I am the classic talented and gifted kid who worked my ass off through middle and high school and is now in college. Around my 2nd year of college I realized I was hideously depressed and riddled with anxiety and got into counseling. Off and on counseling and meds have helped me a lot and I no longer spiral into too-stressed-to-eat, cries-at-everything mode. However, I realized that my motivation for doing well in school was absolute terror. From my perfectionist anxious low-self-esteem let-me-live-through-you mother I learned Never Have Fun Before Homework Is Done (which I literally never could stick to, high school was an endless circle of "I'm going to pretend I'm not living this shit life for a while by reading books and then do homework until the wee hours, then go back to school and start it all again"). So basically I maintained decent grades through perfectionism and absolute terror of not living up to my parents' standards and developed really incredible procrastination as a result. Long story shortish, I finally realized last year that if I don't do my homework no one is going to physically harm me and I will not spontaneously die or instantly have to go live under a bridge. I have no fucking clue what to do with that information. My sole motivation for doing homework is gone! I'm almost halfway through my last semester of college and I'm already scheduled to graduate in May and I just absolutely cannot force myself to do my political science homework for my last necessary GE. I don't care so much. I have been doing school for most of my life and I have been sleep deprived since I was 12 and I am done. I am so done. But I can't be done yet because I need to not fail. I'm definitely going to talk to my counselor about this because I think making the post helped me organize my thoughts about it but FUCK I want to not be in school anymore This is probably one of those things I'm going to have to work on for a while just like it took a while to unlearn the previous motivation but right now I feel disastrously lazy and, pretty much literally, like I would rather die than do this fucking homework. Anyone like...got any advice? I'm open to anything here 8(
I'm going to use this as a whine thread for a bit because holy christ this has been a bad sequence of days YESTERDAY I DID MY LAUNDRY +1 doing things good job me the dorm washing machine i used didn't drain and 1/3 of my clothes were SOPPING wet and I didn't have the cash to do more than one dryer run so I got all my clothes back just damp as shit and had to spend an hour tying up 2 clotheslines across my room and hanging up absolutely all of my clothes and bedsheets which I finally washed and laying out my socks and undergarments on my bed, which is next to the window, which only helped a little and then my comforter was also damp and nothing is dry still (i mean it's getting there but i can't wear any of my t-shirts and all my shorts are wet and I have to wear a skort which is ok sometimes but when i have no choice it's VVVVERY DYSPHORIA i don't like it) (and while loading the laundry machine i scraped the hell out of my hand and didn't notice til later and then got super upset about it because i hate accidentally hurting myself because self-harm problems) AND yesterday my jaw started hurting like hell when I chew. my jaw has been messed up and clicky since middle school when I got hit with a basketball, but it's never hurt this much and I don't even think anything happened to cause it! and so i haven't been to class these last two days because whenever i wake up i'm just like "no i don't want daytime to happen go away life" and i go back to sleep uuUUUUUuUUUuuUUUGGGHHHH i bandaged my hand up and i showered and am wearing clothes, maybe this is a day for turning everything off and writing stuff down for counseling tomorrow
i just want to go home and cook for my family!! i want to go to museums with people i care about and play video games with my sister and garden. i hate being away from home and alone. i have a hard time doing stuff for myself because i don't think i deserve nice things, but i can do anything for other people because i am composed 100% of love and compassion. just not for me! i want to be completely subsumed under caring for others. i want my self to disappear and never have to worry about taking care of it. aaaargh.
back again because very anxious after having this conversation with my mom. sister got so frustrated with mom interrupting her to say "stop saying um" that sister had to leave the room, vented at me a little bit about it, and I offered to talk to mom about it. now i'm having a fun elevated-heart-rate upset stomach time because I Was Firm With My Mom and she did the emotional manipulation thing and i feel like i was maybe too harsh and i would NEVER have been able to say this in real life because i am afraid of my mom, and basically im putting this here so i can see it all at once and remember what happened. Spoiler: fb chat mom convo me: hello! [younger sister, 19, known to have anxiety/depression issues] asked me to talk to you about people saying "um" mom: It's not your problem me: it is now! mom: Okay, it shouldn;t be your problem me: the word "um" is a brain buffering noise, it's something humans insert into sentences to buy time while they remember/create what they next want to say personally, i see it as my problem also because i say um a lot too. my various brainweirds give me bad memory and a bit of aphasia, which is where you forget words and go around it by saying um???? flat food table? (by which I mean plate) mom: She said 6 words and 3 of them were um. me: maybe she's having a bad words day? those happen mom: Okay, you've scolded me enough schooled me, wghatever. I'm an awful person me: that is not what I said and is emotionally manipulative. mom: You know, I don't want you to have to be the mediator for the rest of your life. It's unfair She is snubbing Dad and he wasn't even involved in this situation me: I agree that it can be frustrating to wait for someone to give you information while stammering or saying "um" a lot, but it's a case of your feelings of frustration vs. the effort the other person is trying to put out. And I understand that I shouldn't have to be the mediator forever, but if I want to live comfortably in that house I still have to be now. mom: Things have been relatively fine other than her having absolutely no ambition in life and sleeping all day me: An important point: I don't hate either of you. Another point: when [younger sister] gets frustrated, it's best to leave her be to cool off for a while, in my experience. A third point: I have forgotten my third point. Anyway, I have packing to do. I'm upset that you pulled the "I'm an awful person" thing on me, so I will not be available for a while unless someone really needs me. ttyl my mom and sister are similarly stubborn and will butt heads hideously for entire weeks unless someone steps in to mediate (guess who that always is! the person who feels unsafe when there is fighting, because i want the fighting to stop.) my mom is grade-A no-self-esteem "everyone will judge me for my poor motherhood if my family isn't Perfect" perfectionist crazy. i have suggested counseling, she always regards it as a personal attack, despite me myself being in counseling for the last few years. i'm just so anxious and upset about her. sometimes she's great! other times she's scary and unreasonable.
MY MOTHER IS WRONG, MY COUNSELOR SAID IT AND I NEARLY BURST INTO TEARS my mom's "no playing until work is done" is WRONG, it does not make me worthless, it does not make me a waste of time if i can't conform to it, it makes me human and it means i'm taking care of myself
You might already know this, but your jaw problem sounds like it could be TMJ, which the Internet has a lot of advice for.
I DID NOT KNOW THAT i am going....to research that right away. thank you for improving my quality of life O:
awesome, glad to be helpful! when my jaw started doing weird shit I was like "??? WHAT IS THIS ITS UNSETTLING" for a really long time, so. :P
If your jaw constantly hurts I suggest seeing a dentist about a night guard. Apparently I seriously clench my teeth in my sleep, which eventually resulted in me only being able to open my mouth about a centimetre. Fortunately this situation resolved quickly, as my dentist was able to see me asap and massage the joint until it loosened again, but I only got full mobility back after having a cortisone shot. (Quote from the dental surgeon who gave me the shot: It's TMD, not TMJ. Saying you have TMJ is like saying you have 'knee'.)
I have knee! :P But yes you are correct. Can I describe it as "TMJ bullshit" or (mine isn't that bad but once my mouth locked mostly closed for .. not long at all, but it was v alarming)
So like, on the general emotional regulation side of things I'm doing okay! I'm about 2 weeks away from getting to finally leave university, I'm doing my best to wrap up loose ends, it looks like all classes I've been unable to complete I can totally do with waiver exams, or summer/community college online courses at home. I...I'm honestly doing pretty well on emotional wellness for the most part! I had a good weekend last week! I went to free comic book day and talked to my dad about some important stuff and figured out part of my stressful school situation. The issue I'm currently having is that I think I've totally boned myself on my theater lighting class?? And the weird thing is I absolutely love doing theater lighting tech monkey work, please set me loose to be greasy with a wrench and get things done for people. I've missed a lot of class because it's boring and then I was embarrassed about not being in class, and before I knew it when I went to class I didn't understand anything that was going on. Like, sitting in class with a politely blank expression kind of thing. And I've missed about 5 small written assignments and I feel sheepish as fuck about it. I can probably still turn them in but I have no idea if I can even convince myself to work on them. I'm so tired and so done. I just want to go home. Our final project is to create a lighting plot layout for a hypothetical concert, which theoretically is within my powers; I missed a lot of class but I helped out a lot with lights for our last production at which point I studied the official light plot a bunch. Except that this project started a good month ago and I was focused on other things because I am physically incapable of prioritizing when I have more than one thing to do. So it's due tomorrow and I have done a resounding almost nothing. I suddenly feel really guilty about this. How can I keep pulling this bullshit all the time? At the same time I know this has gotten progressively worse the more semesters I stay at school, 600 miles from home, and that ANY time I have work to do while at home I do pretty darn well. You know, where my support group is, and I don't have as much trouble feeding myself, and the environment is what I'm used to. But I'm still...only taking 3 classes and am failing 2 of them, and the last one I've missed class when we had a model in and I should have been working a few times. Everyone has already been so lenient with me, I'm a fuckup. I just want to go home, it's so dirty and full of unpleasant loud people here. I'm not built for cities and I'm not doing well with adjusting to it. I think the issue is: I've put a lot of hours into my theater lighting class, so giving up now feels like I've wasted all that time. The hours I put into it are for the lab requirement, e.g. the in-person doing-things stuff, so I don't know if I even get points for that. I'd gladly do 15 more hours of going up in the lift and rearranging lights, please don't make me actually be good at an academic thing. I had a panic attack about writing a 500 word thing on art history the other day. I love art history. I'm falling apart at the seams over here.
I think my best option right now might be to late drop the theater class and take a community college art class to fill the last art class units i need. maybe. i hope that will work. i know it won't do me much good but literally whenever i think about staying here longer my brain just stops working. i can't do it. I'm gonna take another look at the requirements and stuff for this light plot project and if it seems impossible I guess I'm going to bed and will show up to class for late drop papers tomorrow or something. i was having fun in that class. i was good at something. damn it
Given the choice I'd probably do another sculpture or pottery class. I like doing stuff with my hands and it's really helped me with my art self esteem this semester. It's one of those things I can actually leave my dorm room and go out and do for a few hours and feel accomplished. It's nice, I like making physical objects. I just...don't want to be here anymore. Why'd I pick a class with theory and math and shit when I could've been doing more art? Dang man. I dunno. I'm exhausted, I want to talk to my parents and have them help me with this but it's kind of late at night. I'm 23 and being in charge of my own life is hard
ok yeah there goes the emotional regulation. slept until 2 in the afternoon, didn't eat enough, kind of weepy all day. but i finished up my sculpture so that's all done for tomorrow. i'm going to bed, i can't be self-destructive if i'm asleep.
Just wanted to update to say I'm doing okay! Talked over things with my counselor, and we brainstormed a lot about what the best way to deal with things was. It helped a lot to have someone on my side trying to help me while minimizing further mental health threats, like, no "you have to finish it up just work really hard", more like "you don't have to be panicked for the next 2 weeks trying to do this, here are other options" I got accepted into the accessibility resource center and like, they will go talk to professors and send papers to the right places for signatures FOR YOU so you don't have to if you have issues that make it hard like social anxiety. My eyes went super wide when I realized I didn't just have to blunder my panicky way through telling people why I was trying to drop out or switch courses or whatever. They're here to help me, they looked at my induction material and decided I'm not a waste of time and I deserve for things to be similarly easy to people who don't have crippling anxiety. ;__; it's amazing anyway i have been running around turning in documents and hurdling bureaucratic hoops and stuff. Certainly dropping theater, may be able to substitute marching band in for those credits. If I pass my waiver exam for polsci I will be home free, but if not I will still only have 1 online class to take and that's extremely doable. I'm gonna live, you guys. I'm gonna do this.
I'm graduated and at home and working 3/4 time at an arts and crafts store! It's pretty fun! I'm on break because I just had this experience person using big circle paper punch in the back: *intermittent loud pounding noises* me, trying to check people out: *panic response, immediate inability to form sentences* like?? what was that, brain?? you know what that sound was, no one was trying to fight you or pound their way into your room or anything. i have social anxiety so working retail gets me a little hypervigilant to start with, but I didn't expect such a strong reaction to Loud Art Noise. 8( im tired now
