#is someone's brain/emotions not fully functioning normally a valid reason for them to not be capable of functioning fully normally

[traumaconvos]

The other day I shut down in therapy to the point that I had to end the session early. I was talking with my therapist about how external depression makes sense because its circumstances but internal depression doesn't make sense to me because it just seems like my body randomly going hey today we're not going to function normally. We had talked about how the internal & external can feed into each other which create a negative feedback loop. The external to me is a puzzle to be solved through work, systems and routine that I can figure out. The internal is a puzzle but my brain is basically saying the puzzle, and therefore life, is meaningless.

Let's back way up for a minute. Because of the way my parents decided to "raise" me I didn't have friends growing up that were around my age. I spent most of my pre adult life just longing for friends, let alone someone to date. When I went to Lee I was just self aware enough to know that I was socially awkward but not aware enough to be able to fix it. I just knew that I was awkward and that something about me was off which was confirmed to me through numerous social interactions. To my credit I worked on this over the years and largely feel like I've grown past this. I consider Lee the greatest point in my life because it was the only time that I've been around people my age with a shared interest (graduating from Lee) and where I had multiple friend groups in different social circles. That being said over the years there's been this certain uneasiness that I have that even though people love me and would do anything for me, I never feel truly accepted. I never feel truly safe.

Let's back up even further now. External depression has always been with me in some sense because there hasn't been a point in my life where I didn't have a sense of longing for something that I haven't experienced. When I was growing up it was friends. When I was at Lee it became women. When I left Lee it was wanting to be accepted and valued for my work and still wanting a relationship. Even though I intentionally chose to cut myself off from my family, there's a certain emotional feeling that comes with that despite the logic of accepting it. I think that feeling while it might not be rejection, it's a lack of a sense of acceptance. I think that fear of never being truly accepted, whether rational or not, is present in every part of my life. I feel like I'm one fight, one bad conversation or one mistake away from anyone or everyone rejecting me. When I got Kolby one of the primary drivers of that decision was wanting to feel like I wasn't in life alone. I don't know fully if he's helped with that but that feeling of not having someone to share my life with, to celebrate the highs and the lows is still very much there. I say all that knowing that I have a fantastic group of friends who love and care about me. But given the lack of having an accepting family, the rejection I've faced personally & professionally combined with the friends I've lost this all makes sense.

Circling back to the end of the second paragraph. This all combines together in my work because of the rejection that I've faced there. A brief recap of my professional adult life:

- Worked a job for 2 years and I quit / was fired because of management making arbitrary changes for no reason to my schedule when I had already lined up freelance work

- The freelance work I accepted with Whiteboard was supposed to be a full time job even though it was structured like a retainer.

- I worked so hard there, constantly showing up before others and leaving well after they had gone because it was the first time I felt challenged.

- I was fired for reasons completely unrelated to my work that were an overreaction on Whiteboard's part

- Because the whiteboard guys were friends that I had known since college this wasn't just professional distance, I looked up to and respected them so it really hurt me that I would put so much of myself into my work and they would reject me.

- I realize now that this was traumatizing to me as I had a complete emotional breakdown over it.

- I took it as a catalyzing experience that failure was a motivator to succeed.

- While that was helpful in terms of what made me drive, the underlying part is that I am a failure.

- Doing freelance work made me feel like I was a failure.

- While it's partially that freelance was born out of failure the other part is that I still feel alone in my day to day life.

- I want to work with others so i can feel like I'm a part of something bigger than myself and I don't feel completely alone.

- I have been fired from multiple places:

- WB

- CG

- MM

- CC

- ID

- FW

All of those feelings combine with the longing from my teenage years for friends, the longing from my adult life for a relationship and the lack of feeling accepted because I've chosen distance with my family. I feel like I'm in my day to day life alone because the reality is my day to day life is spent largely alone. Combine those feelings of being alone with the rejection and the reason that I get so depressed / anxious / stressed about money and clients is because I feel like at any moment I will be abandoned, discarded and replaced. That's my big fear both personally and professionally. Rather unfortunately no matter how much I've grown personally or professionally that pattern keeps repeating. I'm terrified because while obviously my actions play a part the only part I focus on, even if I'm right, is that I failed.

Here's what frustrates me about all this. No matter how much I accept myself, the circumstances or my life this is ultimately out of my control. What I'm seeking here is a feeling of external validation from friends, job, a woman, etc that I don't know how to get. The external depression circumstance of being fired and unemployed feeds into the internal depression feeling of you don't matter and are a failure. Yes the next thing I'm going to write is going to be how I would respond if someone said all this to me and came to me for advice. But the thing I don't know how to solve is that no matter how much compassion I show myself, no matter how hard I work, no matter how much I grow I'm never going to have that validated feeling until I am accepted externally. If I did everything perfectly with my diet, which I won't, I would still be a year or more away from feeling comfortable enough with myself to date. I know the feelings will stay. I know the longing will still stay. This is why internal depression feels like a maze that doesn't matter because I don't see a way out. I don't see a way to stop this feeling. I've had external depression for as long as I can remember but no matter how much I work, strive and fight I can be undone by one day of internal depression completely derailing all of my ambitions. I'm so exhausted dealing with this and i don't know how to fix it.

---

Ok so before I start responding to the trauma side of me and all of that I'm going to intentionally email a client an invoice that I've been avoiding since August and see what happens.

I'm feeling some levels of apprehension doing this. Definitely still there and present. I was able to do it without any real issue but I do feel some sort of feeling that's hard to pin down as a response to doing it. When i've described anxiety before its usually been a feeling like a weight pushing down on different parts of my body. This is different in a way that is strange to describe. Its almost like I can feel something at the edge of my skin just there but still present. I feel it in my chest but most strongly in my arms.

Response time:

A lot of what you're talking about in the early part of this is the frustration that you feel over all these feelings that you've experienced for a large majority of your life. This is completely understandable and frustrating. You've always had an external depression element in your life in some capacity that feeds into the internal element and ends up making both worse. That sucks. But before I respond to anything else you need to recognize the fact that recognizing and categorizing those parts is progress. It's knowledge. You're still learning and growing. Being able to categorize how this is impacting you will make the process come faster on how to identify what's happening and counteracting. I think one of the biggest things that you're dealing with here is the fact that you're using the ability that you have to jump access when processing and seeing the whole mountain when you only need to see a single step forward. Because you can't actually see the finish line seeing the whole mountain makes you feel panicked and like its too overwhelming to ever actually complete. The biggest thing that you have to see going forward is that the steps that you're taking matter. I understand it's hard to see the progress you've made because all you feel is the exhaustion of still climbing. But the way to reframe that narrative is the fact the climb is the measure of the progress. Each step you're taking, even writing this, is an action that you couldn't have taken before but you could ONLY take because of the progress you've made. That's incredible. Seriously. You deserve to give yourself credit for that.

I know it's exhausting. I know it's draining. I know that most days you just want to lay in bed and do nothing. That's ok. Even the process of you doing that is completely different than where it would have been a year ago. You described external depression as a maze you can find your way out of and internal as a maze that seems pointless but it isn't. Here's the good news. Even when you feel overwhelmed and down at how overwhelming the entire maze is, you keep moving forward. You keep fighting. You keep progressing when all you want to do is give up. Do you know how badass that is? Seriously. You would be insanely proud of any of your friends making this progress so its time to be proud of yourself for doing that.

I'd normally try responding to each part of this but I don't think that I have to. You know that these are the root of the disease. You know you're attacking it. You know that you can't overcome this tomorrow. That's ok. No one besides you is telling you that you have to. I'm giving you permission to stop beating yourself up over not being able to solve your problems overnight. You don't have someone to share your life with personally or professionally in the context you want. That sucks. But its also not a problem that you have to solve overnight. You're still climbing. You're still one step closer than you were yesterday. That's how you beat this. Its not mentally deciding that you've over this and it will be fixed tomorrow. Its the thousands of moments you're taking learning to accept yourself, build yourself, care about yourself and fight for yourself. You've already progressed a lot. Multiple people see this. But no one, even me, is asking you to fix yourself tomorrow. Listen to yourself. Listen to what your brain and your body are telling you. Take this one step at a time, even if the way you get to the next step is sitting in bed for a week.

I am going to address one specific thing before I stop writing though. I want you to truly hear this and go back to it as many times as you need to. You are good enough. You do have value. Just because things haven't worked before doesn't mean they won't work in the future. Believe in yourself. Believe that you've grown. Sometimes things don't work out and that's ok. But I know that even if the situations have been setbacks you've grown. Even if you've doubted yourself and felt like you'll never be good enough, you keep pressing on. Its time to stop worrying about reaching the mountain top and start being focused on your next step. You've got this.