Anyone Have Trouble Squaring Their Functionality And How Bad They Feel?

[Tinyflame]

Oh yes very much so, @maelstrom & @ladee . Same here. I think people have difficulty too imagining that people can keep 2 or (many) more thoughts in their head at once.

Sadly though, I remember years ago as a kid, my sister's friend's brother, well he met & told my other sister that he was suicidal & had tried everything to not do it & didn't know what else to do. My sister told the other sister, "he really needs someone to help him, he's telling this to a virtual stranger". But his parents/ sister/ everyone minimized it & a week or 2 later he died. :(

 

[ladee]

How sad @Junebug. Sad for everyone involved. So few know how to really LISTEN when people talk. I do, because I am so rarely HEARD... so if I can't always help myself, at least someone, that day, knew they were heard. But I am HEARD here... thank God, Anthony and the internet !!!!

 

[Tinyflame]

Yes @ladee .And thank you for being how you are (though I wish you hadn't gone through that to have that understanding). :hug: :hug: And thank you too for your help here. :hug: I never thought of it in those terms at all, ever. I suppose too I've been 'heard'. I've been insufficiently grateful for that because (like 'men'- of which I'm not one!) I've always been solution-focused. For myself as well. Maybe because 'being heard' wasn't possible much as child, & mostly not encouraged. But when all is said & done, no matter what happens, it's Big to have been heard. My (2nd) sister heard him that day, & he knew it. (And other than me she was the youngest!)

 

[ladee]

Yes @Junebug, to be HEARD is very big. very large. The first time I was HEARD here, I really had to set back and process what I was feeling...:nailbiting:.... and then to be encouraged AND comforted...:tdown: O M G.... where has this forum been all my life.... :D
Youngsters don't have the same filters built up , or at least those that have not had traumatic childhoods... 'out of the mouth of babes'... I love to hear a young child tell me how they see the world... I want to just scoop them up and take them to a planet far far away where all kids are safe.....
The best job I every had was working with troubled boys... I still hear from some of them. One in particular found me on FB... I called him... we got caught up.. he is a success story !!! So very very proud of him. He told me him and some of the other boys would talk about me and how I was one of the very few houseparents that was really listening to what they were going thru...that I didn't lie to them, that I had been around the block and let them know I understood with out sharing the gory details of my own life... I cried like a baby at hearing that blessing... I did a lot of healing on that job.. of course the boys never knew... or staff for that matter, most of them were just 'warm bodies' that didn't have a clue how to handle those boys...
So I laughed and told him , 'hey, not bad for a girl huh!!!', then he shared that I had also taught them how to respect women. More tears !!! So if I die today, I have been told I mattered on this earth. In spite of my beginning... I matter.... and so do you and all the other awesome people on this forum.... just full of gratitude today. Lots of :hug:@Junebug, for allowing me the space to say Thank You !!!

 

[Tinyflame]

Oh @ladee love to you, you sound like a remarkable person. :hug: :hug: :inlove: Very little thanks need go to me but to your credit & your heart. :notworthy:

 

[ladee]

Thanks @Junebug. Will take your words out later and look at them as sparkling gems I have been given as a gift... tears now... good tears.

 

[Chava]

I get this very much. I am quite high functioning, though that has crumbled in recent years some (panic symptoms, isolation, chronic pain). In the past I had met with a therapist who noted that I was very talented, so "why are you like this?" It freaked the f*ck out of me and I never went back to her. My current therapist does not measure my trauma reality based on how well I function at work. Lots of us can function in a sort of survival mode for a long time. Nobody else can pay my bills for me. Also work is all I "have"...it's like, for me, I do not exist without it. So for sure I pull it together quite well most of the time!

You just have to find a therapist that takes you, your trauma, your symptoms, and your goals seriously. I don't have close relationships. That's a problem. But I would not even say its' a major goal for me...I am working on reaching out to others a bit more, but it's so slow going because it's very hard, even painful. I am working on not having so many meltdowns or ending up in so much pain. I can go to work, but I fall apart around it or just stop functioning. Other people have families, friends, are involved in the community, etc. This is "normal" and healthy, though there is certainly a spectrum (like I will always be introverted, no matter what).

If you have a therapist that is judging your situation based on how well you can do your work, they are not the right therapist. A whole lot of traumatized people in my family were damn good workaholics!

 

[Chava]

More specifically, there is an obvious correlation between workaholism and CSA in my family...the structure of over-working is helpful and there is an increased desperation to feel worthwhile. So working is not a problem. Everything else is.

 

[sun seeker]

Anyone else struggle with this? How do you get taken seriously without falling apart completely?

Unfortunately, I have no trouble falling apart very convincingly. :( Wish I had the opposite problem. We're a hard to please bunch!

 

[rightkindofme]

I was thinking about this thread more yesterday. I haven't been able to get more than 6 hours of very broken sleep in a night in over three weeks. At this point I'm probably down 4 or 5 nights of sleep over three weeks. The sleep I do get is so restless and not restful it barely counts. I am very seriously hurting my body because I can't calm down enough to sleep. Because I'm so terrified.

But I get as much or more done during the day as people who sleep well. Because I believe that if I stop working I have lost all possible value and I should die. So I get a lot of forking work done. Heck, right now I'm even building a forking mosaic that will cover most of my bathroom walls. That's abstract thought + planning in a bunch of dimensions.

How can I do this when I can barely focus my eyes because I'm so tired? Because I've never had a phase of my life that was easier than this. This *is* the easiest section of life I've ever experienced.

I keep moving and I keep doing things because I was taught to from very early childhood. It doesn't matter how bad you feel keep working or die. Keep working or die. Keep working or die.

:(

 

[theshadowoftheliving]

hinking a lot on this the last few days. Thank you all for your thoughtful and kind responses; they have helped more than you know. Here's quite a few thoughts.

Surely, If we are consistently told by MH professionals taht we aren't as bad as we think, then the likelihood is that we aren't as bad as we think? It makes so much more sense that way.

This is what I struggle with. One day I believe them, the other day I believe me. I'm just not sure sometimes. Right now, I'm feeling really confused about this point.

People can develop destructive, damaging coping methods that allow them to look very "functional" from the outside. Everyone around you will insist that you should keep doing what you are doing because you are really fine. You just think you aren't.

Constant battle. I'm functional but I'm also sticking my head in the oven and cutting up my wrist. But then I show up to work the next day and say intelligent things, so I must be fine, right? Plus, there is a sort of glamour in my field of being able to "do it all" and suffer for your work. In a lot of ways, the more I struggle and the more I push myself as a coverup, the more people respect me.

Personally I could walk (likely 'walk') in to the ER with an axe in my head and minimize it.

Happened to me once, but it was with a different medical situation. Laying on a gurney, unable to stand, but arguing with the ER doctors about how I was perfectly fine ... I know I minimize, so I'm always trying to catch myself before I minimize too much.

If you're thinking about ending your life, you're not okay. Period. Get help asap.

I need to hear this; thank you. I've returned to your post to read this several times over the last few days.

when I'm with people I'm usually the "funny" one.

Me too. Me too. I have so much trouble squaring how I feel and how I act.

More specifically, there is an obvious correlation between workaholism and CSA in my family...the structure of over-working is helpful and there is an increased desperation to feel worthwhile. So working is not a problem. Everything else is.

This is exactly how I feel. Exactly.

I keep moving and I keep doing things because I was taught to from very early childhood. It doesn't matter how bad you feel keep working or die. Keep working or die. Keep working or die.

This is my (faulty) mantra. I seem to believe that it is a life or death scenario. Plus, I've built my entire identity around work, so when it disappears I literally have nothing anymore.

 

[Sandstone]

Have you reached a conclusion in your thoughts @theshadowoftheliving Either about what you believe or what you will do? It feels to me as though you would like someone external, in a caring role, to intervene and tell you it is time to stop working and admit you can't cope right now. How would you respond if someone said that to you? For years I had a fantasy that someone would come along and identify a physical problem that was making daily life so hard, identify it and take it away.

I'm sorry one of my replies sounded like a general attack - it was myself I was criticising. I was trying to express the utter conflict I/we experience. I have to believe the experts are more likely to know what they are talking about - that is why they are the experts. So when I report struggling with suicidal thoughts and not daring to get out of bed to phone the crisis line because I'd be more likely to dress and head out to the river, and get the response " Well it sounds as though you managed that OK " then I have to assume that there is no problem, it's just me. That conflicts with the comment above about struggling with thoughts of suicide being time to get help. I won't ask that person again, so he will perceive there is no problem.