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Advice for the lost and weary

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Viewing 15 posts - 61 through 75 (of 198 total)
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  • #284883
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Thank you for answering my questions and concerns anita.

    #284885
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear gj:

    You are welcome. When you feel overwhelmed, fearful, distract yourself, do something else, then when you are calm enough, return to what distressed you before, re-read our communication here, and post again anytime you want.

    When you are overwhelmed with a big task, take on a small task instead. But keep at it, one task at a time toward the big one. Maybe you will achieve the big one, maybe not, but why not move toward it, bit by bit.

    anita

    #284909
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I have been going out for walks to think and wanted to share some of my thoughts with you 🙂

    1) Although I could use better teammates, i wanted to find areas to take responsibility for. I have realized that as i work on the task given to me, if it feels like a lot of work i tap out. That is something i could work on – to match my effort with my expectations.

    2) i blame my seniors for not planning our projects out properly and then in the end questioning me as to why it took so “long”. While i would love for them to improve their planning skills, I think I could work harder too. I expect to be treated like some of my peers which means i should be willing to work like them.

    3) I have figured out what my mother has taught me – to not try to change your situation  as you may lose what you already have. She was afraid of losing financial support so she never left my father and also afraid of losing reputation – i am the same, i was afraid all this time that it if i leave the team i may lose what little good i get out of it, and things may be worse outside.

    4) I am afraid to be honest. I would rather pretend to know everything than expose my flaws. Even at work when i was being asked to work on never heard before things, the lead was non existent in making decisions and guiding and instead of telling the truth i told my manager i had too much ony plate and he eventually halted the project. I was afraid to show them that i did not understand the technology. I feel looked down upon for backing out of it, and hold myself guilty for dissappointing them. I now realize that this was pretty much not my fault besides the communication.

    5) Every time someone is praised for their skills i want to have those, that is probably why i feel drained out, because it gives me a huge list of things i don’t know and is overwhelming. I took some time to go over the things that i have done for the team/company and it is actually amazing that i did all that, coming from 0 experience and low self esteem. I need to take more credit for getting this far.

    #284933
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear gj:

    I think it is excellent that you are reviewing things you can improve on in your current circumstances. Success in doing so will build your confidence and your motivation!

    1) “as I work on the task given to me, if it feels like a lot of work I tap out”- I hope there is a way for you to break down a big task to small tasks, patiently tackling one task at a time and over time the big task will be completed.

    2) “I think I could work harder too”- harder and wiser, wiser means breaking down a big task to smaller, doable tasks, one task at a time, patiently, take breaks if your stress is up, return to the task at hand, etc.

    3) “my mother has taught me…”- remember this point, whatever she learned and then taught you made her an extremely unhappy person, ever since you’ve known her. I suppose if you want to continue to be as unhappy as she is, better continue to practice what she taught you…

    “not to try to change your situation as you may lose what you already have… things may be worse outside”- or things may be better, much better. Eventually we all die, whether we stay where we are or change our situation. People think of dying as that “worse” you mentioned, more precisely, the worst. Question is what do we do/ how do we live, between now and that worst, content or “lost and weary”.

    4) “I am afraid to be honest. I would rather pretend to know everything than expose my flaws”- you are welcome here to continue to be honest and expose your flaws, or areas that need improvement, or better functioning.  When given a task you never heard of before and had no guidance doing it, better say just this, in a confident (not in a shameful, apologetic voice), that you never did this task before and you need to be taught how to do it.

    “I am afraid to be honest”- because in the past, as a child, you were honest and were punished for it, somehow. (what do you think/ remember in this regard?)

    5) “it gives me a huge list of things (skills you don’t have) I don’t know and is overwhelming”- one skill at a time, one task at a time, and over time you will accomplish a lot and learn many skills well. You already did a lot (“it is actually amazing that I did all that”), but with the one-task-at-a-time attitude you will feel okay, not distressed, while accomplishing a lot more.

    anita

     

    #284935
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I will break things down. Also, i will set intentions at the beginning of every day on what I want to accomplish, so when i feel like giving up I remember that. I think this is the main issue. I read my older posts and it has been exactly a year and I realized that i made no progress in that time, because I lose hope very quickly.

    And also another thing I really need your advice on – i zone out and go into all the things that could go wrong. I was just thinking about how to move. I opened linkedin and found i could apply to jobs in Singapore – that is not the west – but it is still exciting to think i could go there – however i immediately went into how the visa could get rejected because of bad documents – i could go yell at my parents ( i will not do that, my sister already has) for being so careless in doing something so simple as keeping consistent names on all the documents, and how changing them is a seriously complicated process. The fear is legitimate and based on real possibilities – but i hate going through this, happens even when i am about to take on something new and/or big at work.  I feel i should not fail so i go over everything that could go wrong.

    In fact, tomorrow, i have to lead something at work – it is a little absurd that i have to (as a junior) but it is my task so i have to do it and also think it could help me push through (this is another realization) the belief that i cannot do anything alone and other people should be trusted to ensure nothing goes wrong. But for the last two days i have been dreaming only about this – and it feels like the movie inception!

    I guess death is the worst, in fact sometimes, i wonder why we want to achieve anything at all, why success matters or making a mark on the world as so many of the youtube videos i watch say.

    I have always been honest with my mother. But she does not like my weaknesses – i feel so ridiculed when her advice has always been a version of “don’t be like that” . Being paralyzed by fear and being overwhelmed by stress has been a pattern for a really long time – i think it comes from believing that if i am not everything i could be to ensure people are not displeased with me, i could lose my job – i think it is a belief of mine that the world cannot accept my weaknesses – so i hide them to survive. And to an extent i have seen proof of this, at work one failure and all the good work gets discounted. That is why i am afraid of failure – i could lose what i have.

    Also, this post may already be long but how do i know which of my beliefs are correct? When i have seen proof that failure clearly is bad and thereby lead to my beliefs about failure, how do i overcome the fear? How do you know which fears to overcome and which are genuine danger signals?

     

     

    #284945
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear gj:

    “I have always been honest with my mother. But she does not like my weaknesses.. ‘don’t be like that’.. I think it is a belief of mine that the world cannot accept my weaknesses- so I hide them to survive”-

    -for a young child, her mother is The World. Your mother rejected you for your weaknesses, so you believe that the World will do the same.

    As the child becomes an older child, a teenager, then an adult, she looks at her mother and doesn’t see her as The World, sees her for her weaknesses, and so the older child/ adult forgets that as a young child, this woman, her mother was The World and all the important things in life, she has learned from this very woman, her mother.

    As a young child you hid your weaknesses so to survive at home, with your mother: a young child, just like a young mammal, like a fawn (a baby deer) instinctively sees no possible survival without the mother. You hid them then and you keep hiding.

    It is true that some people in the world will and do reject you for your weaknesses. After all, your mother is one person in this world and there are many like her. But not everyone is that way and regardless, it is for your advantage to function differently than you have so far, for example: to tell your manager that you don’t know how to tackle a certain task because you never had and never been taught. If you said this to your manager in a confident, non-apologetic tone, maybe he would have taught you, or directed you to someone who  could have and then that task could have been accomplished for everyone’s satisfaction.

    Regarding imagining all the things that can go wrong, ex., in getting a visa to Singapore, make a list of things to do so to get the visa. Break down the big task to small tasks by making that list. Then, as you think about an application being rejected, calm down and visualize it, see it happening in your mind’s eye. Accept this likely possibility and prepare for the longer-term process with patience.

    It will be another opportunity for you to practice Patience.

    It is a good thing that you read your  older posts and resolved to “set intentions at the beginning of every day on what I want to accomplish, so when I feel like giving up I remember that”-

    Practice this resolution.. and patience.

    anita

    #284949
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I was actually in my teens when the stress began. I do not have many memories from when i was younger. But, as I think back on it I really want to seem strong to her. I in fact did not like it when she said my sister has a cool head and knows how to solve problems. I want to be seen as a person that can solve problems – in this case, it is not about her perception but proof to me that i can indeed solve problems. I am not sure if it’s just my mom’s approval though. In my older post I mentioned i wanted to do well to ensure my manager would see me as a competent developer. I think i need to prove anything i want to believe about myself to others first. It may not be a bad thing because i may get delusional and end up having grandiose beliefs about myself but i am not sure where the line should be drawn in terms of taking other people’s judgement of me.

    #284953
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear gj:

    Regarding “grandiose beliefs about myself”- a personal share: as a child/ teenager and even as an adult, I had a very low self esteem, very low and yet, at the same time, I dreamed big, daydreamed, that is. I used to imagine being an international star of some kind, famous and wealthy. At times, outside the daydreaming, there was a belief, deep inside, that I had it in me to .. change the world, to be very powerful.

    I think that it was my deep feelings of inferiority and inadequacy that led to the extremes  of being… on top of the world.

    anita

    #284957
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I do the exact same thing, anita! Both imagining to be famous and also changing the world. In fact after seeing the secret life of walter mitty – i think i may have what is called maladaptive day dreaming. I am not saying you have that, please don’t misunderstand. I am sorry if it sounds like i am diagnosing you with something. Only what i do seems like that.

    #284969
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear gj:

    Well, I don’t daydream this way anymore, but I do have the thought once in a while, that same feeling of maybe I am meant to be someone very special in the world. But then, I correct my thinking and say to myself: I am special. Just not that special, meaning, I do not have a talent that will get the world’s attention. My intelligence is not superior to many people’s intelligence, and so, there is no realistic reason to think that I will be an international star of any kind.

    But it sure felt good to have those “maladaptive day dreaming”! It sure felt a whole lot better than feeling inferior and less than, incapable and inadequate.. that was a painful emotional experience. The day dreaming about greatness is an over compensation of the day-by-day-by day reality of feeling less-than, inadequate, incapable.

    Reality is we function better in almost every area of life if we learn and the longer we learn, patiently.

    anita

    #284975
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I am actually very embarassed about it. Like, the only exciting thing in my life has been to day dream. I hate that i have low self esteem. I never had a choice!

    It bothers me a lot that I have to fix my life that i never broke in the first place. I know that i should be grateful that i am here thanks to my parents but i just am not. They had a child – i don’t even care anymore about what societal pressure they had to go through – and they decided that was enough. I feel like I have been raised more like a farm animal than a human. How is it even possible that as an adult neither of them could put their child’s needs first? And on top of that they got to control how i think about myself and the world. Is it weird that i feel abused? They did actually send me to school and i have a job because of that – but who have i become? i am thinking love may be fiction or a myth. Is it really possible, that my mother did not feel anything when i was born? If she did not feel love then – my own mother – what is the point? I am not sure what our relationship really is.

    #284981
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    I am really shocked that their whole life has been a series of steps prescribed by i don’t know who. They never questioned that and now i am expected not to. How could they do things with no emotions and yet put theit whole lives into it. I wonder how their parents got to them so well that they never thought twice. They were absolute strangers when they got married. If my grand father had replaced my father with another guy on the day of the wedding, it would not have mattered. And with this man she had a child – i guess i can’t blame her. And this is everyone’s story. I think i am overreacting. Something else must have gone wrong. None of this hurt my sister or my cousins. I think this is why i feel like i don’t fit in, i am hyper sensitive to everything.

    #284987
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear gj:

    “None of this hurt my sister or my cousin’- it only seems this way. My sister, I used to think that she wasn’t hurt by our mother, because she seemed so normal, happy and sociable, so unlike me. I thought I was a freak, otherwise, why would she be so normal, having the same mother. I was happy for her, but she was “proof” that there was something inherently wrong with me.

    I thought she was independent, and as beautiful as she was, I thought she would be living a happy life, rich and famous. And imagine that: she dated, for a short while, an internationally famous movie star, at the time (early nineties). When I heard this international movie star’s voice on her answering machine, in the early nineties, it was as close as I ever got, by proxy, to those daydreams of mine!

    Unfortunately, she was damaged, it is just that I didn’t see it. Now she lives with her mother, in the same tiny childhood home in a run down neighborhood, experiencing panic attacks and nightmares, not having been in one healthy loving relationship with a man in her whole life.

    It only seemed at the time, when I was a teenager and a young adult, it only seemed like she was emotionally healthy.

    Abuse is very common and love is rare. Parents feed and clothe their children, that is common. But … well, that is all the love most parents have for their children, feeding and clothing them, taking care of their basic physical needs. Problem is that our emotional needs are no less important. We end up being physically alive after childhood, but suffering and struggling, living a life that is greatly compromised.

    The fact that this is common is no less tragic for each individual.

    But there is hope for you. It will not be easy for you to make a better and better life for yourself, but it is possible. If you are patient and able to endure the distress of seeing reality as-it-is, you will make it, you will see it for yourself.

    anita

     

    #284989
    Phil
    Participant

    Hi Gj!

    First: you do have support, here!

    Second: you counselor had the right idea, but lacking a method: “I even met a life counsellor and her advice was to focus on being happy.”

    Third: Apply Karma, Cause & Effect. In your case it is simple: To experience happiness yourself, find a way to make others happy/content.

    Help in an animal shelter or a homeless kitchen. Go to places where you can remove a little of the suffering of other sentient beings and sooner than later that karma comes to fruition for you.

    Just do it and you are already on your way up.

    #285043
    Anonymous
    Inactive

    Thanks, anita. I will do what you did ” I am special but not that special” and will have to learn patience. I will have to take responsibility for myself and my happiness now and it feels lonely. I was always lonely but now it has somehow become more severe because I will now have to give up on the idea of what a family is that i have held on to for so long.

    Thank you for the support, Phil. It makes sense to not focus on myself for a bit and try to do good. It may sound like an excuse but I am uncomfortable being part of activities. It is weird – i don’t have the guts to go out alone and do something but at the same time with organizations and volunteer groups I feel really out of place. I will make it my goal to volunteer atleast once in the next two-three months. It is just that I have trouble being around enthusiastic people that know what they are doing and feel out of place. I am a little selfish.

     

     

Viewing 15 posts - 61 through 75 (of 198 total)

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