Feeling insecure 😕
I am determined to put all this stuff behind me. Figuring out the how and the way forward is my biggest obstacle. I can admit but I don’t know how to ACT in order to change it. I know I’ve focused too much on the perception of what I’m doing from all angles and it’s caused me too much frustration and worry about how I’m going to look and appear in court, what light my ex is trying to cast on me, how my threefold expect me to be, and trying to get past and heal from my own trauma and damage. It all makes me overwhelmed about the different ways I need and feel I have to be better or seem better or appear this or that. I’m tired of it. I’m tired of being tired and I’m tired of never reaching the impossible standards I’ve forced upon myself and never feeling secure enough, good enough, whole enough, or just enough anytime that perfection standard isn’t met. There is a difference in having a strive to achieve excellence and the losing battle of perfection. Yes it takes a lot of work to undo damage but if I can’t acknowledge what I am doing wrong and how I’m impacting the people around me by doing that then I can’t fix it. I am trying. I want to be better, but I have to learn that expecting more more of myself than is actually attainable is going to keep perpetuating the same reactions and responses. I can’t fix everything all at once. I have to remember that and I have to give myself patience and understanding.
I’m just trying to get to a place where I feel free from my past and can see ahead and all the possibilities it holds. Right now I feel stuck in the in between. I feel I have changed so much in the past year yet I feel like there is far too much control, energy and attention given to the past. Not just me, but by my threefold feeling stuck in their trauma also. I want to move forward but with divorce still looming and everything still so up in the air I can’t seem to release myself from that. I can say all the right words and even start going through the motions but I feel like if I am still linked to this man and if we have no closure on this ugly part of our lives then we can’t begin to heal. I fall back on my own toxic behaviors of setting myself up for failure, catastrophically defining my every shortcoming, placing unreasonable expectations and making out that someone else held me to some unattainable standard that no one has actually expressed an expectation of.
It’s selfish and self centered to focus only on how I feel about me. I can’t take praise, compliments, or criticism without having a negative contradicting thought. It’s anxiety and C-PTSD I know I’m highly aware as to the why and I even can rationalize my behavior as a result and response to those feelings of needing to be validated as good enough but even when I am it’s never enough for me to make it change if anything it raises my expectation of myself. Oh ok I got applauded for being on the top 10 at work so now obsessively check where I am in that ranking everyday and then I do whatever I have to do maintain the value I feel I have to prove I have. In turn I burn myself out and still have been in the top 10 for 6 consecutive weeks and hit #1 twice. It fueled my feelings of achievement, success, and it validated how amazing I am at my job while being insecure about missing work to care for and tend to my threefold during their difficult transition and 2’s hospitalization. I can lose 60lbs and had an original goal of 150 I’m at 159, I will get there by whatever means necessary because I am stubborn and willful and need the challenge to be motivated but once I’m there I’ll change the goal to 140 because I’ll still find why a size 8 doesn’t look good on me then it will be 130 I want but when I don’t reach it in my timeline I set then I will gain 20lbs most likely because im pissed off at myself for not doing more to get there. It’s churning with every aspect of everything. My insecurities drive me in everything yet no matter how far I get in anything I can’t make myself be happy with where I’m at today. My own self-sabotage will continue to cause me to fail but when I let go of the expectation my motivations fade to nothing and I feel like I’m never going to be any further than I am in this moment. In that moment I’m self loathing. Criticizing my every action and inaction and over analyzing everything I’ve said and everything I left unaddressed.
I need to reach the next goal or fix the next problem or find another solution. My life and energy feeds off my need to do more, be more, accomplish more, and my need to be the best in others’ eyes. I don’t feel seen, appreciated, celebrated, or validated. The compliments build my own feelings of them expecting that level at all times. Im pretty, oh ok im not but they like me because they think I’m pretty so I have to be whatever it takes to be pretty. You think im this strong bad ass woman then I must live that life and display behaviors and actions to support those theories. You want me to support myself financially then that means I can’t show I’m struggling or reach out for help. Add those ideas to being told by my past and my own brain reinforcing those words that I’ve been told a million times that I am not good enough, smart enough, thin enough, strong enough, worthy enough and everything just perpetuates that intense desire to be everything I perceive others want and need me to be at all times. Even if my perception isn’t based in truth and reality.
It’s insecurities, it’s psychological trauma, it’s a deep rooted desire to be validated in everything I do, and to be the best at everything all the time. I have to be the picture of the perfect mom, the perfect partner, the perfect daughter, employee, friend and all around person. I will never be pretty enough or thin enough. It’s picking apart every detail and feeling like every move I make is going to be wrong choice or it will somehow cause damage to someone else somewhere. It’s fear that failure is my only defining characteristic in my own eyes and that regardless of how hard I try it will never be good enough. I can’t handle setbacks without thinking the setback will define me to the people around me. Whoever I let down, disappointed, or felt I hurt I feel I’ve failed them on a level that never will be told to me but perceived by me. “So just leave then!” I want to scream when I don’t feel I’m measuring up. “I can’t be everything to everybody all the time!” I cry as I feel I am being criticized and become defensive. “You think I want to be this messed up?” I ask desperately needing someone to meet me where I am as I feel I have attempted to do that time and again with others. “Quit telling me I’m stronger than this and to keep trying!” I say in a frustrated manner as I feel that all of my own insecurities and my expectation of myself are failing to be met and my efforts have begun to meet the end of my motivation to keep trying because I can’t understand why my efforts to do better are never good enough for anyone or seen in a way of wanting more. I’m not sure how to make my inability to receive compliments or praise at face value match up with a need to be validated, valued, appreciated and supported. I need the approval and acceptance because I don’t approve of or accept myself.
I can acknowledge its existence and the toxicity of that pattern but I don’t know how to change that thought pattern and that way of life. It’s been psychologically embedded and rooted that positive affirmations don’t reverse it, support seems to amplify it, and my anxiety seems to manipulate it. I just want be able to give myself the allowances I give everyone else and stop feeling like there is no amount of effort that will improve my life or my relationships. Feeling destined for a life of constantly falling short and blaming others for that is toxic to me and everyone else around me. How do I learn to cut myself some slack, relax, and stop perpetuating this cycle of try and fail and repeat? I’m lost in that today. Maybe writing it down and getting it out will be cathartic and help me find a better way forward than the road I’ve continued to take regardless if that’s the only way I know. It’s time to learn a new way forward because this way is not getting me anywhere.
