Two Problems

I (seriously) think I have some kind of mental illness or personality disorder or some other whatsit that prevents me from acting and thinking like a normal person.

I say that rather matter-of-factly. But the truth is, it hurts. It’s like a narrow opening straight to a pain center. Just thinking about it sometimes makes me tear up.

The two problems are with other people and work.

I secretly suspect that no one likes me. I think that even close, almost life-long friends stick around out of pity or politeness. I often interpret every-day, absent-minded actions or inactions as evidence of this.

Anxiety and despair about this bleeds over into my work. But I also have what seems to be an unrelated problem of simply being lazy and unfocused. I’m convinced that it’s not because I’m in the wrong career. I can’t imagine what I’d rather do. My mind just reels, and I can’t strategize or get organized. I make simple mistakes and fail to see things that should be obvious.

I do try to fight it. I consciously decide to ignore what I’m telling myself about other people. “They do like you. This is normal. Just trust them.” Sometimes it works. Sometimes the only thing that gets me out of the house is the fear that I’ll be like this forever unless I force myself to be social.

I don’t have much of a bead on the work thing, yet.

I of course pray about it constantly. I read once about a Rabbi Kushner, who wrote a book called When Bad Things Happen to Good People. The untimely death of his son convinced him that God isn’t all-knowing and all-powerful. He’s trying to muddle through things just like us. I didn’t get that. I didn’t understand being angry or disappointed enough with God to mix around my theology to get along better with him. I still don’t, really, but sometimes I am mad at God. I can’t tease out why he has so providentially ordered things to make me this way. There’s no meaning or point. I’m like a hobbled horse.

In the liturgy this morning, the Call to Worship had this line: “Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble and He led them by a straight way, until they reached an inhabited city.” What we want is to be teleported to that inhabited city. But God is rarely willing to comply with that sort of demand. Often, we have to content ourselves with what seems to be an inferior kind of help, to be led by a straight way. I think of Paul, with his thorn. God told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

Apart from hope, that’s the only ray of sunshine there is. I bitterly stamp my feet and act put out because I’m too fouled up to be of any use. God might very well say, there’s nothing new or special about that. You’ve never had anything to offer me, and your complaints now are just a pretense. Now you understand real grace and power.

Enthusiast

August 6, 2007

I kind of understand what you mean. Sometimes I’ll have an insane paranoia and worry that nobody really likes me, not even my fiance, and that he just feels trapped with me and doesn’t know how to get rid of me and he can’t really like me the way I am and that my friends and family can’t possibly either and everyone just feels sorry for me because I could never make new friends b/c I’m .. me.

Then those same kinds of feelings spill over into my relationship with my future in-laws, my wedding plans and people who offer to help me and throw showers for me – I’m convinced that everyone feels sorry for my fiance and only wants to help me because they think I’m incapable of doing things myself or I’m a hopeless, timid, terrible cause.

Then I’m convinced everyone at work thinks I’m crazy and weird and withdrawn and that I’m doing a terrible job. Then I’ll miss some little thing in my drawings or details on a job, and I’ll think they must think I’m the biggest moron… and I’m ALWAYS missing little things.

I say all of that to lead into how I deal with it and what it sounds like in you from the outside perhaps. I think part of your problem or maybe a large part is that you expect yourself to live up to an incredible standard on many levels that is unrealistic – that NO ONE could live up to. You expect yourself to be more of a socialite, an Engineer who works flawlessly and tirelessly…

I really enjoy my job and there are times when I feel about my job exactly the way you feel about yours – like I’m lazy and unable to be organized. I think you are expecting so much out of yourself that you think too little of yourself… or rather that you think too little of yourself period.

I think that God’s power is made perfect in our weakness simply means that He doesn’t expect us to come to Him with the perfect personalities and abilities – He perfects our personalities and abilities. You might try going and talking to someone about it, like a pastor or mentor. I think these struggles are common to man, but many people don’t ADMIT they have them.

A powerful tool of Satan is to make you feel discouraged, and not only discouraged but utterly ALONE in your discouragement – like your problems are yours alone and no one else anywhere suffers in the same way. And it’s a bunch of hogwash, even though I fall for it all the time. Paul talked about that too I believe.

I apologize for writing a book. I just felt like I should tell you that I feel that way too sometimes, and I also feel like I have some kind of social dilemma or weird psychological disorder, but I think really… a lot of people think the same things I think, and I should just keep being who I am and keep trying to improve who I am. But you can’t beat yourself up over being you…

If there were no refining to be done to your personality or habits, you would have attained the goal already.

~warped*mind~

August 13, 2007

most of the time i feel that most people i know are just sticking around me because they feel sorry for me or something, that no one really likes me, even my family. i’m getting a little better about that, but it’s still a daily struggle…and a message from satan.