Does anyone else feel like a fraud sometimes?

[Tinyflame]

I think if someone else finds it bad, it can be shocking (in a good way).

 

[Jarae]

It's hard to explain, but I'll try:

Whenever I try to share my story with others, or at least the piece...

I feel like a fraud, but for different reasons. I don't really tell people what happened but other people know about it, I feel like a fraud when they tell me how 'strong' I am.

 

[user27357]

more thoughts on this subject

All of these mental and physical ailments, disorders, syndromes, diseases etc have a broad spectrum of levels of affliction, It doesn't matter what level you are suffering, someone else has it worse, or maybe just a bit different, or maybe under the same umbrella but for different parts of the diagnosis. My point is, there will always be someone that has it worse than you. That doesn't mean you dont have it or be made to feel like a fraud because someone knows someone that has it to a different degree.

When i had Hep c, I tried to explain it to people that thought they knew all about hepatitis and were all done learning about it. They said they knew someone that had hep A or B and that it wasn't that bad, they got a shot and it went away, they couldn't give blood, their eyes turned yellow for awhile but they were OK now etc.

I had to explain that hep A, B, and C were as similar and as dissimilar as "head injury rock, head injury baseball bat and head injury dashboard". They were all diseases of the liver but the causes were all different and the severity was (once again, to make the point) all over a spectrum of levels of suffering.

try to think about that- PTSD rape, PTSD gunshot, PTSD combat, PTSD abuse, PTSD multiple causes from multiple sources. We all have one thing in common here, that's the diagnosis. We are all different, those are the causes and the suffering levels. All of us different but equal on this PTSD bus in my opinion.

But yeah, I can still feel like I shouldn't be taking up room on this forum or time with my therapist because someone else is unable to sleep when I am sleeping well but just having nightmares on a regular basis and someone else can't work at all when I can do my job and still function, just angrily and depressed.

 

[tontoe]

Sometimes I think I don't have it all that bad, sometimes I think it is the only thing I do seem to have.

The all-or-nothing-ness is what kills me - when I feel okay, I kinda can't see what all the fuss [I was making] is about, and that state seems a million miles away. Then BOOM I crash and then, the "okay" person who thought that seems like a million miles away - completely unreachable. My present work is trying to integrate the two, so I can get back when I do crash.

We can grasp a concept, but when triggered, all those hard-earned intellectual victories and insights get thrown out the window for survival.

Yep - sometimes my intellect seems like my worse enemy

It's really good to feel I am not alone - not the only one who has this stuff

 

[Pakadlangitok]

i feel this way because I act different around people I share with. Very much like a kid. Then I get all weirded out and it falls apart.

 

[Joseph King]

It's hard to explain, but I'll try:

Whenever I try to share my story with others, or at least the piece...

On a good day, of course. Two or three good days and I feel like its not real. Then reality comes back. Besides, from what I have learned, explaining something like this to someone that doesn't have it is....difficult. :)

 

[Deleted member 34535]

It's hard to explain, but I'll try:

Whenever I try to share my story with others, or at least the piece with all of my life's heartaches, It sounds like BS to me too.
If I actually sit down and list every item of trash that has occurred in my life, I know for sure that it would sound like a BS story to me. So if it would sound like a BS story to me, then why would I ever expect someone else to believe it. And that is just the way I feel. I think it is similar to what you are speaking of Rascal. And I think that is what makes it difficult at times to stay grounded in reality. It takes real work to stay in the here and now and not to drift off mentally somewhere where there is no pain. But I know there is no such place and I quickly come back to earth. Reality hurts. But we all know in varying degrees what our realities are. As hard as it may be, we need to face them, decipher them, digest them, and not soon enough, file them away so they no longer interfere with our lives. The process is slow and long, but it is a process.

 

[BradyLady]

I feel like a world-class fake every time I start acting like a sane, healthy person. If I'm dressed and groomed well, if I come across like I'm self-confident and put together, if I take any kind of leadership or guidance role whatsoever, a little voice inside me says I'm wearing a mask. This isn't who I really am. I'm actually some emotionally messed up, incompetent, inferior weakling who doesn't know her ass from a hole in the ground and can't do anything right. That voice is lying, of course, but sometimes it speaks so loud I can't hear anything else.

 

[Joseph King]

I feel like a world-class fake every time I start acting like a sane, healthy person. If I'm dressed...

I totally get this. Sometimes, I am up early, dressed and feeling like a rock star. And feel weird about it. Because everyone around me knows. It's like predicting the weather, who knows :)

 

[Flutterbee]

Alot of the time, yes. Part of it could be my unwillingness to accept how I am. I think my life shouldn't be like this. I should be stronger, what happened wasn't bad enough, I have no right to feel this way and used to doubt it happened at all.
When I think about how I dissociated/ got stressed in therapy I feel like I faked it even though I know I didn't.
When I feel better my brain seems to erase all the previous suffering and I can't relate to how bad it was, almost as if it didn't happen to me at all.

 

[Joseph King]

Alot of the time, yes. Part of it could be my unwillingness to accept how I am. I think my life shou...

To me, it never seems that bad when you are talking to the doctor. Then later I am like WTF? So, I started writing notes before I went to the doctor so I didn't forget anything. This has helped a lot. :)

 

[Gamera3000]

An online friend pushed me into telling her about the sexual abuse in my family, then she said that my silence was as bad as my aunt's because it let the abusers get away with it. My aunt directly put her daughters in compromising, weird positions with young male family members, and that did result in abuse situations.

I feel like my "friend" verbalized the guilt I've been feeling all along, like has my silence caused other people to get hurt? Yes, I'm sure it has. But then saying I'm as bad as a person who put her own kids in danger is a sh*t thing to say. Of course I didn't stick up for myself and have just been avoiding her.