To ask if anyone else is as suggestible as I am?

[Tweaker]

I haven't met anyone else who is so suggestible and therefore very changeable. I am driving myself MAD with it as I lurch from one extreme to another. Big things and small. I've been thinking about this for a while and these are just some examples from the last few days:

• I've been wrestling with whether or not I want another baby. I see something about people travelling and maybe a thread about how hard parenting is. I think "they're good points/factors, I am better off not having another child." Then I hear about a friend being pregnant or a bloody happy advert, "I must have another baby! It's essential! What was I THINKING doubting it?" Until something happens and my position changes again.
• met a woman whose family live in Australia. Think, "I should move there, life's for living! Taking chances!" Then I have a zoom chat with my brothers or see a tv show about the Lake District and realise I could never move, what was I thinking!
• that's the perfect wallpaper/picture/style I'll get that! See something else...urgh! How could I ever have liked that!

And so on...Exhausting. For context, I am a reasonably intelligent, professional 40-something woman. Please tell me I'm not alone or at least how to tune in to what I really want/think...

Mental health based insults. Nice

Reading the 2nd pages and you all resonate with me. I have diagnosed ocd, anxiety and panic disorder and an internal monologue that never shuts up.

I also maladaptive daydream, intense daydreams that can go on for hours where i live different lives.

Interesting. My take on this is that a lot of it is an exaggerated version of normal, it's not a completely different experience. If it's constant and overwhelming though, that in itself would be different.

For example, I think coming out from seeing a film and imagining yourself within its milieu is normal, to an extent, for a short time and perhaps as a lasting memory. Surely part of the point of fiction is to expand our ideas of what is possible and how that might feel - without having to experience every single thing ourselves.

Similarly, it's much easier to imagine new ways of living and come up with both fanciful daydreams and doable ideas, when on holiday, because, released from the everyday routine, your brain flows more freely. Most people wait until they're home to see which ideas might last and be possible.

A lot of what's being described just sounds like a case of 'the best being the enemy of the good'. I'd counter that with 'you've got to be in it to win it'. That is, you have to be doing something in a committed way, to have a chance of achieving anything. But, once you are doing something, it's quite possible that opportunities will arise that were not forseeable. if you never get started, or stick to anything, you'll never get anywhere at all.

How do you guys do with your decisions once you've made them? Because I could deal with the flitting about in my head if, at the end of it, I made decent decisions, but sometimes I've made decisions that I massively regretted and now as well as not being able to stick to one thing I'm also scared to pick anything really! I'm trying to look into big career and life decisions right now and it's really difficult, thinking I have no clue how to make a good decision. My instincts are useless, I want to be a different thing every day. My mood is all over the place trying to get my head round all the things I could potentially do. I really find it very hard to cope with - I feel like I get emotionally attached to every option, but then I'm as likely to be super excited about something else tomorrow...
I'm also waiting to get assessed for ADHD. If I have it, and medication ends up working for me as it has for my DD, god how annoying it will be to be this old and only just have worked it out!

I suppose what I wonder is, if you know you / your brain habitually behaves like this, why don't you acknowledge that and set it to one side when making decisions? Just as I might say 'well, it seemed like a good idea at the time but then I was drunk / tired / jet-lagged, so inevitably felt odd and had the strange thoughts associated with that mental state'. So, I won't necessarily discard those ideas but I will examine them in context, alongside a lot of more ordinary, everyday considerations.

Why would you adopt what sounds like a maladaption or an exaggeration of your most extreme ways of thinking, as your sense of self and the thing you allow to drive your decisions?

Surely, with the awareness that you are doing this, comes the ability not to do it and to recognise that 'it' is not 'you'?

Continually self-sabotaging, by preventing yourself from committing to or completing anything, is surely a different problem with a different cause, than having a racing mind or powerful imagination. A consistent, reliable drive for self-destruction is an issue in itself.

I'll chime in with agreement of it sounding very much like ADHD.

I was diagnosed in September and this is me. I flit from one impulse to another. Thoughts constantly whirring, including anxious and intrusive ones.

When I was younger -in fact till quite recently -I didn't really know myself and found others to hide behind with bigger personalities than me.

@lottiegarbanzo. I wish it was that easy! It might be easy for some people to think that way but if your brains not wired to see it as an impulse its hard to control. For me once i get an impulse my ocd kicks in and it becomes my new obsession and im 100% sure its the right thing to do... Until the next thing hits me and i then become 100% convinced this one is it this time and the old one i can still fall back on.

For the sake of honesty on this thread im nearly 30 and have never had a career either. Ive had loads of jobs and been nicknamed jill of all trades, retail, care, schools, hospitality ive done it all.