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Productivity Shame

2020 was a rough year for a lot of people. A lot of us experienced disruptions in our professional and personal lives. This disruption has forced so many people to work in their homes. It’s also forced people out of their jobs. While I was lucky to not experience much of either of these things, I have recently caught myself in a negative feedback loop. In this loop, I constantly berate myself for a lack of “productivity.” This lack of productivity I’ve been experiencing has been through an active choice to embrace stillness by taking a school term off before jumping into a new job at a new school here in Daegu, South Korea.

I started out 2021 thinking of all of the changes that I have experienced in the last year. I thought about how many things I have completely turned around and I was able to give myself a few pats on the back. But why did I still end up feeling so shitty on most days? Why was I constantly feeling shame for not “doing enough” during my days?

I feel that the reason I am able to clearly see the mechanism in which productivity shaming truly brings a person down is due to the fact that I simply don’t have many obligations at this moment in time. Therefore, any “productiveness” that I perceive is necessary is actually not necessary at all. I literally have nothing that I have to do besides eat, walk the dogs, feed the dogs and cat, and clean the cat’s litter box. Technically, if I wanted to lay in bed all day and sleep, I had no obligations to stop me. Yet, I found myself feeling tired, hopeless, and full of self hatred.

I began to go into productivity overdrive a few weeks back. I scheduled every hour of my day to include some kind of activity. I started working out, studying Korean, walking the dogs 5 times a day, and reading. I even planned out exactly when I was going to prepare my meals and how long my meals must take. The first day was great. I finished everything. I felt this little high off of my accomplishments. I proceeded to try to pack the next day in the same way. While I succeeded, I found myself absolutely drained and exhausted from all of the hours I was devoting to studying and working out.

Ten or so days passed and I woke up this past Wednesday and felt absolutely hopeless. I was doing so many things, but I didn’t want to do any of them that day. I let my alerts on my watch and phone ring. Every time I swiped them away, I felt like a piece of crap. Feeling exhausted was getting to me. My insomnia was and still has been out of control. I was running on 4 hours of sleep every day and not allowing myself to rest was catching up to me. Yet, that Wednesday was not restful. I laid in bed, awake, frustrated and full of self-hate. Why couldn’t I just get my lazy ass up and do the stuff I’ve been doing every day?

I had completely depleted myself and instead of allowing myself to take a break on reaching these expectations, I mentally berated myself for being a “failure.” The guilt and the belief that you are not enough can be extremely taxing. That Wednesday stretched onto Thursday. Somewhere between Thursday and today, I finally figured out why I was “stuck” in this loop. I was setting expectations and goals that were so specific and grueling that I was setting myself up for failure.

You see, productivity shaming is an internal battle you fight with your perfectionist self. The self that sets these goals doesn’t have “happy, healthy, balanced” you in mind. It has the “cracked out, stressed, gotta survive” you in mind. It pushes you to the limit because perfectionist you was created under extreme scrutiny and stress. Your perfectionist self has served you well, and has likely helped you in many of your successes. However, the reality is that we can’t always be in “perfectionist” or “go, go, go” mode.

On Wednesday, when I woke up with the “fuck this and everything on the list” feeling, my mind and body was telling me, “Girl, it’s time to go easy on yourself today.” The checklists and reminders from perfectionist me were there to remind me of how I continue to set unrealistic goals for myself despite how badly I feel when I don’t meet them.

So, between Thursday and this moment, I’ve been working out how I can reconcile these parts of me. I reminded myself that it’s ok to not do everything on my checklist down to the amount of time I have allotted. I began to adjust my tasks from having allotted time slots to simply being a loose list of things that I’ll attempt during the day. I also broke down my list into “obligations” and “desires.” The obligations were simply to get out of the house twice a day for at least 30 minutes each time to walk the dogs. I tried to keep each of the lists manageable.

On Friday, I woke up in a pain flare-up from a condition I was diagnosed with a few years back. It’s called interstitial cystitis, which causes bladder pain/UTI-like symptoms in the absence of any actual infection. There’s limited knowledge on the condition and after many tests and scans, I was diagnosed with it based off of the fact that I was not diagnosed with other conditions that exhibit similar symptoms. I often have pain flare-ups during especially depressive/anxious times, and it’s just icing on the cake. I remember thinking to myself, “Wow, is my body trying to tell me something?”

I recently saw a quote on Instagram that said something along the lies of, “If you’re guilting and shaming yourself while you are resting, then it isn’t really rest. If you feel exhausted after resting, then that’s a sign that you weren’t truly resting at all.” It’s definitely not the exact quote, but the gist of it is there. My body was telling me, “Girl, you aren’t resting enough. You aren’t giving your body what it needs while you can and your mind is making yourself feel like shit while you’re telling yourself to rest.”

If anyone else can relate to a chronic feeling of not “doing enough” please reach out. I’d love your insight on how you deal with this never-ending feeling that you should be busy with something at all times. How do I embrace stillness and rest? How do I get the most out of it when my mind/body seems to reject simple acts of rest such as sleep?

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Relationship Anxiety

As I’m going through this period of self-reflection and rest before my new contract starts up, I am realizing that I have very specific triggers to my anxiety. One of them is relationships. It doesn’t have to be romantic relationships that get me feeling this way. It could be platonic relationships and even familial relationships. The idea that someone may be unhappy with me, really gets the nerves going.

More specifically, if I’m going to talk about one type of relationship that notoriously gets me anxious, it would be romantic relationships. There always comes a point in time in my relationships when I start to get either justifiably or unjustifiably anxious about what my partner really wants from me. I either get more clingy and anxious or cold and distant. I’m not sure what triggers which response, but I’ve definitely gone to both extremes in moments of uncertainty. I could be going through all of this unbeknownst to my partner, or it could be glaringly obvious.

Obviously, neither response is healthy for the relationship. But I have experienced disconnect and eventually a dissolution of the relationship from these responses, which I now understand to be ways that I cope with anxieties and uncertainties in my relationships.

One of the most helpful things I’ve learned in therapy is to question my negative thought loops. I’m not an expert, and I am by no means a love doctor, but here are a few questions I ask myself when I feel myself panicking and pulling away from my partner or getting crazy clingy.

“What specific action has my partner done that warrants this reaction? Often times I find that it’s something as simple as, “He hasn’t answered my texts all day today.” In today’s age, texting has become an important way to maintain communication, and unusual disruptions in any schedule or pattern you’ve developed can cause anxiety. But if you’re finding yourself thinking, “OK, well I guess I’ll pull away too,” then you may be reacting to this change by closing yourself off in order to protect yourself. Perhaps this is something you brought from a previous relationship, and it’s baggage you need to sort through. This brings up the next question…

Has my current partner behaved in a way that brings up past baggage? The answer may be “Yes.” Your partner may have a pattern of withholding or becoming “hot and cold” and it’s something that is triggering baggage from your past. In this case, a conversation about this behavior should be had. Understanding why your partner does this, and perhaps helping your partner sort through their own baggage could help you both grow as a couple.
“Hold on, but what if the answer is ‘no?'” Well, if your partner hasn’t behaved in a way that causes real concern, then this is likely a thought pattern that you have developed in order to protect yourself from hurt and disappointment with a previous partner. This is also known as baggage and is separate from your current partner.

Does pulling away/being clingy make me feel better about myself? This is usually the questions I ask myself that kind of brings me into understanding. Does the action that I am planning on executing to alleviate my anxiety help me feel good about myself? Perhaps pulling away makes you feel like you are “powerful” and “strong,” but does withholding yourself make you feel good individually and in this relationship? Probably not. Withholding emotion and information usually ends up breaking down communication and understanding. Being clingy often breaks down your self-esteem and fills you with regret.

So now that I understand my relationship anxiety as a product of my baggage, how do I make it “stop?” Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop. You only get better at questioning your negative thought patterns. By reasoning with your anxiety and bringing in logic, you can slowly develop good habits to combat the anxiety until it becomes a passing thought that you easily let go of as quick as it came in.

I remember a time when my anxiety surrounding my relationship was so intense that I was not able to function outside of my intrusive thoughts and fears. I would compulsively cling on to my partner or punish myself by withholding affection and disconnecting from them for days, weeks, and, one time, a month. When the anxious thoughts surrounding my relationship were too much, I did some of these things:

  1. Journal – I am a huge fan of handwriting my thoughts. Being able to see them on paper was a way for me to release the negative thought loops from my brain. Often times it was cathartic for me to just read and re-read the worries and thoughts that I had. Sometimes, after a few reads, I realize that my worry is not based on facts or action, but on a fear of abandonment or rejection.
  2. Postponement of Worry – There was a time when I scheduled a time to worry about things in general. This included my relationship. When a worry/negative thought popped into my head, I would jot it down on a notepad or in the memo app on my phone. I set an alarm every night for after work, and I would work through each worry. More often than not, giving the worry time without rumination helped make the worry either less of a worry or a non-worry. I also had a friend that did the same activity with me and we shared our worries together. It was encouraging to have a friend to keep me accountable for postponing, and it was great for me to hear feedback from my friend on how to deal with the worry.
  3. Leaves on a Stream – In 2019, my therapist introduced me to this Acceptance and Commitment Therapy method. I now find myself being able to go through this process without the “Leaves on a Stream” guide, but the guide was absolutely necessary in my worst throes of anxiety. Leaves on a Stream teaches you to acknowledge, accept, and embrace thoughts and feelings without judgement through mindfulness. Honestly, being able to accept some of the most negative and nastiest of thoughts without beating myself up over them and feeling guilty about them is a powerful way to regain control over your anxiety. Here’s a video that helped me through this exercise:

I still experience anxiety triggered by relationships on a day-to-day basis, but thanks to some of these techniques, I have really been able to take back control over my life in the last year. I hope that some of these things can help those of us that are a bit spooked by being with other people.

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Goodbye 2020 – Please be nice 2021

Another year, and I have had so many ideas for posts in my drafts that I don’t know where to begin. Let’s start off this post by saying, “Good riddance, 2020.”

So much about my life has changed since Goodbye 2019. I would say that nearly every aspect of normal life has changed for me. For the worst or for the better? I have no idea, but it definitely has been a year of growth, and self-love.

2020 is the year that I learned how to put myself first. It’s the year I decided to put down all of the “responsibilities” and expectations that I have for myself and others. It’s the year that I decided that I am unapologetically a person that suffers from anxiety and depression. While I became much more accepting of this part of me, I also learned how to allow for these parts of me to take a backseat for once.

Things I Quit in 2020

  1. After an on-and-off relationship with my job, I finally decided to part ways and start fresh in a new city. Toward the middle of the year, I realized that my job was no longer serving me. I spent my days drowning in toxic and unprofessional work environments that sucked the joy out of the very thing that I came back for. Once I was able to reflect and pinpoint exactly what I didn’t need from this job, moving on was easy. I will always be grateful for the opportunities I received and the connections I made during my time with my old job. Walking away from some of the most amazing people I have ever had the chance to work with tore me apart, but putting me first is the theme of 2020, and this was the biggest thing that had to go.
  2. One of the biggest skills that I acquired during 2020 were boundaries. I have written a lot about setting boundaries in other posts, such as Boundaries, but actually setting boundaries and maintaining them is a whole different story. I started doing this toward the first half of the year by stepping away from the draining work responsibilities of the “Head Instructor” title. Realizing that no amount of financial gain was worth sacrificing my sanity for was a boundary that I was able to set between me and my employer. Maintaining those boundaries was equally as challenging. It’s hard for people to accept restrictions that were not previously imposed upon them.
  3. I also quit carrying my baggage into my relationships. I wouldn’t say that I am a complete master at this by any means. This is still new. My previous relationship ending in early 2020 definitely revealed a great need for me to learn how to handle my baggage. I learned that it was important to be able to communicate that I had baggage and may need some help with holding it at times. I learned healthy ways to communicate that and how to reach out to loved ones in the event that the baggage was becoming too heavy.

Things I Gained in 2020

  1. Butterscotch. My dear, sweet, Butterscotch. For those that do not know this, Butterscotch is my foster failure cat. I spent most of this year denying that I was falling in love with this cat. He fell into my arms in early April when he was a 5 week old baby. I tried my best not to get too attached but I think that first month was critical for him. After a few foster homes, he came back into my home and claimed his place in mid-September. Oops.
  2. This year, I gained pieces of myself that I thought I had permanently lost. Somehow, amidst a pandemic, I learned how to have fun again. I learned how to enjoy the company of others on my terms. I gained many new connections and maintained others from the previous year. It has made me excited for a life post-COVID-19. I can’t imagine what that will look like anymore, but I’m looking forward to it.
  3. Lastly, I have gained a deeper understanding of what a healthy and sustainable romantic partner can look like. Although, currently, the state of my romantic relationship is rather fresh. I am learning how at ease I can feel with someone. I’m learning what it feels like to not fear that my partner will wake up one day and decide that they don’t want to deal with my shit anymore. Sure, I carry some of that fear from my past and sometimes it does exhibit itself in my present. However, through therapy and a lot of self-reflection, I am able to separate and understand what is “baggage” and what is an actual legitimate concern.

I was recently told by my therapist that she thinks that I am getting close to ending or tapering off therapy. I remember feeling panicked when I heard this, because… what do I do without therapy? Well, I guess I do what I’ve already been doing. I apply the things I learned, and I process things that come up. One step at a time.

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Late Night Thoughts – Treading Water

I’ve been struggling with keeping my head above the “water,” so to speak, with my depressive symptoms. I’ve had a few really great months of managing, functioning, and thriving. I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I kept working toward it.

Two weeks ago, I came down with a cold. It’s usually a matter of not getting enough rest, or being particularly stressed at work… sometimes both. The cold lingered and the symptoms were barely manageable at times. During times of a pandemic, being sick and still needing to go to work causes a great amount of stress, anxiety, and resentment. My workplace is known for being merciless when it comes to sick teachers. My colleague has taught with diagnosed pneumonia. I have taught with diagnosed pyelonephritis despite being ordered by a doctor to stay home and recuperate. Being compromised with another illness can increase the risk of suffering greatly with COVID-19. The stress of possibly contracting the virus and dying made for some difficult days.

Now that my body is over the physical illness, I’m left with complete mental and physical exhaustion from working through fighting the illness. On top of this, I am coordinating my move out of Changwon. Several stress factors are at play and I just feel like I’m about to drown. I feel like my arms and legs are going to give out, and I will be submerged in the “water” of my depression in no time. In fact, I think it’s already begun. I can’t help but feel as if I failed myself. I preach self-care and self-compassion, but I can’t seem to spare any for myself.

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Reassuring Signs of Healing

It’s been a while my friends. It’s been turbulent. It’s been trying. But I am proud to say it has been a journey I’ve been going through on my own. As I’ve been reflecting on this rather tumultuous period of my life, I’m realizing that I’ve been exhibiting some really subtle signs of some major healing. Signs that I thought were simply signs that I was sliding back.

  1. Being able to brush things off – There was a time when the smallest bit of conflict, and the smallest little hiccup would send me into a complete meltdown. I first noticed this newfound ability to brush off unexpected events or mishaps in recent weeks, as my work has been piling on the unexpected meetings, tutoring sessions, and workshops.
  2. Things that I thought would devastate me, simply don’t – As a person with anxiety, I have thought of every single unfortunate event and imagined what I would feel like if that event were to happen. With anxiety, the emotion was always blown out of proportion. When that “devastating” event happened, it would be a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not anymore. Since I’ve been regularly practicing rationalizing “catastrophized” thoughts, I have already worked out my feelings toward the devastating event.
  3. I allow myself to feel what I need to feel, both good and bad – I spent a lot of my childhood and younger adulthood running away from the “bad feelings.” I never wanted to feel sad, hurt, angry, frustrated, or hopeless. All of this running took its toll on me last year when my emotions cup completely filled and continued to overflow well into this year. Being able to sit with my difficult emotions is an ongoing process for me. I still become completely overcome with panic when a difficult feeling creeps up. I always feel myself fighting it first, but I have noticed my newfound ability to take a step back and allow the feeling to just pass.
  4. Coming to an understanding that I, too, deserve love – I spent a lot of my time in my last serious relationship questioning whether or not a “person like me” deserved to be loved. With all of my shortcomings, my traumas, and my struggles, was I deserving of love? If I cannot always choose to love me, do I have the ability to love and be loved by another? The answer is, yes. I did then. I do now. I always have and always will deserve to be loved and respected no matter what state my mind is in. I also have come to the understanding that anyone that tells me, “You need to love yourself before you seek love,” is someone that just really doesn’t have the capacity to deal with someone that will always have to actively choose to love themselves despite the gut feeling that they should loathe themselves instead. While I do need to continue to work on self-love and acceptance, I do not need to be free of baggage to be loved.

I am still a long ways from the me that I want to be. I am still experiencing dissociation that cuts myself off from enjoying the present. However, I have a light at the end of the tunnel: a long-awaited break from working in a place that has taken me for granted and also begun to take advantage of my ability to function despite the underlying anxiety and depression that often cripples me the moment I get home. A new beginning is on the horizon, and I am hanging onto a sliver of hope that I can make more progress in my mental health journey with a balanced environment.

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Once Upon a Time…

There was a girl that didn’t really believe that love was a wonderful thing. She went through life thinking that she deserved lackluster relationships. She went through them, methodologically. One step at a time, she figured out what was acceptable and what was not acceptable. In the end, things numbed her out. She didn’t think she would find someone again.

Then, by chance, she met someone that actually took the time to ask her about her story. This person was curiously comforting to talk to, and she took to him immediately. It was so fast and so intense. It was so unintentional, and all the timing just felt so wrong, but all of the feelings felt so right.

The time she spent with him was wonderful, she learned so much about herself and love. She learned so much about how to accept the flawed parts of herself while learning about the flawed parts of her partner. She fell in a love that was so deep and so unfamiliar, something was triggered within her. For the first time, she feared the loss of this relationship more than anything. That heart wrenching feeling during conflict caused so much turbulence in her heart that she realized that she had no idea how to deal with a love like this.

The time she spent with him was also turbulent. Dealing with another person’s very different way of communicating their emotions was a challenge. Communicating clearly was the biggest one. The turbulence of her professional and personal life eventually drove her into one of the deepest slumps of depression and anxiety. Nothing could console her. Nothing.

How does one express their fear of the unknown to someone that just doesn’t fear the unknown? How does one express that sometimes when they argued it hit something so deep that it triggered a fear of being left alone? How does one express that fighting felt like the absolute destruction of the foundation she tried to build for herself and her self confidence? How does one express when throughout her life, she was taught to stay quiet, stay “good,” stay agreeable, and stay happy. How does one function in a relationship when you don’t really know how to function as a healthy expressing adult?

The answer is you don’t function unless you’re willing to learn. You make mistakes. You break down in communication. You stop sharing and you stop learning. You stop feeling connected despite constantly reaching out. In the end you’re left anxious, afraid, and slowly realizing that you’ve lost that person that you are so in love with. There was such a long list of things that needed to be done and needed to be addressed before any other love connection is made.

Despite this realization that things just weren’t right, this girl sometimes sits here, months later, realizing that she’s still in love with this boy. Even though she knows this boy has likely decided that there’s not possible way that he will ever give her the time of day again. And she… she won’t ever want to put that burden of her struggles and her pain on another man that she cares about again. Because baggage isn’t fair. It’s not fair to your new partner to have to deal with baggage that you haven’t figured out.

To my future lover, I hope I can continue on this journey to figure out how to be a good communicator, I hope that I can learn to love myself more than you can ever love me, because I don’t ever want to feel like I lost my world again. And I hope that I can give to you the real, loving, and authentic me that I’m not afraid to show you. I hope that we can learn to grow together rather than tolerate each other’s flaws. I want to embrace yours while you embrace mine. Maybe one day I’ll find you. But the goal of this is to be OK if I don’t.

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Late Night Thoughts: Breaking Point

Over the last few weeks I have had some severe ups and downs. I fluctuate between being a hopeful and optimistic person that is shaking with excitement of what the future has to offer and a person that is paralyzed by the fear and anxiety of uncertainty. While dealing with this uncertainty, my work has been going through the “Intensives” period for summer. What is this, you ask? Well, it’s basically where we, the teachers, teach anywhere between 6 to 9 hours non-stop for at least 4 out of 5 days a week. To add a dash of salt to the wound, COVID-19 has shortened my students’ summer vacation with public school, and we had to cram all 4 weeks of a normal 4 week vacation intensive camp into 3 weeks. Yep. Saturday classes required.

I have been expending my energy, both physical and mental, in order to do my job well. I know that I have previously discussed having High-Functioning Anxiety/Depression. I am recently coming to terms with the fact that being this way may has driven me to the point I am at today. I care so much about “doing well” and being “put together” that I forget that I get to be upset about things and be on the lookout for something better.

A few months ago, I had a meeting with my direct supervisor and the director of the school on the direction that I hoped to go in. I asked to be a regular teacher and to remove my title as a Head Instructor. Of course, it wasn’t that easy, and there were stipulations. I suppose I felt like I owed it to work to allow for stipulations because I wanted to continue to be a useful worker. For the first time in my life I wasn’t continuing to claw my way up because that’s what I “ought” to do. For the first time, I decided what’s best for me as a whole human being. It was terrifying. I was overcome with guilt for “disappointing” my supervisors. I berated myself for not being useful, and a little voice in my head reminded me that the reason why I couldn’t “handle” being HI was because I was weak and stupid.

You see, telling the self-loathing part of me to just shut the fuck up and let me live seems to be an easy thing to do. After all, you’re supposed to be able to control your thoughts. Or at least that’s what the world tries to make you think. Individuals with anxiety or depression end up wondering how the hell you’re supposed to just… “control” these thoughts. While people will just say, “Just don’t think about them.” It’s the most excruciatingly frustrating conversation. I have had these conversations so many times. “Well, I can’t really do that, because these thoughts are intrusive,” I’ll say in reply. The reply I usually get is, “Well, just try a bit harder to block that out.” This reply makes me not want to make another human acquaintance again. Like, ok, cool. You cured me. The thousands I’ve spent on therapy, medication, and specialized treatment. Useless. I should have just blocked the damn thoughts this whole time. Easy.

Clearly, as you can tell by the little rant, stopping myself from hating myself and blaming myself is something that is hardwired into my brain. Not sure why. I’m still digging for it. But I know it has a lot to do with culture, upbringing, and habits I’ve formed since I was a child. My willingness to unlearn these habits is the only strength I have right now. The hope for a better future is one of the few things I can hang on to.

As I’m laying in bed having a mini breakdown because: I hate work, I’m sad, I’m lonely, I hate myself, etc., I have to remember the one universal truth. The only certainty in life is uncertainty. Nothing is permanent.

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Late Night Thoughts – I’ve Learned Stuff

TW: Discussion of suicidal thoughts and ideations.

Some days when I think I’ve reached my breaking point, life just says, “Nah, girl, I can drag you so much lower. Just watch me.” These days I feel as if no matter how horrible things go, or no matter how low my moods get, I can’t seem to reach the bottom. It’s not to say that I don’t ever feel like quitting… it’s that I am constantly in the state of “I quit,” or “I have quit.”

These days, I’ve been in a constant low. I don’t have energy for much other than going to and from work. I don’t recognize myself in the mirror. I don’t want to make time for anything… not even myself. A few sessions ago, my therapist urged me to take a day to myself to just rest. I did that same day, and I felt great… but awful afterward.

What the fuck am I doing? Laying around like a useless sack of shit? There are people dying in America of COVID, and you want to “rest” and “take care of yourself?!” How first-world of you!

I berate myself constantly and bully myself into believing that I am not worth the self-care. That my shit isn’t as bad as other people’s shit so I should just be grateful. Doesn’t matter though, I still feel like a sack of shit, even if I am grateful that I have the luxury of life and feeling things. I guess it’s a luxury that it’s not my life I’m fighting for but just the feeling of the inevitable rock bottom I seem to keep discovering. A new kind of low that keeps telling me, “Don’t worry, hun, this is the worst that it’ll get,” but somehow still seems to keep dragging me further down.

When I read back on what I’ve typed, I know what this all is. Another depressive episode. Episode. It sounds so temporary and like a “phase,” but I can’t imagine any other way to live. It’s like I live in a fog where I function almost perfectly “fine” in all of society’s definitions of fine. I productively contribute to society, I read up about what is wrong with the world, I have some level of passion for things, and I continue to do what’s necessary to be alive. All of this, while I don’t feel like I’m here for any of it. All of this while I feel like I’m not really “alive” for any of this.

I realize that this sounds pretty horrible. I realize that this is a huge downer for anyone that knows me to read. I used to really care about not burdening others with my shit. It got to the point where all of the people that I called my “best friends” didn’t actually know that I sometimes thought about throwing myself into the Mississippi River, or taking too many pain killers. I was so terrified that someone would somehow find out about these secret thoughts of mine and throw me into the hospital. Lock me up. I was scared shitless of being labeled as the “fragile” or “special” one in the family. So I’d zip my lips, push the thoughts away, and continue to function.

So what has that taught me?

  1. This all comes at a price. That price is years of functioning at max capacity only to watch everything kind of fall apart while the real you is watching from a distance. You can’t say that it wasn’t your fault, but your therapist is trying to tell you it wasn’t your fault. When blaming yourself is second nature, unlearning it all doesn’t just happen. I was taught to be successful, productive, and do everything “right” the first time. The realization that my upbringing has caused so much pain and suffering at this very moment is a hard pill to swallow, because I watched my wonderful parents toil away to give me everything they thought I needed. I had every material thing I could ever want at the price of self-compassion.
  2. Shit just happens and no one needs to be assigned “fault.” This really just applies because I’ve spent countless years blaming myself for things that no one else blamed me for. Every decision or word that’s ever come out of me… down to things I said that one time in band in the 11th grade. Stupid shit. Countless stupid little things that sometimes just come back to haunt me so that I can assign the blame to myself. It’s taken 29 years for me to learn that not everything has to be my fault. Or anyone’s fault. What the fuck is fault?
  3. This whole damn time, I was enough. I’m not sure where the hell I got the idea that I wasn’t. But this whole damn time, I was more than enough. I am enough for my parents. I am enough for my sisters. I am enough for my friends. I am enough for me. Do I believe this every day? Hell, no. But I know that I am enough. I will be enough to pull through this depressive episode. I am enough to get through this rough patch in life. I will be enough for people I have yet to meet. Those that have gone and those that I no longer have connections likely no longer are connected to me because whatever I was at that point was enough.
  4. Absolutely nothing is permanent. My feelings right now won’t last forever. Feelings that I have toward myself will change. Feelings I have toward people that I thought were permanent can morph into other types of feelings. Things are always changing, and I am always changing.
  5. I have to speak my truth. I have depression. I have it bad at times. I have crippling anxiety. It sometimes keeps me home for days at a time on the weekends. Hell, my depression is crippling, it makes it hard for me to see past the next day. It looks different for everyone. I can hold down a job fine. I can continue to function at max level just fine. But imagine functioning and doing all this with a smile plastered on your face, but your brain is screaming “YOU ARE A SACK OF SHIT” the entire time. It can be mighty hard to have room for much else. So, I need to stop belittling it and actually address my mental illness as an actual illness that affects my life in an adverse way.

Mid-year check in with myself… and reflecting on shit that I have learned during 2020. Can’t wait to see what other destruction and despair this year has to offer. This certainly has been one for the books.

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High-Functioning Anxiety/Depression

I recently had a talk with my therapist about what it means to be a high-functioning person with anxiety and depression. It made me realize that a lot of people are likely suffering from mental illness despite “keeping it all together.” This happens because I was taught that falling apart was not ok. I also continue to function because the culture in which I work in cannot really deal with “mental health issues.”

I have been in situations where I’ve been sobbing in my classroom before class begins. Desperately trying to suck the tears back in before any students see me. I’ve been still in bed 30 minutes before the time when I have to be at work, and still somehow managed to get myself “together” enough to pass for “functioning” at work. The moment the students come in through those doors, I put it all away and I put in all of my energy and efforts into making class fun for the students. I know that the students can feel me struggling some days, because they are patient with me. But I constantly berate myself. I tell myself how I’m not doing enough. I reprimand myself for not being more “together.”

The High-Functioning part of my mental illness stems from a childhood of constant activity. If I wasn’t at school, I was doing some type of sport, or some kind of project at home. I was raised thinking that idleness is a sign of weakness. That if I let my mind or body stay idle, I will, in turn, allow myself to become a worthless sack of shit. Being useless is my worst fear. It’s one of the biggest reasons why I rarely sleep a weekend away.

So what happens when my mental health takes a turn for the worse? Well, I simply overcompensate. I run myself until I’m on empty. I forget about really simple things such as meals, medication, cleaning, and doing laundry. In my worst state, I do everything I can to make it through those doors at work before collapsing in a heap on my bed at the end of the day. On the weekends, I have no work to occupy my time, so I keep myself so busy that I don’t even have time to think about what is making me so distraught. This works for some time because it keeps me from dwelling on negativity, but eventually my emotions cup overflows. When it overflows, then the anxiety begins to manifest itself into real physical symptoms.

The past two weeks, I’ve been terrified to fall asleep. I wake up every two hours during my sleep, gasping for air. Panic attacks plague me and coming down from each attack takes time and energy. Sleeping is almost as detrimental as not sleeping, and I wake up every morning absolutely defeated. In my dreams, I replay all of the things in my day, my week, my month, my year that have accumulated to break me down so that I can be gripped in fear when I wake up… on the dot… every two hours.

I am exhausted. I feel like I’m constantly on the verge of tears. I feel hopeless. But that’s life, right?

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Invasive Thoughts

For people that don’t have an anxiety disorder, it is often very difficult to understand that those of us that have anxiety don’t really want to think these things. The worries that pop into my mind are 100% involuntary. On top of that, I do not necessarily believe in every single thought that has ever popped into my head. It sounds wild, I get it. If this is not part of your human experience, it’s really hard to wrap your head around a thought flying into your brain and invading it. Having no control over what “conclusion” your thought patterns end up having isn’t something that everyone experiences. However, I aim to enlighten and help people understand those around them.

So what are intrusive thoughts? It’s like a fucking conquistador trying to claim your brain and sense of self as it’s own. They can be triggered by any kind of stimuli or image. They come in and they seep into your thoughts and try to convince you that it’s true. Eventually, your anxiety tries to convince you, “Hey, girl, you should probably just believe it so that you can prepare yourself for the worst. You know what your history’s been like. You know how shit just keeps happening. Be prepared.” Do I want to believe the intrusive thought? No. Do I just passively let it consume me? Also, no. It takes a lot of goddamn work to fight an intrusive thought.

So, what is the loudest intrusive thought I’ve been having? “You’re going to die alone because you’re not a person that’s made for long-lasting relationships.” *Cue all of the people trying to tell me how wonderful I am* So why is this so distressing to me? Well, it’s because I’ve learned from life that my intrinsic value is linked to how people perceive me. Should that be what determines my value? No. Does that stop me from feeling like a sack of shit? Also, no. So how do I work through this thought? Well, I ask myself if my personality really is the reason why I am not meant for “lasting relationships” or if it’s my past relationships that have worn away at my sense of self. I realize it’s the baggage I’m carrying from my past relationships that weighs me down from healthily developing new relationships. Now, if it’s the baggage, then it’s not a problem that’s permanent. That’s good! Then, I have to challenge the fear of whether or not I’m actually afraid of being alone, or if I’m afraid of what people will perceive me as due to my history with relationships. Working through that thought takes time and emotional energy that drains me. In the end, I’m left irritable and very, very vulnerable to emotional distress.

So… next time you’ve got a buddy or a partner that is having a moment with their anxious thoughts, try to encourage them to challenge the thoughts rather than tell them to “stop being so negative” or berating them for being a “pessimist.” We really… really don’t want to be like this. We just are.

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