The Vine: September 15, 2010
Dear Sars,
For all of high school, I’ve felt like a fraud. I’m supposedly really, really smart, but I’m lazy and worthless. I scrape by with Bs and A-minuses, but the amount of work I don’t do…I can’t describe it. It’s not even like I completed classwork but didn’t study. I skipped so many projects, constantly telling myself I’d do them later. I have a week left. I have a day left. I can finish it overnight. It’s not so bad if it’s only a day late. I’ll finish it over the weekend and still get credit. Too late, why bother doing it now?
Instead I wasted time on the Internet. It disgusts me to think of all the time I spend reading fan-fiction. I’m not even a productive member of fandoms, I just lurk constantly. I’ve constantly been dreading the day this all catches up to me. A few times, I felt like it had. I got a D in a class but it blew over. I almost failed another class but I pulled my grade up doing the minimum of work.
There’s another thing. My emotions are shallow. I bet I sound completely self-loathing, but as soon as I log in to some stupid website or get distracted by music, I’ll forget all about this like I’m a baby watching jangling keys.
For years, I’ve been dealing with this the same way I deal with everything — by hiding from it and hoping it’ll go away if I ignore it for long enough. But recently my family’s been going through a lot of trauma. My parents are devastated by issues they’re having with my sibling. I can’t fail them. I can’t waste my life anymore. I got into a good college, somehow, but it’s got a tough reputation. If I disappoint them, lose the scholarships I got, it’ll ruin everything.
But I can’t be the person I should be. They need me to be emotionally supportive, but I stop caring about what’s going on as soon as I get distracted by something else. I need to be someone who can actually hold onto a feeling for longer than an hour (not counting occasional nights of unproductive self-pity and whining into journals). I need to stop making up emotional issues I can pretend I have instead of admitting that I’m lazy and incompetent. I need to work hard and succeed academically.
I don’t know how to do it. I’ve never been good at anything. I’ve never cared about anything or anyone. I’ve never succeeded at anything.
I wish I could be someone different
Dear Don’t We All Sometimes,
“It’ll ruin everything”? For whom? Seriously. To my mind, if you do poorly in college, lose your scholarships, and have to start over, it would actually save everything — because it would force you to confront your boredom and depression, and to start doing things you want to do and setting goals you want to achieve.
You need to deal with the depression and self-hatred first; when you get to campus, get a counselor, and get a tutor who can help you organize your study habits better. The ease with which you get distracted sounds to me mostly like a denial/avoidance issue, but could also be somewhere on the ADD spectrum; get it checked out.
Once you’ve done that, and once you’ve spent some time talking to a therapist about these issues, maybe you’ll realize that very few people enjoy doing homework on time, or do it without any bumps in the road; that nobody just sits around having a single emotion for hours at a time, and breaking up sadness or anxiety with a couple of hours of television is more or less what television is for; that your “need” to “work hard and succeed academically” is actually your parents’ desire, what other people want for you, and may have nothing to do with your own tastes and desires.
Your last paragraph is, I think, a bit melodramatic. I’m sure you do care about things; I’m sure you have succeeded at things (the good college you got into apparently agrees with me). You sent this email at two in the morning, which is not when we tend to have the highest opinions of ourselves, or feel the most connected to the world — and I speak from experience when I tell you that it’s a lot easier to sit around brooding about how much you suck and how you’ll never amount to anything than it is to go after something you want, and possibly fail. It’s called “fear,” and it’s normal. It’s also called “life,” and sometimes it’s hard.
It’s often hardest at a transition point like the one you’re facing now, heading into college; college is a less structured environment with fewer external requirements and compulsory activities, and you get to decide what happens next, and how. It’s exciting, but also overwhelming, and if you haven’t learned how to manage your time or your emotions, it can feel like you’re at sea.
But it’s normal. Not everyone is happy every minute. Not everyone who is un-happy is required to marinate in it uninterrupted for a full day. Not wanting to do schoolwork doesn’t make you a psycho. You just need to get some help putting things in perspective, and your school will offer that; please take advantage of it.
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Does your college have a learning specialist / learning instructor? The university I work for has someone on staff who specializes in time management issues and can help people determine whether their preferred learning style conflicts with typical teaching styles (and how to cope with that disconnect). Maybe something like that would help?
I second talking to someone in the counseling center, as well. If your school doesn’t have a learning specialist, counselors can often help with that kind of stuff, in addition to the depression and self-hatred that Sars mentioned.
Good luck!
Oof. You sound very depressed, and I know what I’m talking about. Much of your letter could have been written by me in high school . . . or college . . . or sometimes even now, at age 27. But that’s why I go to a therapist. Intellectually, I know that I don’t suck, that I’m not stupid or incapable of doing great things, but still, I don’t always BELIEVE that I’m a good, smart, competent person. Per usual, Sars is right. You have to define your goals and interests for yourself. It may take a long time and a lot of work to clear away others’ expectations of you (or, as it sounds to me here, what you PERCEIVE are others’ expectations of you), but once you do that, and start being “your authentic self,” as corny as that sounds, I think you’ll be much happier. It won’t necessarily be quick, and it probably won’t be easy, but it’ll be worth it.
Also, I know you think your parents need you to be there for them, and that’s noble of you, but I don’t get the impression that your parents are unstable people who will break down at the drop of a hat. I expect if they knew the emotional upheaval you’re having, they’d do their best to get help for you, rather than berating you for not being stoic and supportive enough. In my family, I was always the “good” kid–not the one who attempted suicide, not the one who got tattooed underage, or was involved in drunk driving. But by casting myself as the good kid, I had ridiculously high expectations of myself, and, much like you, beat myself up ( . . . not literally) when I didn’t meet them. It sounds to me like your expectations of yourself are a) unrealistic, and b) meant to please your parents, who, probably, if they’re good parents, just want you to be safe and happy, not perfect. Go easy on yourself.
I second what’s already been said, but I want to add that at college, you will find many, many people who’ve experienced or who are experiencing what you are. I suggest you get involved in at least one activity that makes you happy – if you can’t find one, start one. Make connections with people who have things in common with you, and they can help you out. If you feel like everything you do is a waste of time (and I’m sure it’s not), find something that makes you feel like you’re doing something good, or interesting, or that just makes you happy. Being happy is not a waste of time.
“They need me to be emotionally supportive, but I stop caring about what’s going on as soon as I get distracted by something else.”
Actually, you don’t stop caring. You stop thinking. What you’re doing is using the internet, TV, whatever as a means of escape from stressful feelings. The feelings fade until you turn off the distraction. Which is why you don’t.
You wrote a very honest letter, and I’m sure there were things in it that were difficult for you to admit. You have a very low opinion of yourself right now, and that is sad to read. Please consider talking to your parents about these issues before you leave for college – they would want to do anything they could to help you be happy and successful. Part of that is relieving the pressure you feel to be responsible for their happiness.
As someone who is also skilled at the art of self-sabotage, I just want you to know that fixing this is not as simple as just doing your homework. It’s about learning different coping skills. As Sars said, you may be experiencing depression and/or anxiety, that may or may not be related to ADD. Depression doesn’t always look like spending the day in bed crying, and anxiety doesn’t look like a panic attack. Speaking with a counselor now, or when you arrive at school is the best route for you to define how you feel and why, and to learn new ways to handle stress in your life. Good luck!
Your email could have been written by me at certain points in my life. My high school academic career was much like yours – I am apparently very smart, and when I took the time to throw myself into something I always did well. However, same thing: did “ok” by everyone’s standards, but to this day I know if I had applied myself I could have been in the top one or two in my class.
Now a post-graduate working girl, I’m only now starting to learn what I need to do to feel comfortable and happy, and it’s not easy. You – and me – have strong symptoms of ADD, and as I don’t want to go on medication, I have begun to make lists and routines for myself.
You can’t go all out at once, from my experience, as it usually just fades back into the old cycle. You have to do things a little at a time. The simplest things make the bigger things easier. Put a sign on your wall: Laundry on Tuesday night. Put another sign on your wall: sweep the floor on Wednesdays.
Anything pressing you have to do? Do it NOW. It’s so tempting to put it off, and for me it’s a BATTLE. Omigosh like world war three to avoid the Procrastination Fairy. Bill you can pay? Pay it now, online. Have to read 15 pages? Do it NOW. Think of rewards for yourself. And give yourself one day a week of “vacation,” where you give yourself some “me time,” and don’t worry about the rest.
It’s so hard, but you can definitely do it. Therapy=must. Study groups=must. Good luck – you definitely have it in you. It’s just a matter of channeling it.
ADD/ADHD has a high co-morbidity with anxiety and depression. Your struggles sound similar to my own, in that I was high-achieving enough to “cope” with my symptoms and get by pretty well, but I was constantly doing the same procrastination/justification/shame timeline myself, and things would turn out okay, until they didn’t, and I’d deal with the consequences, and it would start all over again. I wasn’t diagnosed with ADD until into high school, but once I got things sorted out, I was able to begin to *actually* cope with and change my behavior.
15 years later, I’m a responsible, relatively anxiety-free, generally happy, capable adult who is not the tidiest person and sometimes still struggles with time management, but has things under control and doesn’t beat herself up over the past.
Even if this isn’t your diagnosis, I strongly encourage you to seek out a therapist or specialist to help you through these patterns and feelings. And, yes, be on the look out for something that really lights your fire and motivates you because it makes you happy, not just because you need to be a success. At this time in your life, as cliche as it is, the world is full of opportunities and potential, and I sincerely hope you can get to a point where you feel you can embrace it! Good luck to you.
This could have been me in high school and college, too, minus the fandom stuff. I absolutely second the above comments about getting some help with your emotional and mental health.
But I will also tell you what I wish I had known at that stage, which is that you need more sleep. All through high school and some of college, I thought I was a twitchy, snarky, distraction-prone, unhappy, cynical person who got by fine on 6 hours per night of sleep. Turns out that I’m a happy, focused, friendly person who needs 9 hours to be that way. If travel or other outside circumstances deprive me of sleep, I easily slip back to being high-strung, self-loathing, avoidant, etc.
I realize that “get more sleep” probably sounds very glib and unhelpful, and I don’t intend to say that it will solve all your problems. But when you pull all-nighters, send e-mails at 2 in the morning, stay up writing in journals, etc., you are starving yourself of one of the main resources that you need to handle the situations in your life. Nobody is at their best when they are exhausted, so please trust that you deserve to be well-rested (and well-nourished, well-hydrated, etc.), and that taking care of yourself physically will help you get your mental house in order.
I could have totally written that letter when I was in college the first time. The second time. Even some of the third time. I had been an overachiever since I tested in the Gifted & Talented program in 2nd grade. By the time I was in high school, I was taking AP math classes I really had no business taking and other such things. I got a scholarship to a private university in Texas (I’m from DC) and was on a pre-med track. By the time I got to orientation, I was having anxiety issues and panic attacks that led to me leaving the university before classes even started. My parents then set me up at a local community college, where I scraped by with Bs and Cs while doing the minimum amount of work. I transferred to a local four-year university, freaked out at trying to live in dorm again and moved back home. Then I started a pattern VERY much like the one you mentioned in your letter – procrastinating assignments, reading fanfic way into the night, not going to class because I wasn’t prepared, etc. I managed to pull up passing grades in the fall, but failed basically everything in the spring. All the while I was in therapy, but lying to my therapist by omission and not wanting to fail her too; I thought if I could just get over whatever I failed at in Texas, that would stop everything else. Not so much. Why am I sharing this?
Luck/Fate intervened that summer and sent me to LA to an internship in an industry that I would grow to love. I was good at it and loved where I was living. I eventually went back to college, first earning an associate’s and then moving again to get my BA. That’s not to say that I didn’t need to go back to therapy again or slip up (don’t even mention Fall 2002!), but by the time I got to college #5 (where I earned my BA), I found something I loved to do, somewhere I loved to live and people I loved to be around.
I had to get off the hamster wheel for a while. I felt trapped in a life that I didn’t really chose (it was expected that I go to college and do well and do all those things that you (and your parents) dream of when you’re five. I messed up. I wasted a lot of my parents money. I have some ugly-looking transcripts. But I got through it and at the fabulous job I have now, no one would even know about it unless I told them. Nothing is forever – nothing that is very good and nothing that is very bad.
I would definitely recommend therapy, as long as you can be brutally honest with your therapist and you find the right fit for you. I didn’t want to get put on meds, but in later years, I’ve found that meds can help with my anxiety issues without me needing them long term. Your parents may be having a hard time with your sibling and want your support, but more than anything, I’m sure they love you and want you to be happy. You aren’t happy and they need to know. You aren’t failing. You just need some help. Everyone does at some point.
I could have written this letter at 18. I was the smart kid who did no work. I was lazy and undisciplined, and still managed to coast by. And it caught up with me – I carried on the same behaviour at university, got put on academic probation after first year, and dropped out after 2nd year (and by “dropped out”, I mean “got asked to take a year off by the university”).
And, and I cannot stress this enough, it was the best thing that happened to me.
Forcing me to grow up and get a job was what I needed. And I discovered that, although I am not a good student, I am a great employee. I’m motivated and passionate about work, where I was never that way about school.
I’m not sure what the difference is, but I’m 100% sure that, although I thought at the time that getting kicked out of university was the worst thing that had ever happened to me, my life is on the right path now. I’m successful and love my life.
And my relationship with my parents is fine – we went through a rough patch (a very rough patch) when I left school, but we got through it. And their expectations for my brother were a little more relaxed, which is part of a big sister’s job.
Anyway, what I’m saying is relax. You will get past this. Talk to someone, yes. Definitely do that. But don’t worry about ruining your life, or your parents life. I assure you that even if the worst happens, you will get through it. And possibly be better for it.
@Liza – those are exactly the things I do. I break things up into small tasks. I put up obvious signs on the walls for what I have to prioritize. And I often stick up a post-it (at my desk, or wherever necessary) that simply says “Do it now.” :)
I like all of these responses. Like many of the people who have posted, I was (and sometimes am still) like the letter-writer. And I bet you, letter-writer, don’t like yourself for the “bid for attention” you now think this letter represents–you may not even be able to listen to the advice you’re being given because the particular situation that prompted the letter has blown over, so you stopped worrying, but then you feel guilty for being melodrmataic and wasting people’s time. That’s what happens to me, anyway.
Here’s something that helped me, although it took years of melodrama and angst for me to find it: name your feelings, especially anxiety. It’s a feeling; it’s not who you are. There are things that prompt it and things you do to avoid feeling it, but then you just feel more guilty and your anxiety gets more powerful. Like Liza said, and Yoda said, There is only do. You can get up in the morning; you can get dressed; you can have breakfast; you can get to school. You are capable of being in the middle of an action instead of just dreading it. With schoolwork (how I struggled with this!) DO NOT try to leap over the heads of everyone who has ever thought about something and write something totally original your freshman year. Do the obvious, simple things first. Stick to the basics, and you will get there. And when you start to sabotage or doubt yourself, go for a walk. When something in you says “paralysis,” prove it wrong by taking a step.
One of the things about college is that it’s a chance to be different. It seems like there’s a job of work to be done to get there, but maybe you could look at going to college as a chance to become the person you feel like YOU want to be. Not the person others expect you to be, not the person you think your family wants you to be, but the person YOU want to be.
It may take some looking around to figure out who that person is, but college is the place and time to do that. It really is.
Also, re: letting your parents down … I’m 35 years old and I still worry about that. But the reality is, your parents are responsible for themselves and soon you will be responsible for YOURself. Their emotional health is not your responsibility. Your success or failure will not determine their happiness. It will determine YOURS. Be the success or failure YOU want to be. They can and will take good care of themselves.
The support systems at your college know that a lot of students have these kinds of crises of identity and purpose during the college years. They will not be surprised or judgmental or put off by your search for help and guidance. This is the kind of thing college counselors/therapists help people with ALL THE TIME. They will help you get things figured out.
You are soon to come in to your own. Try to enjoy the process and relish your own blossoming. The chrysalis is about to crack!
I would add, yet again, that “a good college” is far less important down the line than it seems at the time. Depending on what you want to do, it’s not completely useless, of course — it can help get you into professional schools — but if you don’t know WHAT you want to do, don’t get too caught up in the academic branding. The scholarships are a concern, sure, but most people don’t give a shit where you went to college. Or if you even finished.
I was extremely fortunate; my parents could pay for a name university, and I had a fantastic time there. In retrospect, the name, the fact that I graduated on time, my GPA…it hasn’t made a difference, and if you come to a place where those things DO make a difference, you can deal.
@Geneva,
Thank you for the insight about getting enough sleep. Far too many of us are chronically sleep-deprived. When I ride the bus to work in the morning, I see school kids and adults who can barely keep their eyes open, and I wonder how they can learn or work in that condition. Turning off the TV, the computer, the music, and any other distractions, at an early hour of the evening, can become a very good habit. Just figure out what time you need to get up, and count back about 8-10 hours to reach the “shut it all off” time that will still allow you to do whatever MUST be done before bed. It’ll be weird for a little while until your body adjusts, but it’s worth it even if you lay there awake at first.
I too could have written this in high school and my first attempt at college.
I highly recommend talking to someone about the possibility you have ADD/ADHD. Sometimes it can be overlooked in intelligent people because of the mistaken belief that people with ADHD are stupid. Especially if you have a subtype that does not come with ‘H’ part, hyperactivity.
And pick up a book called “Driven to Distraction” by Edward M. Hallowell and John J. Ratey.
Ugh. Add another to the list thinking this sounds so much like me in high school and college. I agree with everyone that some counseling is in order because the problem isn’t necessarily doing minimum work and getting pretty good results–that just means you’re naturally quite bright. It’s a GOOD thing. Imagine what you could do if you got some help with the depression?
I think about this all the time. I was fairly self-loathing and depressed through much of high school and college. I got very good grades (A’s and B’s throughout both) and did what I felt was practically no work. My friends despised me when I’d bring home an A- on a paper I wrote in a few hours when they’d spent weeks in the library doing theirs. I was just lucky to have the natural gifts to be able to pull something like that off. But I think all the time about what I could have accomplished with my natural gifts if I’d dealt with the issues that left me paralyzed to work harder.
I am still a master procrastinator (obviously…I’m writing this comment at work!), but as a happier more adjusted person, I find the tendency less. Deal with yourself first, school/work second.
I agree with everything everyone else said, but I also wanted to point out that this part of your letter…
“I don’t know how to do it. I’ve never been good at anything. I’ve never cared about anything or anyone. I’ve never succeeded at anything.”
Read the whole letter again and then tell me how this paragraph matches the rest of what you wrote. You’ve never been good at anything? You got Bs and A-s, I know people who work their absolute hardest and will never be better than a C student. I’ve never succeeded at anything? You got into a competitive college on scholarships, didn’t you? I’ve never cared about anything or anyone? Uh, how does that match what you wrote about you can’t disappoint your parents and you are so worried about what they are going through with your sibling? If you didn’t care about your parents, you wouldn’t care if they were disappointed in you, would you? You wouldn’t care if they needed you to be “emotionally supportive” would you? Honey, the carpet in this room doesn’t match the drapes.
I agree with everyone else-counseling, yesterday. Your perspective of yourself is so different from reality. You are a great person-and a counselor will help you start believeing it.
Adding on to Sars comment, there is way too much pressure to get into the “right” college — as if you only ever have one try. Maybe it would be a good idea to try a community college for a while and then transfer. Great colleges take transfers all the time — and you can also apply to a college more than once. A lot of students are convinced that if they apply to Fab University and don’t get in, then it’s over — and that if you try again, they have this file of failures, or something, that they’ll cross-reference you to. No, no, and no. If anything, if you apply again and IF they remember you — which, in hundreds of application, they likely won’t — the most common reaction is, “Hey! She tried again! Good for her! Let’s see how she improved!” Trust me on this; I work at a university. A lot of professors are actually impressed with students who have demonstrably gotten their shit together (example: when you send them your transcripts, they actually READ them. Seriously. And when they see that you failed Calculus I the first time around, then took it again and got a C, then took it again and got an A, they LIKE that. It shows tenacity, determination and progress.) Don’t make it a competition that you have to WIN or else you LOSE. When you have an idea of what you might like to try, try it. Something will work out, and maybe even very well.
I got into a horrible, negative cycle of procrastination (including fanfic), self-loathing, and panic while writing up my Master’s thesis earlier this year. I also had a ton of other emotional stress in my life at the time, which didn’t help. I started hiding, and lying about, how little progress I’d made to everyone until I finally wound myself up to snapping point. It took standing on a train platform and being overcome with the urge to jump to get me to start talking and dealing.
Different, you may indeed benefit from seeing an MD/PhD and getting treatment and support for depression and/or anxiety and/or ADHD, but I think you also have one of the same problems I had. My project had long stopped being my own and become my supervisor’s. I didn’t care about it. It wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. If it’s at all possible, try taking a year off before college; if not, try and think more about what *you* actually want, not what you *think* they want. Because like other commenters, I’ll bet my boots that they may think they want you to get a great degree, but deep down they just want you to be happy doing something that you love. And you’ll get there. The roads are frequently twisty and confusing and don’t look like the simple shiny life path you imagined, but nobody has that simple shiny path. You’ll figure it out. And you can cope. I promise.
wow. I am another voice in the chorus. Hello SL of 1987, 1992, 1996, 2001 and 2006! Did NOT miss you. Wish, I really hope that reading all these responses about how a lot of people have felt and feel this way brings some comfort. It did for me – you are not alone. After decades of believing that I was somehow broken or just unworthy deep inside in a way that needed to be hidden away because of how lazy and thoughtless, etc… – I know now that 4 out of 5 people I will see every day have had those moments. Having the moments last a long time means that depression has set in, not that the thoughts are true.
But I also want to say the one thing I haven’t read that much of yet here. Don’t be afraid or or ashamed of anti-depressants. Once you find the right one or the right mix of them, it is a lot easier to recognize the spiral of self-loathing that led to this letter at 2am and stop it – by a call to your parents or a friend or even just to the part of you that reached out to get some help from a website. The meds don’t solve all your problems but anti-depressants do help. I think of myself as living proof.
I still get bored at work and still wonder at the people who think I am good at my job (typing at work here after all) when I feel like I am putting in the minimum effort. But I also think that maybe I’m just wired to be good at this and maybe it takes me less effort to get to where I need to be. And that it is time to look for a new job that interests me more.
good luck. I wish I could give you a hug. Georgia is right – your parents love you and are not expecting you to be perfect or nearly as good as I am guessing you think they do. Just reach out and tell them you want some help. They will be far more upset that they didn’t see it themselves and relieved that you asked.
I hope,if nothing else, your isolation will be cracked a bit by the fact that every other reply has a variation on “this is/was me.”
The most insidious part of depression/anxiety isn’t the self-loathing, it’s the isolation. Depression as a medical condition takes a circumstance where it’s normal to feel stressed/sad–starting school, problems with a family member–and transforms those feelings into something to feel bad ABOUT,if you follow me. Your sadness over your parents’ worry gets transmuted into “and I’m the worst ever because I might fail them!” Your worry over using your time productively gets changed to “I’m worse than Hitler for reading fanfic!” Everything becomes another stick to beat yourself up with,and then you feel bad about that, and that becomes another stick,and on and on.
I think the most important thing you can do for yourself is get help breaking this cycle of beating yourself up for the wrong things, things that are and were never in your control. And by the by,your depression will try to transform getting help into another expression of your “weakness.” Don’t let it. A good counselor is there to listen,interpret,and change your emotional patterns.
Take a nap, eat a good breakfast,and get some good help. You are more than te demons hag-riding your brain,so much more, and you are not bad,damaged,or worthless for needing help excorcising them.
I would start therapy before leaving for college if you can help it. I mention this because what with one thing and the other, it took me a decade and a half to get the help I needed with anxiety issues, instead of getting it when I could have used it (i.e., while in high school, very socially detached, very anxious and depressed, and with parents who thought I was the “good” child, and therefore focused their attentions elsewhere).
What ended up happening is that I similarly got by in college, I found a job that I got by in for a long while, and then I decided to go to law school. Having to deal with actually competing academically for the first time in my life (there’s no coasting in law school) while battling my anxiety very nearly did me in. I believe the only reason I am no longer on the brink of thinking of suicide (and yet being scared enough not to try it out) is that I eventually found a therapist who was able to make me realize and accept that all of the shoulds and musts in my life were not dictated by anyone but me, and that in order for me to enjoy my life instead of always feeling like I didn’t quite measure up to it, I had to find a way to cope with that inner voice.
Taking anti-anxiety meds for a few months helped: it helped free me of the anxiety that I had always taken for granted as part of my personality (except that I labeled it as a nasty habit of procrastinating and a tendency to lose focus. Sound familiar?), and to get to experience what life was like if you stopped beating up on yourself. All of a sudden, that voice in the back of my head telling me how I hadn’t done this, or that, and I would surely fail if I did this other thing was gone. With cognitive therapy coaching on top of that, I actually learned to get things done not because it was the only way that self doubting voice would stop tormenting me, but because I wanted to do them, or at least get them out of the way so I could spend my time doing what I really wanted to do.
Meanwhile, I learned not to beat myself up if things don’t get done right away, but to tell myself “ok, this can still be fixed” and come up with an alternate plan (I’m sure it sounds hard to believe, but there are very few deadlines in life that are so meaningful that missing them will ruin your entire life). It’s a coping skill that my pdoc remarks often that people with anxiety never learn while growing up, which makes adulthood overwhelming. No one’s fault here, really… like you I was good at being “the good kid” so my parents wouldn’t worry about me, that actually performing the lie became all-consuming.
Realizing that the only person who held me accountable for my accomplishments was me, and that I neither owed nor was expected by my parents to do anything other than make myself happy was so liberating that I am so stunned by how long I was willing to put therapy off and instead be my own worst enemy. This is why I would implore you to go see a therapist today, if you can.
Ok, another voice chiming in to say this all sounds very familiar. I’m comforted to see that many of us get pulled down the “shame spiral†:P The question is, how do you get out of it? I’ve been to three shrinks and on a half dozen different anti-depressants and still can’t shake my “performance anxiety†and bad self-esteem. Does anyone have like, a book recommendation or something on this? Or a good shrink in the Buffalo NY area? Because I know what my problem is, I just haven’t found a way to get over it yet. I know my perception of events isn’t comensurate with what’s actually going on, but I just can’t help thinking the worst.
Hope you get the help you need, Wish.
Another thing I’ve learned from years of dealing with an anxiety disorder: Don’t apologize or beat yourself up because you feel a certain way. If your problem is chemical in nature, that’s not something you can control. If you feel depressed, you feel depressed. It’s not your fault, and those feelings are valid. If you need to cry, cry. I personally believe no one should ever apologize for crying. It’s how we deal with what we’re feeling.
Glad to see that sleep was mentioned more than once. I recently read a report that while we are sleeping we are “storing” the information that we learned during the day.
After reading these entries about being the “goog” child I started to think about my own daughters. One I do consider the “good” child and the other is the “challenging” child. Now I feel like I need to reavluate the “good” kid to make sure she is hanging in there!
I share many of the same issues as the OP … and my 14 year-old son does, as well. (I sometimes feel like an ‘elder statesman’ around here!) My son, in particular, has some major anxiety and depression issues as well as ADD/HD, and he’s also a perfectionist (as I am) and incredibly bright; both you and he are lucky, in a sense, that you’re going through this today and not 40 years ago, as I was – the public and the medical community are much more attuned to these issues, and there are so many more effective modalities of treatment.
A couple of things that I wanted to address, some of which have been mentioned by others to some extent:
First, ADD/HD presents itself *very* differently, overall, in men versus women … which is why men are much more likely to be diagnosed. Women are, um, quieter and less disruptive; we’re not the ones teachers typically see bouncing off of the classroom walls, and our issues tend to make us fade into the background a bit more. We “zone” or procrastinate, so – while our grades may suffer – we don’t have a negative affect on the classroom atmosphere. So, just because you might not think that you “look” like what you think of when you visualize “ADD/HD”, please get checked out by a qualified therapist or psychiatrist who is much more capable of making a diagnosis.
I’ll also throw out there that “screen time” of any stripe – TV, video games, computer surfing – has an insideous effect on my son. Too much time spent looking at any screen makes him extremely nasty and lethargic; screen time too close to going to bed is also the “anti-sleeping pill”, since it seems to turn on his brain to the point where he can’t shut off his thoughts enough to fall asleep (which is a challenge for him under the best circumstances). (I also find that surfing the ‘Net or watching TV too close to bedtime revs my own brain too much.) He becomes “locked in”, he’s seemingly unable to stop what he’s doing, and he’ll allow his other responsibilities to go by the wayside. So we are very careful to try keep his screen activities to a minimum, and not allow them to get to the point where they’re having a detrimental affect on him. You might want to take a look at how much time you spend on the computer or watching TV/DVDs, and try to cut back a bit to see if that helps how you feel at all.
And yes: SLEEP. VERY important!! Our son’s tdoc had noticed that a disproportionate number of his ADD/HD patients have sleep issues, and suggested that we have a sleep test run for the kid (who had turned into a lousy sleeper and was ALWAYS tired). Lo and behold, it turned out that he had sleep apnea and that he stopped breathing about 8 times every *hour*; he basically never hit REM sleep. Makes sense that being chronically tired would be pretty deadly for someone who is already challenged in the concentration realm, right? He had his tonsils/adenoids out last Fall and – while he still has some sleep issues – it’s NOTHING like it was before, and he’s much better able to focus at school and on homework. So, yeah, “good” sleep is probably even more critical for people who have chemical/wiring issues than for other folks, to maximize their already-challenged ability to focus and control their impulsivity.
There have been several posters who have expressed an unwillingness to try medication for ADD/HD or depression/anxiety. While I respect everyone’s right to do what they feel is the best thing for them, and while I agree that these conditions are being over-diagnosed and over-medicated across the general population, the fact remains that, for those who truly DO suffer, medication is a very, very good thing. Especially in conjunction with therapy. If you were a Type 1 diabetic, would you attempt to just “get along” without insulin? If you had asthma, would you just forego your rescue inhaler and try to “tough it out”? Would you feel that taking insulin or using a rescue inhaler every day made you “weak”, or a lesser person? ADD/HD and depression/anxiety can be rooted in bio-chemical imbalances. We’re “wired” differently. So, we’re talking about treating a medical condition here – just as diabetes and asthma are medical conditions. If your doctor recommends that you try meds, then please try them. Just please be patient; it’s often a game of trial-and-error until the right med or meds, in the right doses, is determined. So you might not feel ‘better’ right away. But you will. Seriously – if you need these meds and you take them, you WILL feel better and begin to function better.
The last thing that I wanted to address is your fear of letting down your parents. Oh, sweetie. As a parent of a … challenging son, I can tell you that, while I can’t say that I’m always thrilled with the things he does, I will never, ever stop loving him or being there for him. Similarly, things he DOES may “disappoint” me, but HE doesn’t disappoint me as long as he respects himself and others, and as long as he sincerely does the best that he can do. It sounds to me as though you are more than doing these things already. I would bet that your parents are not aware of the extent to which you are feeling depressed, anxious, and down on yourself. Because I would also bet that, if they knew how you were feeling, they’d encourage you to get help, try to do everything in their power to help find you the proper resources to get help, and reassure you that you *are* good, and strong, and smart, and caring … and everything that you fear right now that you’re not. Heck, I’m almost 50 YO, and I can still count on my own parents for that. You’ll always be their kid, and they’ll always want the best for you, no matter how old you are.
Please hang in there, and take care of yourself.
Your letter sounds like you’ve gotten into the habit of thinking the only two possibilities for your life are COMPLETE PERFECT SUCCESS or COMPLETE HIDEOUS FAILURE — like, as ferretrick pointed out, you’ve been pretty successful, but you’re dismissing that as not actually counting because you’ve also screwed up occasionally. For me, that belief system was the source of my huge problems with procrastination — there was a lot of not-quite-conscious thought process along the lines of “Turning in imperfect work would be an embarrassment to me and an insult to my professor, and my paper will never be perfect no matter what, so I’m screwed, so I might as well play Freecell for eight hours instead of working” — and I wonder if it’s also part of your procrastination problem.
Along with everyone else, I really recommend that you find a therapist or counselor you can talk to, soon. The student counseling resources on your campus will be able to help you, and will most likely have lots of experience with the kind of issues you’re having — procrastination, parental expectations that are stressing you out, the pressure of trying to live up to your own desire to be perfect. Anxiety and depression can make you feel horribly isolated, but you really, honestly are not alone in having these problems (this will become more obvious if you can bring yourself to talk about them — when I dropped out of my first attempt at college after burning out on the anxiety and stress and had to admit that I was not, in fact, doing that great, all of a sudden it seemed like everyone I knew had a similar story), and you don’t have to deal with them alone either. Good luck at college, good luck finding help, and take care.
Hey, Wish. Good for you for writing. It’s great to see a community of successful, happy people who’ve all gone through similar issues here. You will absolutely find this elsewhere, and I encourage you to continue to seek help. Sometimes it takes time – in the five darkest years before my lifelong depression and anxiety were finally diagnosed (when I was 26!), I saw three different counselors and therapists before a recommendation from a friend finally got me to the right person. It can be hard to be persistent. Is there a friend or relative or teacher who can help you keep moving?
In addition to finding a good therapist, you should also get a complete physical and a proper diagnosis – there are probably dietary and exercise changes you can make to help you recover. I would also stress that sometimes medication can be helpful – it doesn’t have to be forever, and if you have a chemical issue (as someone said above), it’s a chemical issue. This was comforting sometimes when I would just wonder, “What’s wrong with me? Why do I have to be this way?” It took me about a year to get off them completely, but they definitely helped me, at least.
When you’re feeling a bit more stable, it will likely be easier to see what you really want for yourself. Echoing the others, don’t worry about messing things up. It happens to everyone. I have stories similar to those listed above. Everything used to seem like it was the worst thing in the world. If I messed up, it would make everyone think I was the worst person in the world. But actually, recovering and becoming emotionally and physically healthy has brought me closer to friends and family and made me realize that they love me depression and mess-ups and all.
Just keep moving and keep trying, Wish. If you do, there is lots of goodness ahead. Good luck!
It’s remarkable to see so many people who have the same problems. I’m here to add to it. :) It really does feel like you’re alone with it though when you’re surrounded by ‘normal’ people.
I disagree with Sars though on one point – I don’t think it has anything to do with her goals not being her own and being her parents’ instead. My parents have never been anything but supportive of what I choose for my goals, and I have chosen a career path which I am good at and I enjoy and I *still* get very easily distracted from the things I need and want to do by easy and lazy things.
Now I don’t have any advice to add about how to do well at college, but I can say – don’t try and force yourself into the ‘normal’ way of having a life. Build a life that suits your capabilities. I work from home, working in short bursts, any time day or night that I can focus enough to do it.
But, there is hope that the burst style of working is becoming more acceptable.
I just want to add, since it has come up since my previous comments, that taking medication was part of how I learned to cope with my ADD and depression/anxiety and then become able to do other things that helped me modify my behavior. I neglected to mention that as part of the formula that worked for me, and I see how that could be a little misleading! There is absolutely no shame in needing medication (whether temporarily or on a longer-term basis) and for years I defiantly fought that stigma.
The bottom line is that while many of us commenting seem to have had very similar experiences, we all found the proper balance of therapy/counseling, medication, healthy routines and behavior changes that helped us, as individuals, to improve. I think “Different” needs to get working with a professional to start finding that balance.
Oof. Another person saying “This is me at various points in my life,” with great sympathy. (Fandom, so wonderful and so destructive to people like us.) I managed to get through high school, get a full scholarship to college, and go to a top-50 law school, and I still felt like a big fat miserable fraud the whole time. Three years of therapy, lots of different meds, still working on feeling OK about things.
One thing to remember, which took me years to figure out? You’re not procrastinating because you’re lazy — you’re doing it because you’re scared. It’s really easy to get a B on a paper with only a couple hours of work and then imagine what you could have done if you’d really tried. It’s really hard to put all your effort into something, because then you might fail. You’re self-handicapping as a protective move.
You are going to have to break the cycle, which sucks. I know you genuinely hate yourself at times, but I also know that just writing yourself off as a “terrible person” is a painful but simplistic way to get out of trying to make things better. Which is where therapy comes in. I put it off until I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown in law school, which was about ten years too late. Do yourself a favor and start it now, while you’re still on your parents’ insurance and are so young. You don’t have to live this way forever, and the sooner you start the happier you’ll be.
There is a school of thought in educational circles that argues that most schools support what is known as a ‘fixed mindset’: that people are either smart or not. This is believed to have negative consequences both for people who are seen as ‘smart’ (they tend to be motivated by a fear of failure rather than a desire for success and they often find themselves doing the bare minimum to scrape by in exams and school work and then beat themselves up for not doing better) and for those who aren’t seen as ‘smart’ (because they often have less access to support and opportunities and because people tend to live up – or down – to expectations placed on them).
The alternative is what is described as a ‘growth mindset’: in short, the idea that everybody has the capacity to do well and that things like ‘being smart’ are not binary states – by working hard and receiving proper support, nearly all students will do well. Google Carol Dweck to learn more – she’s the person behind this idea.
I’m saying all this because the letter writer sounds like a classic case of somebody for whom being labelled as ‘smart’ has been a millstone around the neck. I was exactly the same at school and I underachieved to a massive extent.
And yet another here for the train of “boy does a lot of this sound like me”, with a side-helping of “I had a very high-achieving brother as a model, 10 years my senior, who set an impossible-for-me example” (on the plus side, my parents were REALLY good at regarding me as the “arty” one – inherited my father’s art talent – and thus not truly holding me to my brother’s “the math-y one” example).
Anyhoo. I would also add that I’ve never gone to counseling (sometimes thought about it, never gotten around to it), wondered about the ADD thing sometimes but never looked into it further, and I have those same self-doubts about how much I “care” (feeling like I am self-centered and emotionally shallow and care too little about things I should care more deeply about, wondering if I will ever truly “fall in love”, etc.). And to this day, in my 40s, I still read/write too much fanfic sometimes. And obviously, write TN replies from work.
That is not to say I am trying to refute all the good advice above about getting counseling and exploring ADD diagnosis possibilities! I’m not; I think that’s good advice, because everyone’s experience is different, and everyone’s needs are different. Whether or not I need those things is a separate question; my example doesn’t have bearing on yours.
I guess I just wanted to say… I recognize a lot of what you’re saying. I had big family drama in college that I felt I wasn’t supportive enough to my mother about (my father died); I am judged to be very bright, but I’ve diagnosed myself as “an intellectual dilettante” (it was a blow to realize that I would NOT be going on in a career in higher academia, that I didn’t even WANT to and it wouldn’t be good for me); in the end I barely squeaked by in the several courses that were requirements, and to this day I’m not sure anyone else knows how close I came to not graduating on time.
And here I am in my 40s, with good family relationships, good friends (who I’m constantly afraid of losing), good pets, and a good job that’s interesting, with people I like. I still get bored at my job and surf the internet WAY more than I should. Your procrastination thought patterns sound a lot like mine. Hell, sometimes I procrastinate about doing the fanfic/fan-art, too. But objectively speaking, things are okay. And for you, things may also be okay down the road — or better, especially if you do actually do some things now to get on top of some of these negative patterns.
The one thing I wanted to say which I hadn’t yet seen reflected above (unless I missed it) is: maybe this isn’t the time for you to be thinking like this, but, college is also not necessarily the answer for everyone. I know you’ve gotten *IN* now and your parents have these expectations and you don’t want to disappoint them and so on. But… just keep this in the back of your head. As others here have pointed out, you’re tripping up somewhat over others’ expectations OF you. You’re doing what you think others think you should do. And that can be hard to break out of, especially when you’re young.
So while you’re in college this first year, while you’re following some of the other good advice above, if you can make yourself do it… look for some practical volunteer opportunities. See if you can volunteer on a farm or at a wildlife reservation or something. Maybe, I don’t know, take a pottery class that gets your hands dirty.
One of the biggest “what ifs” I have always faced is… well, okay, I figured out during college that further academia was not for me. Would I have been happier, would I *be* happier, if I was doing physical things with my life, things with my hands that get me away from a desk and a computer screen? In small ways, I’m trying to explore that even now through volunteering. When I say “college isn’t for everyone” what I mean is that there are a lot of careers out there, lifestyles, that aren’t academic, and yes, they are hard work, often hard physical work, and sometimes they involve a very different career path. Just… think about it, okay?
It may not seem like it right now — because you probably feel like you’re on closed railroad tracks, going along the path that others think you “should”. But college is the time when you really will have the most freedom to explore possibilities. Find that volunteering opportunity. Or find a summer job doing something out-there. Get a taste of what that’s like, too. You might find out that you seem to “care” more about things you can get your hands on than the things on the other side of the computer screen, or things in books.
I know it’ll be hard to tear yourself away from the computer and the fanfic. At various points in my life it’s been too hard for me to actually do. I’m trying to rectify that now, but I wish I’d done it a long time ago.
Another thing to keep in mind is that schools teach at the lowest level in the class. It’s entirely possible that you feel like you’re blowing everything off and still getting perfect scores because, for you, the work is baby work.
Now, I’m not saying this to blow sunshine up your ass about how you’re the smartest person ever. “Not being challenged” isn’t the same thing as “genius-level intellect”. But maybe what you could do is some independent research. Read ahead in the books; look at the chapters of the math book that aren’t being covered in class, do the problems there, ask the teacher if you can get the relevant sections of the answer guide so that you can check your work. Take up a hobby–3D modeling, or photoshopping, or knitting, jewelry, scrapbooking, something.
And here’s another thing–don’t lose heart when you get to college and it’s super-hard. I had the same issue you did–high school was cake, and when I got to college and they expected me to actually do stuff I fell apart. Fortunately I managed to get myself back together.
One more, but I’ve got something additional to add.
I’m a social media specialist for a major brand, and my job consists of dealing with incoming information in a whole bunch of different channels (Twitter, Facebook, internal message board, etc.) and reacting effectively in real time.
My ADD tendencies and my years of procrastination taught me what I needed to know about working fast, working intuitively, working when there’s no time to research or plan or write a rough draft. The papers that got done at the last possible minute taught me to put down effective prose in a hurry, without the benefit of spell check or a second glance. The books that got skimmed the last five minutes before class taught me how to get the gist of things when there isn’t time to read them in a leisurely way.
Procrastination, for all the malignment it gets, can teach a person a lot about being a quick study, and being a quick study can be a valuable career skill.
I can’t remember which commenter said “I was a crappy student but a good employee,” but that has been my experience, too. If you’re intelligent and easily bored, school can feel like one big make-work project, and work can feel like the education you always wished you got in school.
Hang in there.
Oh, and one last thing. If you’re not athletic, find a sport and give it a try. I found running in my mid-twenties, and found that it really took the edge off my perpetual distractedness and general dissatisfaction with life and with myself. Anything that makes you sweat, burns off some nervous energy, and gets your mind off your issues is a GOOD thing.
Wow. You’ve offered this poignant oxymoron–you’re viciously hard on yourself because you’re convinced you’re not hard enough on yourself.
It seems to me that you think that self-blame is a solution and you’re just not applying it firmly enough–if you could find a way to really savage yourself you’d make yourself fall into line. But the self-blame is as much or more a problem than the procrastination and attention-wavers. It’s not how you fix the problem, it’s a thing in itself that you need to fix.
People have addressed a lot of that, but I’ll also note that you’re comparing your insides with other people’s outsides. As you’re reading in the comments here, most people’s insides are racked with anxieties and impostor worries and procrastination, but you just don’t see it. It’s bad enough to constantly measure yourself against other people, but you’re not even comparing the same things.
And this moment is not your whole life. This moment is not the measure of your whole life. You are not defined as a person by having a crappy year in your twenties or by having college bring your anxieties to a head.
Most importantly, this condemnation is not an appropriate way to treat anybody. As has been discussed in TN before, would you scorn your best friend’s efforts the way you do your own? And no, it’s not different for you; you’re no less deserving. (Any chance that you’ve had some external modeling on this self-harshness, by the way? Anybody in your life who always points out what they did wrong when they’re praised for an achievement, or trumpets that true artists are never satisfied with their work, or in any other way sends the message that considering yourself to have done well isn’t something the best people do?) Before you self-flagellate, think how you’d address a friend who’d just done the same thing. Do you think that telling him that it just proves how much he sucks would be a useful response? What would be helpful for her to hear? Then tell her that, even though she’s not there, and listen in.
This is a great thread.
Good on you for recognizing the problem and resolving to fix it. I didn’t deal with my depression when I was your age and now it’s swallowed me whole. Get professional help (before you lose your job and insurance and there aren’t any free resources left because, shit, look around.)
When you get to college, surround yourself with people who know how to study — quiet study/honors dorms are a good start. You have the skills needed to rock college (really!) but it’s easier to get down to business if you allow yourself to be carried along by people who already have the discipline to handle the workload. Schedule group study times, and don’t let yourself slide on that commitment. Becoming a competent student feels good.
Your work does not equal you. Your papers and exams are just x effort * y insight — you didn’t break off a piece of your soul to hand over for judgment.
I don’t recommend waiting or not going; if you have the opportunity, TAKE IT. College is designed to give you the leeway to fuck up and learn from it. The outside world is less accommodating.
As someone struggling with these very issues right now, who has printed out the original letter and Sar’s response to take to her therapist tomorrow, I can’t say enough how much the comments and compassion have vicariously helped me.
I hope the original poster is as comforted by them as I am. Ya’ll are a really great group, and this is a really great space.
Oh my god. That letter sounds like something I could have written until a year ago. This was me from first grade all the way to college. It was only last year that my therapist suggested that I be evaluated for a learning disability and it turned out, I was depressed, had sensory integration dysfunction, ADHD and an anxiety disorder. It was such a huge relief to finally know what I was dealing with and for my therapist to show me exactly what works.
Definitely go to a mental health professional. Make a list in point form of everything you’ve mentioned in your letter to show them if you get distracted easily. You sound as though you need someone who can be an objective sounding board and guide, which is the role a therapist plays. It won’t be a magical cure-all pill, but sometimes, even just having a therapist help you put things into perspective again can be a huge relief.