I Don't Know how to…

[maddog]

I am being supported by magic people with magic wands to help me get my benefits and finances sorted out.

I think I am reasonably well educated, intelligent, trustworthy, hardworking etc. Yet all my adult life I have really struggled with work. Again again again people say, why don’t you?

When my friends were all out getting post grad jobs, I was on a self-destructive bender. When I graduated I was terrified of my tutors and terrified of everyone and everything. I decided that I was safer at college than the alternative living with an overwhelming sense of worthlessness and inability to make decisions. I have always felt a sense of not belonging and not being wanted and sort of not really being present.

There have been good times in my working life, although financially rubbish. I have successfully pulled off projects and raised money and I have been given wonderful opportunities. Instead of hitting the ground running, I hit the ground. Most people don’t understand why, and I am left saying I don’t know, I don’t know again and again and again.

I long to be part of the world yet it defies me and I don’t know what is wrong with me. I am good at what I have trained long and hard to do yet there is a blind spot. I don’t even know what to ask. I just don’t know.

[KIP.]

Hi there. Yes I know exactly how you feel. I am covering core beliefs in cbt soon and hope it will shine some light on these core beliefs and how wrong they are and how I avoid life to cope with them. It sounds, like me, your core beliefs that were ingrained at an early stage may be driving your avoidance. Forgive me if I’m way off course, it’s just some thoughts. I feel I underachieved but there’s a great CS Lewis quote. You can’t go back and change the beginning but you can start now and change the ending ❤️

[maddog]

I’ve been CBT’d since my early 20s! Then, my experience of it was teaching the blindingly obvious to the uninitiated. I am quite good at CBT’ing myself most of the time. This one is a real and painful blockage, like a fatberg in my brain except I don’t know what it is or how to tackle it!

I know I am a massive under-achiever. I had the same nightmare through my 20s about missing trains, getting on the wrong one, not being able to get off and generally feeling out of control. Sitting at the station watching the trains go by.

I still have repetitive nightmares, still about feeling out of control and the world whooshing about around me but not feeling part of it. I would love to be able to pick up the baton and run with it instead of dropping it like a hot potato.

[Falling Skys]

Hi MD

I just want to say I know how you feel, I’m the same at the moment I’ve just lost a job due to the inability to make decisions.

I use to manage two companies simultaneous, now making simple decisions my mind blanks.

We need to come to terms with the fact that the years of being abused has taken its toll, and we need to be kind to ourselves. (which if your anything like me it very hard to accept). Maybe we need to reevaluate another career.

We are survivors and that is our greatest achievement.

FS x

[maddog]

Yes you’re right, Falling Skys, about being kind to ourselves and taking a step back.

A clinical psychologist recognised decades ago that I had been abused. I didn’t know what he was talking about because it wasn’t sexual. Looking back to when I was working, I must have come across as quite odd. I couldn’t connect with people. I must have come across like a needy annoying gnat. Endless missed opportunities and a huge sense of not being worthy of breathing. There is no self, just a vacuum.

Things are not the same now although when money comes up, I fill with blind terror. I just want to be like other people and now in many ways I am. But not when it comes to jobs or careers.

[Twisted Sister]

From reading what you have posted you are tackling it!

I know all the abuse can grind us into feeling nothing or that we are nothing, but that doesn’t make it true. You recognise your achievements and they sound great.

It’s all that fear that comes through in your writing, and I experience the same with fears of many things.

Interactional therapy would be good. I mean, at the end of the day what have you learnt about life\people\men\anger?

These are your very real experiences and they have taught you what you know of life now, it takes time to seek supportive safe experiences that give our life colour and richness, faith and belief in ourselves.

Focussing on the enriching and happy experiences. Keep walking, step by step, the o5thers that you talk of learnt different things about life\people\men\anger and so act differently without such fear. No-one knows what life will bring them, or us but good boundaries keep us safe and bring self-reliance.

Warmest wishes ts

[maddog]

What kind words, Twisted Sister.

I have some wonderful people who grew up with my parents and who have understood my experience which has brought me great comfort. A great many of the obstacles I have faced are no longer. However, the work thing still defies me. It makes me feel so stupid as it’s not how other people see me.

For most of my life, music has defied me totally although timing comes into every aspect of my life. I decided aged 50 to learn an instrument. A few years in I am butchering grade 4/5 but asking questions I would not have thought of before.

The work thing is like a dirty secret which I can’t articulate. I can see people saying that I have been given every opportunity and dropped each one of them. I can also see that I have created these wonderful opportunities. I just don’t know how to hold onto them to create more. Or to make them financially viable.

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