Needing validation (general thread)

ha ha shit that's me

 

@garden i think i found it. http://superopinionated.com/post/114171255785/wherever-perfectionism-is-driving-shame-is-riding

 

@unknownanonymous Yeah, that looks like it. Thanks!

 

@pixels You're just fine. I know that it feels like validation and emotional help are more effective if they're unprompted, and it feels manipulative to actually ask for them. It's not, though. When you express that you're feeling weak or frustrated and people offer to help, they're doing it because they care about you, not because you're talking them into it. It's a reasonable and adult thing to do to recognize when you need outside help and validation, and seek it out. That's why kids flail through things on their own; they don't have the communication skills yet to express their feelings, and they don't have the empathy yet to realize that other people have similar experiences.

(And I hope that doesn't read as the condescending kind of validation, because it's not intended as such. Always a tough line, that.)

Also, you're almost definitely aware of this, but you sound depressed, overloaded, or both. Those sound like executive functioning issues or a lack of spoons, not 'laziness' or 'lack of motivation'.

Is there a kind of carrot that the forum might be able to help with? I don't have enough spoons to be reliable, but... seems worth asking.




@garden Yeah, I've seen the same 'gifted kids have skill gaps because they feel like they're supposed to be perfect at everything' thing. I do that too.

For what it's worth, as a kid, what I was thinking was, "I need to be perfect and never ask for help, because I need to be better than and smarter than anyone else. I need to be Different. Because if I have the same problems as other people, then I can be judged and valued based on the same metrics they are. And given that I don't have any friends, and I have crippling brainweirds, I'm a failure of a normal person." My whole self-esteem was based on Not Being Like Other People. I got over it, but I still feel like I'm expected to know everything already. :\

That also sounds like it might be executive functioning / overload issues, in addition to avoidance, for what it's worth.

If you don't have enough spoons to initiate Productive Behaviors, and everything just feels overwhelming and like too much work and energy, so you're just doing things that don't take up your spoons... That's normal and reasonable - just focus on recovering some spoons, and deliberately give yourself a break, instead of beating yourself up for not getting more done.

 

I've been completely out of spoons since about the middle of January. I thought they'd be back and they just aren't. The few I get extra, just have to be allocated among the things I gave up doing. And since I don't really know what executive functioning is, I don't think I'm qualified to say I'm having issues with it. Although I did point out to my mom, who knows about my severe depression issues, that this is the most severe case of the I don't wannas that I've ever had, and that I hate school for the first time in my life. (Did she validate me? Of course not. "You just need to find some motivation!" THANKS. Not.)

Forum probably can't help, I'm going into isolation mode because my current video game is on my PC and so is Kintsugi (my main social networking timesuck). I'll be back with a picture of my diploma tho! C:

 

@pixels Ugh, that sucks. Yeah, I figured you knew that; just thought it might be useful to hear.

Executive functioning is the kind of spoons that let you initiate new tasks, or switch between them. That's often the kind of 'tired' that makes people go 'you just need motivation!' - when you know that you need to do something, you know you'll enjoy it or feel better when you do it, and you just can't get off the couch.

It's common for sperg overload or depression to impair executive functioning, and it's one of the less-understood symptoms of depression. The usual sense of "tired" is well-understood, but executive function issues impair things like 'getting off the computer to go to bed at a decent hour'. So people go 'but WHY can't you do this super easy thing that will make you feel better?'.

It's not a personal failing, and not your fault; it's symptomatic.

Good luck; I'm glad it's not much longer. :) And congrats on being almost done.

 

"Who's flying the plane?"

Another childhood high-achiever turned depressed perfectionist here, and at least part of it stems from interactions with my parents.

My mom, when stressed, is especially impatient. If she asks/tells someone to do something and they ask how, she tends to tell them to move aside so she can take care of it. (The thing gets done quickly and she has more ammo for complaining about no one helps around the house, double bonus!)

It's a learned habit of hers, I think, somewhat from having people in her life feign ignorance so she would do things for them, and somewhat from having a bad temper that makes it hard for her to explain things calmly and thoroughly. Plus /her/ mother pings a lot of narcisstic traits and wouldn't have been much of a mom to her; my mom probably felt she had to do everything from a young age.

 

The problem in this particular case is that most of my statistics work is fairly late, which of course only increases the panic. But... yeah. It's just kind of hard to intentionally take a break without feeling like I'm just slipping into procrastination :/

Oh my god. This explains so much. Especially how I often seem to continue scrolling through Tumblr even though I should have gone to bed an hour ago - and even when Tumblr isn't offering anything interesting - but I just end up cursing my stupidity once I can finally get up and go to bed. Only there's an actual reason. This is... kind of amazing, having an explanation for this shit.

 

Adding my voice to the "fucking finally there's a word for this". I knew for years that the depression torpedoed my motivation, but could not pinpoint what step of the process it was destroying. (I am very much a fix-it person. life and blah.) Once I figured out that it was getting past the starting stage, that helped a lot - particularly in the "how many things can I do today" department. This is because I thought I had enough spoons to do 10 things, but in reality I had the spoons to do 5 things because the other spoons had to go to starting the things. Which didn't make any sense at first, because you have to start in order to do, so wouldn't they be the same thing?

When I heard of executive dysfunction, it was literally like sunbeams bursting through the clouds. So that's why it doesn't work ...

 

Holy shit it takes me so much spoons to start things. I get, on average, one big thing and one small thing done a day, which is usually 'Go To Work' or 'Actually Show Up At University' or 'Do Craftsproject' for big thing and then small things are usually 'post on RP' or 'write a couple words fanfic' or 'Search for character inspiration', 'draw a thing', etc.
I cannot do more than that. If I am scheduled to cook I cannot do any of the small things anymore because I will literally waffle around on the couch until 3am unable to even go to sleep.
THIS IS OBVIOUSLY NOT GOOD because I never manage to do my uni reading stuff. If that is executive functioning, then my refill on that got lost in the mail two years ago and never got resent. I haven't been doing class readings in like two and a half years. It takes less spoons to improvise and pretend I read stuff and bullshit class discussion than it would take for me to sit down and actually read stuff.
I assume its not normal that this is a thing but does anyone have an idea how to fix this?

 

Yeah, that's actually the entire reason I'm on an SSRI. I'm not really miserable anymore, but the constant exhaustion and executive dysfunction were bad enough that I couldn't do anything.

 

wow, i have the same "starting things" problem. like, man, starting things and transitioning between stuff is often just so hard...

 

I really need to get my mom to get me a therapist appointment do i?
:(
(I can't make the call(s) on my own because phones scare me)

 

Yeah - I got slightly better at it by recognizing it and tweaking my list of things to do in a day (and tricking my brain, very occasionally, into thinking that strings of tasks were just one - like housework), but it's only gotten relatively manageable since I started taking citalopram in December.

 

i was bullied a lot when i was a kid, and i would lash out a lot and became a problem for teachers, so i was kinda disliked by almost everyone except this one nice teacher
anyway i feel like i'm beneath everyone, like i'm always the bad guy, no one wants to be talked to by me, i make everyone uncomfortable, it would be uppity of me to speak to people etc. it's not even a conscious thought, it's just this sort of background sense of knowing that everything else is built on
i don't know if it's because i was bullied but i was too young to remember if i felt another way about myself before that
so yeah, i'm always looking for ways to redeem myself and become "one of them" which is really, all of you and everyone i don't hate as much as myself
i don't think people telling me nice things will fix it though, people have been very nice to me many times, i might just be this way forever, oh well

 

@lvkz i'm going to kiss a piece of paper with heavy lipstick and send it to you so you can stick it on your forehead because that's how i feel for you right now

 

@pixels i'm pretending to wear it with pride, thank you

 

*says something that might be problematic in my norm the genie thread on kintsugi*
*comments on how it might be problematic on the Status Update function*
*notices sudden increase in thread views*
*is like "yay" but also like "oh fuck"*
*makes a silly joke about it*

man, emotions are complicated and i sure like talking about norm the genie. and i sure hope i didn't fuck up.

 

I keep getting this song stuck in my head:

Do you love me? (do you love me)
Do you love me? (do you love me)
Do you love me?
Do you love me like that?
(do you love me like that)

What's irritating me more than not knowing what that chorus is from (some '50s-era pop, I think) is that I keep feeling that way. I don't know why I want to ask everyone for their opinions of me, but I guess it matters? Ugh. Gross feelings.