This thing called self-love…
and how it feels to have no self-awareness
I don’t have self-awareness.
Not self-awareness, as in “someone is extroverted and believes in themselves”. But rather an awareness of the self. Psychologically as well as physically.
I was out of order for a while due to burnout (or a moderately severe depressive episode). Add a generalized anxiety disorder to that, and you have even more fun, yay!
I was on and off for years, on sick leave or having nervous breakdowns. I don’t know how to describe it better. Nervous breakdowns sound too hysterical, but it wasn’t black holes either.
So all this had been smoldering inside me for a long time. If I dig deep, the anxiety disorder has been my companion since at least my teens. And the depression as well. But it manifested itself through anger, sarcasm, and crankiness.
And that is why I say I don’t have self-awareness: I never really noticed it. So sure, I noticed when I was sad, angry, full of fear. But I could rarely determine why exactly I was feeling that way. I still can’t.
I still sit here when I suddenly feel worse (be it a headache or sometimes a soul-cloudy day) and think, “What? There was nothing? What happened? Why?”
I don’t know why exactly, but I still can’t get it together; it’s sort of like I keep forgetting. And then other people tell me, for example, what the reasons could be and say “It’s obvious!” and I think, “You serious? This little whatever has triggered this now?!”
It still doesn’t get through to me that large parts of my life have been way more than 150% for a long time. I give it all. And more.
This may be due to my character, I would like to do 23 things at once and I have 300 interests. But also due to my (former) environment that influenced me — social media, family, friends, work.
I’ve found that I’m pretty easy to manipulate. I didn’t want to admit that to myself for a long time because it’s a weakness. But “the people” are right: I’m too nice. And as soon as someone asks me to do anything more than once, I get guilty and then do what they ask me to do, even if I hate myself for it afterward. Because for me, this multiple asking already feels like persuading.
This is certainly due to my childhood. My father always tried to blackmail me emotionally and persuade me to do things that I didn’t want to do. “If you don’t do it, I’m sad”.
And since I was a shy child and couldn’t say ‘no’ very well, I usually did what he wanted. In tears and self-hatred.
Since then, I hate that and regularly freak out when someone tries to persuade me to do something.
So the bad conscience is automatically connected with “I refuse to do something.”
And that’s why I always had the feeling of doing too much for others, giving too much, which somehow sucked me dry. And it was only my inner self that was the problem. Nobody expected anything from me, at least not my friends.
Through all this (and more), I was always working and living 150%. And I never understood how people think that my workload wouldn’t be normal. There are people everywhere hustling 24/7 and more. Why shouldn’t I be able to do that?
It went very well for a while.
But, now, in retrospect: I could have noticed all this much earlier. I became more and more aggressive, libido who she?, felt like an animal in a cage. And only when there were physical problems, I realized that I did too much.
I still can’t get it into my head that, for example, a 26km bike ride messed up my CNS. Isn’t it just a bit of cycling? It also didn’t feel exhausting.
Translating more than 20k words eight hours in a row and the next day headache? Excuse me? That’s easy, I’ve been working harder for a longer time before! The sick leave because of burnout was over a year ago. Why am I still not as efficient as before? I must recover faster, right?
Now I also know why people always work so much. Time is flying. I feel like I can’t get anything done since the burnout. But actually, I get an average amount done now, and before, it was just always much, much more. Too much. That’s why it seems like nothing to me now.
Let’s see how long I need to understand that it will never be the same again. That it’s just not sustainable to go back to 150%.
I want to notice sooner when it was too much. Not only when there are physical issues.
For that, I have to be more mindful and attentive.
And accept that the road out of burnout is a long one. After all, it accompanied me for years, so why should it go away again within a year?
