Why do I keep doing these self-destructive things? Why do I always want the approval of the one person who will never give it to me? Why can't I conform to societal norms? Why can't I just be normal? Normal people in our culture are cheerful, outgoing, relaxed, success-oriented and independent, whereas I am a crabby, pissy, needy, tortured freak.
My latest lapse was particularly frustrating as I thought I was making good progress. I'm writing about this because this time last year I wrote about being seriously depressed, and really! I'm not anymore!
Oh dear, those exclamation marks look psychotically cheerful, which rather undermines the authenticity of the sentiment, but I just wanted to share how I am getting better in case anyone else out there is a scuzzy weirdo like me, and you never know, this might help.
You don't need to read every single book Amazon offers on self-compassion because I have done it ("Reform your inner mean girl!"). What those books don't tell you is that you can't just make yourself go in one graceful Bambi leap from the excruciating, worm farm of self-loathing to the delightful state of being kind and loving to yourself. You need to use titration - the chemistry term for the tedious process of adding one liquid drop by drop to another, because if you combined the two elements at once they would explode.
Release from self-hatred is arduous and slow; it only happens drop by drop. My therapist says: "Go gently." These days, I tell myself whatever I feel is okay, even if it might seem extreme, obsessive or even crazy to someone else.
I'm just going to embrace the freakish thing. Because you can't help what you feel. That was the most powerful life-changing sentence, so I'm going to say it again. "You can't help what you feel." You might feel things more intensely than some other people do, but that's okay. You don't need to feel ashamed of what you feel or how you are. ("Compulsive avoidance of embarrassment is a form of suicide," wrote essayist Colin Marshall. )
Letting yourself feel what you feel is not as easy as you might think. The culture we live in is dark-phobic. Feeling bad is taboo. If you admit to feelings of sadness, despair, hopelessness and grief it causes other people considerable discomfort. They will say, "Get over it, move on, stop being so self-obsessed", and other smile-while-you're-hurting sentiments.
So it takes courage to consider giving yourself permission to be exactly where you are while you're there even when you truly wish you didn't have to be there at all.
I am working on being okay with the fact that I will sometimes feel unhappy. This is a relief because it is very tiring trying not to feel what you feel. Stopping blaming yourself for your neurotic or self-destructive tendencies is like being given a new life. I am slowly getting there, drop by drop.
The reason I know I am making progress is that when I read my daughter's story, I cried. And for the first time I was crying for the 11-year-old girl I used to be, who also used to write stories, who thought she was so bad and wrong because she didn't fit in and no one wanted to share her room at camp.
Instead of feeling ashamed of her, in all her frizzy haired, furry-eyebrowed buck-toothed awkwardness, for the first time I felt protective of her, like I do towards my daughter. I wished I could give the 11-year-old me a hug and say sorry; she spent so many years hating herself. Instead, I made my daughter waffles, and told her I was very proud of her.
