Introduction
So, this is my first post in this process of trying to improve my mental health. I don’t really know how to go about this, but I will do my best.
Reflections
So, last year, my girlfriend broke up with me in a similar situation to this year. She isolated herself for a few weeks and then reached out to me. At the time, we decided not to date for the time being, but to stay separated until we had both worked on ourselves.
Part of what I did during that period that helped, was writing posts here. And I was actually making good progress until I stopped being consistent. In fact, once she started dating me again, I stopped using this blog for that purpose, and it became a project site.
We were going to monetize it to help her gain income. But what I didn’t realize was that when I started to use this site to make money, it no longer helped me to write about how I felt and the progress I was making. It became a burden. Something that stressed me more than it helped.
After we started dating again, I spent a lot of my time focused on interacting with her, and not enough on my own personal growth. I started to get stressed at work which compounded the situation.
Over the next few months, I made several decisions that ended up threatening any chance at stability I had once I moved out of my parents’ house and began the process of damaging the relationship. The crazy thing is in retrospect it was a blur. I can see how far and how fast I pushed things, and I couldn’t see that at the time. Despite everyone telling me otherwise.
First Step: Identifying Key Problem Areas
I guess to solve a problem, you have to know what the problem is, right? I have been told that I have several shortcomings in interpersonal interactions, and so I guess I will start there.
- Selfishness: I don’t think that I am an inherently selfish person, but I have a massive problem with dismissing other’s feelings and redirecting focus to my own. It is a massive form of invalidation, and undermines the goal of creating a safe space for a partner
- Fixation: I have an issue with rumination. I know a bit more about this one than the previous one. As a child, care and attention were sometimes infrequent and often unpredictable. This led to a massive anxiety regarding things that were unpredictable, or situations where the outcome was unknown. In these situations, I would ruminate on the fear, not the reality, and catastrophize about the outcome frequently leading to anxiety attacks that turned the tides of this situation towards the exact direction I didn’t want it to go
- Perspective: This is an issue that I am unsure of how to address or how to resolve. I have a problem with masking I think is the word. The problem is the only people that can really see where I struggle are the people who get to know me well for a very long time. Anyone else just sees a guy who’s kind and compassionate who’s been through a lot of stuff. It almost feeds the victim mentality without intending to, and the only people that can challenge it to help me grow I have driven away.
- Issue With Authority: I have an issue with authority. Not just like someone higher in the food chain. But anyone who challenges me, I immediately shut out anything then have to say and frequently argue with them to tell them they are wrong. Most of the time, the people who I have done this too were just trying to help me, not hurt me. But my perception that everyone who interacts with me, no matter how much they love me, is only there to harm me has made them walk away.
- Fear That Everyone Is Out To Get Me: This is something that is a hallmark issue of bipolar disorder. It is extremely difficult, and frequently, almost impossible for us to trust anyone or their intent. An unfortunate consequence of this is a form of confirmation bias, or “self-fulfilling prophesy”. Eventually those who love us become so overwhelmed with the blatant distrust that they feel like nothing they do is “good enough”, and to protect themselves, they walk away.
I think that is a start. This list most likely needs to be refined and updated, but the only person that knew enough about me to help with this walked away. So, I’m on my own on figuring this stuff out. I’ve met a lot of people who have done this on their own, so there isn’t any question that I can do this too if I put my mind to it.
That is going to come back to the point of consistency. I need to make these changes, but they need to be small enough that I can start forming a habit with them every day. It has been well established that I have very little self-control in the form of willpower. I know that is a fault of mine, but it shouldn’t stop me from making progress.
There is an amazing quote in the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear that goes something like “You don’t rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems”. I know that I will always struggle with willpower, but I do not struggle with systems. So, over the next 12 weeks, my goal is to establish systems to help address the 5 characteristics that continue to drive people I love out of my life.
I want to develop the system, then test it for two weeks, adjust and tweak and then re-test. Between all of that, it will likely take longer than 12 weeks. But, if I consistently work on implementing them, these “systems” should become a habit, which means my brain will automatically try to default to the systems and coping mechanisms I put in place rather than the unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Conslusion
This post has been a good start, but there is a very long road ahead of me. I plan on starting with the fixation problem first. Several of the other problems come from the consequences of rumination and fixation. If I can establish systems that prevent the “spirals” from occurring. I won’t have the added weight of the guilt on top of everything else. Hopefully, that will allow me to step out of the constant cycling between moods and finally start making progress.