anxiety

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Insecurity

I am having an attack of insecurity. There are (currently) four things I can blame, I think: 1. My husband is on call, and when he is on call we spend less time together and I feel ignored and needy. 2. My primary client, for the first time ever, returned a project to me and asked me to redo it. Not minor edits, but a complete redo because I had so completely missed the mark. 3. I have been ordering cute bikinis from amazon because the summery weather (which has since retreated) has me dreaming of time by the pool, and NOT A ONE has looked remotely reasonable on me and only emphasizes the weird shape of my hips and thighs. 4. My poor kid is homesick for our old house and cannot fall asleep (it is currently 1:11 in the morning egads) and I cannot help her feel better (which I know isn’t always the goal! she should feel her feelings!) or help her fall asleep.

To sum up: I am unlovable, my work performance sucks, I look terrible in a bathing suit and probably in all clothing, and I am a terrible mother.

Should I perhaps be focusing on the fact that my husband is lovely and warm and attentive 6/7 of the time, and that he is not ignoring me but is instead focusing all his energy on the very difficult work of keeping dangerously sick people alive? Should I perhaps be remembering that this client mostly asks for very small edits, if any, and also it seems statistically improbable that I would write exactly what they want every single time and also one miss does not negate all the hits, nor does it preclude me from writing well in the future? Should I perhaps stop pressing my finger into the tender bruise of body imperfection when I have a perfectly good, rear-end covering skirted suit already? Should I perhaps recall the many, many nights when I was a child that I cried myself to sleep over something or other and the many, many nights as a child and an adult when I couldn’t sleep and how none of those nights had anything to do with my parents or their parenting ability?

Should does not equal AM DOING, let me tell you that.  

Insecurity can REALLY spiral if I let it get going, so I have been reading articles titled “Top Ten Things Therapists Recommend You Do When You’re Feeling Insecure!” and “How to Conquer Feelings of Insecurity.” The thing is that I know how to stop feeling insecure. I mean, I am aware of the techniques. But most of them are long-term kinds of things (replace negative self-talk with positive self-talk; focus on your strengths; talk to a therapist) and I am working on those things, but I want a quick fix. Is there a quick fix for feeling insecure?

What I really want is to say something negative about myself and have someone refute it with convincing evidence backed by reliable sources. My husband is not good at providing reassurance of this type; he is impatient with insecurity and seems to operate under the belief that there is no need to tell a person something that they should already know about themselves. (I also worry that, if I am too insecure around him, he will stop wanting to be married to me how’s THAT for insecurity catastrophizing, hmmm?????)

Reassurance is best sought from friends, I find. But it’s too late to call or text any of my analog-world friends, so I am writing to you. This makes it sound like I am demanding compliments, which I am not because that would be embarrassing and stupid. (Also, you aren’t married to me, you don’t know my work writing and you don’t know what I look like in a bikini, so, lovely and brilliant as you are, you cannot possibly make an honest evaluation of any of those things.) What I’m hoping for, I guess, is commiseration and solidarity. I would also accept The Key to Real Confidence, if you have it.

Do you ever feel insecure? If so, what do you do when you feel that way? My negative self-talk is so loud right now, even my strategies for combatting it (talking out loud to myself; pretending my concerns belong to my best friend and saying to myself what I would say to her; referring to myself as honey and acknowledging that my feelings are valid) are inaudible over the din. 

Gah. Being a person is so stupid and exhausting sometimes.

Well, I suppose the next best thing to writing a blog post about it is going to sleep. Sleep helps most things. 

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Things I Wish I Loved (or at Least Liked)

I am shamelessly borrowing this post idea from Elisabeth. 

Tomatoes. Tomatoes are everywhere, in everything. Life would be so much easier if I liked them.

Speaking out loud in groups of more than two people. Most people seem capable of speaking up in groups – whether out at coffee with a few friends or in a meeting or standing in an elevator. NOT ME. My heart pounds and my head swims just at the thought that I might open my mouth. And if I do manage to say something, my words come out all wrong and sometimes I stutter and my face gets all red and I rush through whatever it was I was trying to say, eliminating key context that would help make my point. Oh how I wish I could have even just a LITTLE CHILL when speaking to more than two people!

Dogs. *HEAR ME OUT* I hope you know that I love YOUR dog. I do. I want to see all the photos of your dog, and hear all the anecdotes, and if I visited you I would pet and snuggle your dog. I show my daughter pictures of your dog so often she can now differentiate them: “Is that Rex?” “Oh, is that Hannah?” “Charlie is so cute!” I have a soft spot in my heart for all animals, cockroaches excluded. And maybe snakes. But I don’t love dogs. I can appreciate them, I can admire them, I can enjoy them through their owners’ eyes or the eyes of my dog-crazy child. But I don’t love them. I don’t like licking. I don’t like wet noses. I don’t like drooling. I don’t like the idea of an outside creature bringing the outdoors into my home. I don’t like the idea of picking up poop. I think when you love dogs, these things become part of the package. And I just don’t love them. But oh, how I wish I did. If I loved dogs, we could own a dog and I would be happy about it. 

Pedicures. I think pedicures are such a fun, luxurious indulgence. But I find them so uncomfortable! My feet are very sensitive, and pretty much everything except the warm water soak and the warm towel wrap are verging on painful for me. Plus, I find myself worrying all the time about dangerous bacteria and whether I’m going to develop gangrene or pick up a flesh eating bacterium or something equally horrific from inadequately cleansed tools. 

Group events. Most people I know love parties and gatherings. But I find even smallish groups to be thoroughly exhausting. I overanalyze everything about them from what I will wear to who I can talk to, to where to park and whether there will be food. And then I spend the whole time feeling like I’m on the fringe of conversation, that no one wants to talk to me, that I have nothing interesting to say, that I look weird and stand awkwardly and can’t move my arms in a human manner. I get overstimulated and overwhelmed and have no idea how to keep up with the pace of conversation. It is awful. And then afterward I feel drained and reeling and want to crawl into a cave for days until everything feels calm and safe again. 

Letting other people cook in my kitchen. I am a control enthusiast in the extreme and prefer that things in my kitchen happen MY way. I am insufferable, I know. My kind and generous mother-in-law, for whom “making food” is a love language, will be eternally baffled by this facet of my personality. “Just let her make you dinner!” you may be thinking. But the very thought of it fills me with anxiety.  

Sharing food. JOEY DOESN’T SHARE FOOD and neither do I. And people who do share food find this personally offensive. It would just be easier if I didn’t care. 

The beach. Sand adheres to me like a persistent infection. Everything is hot. The sand and ocean stink. Too many people. Things lurking unseen in the watery depths. NO THANK YOU times a million. But the beach is such a quintessential summer experience, and it would be nice if I didn’t feel angry and grumbly every time it’s broached.

Bridgerton, Yellowstone, and West Wing. Since this list is rapidly devolving into a catalog of my anxieties, I will switch to TV. These shows are universally beloved, and I just cannot get into any of them. I have total pop culture FOMO, and would love to love these shows.

Do you and I share any wish-I-liked items? What’s one thing that would make your life easier if you liked it?

I am kinda sorta attempting to complete NaBloPoMo, with the full expectation that life will make it impossible any day now. If you want to follow along, or join the fun, check out San’s blog here.