Are you hard on yourself?

I’m very hard on myself. I’m trying to get better with this, but I can very much relate to all the ways you’re hard on yourself. 

Im really having a hard time with it now. My appearance has drastically been altered over the years with my illness, and I'm feeling super ugly lately. There are times, well, I'm never "ok" with it, but more resigned, I guess, then other times. I also feel stupid sometimes, saying the wrong thing, or being out of place. I've been isolating myself a bit because of it.

Oh gosh yes. I had a conversation with my daughter recently and she turned what I was saying around to be about her- would I be so hard on her? Of course not. So I shouldn’t be to myself. Thank you, therapist R 😂

But she has a point.

I am harder on myself than anyone will ever be. I'm trying to change that.

I'm not sure so much it's hard on myself so much as living with a severe mental illness, you learn to do every single thing you can accomplish when you feel well. Because you know the depression is coming for you. And even though it drives me nuts to have to rest, I do. I mentally think of all the things, fun and not fun, that I could be doing if I wasn't depressed. But then I remind myself to take care of myself and that it won't last forever. Lucky for me, I am rapid cycling. So usually my bad moods last less than a week. If they are persistent I know I need adjustments in my medication.

I am more crushed by the weight of other people's expectations and judgements than my own. My mother, my sister. I will never measure up. I have never felt loved unconditionally by my family. Most of the time, I am OK with it and just roll on anyway, but lately, I've been reassessing what I'm willing to tolerate. I'm just really tired of the weight of other people's opinions.

And I have two friends, who I love dearly, who just, despite knowing me all these years, think every time my mood shifts, I should be demanding medication adjustments. No matter how many times I tell them that I will never be "normal" they just can't seem to grasp that medication can't control everything for me. I am still going to have a random day when I can't sit still and my thoughts race. If it's happening for weeks on end, then it's a problem. If it escalates to where I feel completely out of control, then it's a problem. But two days of mania? Well that's just going to happen. A day when I can't make it out of bed after 30 days of normal mood? Leave me be. If it were possible for me to live like a neurotypical person, I would have discovered that in my 22 years of treatment. And I know it comes from a place of them not wanting me to suffer. I get that. But it's damn annoying.

No one is harder on me than me, but that's partly because I don't allow anyone else to be. I set the bar high for myself.

I can allow for constructive criticism and certainly will admit when I'm wrong but I don't allow anyone, at all, ever, to "beat me up". My dad was very critical of me when I was a kid and I guess I just told myself I wouldn't allow anyone else the pleasure. Always been scrappy.

Not now. I was, absolutely, until I had cancer. It's taken that to make me far more relaxed now. If someone comes round before I've cleaned, and there's unfolded, unironed laundry in piles on the armchairs, limescale on the taps, and I haven't vacuumed, then too bad. They haven't come to see the house, they've come to see us. Interestingly I used to be the one fussing about dust and mess and DH couldn't see it. Now he's the one frantically dusting the coffee table if the doorbell rings.

I do still dwell on things that happen that I could have handled better. I know that's silly, because nobody else will remember those things in 1, 5, 10 or 20 years except me. But I suppose that shows that I haven't completely lost my self-respect!