By means of a paradox that never fails to amuse me, I somehow manage to combine a sense of hyper-criticism and an easily shaken self-esteem with a deep-set belief that I can pretty much do everything. I have to assume that this stems from the fact that pre-university, academically at least, I was pretty much guaranteed to be in the right, or at least quick enough to recover from a mistake that people tended not to notice. Which sounds rather arrogant, but I discovered just how deeply-rooted this idea was to my understanding of the world when I started at Oxford, and that certainty was very effectively shattered. I went from marks of between 90%-100% to ones between 40%-70%. Even when I really put the effort in there was no guarantee I would even understand the concepts we were studying, never mind gain the easy confidence with material that I was used to. It really threw me, and it took a while of working it through with my tutors and myself to not let it completely crush my sense of competency. The degree took an awful lot of work, and an awful lot of admitting that I was ignorant in an area to be able to then move on in it and learn. I'd tended to, subconsciously I think, avoid things that involved admitting to my ignorance before my degree, and it was an interesting learning curve to realise that I could grow through that.
So I eventually got it into my head that I couldn't necessarily do everything academically, and that this was ok, but didn't quite manage to transfer that realisation to the rest of my life. I tend to be late for deadlines and appointments, because I try to cram so much into the time I have, all without realising that I'm cramming rather than taking on a reasonable level of work. When I agree to tasks I do so in the complete confidence that 'yep, of course I can do it', which I'll say to a ridiculous number of things with the belief that I'll manage them all, and for some reason find myself constantly surprised that I'm burnt out and unable to do half of them.
Some of it could be because I pressure myself with the expectation that I should always be able to help people and meet whatever needs are there, another element that I'm still working on. But a lot of this attitude is built out of my genuine underlying belief that I'll be able to do everything.
Somewhere in my head, I seem to think that I'm actually Wonder Woman...
See the similarities?....
Instead of looking at the cumulative level of tasks that I've committed to, I see a lot of individual tasks that I know I can do perfectly well, so why would there be a problem with trying to do twenty of those in one day? I don't tend to factor in my own needs, especially rest, as things to spend time on and prioritise, not particularly because I'm being all self-depreciating and don't consider them worth valuing, but often because I simply forget that I need to. Without previously being aware of the assumption that I was an Amazonian goddess, I seem to have built my approach around the idea that I will be constantly functioning at 100% capability, always full of energy, positive attitudes and good health. When I stop and think about it, the only way this could be possible is if I did indeed possess super-speed, super-strength and super-stamina
The 'non-functioning' phase of the Depression, as I find it easiest to call it, forced me to put my own needs first. I literally couldn't manage to take on what anyone else might expect of me, getting myself fed and sleeping at some point during a 24-hour period counted as a pretty big achievement. One of the most frustrating elements of the experience was being faced with the the cold, hard, very obvious fact that I couldn't do all the things I expected of myself. At some points that I meant I couldn't get out of bed, and at some points that meant I couldn't find the space to create that hand-made birthday card that I'd meant to.
It took a lot of effort to start seeing things that I'd usually dismiss as almost effortless, like sorting myself some cereal or making a phone call, as the achievements that they really were right then. Learning to change my perspective like that really helped with the recovery process, although there was still my sense of the ridiculous undermining it sometimes.
Since I've started functioning again, mentally and physically, I've had a tendency to completely forget all that re-evaluation that I had to do when depressed. I'm 'better' now, why do I need to value the things I do, build in time to rest or turn down invites or requests because I don't actually have the physical or emotional resources to follow them through?
Because it's all still just as necessary!!!!!
I need rest...
I'm not always going to manage...
I do need to give myself chance to recover from the daily grind of
life, even if I don't feel like it should be wearing me down....
..... And actually that's ok.
Somehow I need to learn to move from my overly ambitious and hyper critical sense of shoulds- what I should be able to manage, what I should expect of myself, who I should be to people around me- to working on the basis of what actually is and in response to that what is realistic for me to achieve with the resources I currently have?
One of the really helpful things that my counsellor mentioned recently was the idea that not only can I not do everything, but that actually I'm not expected to do it all, even by God. She pointed out the fact that Jesus, despite being completely capable in his character, didn't try to do everything, that he took times to be by himself to pray and rest, that he delegated and sent others out and despite the thousands of people asking for his attention he drew the line when he knew that actually he needed to move on, to work with them in a different way or just to go to sleep.
If Jesus found a way to cope with the literally Messianic level of expectations that people were putting on him, then I can probably learn not to be dominated by the expectations that I put on myself. There's hope, and there's space.
