Facing Failure

When your fears become a reality it’s scary. My stomach drops and I want to crawl under my desk to hide.

I started a new initiative at work that I was excited about. My boss was excited too. I spoke to all of the parties who would be involved with the initiative before the launch so everyone was on the same page.

The day came and everyone was blind sided somehow. I come in to emails that they are confused and frustrated even though I told everyone the launch date and they were to work shit out themselves.

Now it is on pause. I’m still the newbie at work so I feel like an idiot. I feel stupid for trying to do something innovative.

I can only blame myself for my failure. I clearly missed the mark on communication.

Having my worries realized feels like a win for my anxiety. I can already hear it saying, “of course you failed” and “now nobody is going to want to work with you again. They already don’t like you and now they have another reason why the think you’re shit.”

Is it 5 o’clock yet?

Is it ok to walk around the office with a paper bag over my head?

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Mistakes Make Me Feel Guilty

Am I the only one who gets super anxious after they make a mistake?

A few minutes ago I had a misunderstanding with the people at my side gig. Everything got worked out but I feel so guilty for misunderstanding!

As I’ve written about before, I struggle with a version of perfectionism that includes I should never make any mistakes. I should always have the correct answer, I should always understand others and I should never mess up.

The moment I huge up the phone my stomach dropped to my butt. My anxiety was ready with the negativity when I pressed “end.”

“Megan, why are you so stupid? You should have known that!”

“They’re going to fire you because of this. You’ve made too many mistakes. Your boss didn’t hire you to make mistakes and he could find somebody else to write who will be perfect.”

I know I can’t be perfect. Hannah Montana told us in 2007, nobody’s perfect.

Being serious, I need to overcome my anxiety and guilt after I make a mistake. I’m not sure how I do that but I don’t want to get gray hairs because of this issue. It takes such a tole on my mental state.

Too Nice for My Own Good

In my previous post I talked about how an ex-friend had reached out to me looking to rekindle our friendship. It really put me into a boiling pot of anxiety because I wasn’t prepared for this and I don’t want to rekindle our friendship.

I hate being mean and knowing that I have hurt somebody’s feelings. I get serious guilt and I always have been that way even if I am standing up for myself. In my mind, being mean is bad and I should always be nice to others.

It gives me anxiety when I know I have to tell somebody no because I don’t want to upset that person. I am a people pleaser at heart, there’s no way to sugar coat it. It is a huge reason why I had put up with this ex-friend’s bullshit for so long.

I was afraid to stand up for myself for years in fear of hurting her feelings. That doesn’t even make sense!

In her and I’s texting conversation, that has taken up most of this week, she does not understand why I can’t move on from the horrible things she said to me. In her mind, it wasn’t a big deal and she “apologized” for it. It was such a fake apology, she said, “I’m sorry but…” which did not respect my feelings.

I finally told her how I have felt that I will never live up to these expectations she has of me. That I cannot live my life to please her because I need to make sure that I am happy first.

She is upset that I didn’t tell her I felt that way until now when I felt that way for so many years. Sure, I could have told her but I was afraid to. That trust kept breaking down and never getting built back up.

When all the trust was gone, for me the friendship was more or less over.

Even though I wrote a whole post about how I wanted to tell her thank you, next, now that the moment has come I feel like I can’t do it. Around her I have no courage, no strength to stand up for myself even when it is in my best interest.

I wish I could crawl under my covers, waiting until all of this crap has blown over. My natural instinct is to hide when things get tough, this situation is no different.

Tonights Meltdown

I’m having one of those evenings where I can’t stop my anxiety and depression from bullying me into a corner. They shout horrible things at me, the words that come from my own mind are like a punch in the gut.

Tonight my depression is reminding me that all of my mistakes make me a terrible person. That my errors are why people hate me.

Anxiety backs depression up by saying that everyone in my life is packing their bags and distancing themselves from me. That my mistakes and flaws make me unworthy of their presence.

They tell me my boyfriend is going to dump me because I am not enough. That I will never be enough. He wants somebody perfect, somebody who doesn’t fuck up the way I do.

When everything becomes too overwhelming I want to hide. That is my natural instinct, I’ve done it since I was a child. I want to hide from the people I have disappointed so they can’t look at me with eyes filled with pain that I caused.

I hope that if you’re struggling you can make it through. More than likely the sun will rise again in the morning.

My Fears: I’m Not Good Enough

Like my fear that everyone pretends to like me, I’ve had the worry that I’ll never be good enough. I think that is the overarching phrase of my entire existence.

As a child I never thought I was good enough to be a part of anything special or succeed in academics, sports or music.

I remember being in 5th grade, I was selected to be a part of the Four Mile Singers (the school was called Four Mile, hence the name) which was a special singing ensemble for 5th graders.

I went up to my music teacher and told him that I didn’t deserve to be in Four Mile Singers because it was for special people. I told him that I was not special therefore I shouldn’t be in it.

I have blocked that memory out for the most part but every once in a while it creeps back up in my brain. It’s quite painful to think about.

I loved playing the piano but I have never thought I was very good. I took lessons from kindergarten through 12th grade.

I would compare myself to the other students who took lessons from the same teacher. I would hear them play and think, “Wow, I wish I could play like them. They have so much talent!”

By the time I got to high school, I rarely performed in recitals on my own. I would become so incredibly anxious that I would fuck it all up. So my teacher would pair me with other students to do duets, duals and quartets. I loved doing those! I felt confident because I had other people around me to support me.

With friends and boyfriends, I have always thought that they secretly hated me. I’ve always thought that they would leave because I was not enough for them. That I couldn’t provide whatever they were searching for so they would leave to find somebody who could fill that void.

As I am growing up I am feeling this a little less. I am confident in my relationship with my boyfriend, I know that he loves me. I have only a few friends in my actual life (outside from social media and texting). The couple that I have will reach out to chat or even take the lengths to spend time with me.

Every day I have to work towards self-acceptance. I need to accept myself for who I am, not look at what I lack. I do not need to live my life to meet the standards of others. 

May 2019 bring some more self-acceptance! I will be doing a New Years goals list this month. Follow me so you can check it out!

My Fears: Everybody Hates Me

Since I wrote a few days ago about my fear of being fired from my job, I figured I would do a series about my different fears sustained by my anxiety. This one is about my fear that everyone secretly hates me.

I have thought that everyone hates me since I was a child. I don’t know where it originally came from but anxiety always told me that. I often thought my friends were friends with me for pity and not because they wanted to hang out with me.

As my mental illness developed as I grew up, I felt that way more and more.

I mainly have felt this way in romantic relationships. With my first boyfriend at the age of 15, I thought he was dating me for pity. I thought he was so cute, cool and 16 that there was no way he actually wanted to date me.

That feeling was solidified after I found out he was cheating on me with another girl. It told me that I am not enough.

Fast forward to 22 and I felt that way again with my ex and now at 25 I still have those feelings about my current boyfriend.

I worry that deep down he hates me. I worry that he is with me because he feels sad for me. I worry that he is always on the verge of breaking up with me especially if there’s an argument.

Whenever there’s a rough patch I think, “Omg, this is the end. He’s going to break up with me.” So far that hasn’t happened, we have been together for 2 years.

It’s this deep insecurity that I have always had inside me. That I am not good enough and not worthy of love. That my mental illness and other weird quirks are a turn off, making people run away from me as quickly as possible.

Anxiety screams so loudly in my mind that it is often difficult to tune out. On repeat it tells me that everybody hates me and is planning to leave me.

My therapist has worked hard to try and tell me that my anxiety is wrong. That there are many people who care about me, she even had me create a list once! She asked me to really think, without anxiety’s influence, about who I know does not hate me.

Maybe I should do that again but I’m not sure if it will curb these thoughts.

Hope you guys are all doing well!

— Megan

 

Fear of being Fired

Lately I’ve been incredibly nervous that I’m performing poorly at my full-time job and my side hustle. Both involve me writing for two different organizations plus doing some design work and social media managing.

Let’s start at my side gig where my real anxiety lies.

I’m incredibly thankful to have something on the side to bring in some extra cash every month and give me additional writing experience. I’ve was hired in April 2017 because my boss loved the writing I did about them as a reporter.

He said, “Megan, I’m going to talk to the board and try to convince them to bring you on board.”

It all worked out! I really enjoy writing for them but my boss is a perfectionist. He might even be a robot, I’m not 100% sure though.

My anxiety tells me that my work won’t be good enough in his eyes and eventually grow tired of my work then sack me.

Here’s the thing: I have no evidence or actual reason to think that he’s displeased with my work. He continues to give me solid feedback and just gave me 3 stories to complete this month.

Anxiety tells me so frequently that my writing is bad, that I have chosen a profession that I suck at. My anxiety says that I should quit writing because nobody will ever enjoy reading it.

At my full-time job I am often asked to write in a style that I’ve never really written in before, a conversational style.

All through school and university I was instructed to write in a professional manner, to stick to the facts and leave any exaggeration or bias out of it. I am a journalist by trade so that is the way I have been trained to write.

Whenever I get my stories kicked back from my supervisor with edits up and down basically instructing me to rewrite it, I fear that I will be let go. I worry that because I struggle with a conversational writing style that they will fire me to find somebody else who excels at that.

My anxiety has always had a strong grip around my writing. I have always loved to write but my anxiety repeatedly tells me it’s all shit.

I’ve worked with my therapist about this issue for a while, clearly it’s something we need to revisit.

Stay strong and be alright, everyone!

Happy Hanukkah to all of my Jewish readers!

Waking Up Empty

If you’ve ever experienced depression or anxiety, you have probably experienced the emptiness that resounds in your chest the moment you wake up. I felt that this morning for the first time in a while.

I forgot how horrible it feels to be hollow once more. For many weeks I only woke up feeling sleepy, ready to go back to sleep instead of getting up at 5:30 or 6 in the morning. This morning I rose, began to stretch then the empty feeling began to settle into my chest.

I have today off so I should be looking forward to everything I get to do (and don’t have to do) today. I have some work for my side gig to do, I’m going shopping, hopefully going to the gym and best of all, I am getting a sauna and massage. My emptiness calls me to forget those positive activities, instead to focus on how depressed I feel.

This is a feeling I hoped wouldn’t touch me until the new year. I deeply hoped that the light inside me could continue to shine brightly. To light me up like a jack-o-lantern, but it seems that my candle was blown out.

I don’t want my depression to ruin the holidays for me. Not this year!

On Christmas 2016 I was remembering that I had been suicidal for 3 months instead of celebrating with my family. The desire to die was so strong even on my favorite holiday. This year, I don’t want that to be the case! I want to be happy spending time with my family, my boyfriend and his family.

This empty feeling may not go away for a while, that’s reality. I know myself and have learned so much through my long journey with mental illness. In time I will be better. In time I will have my energy back and be able to feel good again.

It’s all in time.

Sinking down

I had been free from the grips of depression for over a month. It was beautiful! I felt truly happy with my life and where I am at.

Until today.

I feel like I have fallen down the stairs, that I was at the top, slipped and have begun to topple down step after step. I was perfectly content at the top until my footing got shaky yesterday.

I was at my boyfriend’s house where I began to overreact about something I said to him. I got very upset with myself  so I started to cry. I told him I didn’t know why I was crying, just that I felt bad for being nasty to him when I shouldn’t have been.

This morning (and basically all day) he has been off, I noticed immediately. My brain shut down and I lost it. I began sobbing and saying to myself over and over, “It’s all my fault.” I always blame myself for anything that goes wrong. All morning I could not stop crying, my mind felt unbalanced. That something had snapped or a switch was turned off that allowed me to function properly.

All day my brain has been telling me that my boyfriend doesn’t love me anymore, that he hates me, that he doesn’t want to see me anymore after nearly 2 years together. It makes me stomach hurt as those thoughts claw on the inside of my skull.

Depression has returned. I feel it in the core of my being. It’s such a familiar feeling to have my energy zapped and feel like I’m a hollow vessel.

This time around I don’t find any comfort in my depression. I feel like I’m tied up with extra-strength chewing gum trying to break free from it’s grasp. I feel uncomfortable and I want my mind to go back to the way it was.

I don’t know if I can get back to where I was mentally any time soon. I don’t know how long this depressive episode will last me.

All I can do is be strong and try my best to make it through.

Let’s Discuss Self-Harm

Self-harm is a topic, just like suicide, that a lot of people refrain from talking about. There’s a group of us who walk around every day with physical scars that we either embrace or try to hide. We can be in control for years, months, weeks, days or hours then fall victim to this habit.

I don’t want anybody to be triggered by this so if you are already feeling inclined to hurt yourself, just skip this post.

I started my journey of self-harm when I was 18 in my first semester of college. I felt completely alone starting school in a place where I knew almost no one in a town hours away from home. To help with the loneliness and depression, I would scratch myself. This escalated to cutting myself up and down my arms every day for around a month when my roommate was at work.

A friend, who I have lost touch with now, saw my cuts while we were out to dinner and kindly confronted me about it. He told me that he was there for me whenever I needed him, he kept that promise too.

I wish my journey would have ended there but I have continued to self harm on and off ever since. There has yet to be a full year that I have not hurt myself. Maybe in the future I will get to that point but right now I am 7 months clean.

It’s important to talk about self-harm and the many forms that it takes (cutting, burning, restricting food, etc.). Those of us that struggle with this habit can feel ashamed when what we really need is love and compassion. Having a support is nice to have whether you tell them that you are hurting yourself or not. Just having someone to love you and that you can talk to is really uplifting.

For me, it’s been very hard to completely quit hurting myself. In my next post I’m going to write up some of the tips that have helped me restrain myself from cutting. Here are a few posts that include tips about curbing suicidal thoughts.

If you’re struggling with self-harm, I understand your pain. I hope that you can make it through this challenging part of your life, you are stronger than you think you are!

–Megan