I haven't posted anything in a few days (despite my challenge to myself to write something every day) because I've been feeling very low and rough recently.
How does one go about fixing a broken person that can't be repaired, a person whom believes that they can't be, because they break everything they touch? Is it even possible? From what I understand of psychology, it isn't:
"You can't help a person change if they don't want to. Real change comes from within." (It's something like that, anyway).
Please let me know if you find out (or know) to the contrary. I've been trying to, in and out of therapy and philosophy sessions on and off, for a long time. You know that the headshrinkers are just quoting what they learned from a book and therefore don't respect anything they have to say.
Nobody actually wants a shitty life. Some people pretend they do, but that's mostly them doing their best at coping. So far, I've only find ways to avoid/cope with my issues. That's probably good enough, but not ideal. Misery loves company. Most of the people that complain how bad their lives are, are generally just fishing for attention, which drowns out those people whom actually are suffering due to shitty broken brains harbouring issues they can't/don't know how to fix/mitigate. Despite posts by me that may seem to indicate otherwise, I try not to complain too much, but none of that changes my being broken and irreparable (or at least believing that I am, which is a pretty close proxy).
I could've been easier on you. I couldn't change though I wanted to. It should have been easier by three. Our old friend fear and you and me.
Whilst what the shrinks say might be true, it seems highly unlikely that most of them have ever been in a situation where one part of a person's brain tries to change, and then the other half does its best to stop that happening. Procrastinating and being overwhelmed by crippling anxiety and fear of failure (or perhaps success?), one of my many mental issues, is a case in point. Sometimes, I actually manage to talk myself down for long enough to go to the office, keep them at bay and get through a day's work without being overwhelmed, but those are rare days. The typical days of operating in a highly agitated state are exhausting. I actually feel pretty good about it when I do have good to great days. That's my predicament, except when it comes to finding work that gives me an office to which to go for longer than three months (because my issues and resulting conduct keep me from holding down a job for longer).
I have managed to dig myself out of a extremely deep bottomless hole, into a slightly less deep hole, a number of times before, but it's still deep nonetheless. I'm in a very deep hole right now and don't think I can manage unaided (at least not without some sort of anti-anxiety and sedative meds or finding a low-pressure/stress job that pays me a living wage, not that such a thing likely exists.) I'm on my own in that initiative, unfortunately, since it's clear to me that no-one else is willing to help me with that.
As I have stated before, the problem seems to be that I know what to do; I just can't seem to find/apply the courage/motivation to do all the things necessary and manage my limited time well enough to get them all done. Besides, I destroy everything I touch and once things start to go well and look up in some aspects of my life, others fail until I fail at everything, at which point people realise I'm actually a fraud whom really doesn't know what I'm doing, despite my experience, knowledge and skills, and I'm back to square one.
Once things look up, I come falling down.
The worst part is that I keep putting myself in the same old bullshit fruit salad situations and don't learn from them as fast as I should or as is necessary. Therefore, I can't help but falling back into the same old hole in my neighborhood, even though I know it's there, without making a change that I don't believe I can (or at least taking sufficiently preventative measures like putting guard rails up around it and seeing the warning signs). Unfortunately, that is how it goes with people like me: Regardless of how good/strong/stable any of us gets, to any extent, it all goes to shit in the end. Maybe I'm just making excuses here and procrastinating, again ...
There's a hole in my neighbourhood, down which of late, I cannot help but fall.
It took me four and a half years to learn that I'm just not good enough at relationships (especially romantic ones) with other people. No matter how hard I try, how much effort I put in or time to myself I sacrifice to meet the needs (professional or personal) of others and make them feel cared for or important to me, it's never enough for either of us. It took me over twelve years to learn that the same goes for software and Web development (and working for others in general). No matter how much I learn and/or hone my skills, at some point I stop persisting at making a consistent effort to get better, to learn, and it all goes south. Awareness of my limits and life experience is not enough to keep me safe from causing anguish, harm and pain to both myself and others. I cannot stop myself destroying everything I touch, as much as I'd like to.
Anything that may delay you might just save you. You only have to look behind you, at who's underlined you.
It's not that I don't know how to get things done (since I neglect to use strategies that I know work), but the majority of the problem is that I don't have sufficient energy or resolve to do them or create and adhere to a structure that enables me to do them. I just want to find a way to deal with my overwhelming anxiety and fear when it comes to working with other people for money. (I estimate that I spend about 75-80% of my mental time and effort trying to allay/alleviate them in order to function and do what I have to. Since they dominate my life, energy and time, take almost all of my resolve and are the root cause of my procrastination, I have little to none of that left for doing actual work, getting done the things that I have/need to.) Coping with them is a good baseline/start, since I don't believe my deep-seated issues are actually something I can conquer and fix permanently. While I know that my past traumatic experiences don't have to define me or shape my identity and mentality, they very much do. All the mental/psych work I've done on them hasn't been enough to change that, mainly because as soon as I get close to breaking through to succeeding with that, the anxiety and fear comes back overwhelmingly and I run away from a new and unknown approach/paradigm.
On that bombshell, I have a lot of reading to do (links in the "Resources" section) and free psychological counseling to find, in the hopes I can convince/persuade someone to prescribe me the anti-anxiety meds and methylphenidate-HCL I can't afford.
Thumbnail image: Photo by Anfisa Eremina on Pexels
