Struggling again (still)

[weary]

I'm really hurting and scared. Lots of needs not being met. Exhausted physically and emotionally. Really want and need support, but at the same time, feeling like I can't trust the love and support that is being offered to me (or it's not enough/not the right kind). I'm feeling like I'm under a heavy weight of fear and depression that never lets up. I feel really trapped and stuck and like the bottom is going to drop out from under me at any time. My tenure dossier is up for my annual review/renewal in a week, and it is depressing and humiliating preparing for submission knowing how few of the things that I wanted to accomplish professionally in the past year actually got done. I actually go up for tenure a year from now, and if I don't hit those marks in the next year, that's it for me.

And the thing is, I feel like I'm out on the edge like that with everything. My marriage and my personal life as much as anything else. I feel really alone at the same time that I wish my wife would just back off with her fucking anxiety and depression for a little while. The people in my therapy group were really nice to me last night and said some nice supportive things to me, but that is just for 1 hour per week, and then I have to go back into the real world, where I have to strive to be competent and successful at work even though I feel like a total fraud and failure inside, and I struggle to connect emotionally with my wife as we both struggle with our issues, but I feel so depressed and hopeless about getting anything that I want out of my marriage or my life in general anymore. And I feel completely isolated from everyone else. Nobody I can even talk to and open up to about anything - and so the things that I am too afraid to discuss with my wife stay locked up in my head 24/7 except for the rare occasion that I have an appointment with my therapist or my weekly group session.

[Herself]

Poor wee thing! Would it make you feel better to write it all down? You'd be venting at least a little. Or maybe you need to talk to your therapist more often?

I hope you feel better soon!

[manuel_moe_g]

Please take care, weary. Please go easy on yourself. We here are cheering for you.

[Stina]

Good luck with EVERYTHING, weary.

[weary]

Thanks everyone.
I have come to some difficult realizations lately, and one of the hardest is that I don't really know how to be compassionate to myself. I mean, I think I know, but I just can't really do it. When I try, I feel silly, and there is so much negative self-talk that I end up tearing myself down. A lot of these negative feelings about myself have been there forever, but they were feelings and not really fully realized thoughts, and now that I am trying to put words to them I understand that I really feel like I'm not worth very much most of the time. That my worth is only in what I do and my achievements and accomplishments (which are never enough). That people only love me, like me, or even tolerate me because of what I do for them and not for anything intrinsically about me. I am really fucking mean and judgmental to myself automatically without even thinking about it. And I just automatically expect that everyone else is and read it into everything that happens to me.

I can summon some self-esteem from time to time, but it still ends up being about my accomplishments rather than just feeling good about me. I have lots of thoughts and feelings that make me feel horrible about myself and make it really hard to emotionally open up and connect with others. I have been trying so hard to more honestly express my feelings to my wife, and to open up and be honest and authentic with my therapy group.

I really need friends who understand and accept me, and I need love and support. But I feel unworthy of it most of the time, I feel ashamed to need it or want it, and I feel embarrassed to ask for it. I actually need a lot more than that. I'm working on it but it is very hard. I'm trying to own it and work on it, but I feel trapped by so many situations that keep reinforcing all of these patterns.

Thanks again for the well wishes.

[Glock therapy]

Hey weary,
I particularly relate to the needing help and support but not feeling able to ask for it-- thoughts include: the things I feel and what I need help with is pathetic; others don't want to hear about or get involved with any of that stuff; I'm being a baby; I'm violating some sort of etiquette; Ipeople will avoid me; 'll then be obligated to the other in a way that I don't want to be. Ugh... it's one or more of those things each time, and then again they don't capture it entirely either. The result is I feel like I cut off from what I need the most. I keep picturing a movie scene where someone in a plane going down or something, who just needs to stop panicking and put on their oxygen mask, instead pushes it away and continues to instead flail about and scream and fail to access the resource he needs, and that's right in front of them (I hate action movies; weird image for me but feels fitting).

As you describe, many of my days consist of feeling in every moment like a fraud, failure, hopelessly-a-loser, etc. Unrelenting negative voices--sometimes that drives good work, but so unsatisfying that I feel like I just manage to "pull things off" and that I do so because I'm trying to avoid humiliating failure. Most days can't wait to get home and veg out, eat, watch movies, read... when alone, there's no pressure to perform, there's no chance of "being wrong'.

The thing is... I don't feel that way--endlessly berating--about you, for example, or anyone else here. And I would never say those things of anyone else. Not only would that not be nice, it wouldn't be true--who the fuck is so absolutely a failure, a waste, an idiot? Sure I hate some folks, but it's really not the same disdain that I heap on myself. I know better--I always know, on some level, that I'm not a freak, asshole, idiot, unlovable, etc. So why do I hang on to those thoughts and feelings so obstinately?

Maybe I figure "that's good enough for other folks, but not for me"--i.e., behind the self-deprecation is a pretty high opinion of myself that I either want to see completely fulfilled or else I just want to fold up shop and not do anything. Wow, I'm really ashamed of that, but I think that's a huge part of it. I'd rather hang on to an unrealized grandiose opinion of myself then just be a member of the pack and just live a life. My shrink says that embracing depression is a way of staying attached to my distant, detached, and depressed mother. My point is, I know better. I know that obsessing and going around being depressed is self-perpetuating and won't help anything. I can think of a million better things to do in any moment that ruminate, etc.... but I don't. Why would that be?

Anyway, this may all apply to you to a greater or lesser extent, was the point of my blathering. Or very little at all--and I should go... fuck... my... self!!!!-- but I related to this and other stuff you've written, and you vibed with something really self-condemning that I wrote, so I'm guessing you can relate some. You do have a lot on your plate, and I wish you well with it, and with being OK with stuff.

[weary]

Thanks Glock, you described what goes on in my head with scary accuracy. Nice to know it's not just me.

I'm kind of at a low point in some ways, but not others. I feel very detached part of the time, and sometimes I feel absolutely horrible, especially when my wife is having a meltdown that triggers a meltdown in me. Trying to hang in there and I hope you all are too. Wish I had more people to connect with more of the time in real life, but I am very grateful for all of you.