A bit of a mess

Shared experiences of life, and the path that has led you to where you are.

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LilyCakes
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Nov 15, 2019 6:00 pm

A bit of a mess

Postby LilyCakes » Fri Nov 15, 2019 6:34 pm

Hello! I was asked by a cousin I’m very close with to try opening up on a mental health forum due to difficulty talking about it to actual people.

Mental health is scary and I like to kind of shove it away and pretend it doesn’t exist and not to deal with it. When I first found out I had anxiety and possibly depression, I was 14 and receiving councling and 2 weekly hour long seasons during school time.

I didn’t like that people thought of me as mopey so I spent a couple of years building up a super ditsy, happy, bubbly front, changed schools for post 16 and tried leaving everything behind. When applying, I left the mental health and young carer status section blank despite my very chunky file at secondary school. Now I’m kind of known as the dumb blonde pink fluffy girly in the group and keep everything in until I kind of flop.

Often I’ll just break down because of the anxiety and have to make up an excuse to leave and then go cry in the toilets for a while or spend my free periods sitting in a cupboard doing art work alone with no people. (My art teacher is the only one who knows a bit about issues at home so let’s me do it - she’s super nice). It had been okay ish for year 12 but then things got a lot worse because of personal reasons that I might open up about in a later thingy.

I have a dumb and weird logic and that’s that I should make everybody super super happy at whatever cost and hide behind that girly ditsy front so I’m easier to approach and like and also that I’m super lucky that people pay attention to me and therefore, I have to do everything in my power to keep them happy so they don’t leave and like me.

I get taken advantage of a lot because of this and even with people being horrible to me, I pretend I’m okay, laugh it off and even do things for the person like buy them cake to make them happy. And then when I make an excuse to be alone, go cry and have a panic attack and sit alone for a while in silence.

Recently, holding up this happy front has been really hard. Teachers asked if I was okay because i have been looking into space a bit more and o kind of just go “oh yeah! Oopsie doopsie was just thinking about the work I’m a bit confused Hehehehe” then proceeding after class to disappear and sit in silence thinking about why I’m a failure and unlovable, in the girls bathroom.

I’ve attempted suicide once before and had suicidal thoughts before but never had the thoughts this bad. Being happy hurts and despite working hard at school and doing everything to make everybody happy, there’s nothing in return. I feel awful constantly and don’t see a point anymore. I don’t like where I am and just want to disappear and make everything go away. I mean... I don’t know where I’m meant to go forward from here and if there’s anything I’m working for or am I just living for the sake of living? I act super happy for other people not for me.

Because I hide everything and don’t let people in to avoid being called weird, sad, depressed or an attention whore it means having these breakdowns often and I just don’t know where to go from here or what to do. Apparently, I care too much about people and do too much but i dont know... if I start focusing on me then people might not like me anymore. Sorry much typing hehe whoopsie doopsie ☺️

Spleefy
Posts: 240
Joined: Sat Sep 09, 2017 6:54 am

Re: A bit of a mess

Postby Spleefy » Sat Nov 16, 2019 7:43 am

Hi LilyCakes,

Wait, people on forums are not “actual people”? :O lol

Thank you so much for sharing a bit about your story.

You definitely don’t want to ignore what is going on in your life, no matter how painful it is to face up to it. It will just get worse and harder to deal with the longer you leave it.

How did you find counselling? Do you feel that you benefited from it?

I learnt that the only people that can make us happy is ourselves. However, we can certainly add value and enhance other people’s lives, but whether or not they are happy is entirely up to them. Also, it isn’t your responsibility to make other people happy, but it is your responsibility to make yourself happy.

Being happy does take work, just like anything else. And in order to be happy, you need to know what will make you happy.

Why do you think you are a “failure” and “unlovable”?

When I had depression, “living for the sake of living” was something I often wondered about. I very much felt this way, and I did not see the point of being alive.

I had no idea why I existed, what my purpose was for being alive, and I didn’t even want to be alive.

I also had a very low opinion of myself that reinforced my perceived worthless existence.

One of the things that liberated me from having these feelings is to create value in my life. For me, being born does not automatically make me worthy of life. I need to create it and earn my place in this world by contributing and doing something purposeful. This is just my own thinking, but it gives my life purpose and meaning.

Does this mean that because I’m adding value to other people’s lives that I am not adding anything to my own? Absolutely not! For me, this creates more value in my life. I discover more about myself. I strive to become a better person, knowing that in order to add value to other people’s lives I must be able to do those things for myself. So by helping other people, I push myself more to better my own life lest I be a hypocrite.

There is no such thing as “caring too much for people”. I think it is a fantastic quality—more people need to be as caring as you. The world would certainly be a better place because of it.

You seem to have a beautiful quality and nature about you. Don’t lose this. Continue to be loving and caring towards others, but you also need to give those things to yourself!

The problem isn’t that you want to add value to other people’s lives, but the reason behind why you are doing it. Doing it just so other people will like you seems to me to be all for the wrong reasons.

From a spiritual view, the most important relationship we can have is with God. From a secular view, the most important relationship we can have is with ourselves.

Whether spiritual or secular, I think having a good relationship with ourselves is a priority and very important.

So that is something you might want to work on. Work towards liking yourself, loving yourself, and being kind to yourself. Be good to yourself and create a beautiful friendship with yourself. You deserve it. You owe yourself that much. You owe yourself more than what you are currently giving yourself.

Think of this way… how can we expect other people to like us if we don’t like ourselves? How can we expect other people to love us when we don’t even love ourselves? How can we expect other people to treat us right and be good to us when we don’t know how to treat ourselves right? That’s double standards.

Something else that you might want to look at is to be careful not not form habits and behaviors. We often do this and wonder why our lives won’t get better or things don’t improve.

So things like suffering in silence, bottling up your feelings, trying to make everyone else happy whilst neglecting your own well-being, trying to make others happy just so they like you, and unfounded beliefs of being a “failure” or “unlovable” are some behaviors, habits and thoughts that you might want to consider changing if you want any hope of things getting better.

I know it is easier said than done. Just take small, manageable steps.

Raising a puppy is actually teaching me a lot more about myself and my view on life.

For example, I put in a lot of time and effort researching and doing obedience training with him. I’m a novice at this, so I’m learning along with him.

I don’t spend an hour straight training him. I keep it short, interesting and manageable by breaking it up into 10 minutes sessions throughout the day.

I do this because it is more manageable for me to make time for it. Second, and most important, I keep it short and fun so I can set him up for success. If I overwhelm him with too much information and training, I will be setting him up for failure.

This is very much the same in our lives. We need to do things in manageable chunks to make sure we set ourselves up for success and not failure by overwhelming ourselves. So just work on breaking bad habits and behaviors bit by bit, replacing them with healthy ones.

As a final thought to your post… a part of the commencement Speech to Stanford University students in 2005 by Steve Jobs makes so much sense to me now as a survivor of clinical depression and anxiety.

The part of the speech is as follows…

Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backward 10 years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward—you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something—your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road, will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path, and that will make all the difference”.

At the time I had depression, I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to actually get to the other side of it, especially as the years wore on.

But I held onto hope, faith, and believed in myself that things would work out, even though I didn’t know when or how or even if they would. But trusting that if I just kept moving forward, kept trying, it would all work out the way it is meant to be, whether or not it goes according to how I planned. This is what gave me the courage at the time to keep trying to overcome depression after ten years living with it. So at the time, I couldn't connect the dots looking forward. But looking back now, I can connect the dots, just as Steve Jobs said.

You will find a way out of this mess that you are find yourself in. Just have faith, and trust that things will work out.


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