Worth. No quirky titles, this one has drained me.

This post has been the bane of my mental world for the last few weeks. I have written and rewritten it, but I have been totally at a loss for how to make it say what I want it to say. A large part of the reason is that I don’t actually know what I am trying to say. My personal sense of worth and where I generate it from is bringing my self-awareness of who I am into question. I am tired and I am confused and I can’t turn back. To be dramatic about it, I am trapped in a personal worth vacuum. My external supply has been almost cut off and I have little to no skill to create it independently.

This needs more explanation, but I am trying to ‘radically accept’ (DBT lingo) that this post is likely to make little sense to anyone but me. I still think that it needs to be published though, otherwise things down the road are going to look like they came out of nowhere. I’ve been aware for many years that my sense of self is not well defined. There are many reasons for this and many examples I could give, but I am not going to go into that detail here. What is relevant right now is that the work I have been doing in DBT, in therapy and in my personal experiences, has made me see that most of my anxiety in relationships, professional settings and surrounding my lack of autonomy, comes down to the need I have for who I am, what I do and where I fit, to be defined by others. I just don’t have the skills to bolster myself up, praise myself and consider myself capable of achieving things. 

I cannot see my self-worth unless it is reflected back at me by how I interpret other people’s actions towards me. Yes, it is not even so simple as judging myself on how people treat me, it is based on how I interpret how they treat me. So, unless it is clear, direct and positive, there is more than enough room for me to interpret my existence to them as a hindrance, and therefore consider myself to be worthless, unlikeable and unloved. Even more so because I am not coming at these situations from a positive or confident place. If I believe 'they' do not see me as worthwhile, likeable and loved, I have no means of knowing myself to be anything else but worthless. One of the biggest consequences of this is an intense guilt when I try to do any thing that means I put myself first, like self care, having time alone or requesting something I need from someone else. There are so many nuances that I could write for pages and pages and would still never be able to fully convey where I am. If I wrote it all, the contradictions would end up making it more confusing than it already is.

To bring it to the point, the problem this awareness has brought is that I can now see how unhelpful and unsustainable it is to keep getting my self-worth fix from the interpretations I make of other’s thoughts about me. To take it a step further, I am beginning to think that it is unhelpful to expect any of my self-worth to come from anyone but me. People around me can probably offer space for reflection and insight, but they shouldn’t be the source of my opinion of myself. That is ridiculous. I won’t explain all the reasons why it is ridiculous, but trust me, it is.

So I need to find my self worth from within me. I should like myself, shouldn’t I? But how? I have no concept of how to like myself let alone see myself as valuable. This is a whole new skill set, one that I am starting from scratch. And in the mean time, I have gone cold turkey from my usual source. I have little lapses, but they are rough because I notice them just a fraction too late and, because I don’t like myself yet, I beat myself up over it.

And here we are. You have read all of that and made it to the final paragraph where all the paths I have drawn should come together in a heartfelt life anecdote, but not today. What I will do is share the project I have started in hopes that I will soon be able to write a better version of this post. My therapist has suggested an art project where I draw where I am now, where I want to be, and then draw a series of images that show how to get from one to the other. I’m not sure yet how this will translate into a sense of worth, but the process of creativity that I started this year has already helped me give awareness and order to my thoughts and emotions. I am hoping that having a directive art project will speed this process up a little.

‘Where I am at now’ is on the left, and ‘where I want to be’ is on the right. I’m not sure how the sharing process will work, but I will be sharing.

Nothing stands still but me: Three months into DBT

I completed my first module of DBT, distress tolerance, two weeks ago. In true blogger form I had an idea in my mind that I would be writing a quirky, slightly angsty, uplifting post with just the right amount of buzzfeed quip to share my journey thus far. That is how all my posts sound in my head before I write them. But no matter how much I thought of it, I couldn’t bring myself to sit and write it. It would have been a lie and the predictability of it bored me. Instead, I am writing about where I am now, after three months in DBT.

As with the start of all endeavours, when I began DBT I imagined my future self in three months time to be vulnerable yet making steady progress in building some good quality coping skills. Now that I am here, it feels less like healthy progress and more like the walls of reality are pushing themselves in around me. You see, when I first had the BPD diagnosis, I wasn’t shocked or surprised, but I think I was nicely buffeted by my super-ego, plus it was something of a novelty to have a diagnosis that wasn’t depression. As the DBT program goes on and I gain more insight into myself and what BPD is, the layers of what forms my surface actions are making themselves known. For example, I felt OK with my diagnosis because it was novel, but not horrible, because I was not as bad off as some others, but why do I think that:

Layer 1: I have this diagnosis, but I’m not as bad off as other people.
Layer 2: Being not as bad as others means that I don’t need as much help as them.
Layer 3: That means my need comes secondary to others
Layer 4: I’m not worthy of the help, I shouldn’t take the time that other people need.
Layer 5: I am unhelpable, I should be left by the wayside so people who are helpable get the time they need.Layer 6: No one can help me but myself
Layer 7: I can’t help myself, this is too much for me.

Layer 6 is unrealistic and based on a poor sense of self brought on by early childhood experiences yada yada yada, how it happened isn’t the point. It is a core idea that goes through a process of being justified so that my surface self can use it logically. Those core beliefs can be good or bad, realistic or unrealistic, I doubt the psyche really discriminates when the correct formula is in place. I have spent my life thinking that the first layer of thought was the core, but now it turns out some of these ideas run much, much deeper and impact more than I imagined. I think most people live like this, but from what I understand of BDP, the core beliefs are maladaptive, and if mine are maladaptive at the core it is going to take more than some positive thoughts to change them.

What makes it harder is that I have grown up believing these thoughts and their respective feelings were correct. To be shown that there are other ways of thinking, feeling and acting, ways that are ‘healthy’ and which most people do- well, it is almost like being told that my parents aren’t my real parents. Nothing about the here and now changes, the world keeps on spinning and I am who I am, but everything I thought of as me is fundamentally different and I can’t understand why.

Now, I keep finding myself at standstills. Am I making a decisive action, or is this black and white thinking? Is this moment really a bad one, or am I lost in emotion? Does that person really think that about me, or am I projecting? I end up not acting because I am confused about whether it is the right thing to do or if I am being overtaken by irrational thoughts. So I just stand there, dumbfounded and feeling like like I am in purgatory.

When I look back, I have often stood in that fear of movement, but I’m still here and still a long way from where I once was. Time drags me forward regardless. It’s the idea that I have been incapable of actively choosing where it has dragged me to that hurts the most. Is that the next step, to act with agency?

As you finish reading, be sure to reassure me like I am helpless while also praising my superior wisdom. I want you to do neither and I want you to do both. Which turns out, is a BPD trait, at least I know I am normal as far as that goes.

Creating Creativity

Lately I’ve been contemplating on the fearlessness I had as a child. For some that might mean jumping off things, trying anything you were dared to, acting the clown or talking without restraint. I would call my experience of it as being fearlessly creative. I drew and painted without consequence. My ‘works’ weren’t to hang on my wall, to put up on the fridge, or to be praised for. They were creations for creativity’s own sake.  Drawing was the bliss that Joseph Campbell would tell me to follow.

My memory would have this fearlessness disappear when I was maybe 13 or 14. I dug deep and tried to recall when that fearlessness dissipated, and there are a few moments in early high school that would have contributed. They weren’t life-shattering events; they were small and subtle experiences, the kind that people involved wouldn’t even recall. Theses moments made me self-conscious about others seeing my work. For the first time I learnt that these items, which were given life by something within me, could be used to make judgments about me, both good and bad. Being graded on my creativity in the school system is an obvious one, but there were a few personal exchanges too. It just happened that perceived judgment mixed with a poor sense of self resulted in hiding my work and talent away. It was no one’s fault, just an unfortunate combination.

This disconnect from my creativity was brought to my attention when a friend asked me “Is your desire to think about art greater than your desire to create it?” I paused and tried to answer, but I couldn’t get the words out.  I wanted so much for my reply to be “Thinking about it is my greater desire”, but I knew that wasn’t the honest response. I know how happy drawing and painting makes me, why would I only want my answer to be ‘to think about it’?

The words I wanted to say and the words that were true stuck in my throat while my mind tried to decide which one had right of way. Thinking and theorizing about creativity is safe. This is a genius ploy of my super-ego to keep my creativity, and me, safe from judgment while still allowing a space for it in my life. In the few seconds it took me to answer, I saw that I had most certainly forgotten my fearlessness and my bliss. If my answer was ‘to think about it’, my life was destined to be one half lived.

In ‘The Denial of Death’, Ernest Becker talked about the creative person and how they can see the reality and pain of the world for what it is. What saves them from the neurosis that this awareness brings is their ability to take it into themselves, and then spit it back out in a new form through their art. After reading this I thought that the repression of my own creativity must have contributed to my depression and personality disorder. Once my creative outlet was put away, I was denying myself the only tool that could counter my over awareness. Ironically, I may have also put it away because it reminded me too much of my mortality, I think that is another post for another day though.

For years, I have not considered myself to be a creative person. I thought that all I did was take other people’s ideas and put my spin on it, or even just copied them. After recent experiences I feel like this thinking has shifted. When I focus, I know what I want to hear, see, feel and experience. I can draw on connections at any time and create the moments I choose to. Creativity isn’t in the end result, it is in the experience of the moment. That is what I felt as a child who was fearlessly creative.

I'll leave you with this quote from diarist Anaïs Nin, which I felt is a fitting ending to mark the start of where my own journey will be taking me next.

“I am more interested in human beings than in writing, more interested in lovemaking than in writing, more interested in living than in writing. More interested in becoming a work of art than in creating one. I am more interesting than what I write.”