I’m guilty of this, not taking a big breath before making decisions. I can suspect its because of some anxiety lingering from a past of anxiety as a full blown illness, but it matters not the cause when you are trying to find a remedy. It’s there, it’s real and it must be tackled not ignored.
With some people taking a breath before answering a question is natural. In fact an old school friend of mine would indeed do that automatically and it was painful to wait for his response. That delay, often around 3 seconds, you could almost watch the cogs turning, however as he was really intelligent A student, his answers were always detailed and accurate. Rarely did he have to apologise for answering wrongly simply because he had done his thinking on the topic in that 3 seconds.
However, that isn’t me and it might not be you?, But what we can learn is to take a breath before you answer and that breath can be 3 seconds long, enforced time delay while you do such thinking. I now do that with an “ummmm” and that helps as that word relays to the receiver that I’m about to answer so they don’t fill that void with more chatter.
People with mental health issues can have side issues with communication. Eg “foot in mouth” the fault of saying something inappropriate before thinking is common with ADHD and getting distressed over a traumatic topic before all the facts are conveyed can be seen as catastrophizing are two examples of reactions or automatic responses that can find us in trouble with people. I can recall my mother once over reacting when my father arrived home and said “now don’t take this to heart…” – that was enough for her to yell “oh no” and start welling up in the eyes. She assumed he’d lost his job. He finished “I hit the curb with the car, we need a new tyre”. Clearly there was no easy way of breaking any news to her.eg if he said “come and look at the car” she would have thought it was a right off… and so on. Whereas, had she taken a breath and waited 3 seconds the rest of his statement would have finished and she would have realized it wasn’t the end of the world. Easy to say hard to do however.
Being an individual includes not being within the boundaries of what is considered “normal” interaction. Mental illness or not, we are ourselves and if that means saying the wrong thing a quick apology should always suffice. If not hold your head up high and accept that the receiver is not being receptive to that individual- the amazing and wonderful- YOU.
