Do you think you have an accurate assessment of how you come across to people and the reasons behind your feelings/actions?
Do you think you have strong awareness of your emotional state and opinions?
Has someone ever held a mirror up to you and pointed out things about your personality…and now you’re completely blow away and can’t not stop seeing them?
Sometimes I think I’ve got a good grasp on who I am. And then other times, like right now, I think about the “me” of yesterday and think, “What the hell was I thinking? How could I not have seen that?!” I like learning, but I don’t like these kinds of revelations.
I love the revelations. At the present time I feel less, well… present, and that bothers me. The last time someone held a mirror up to me it was more a projection of their own image that they were accusing me of embodying. I live for learning but am currently in desperate need of grounding.
What has happened that has you contemplating these things, if you don’t mind me asking?
A couple of months ago I received a diagnosis from two different practitioners. I’ve thrown hints at about it on the board, but I haven’t come out and claimed it because a huge part of me thinks it’s completely nutso.
But as time passes and my mind’s stewed over this matter, I’m starting to realize that there’s a pretty good reason why it’s nutso and will always seem nutso to me. Some degree of blindspot is associated with the disorder. Graft on the psychological defenses I’ve developed to cope up with it, and the blindspot becomes even larger.
Now I can’t NOT see the “diagnostic criteria” in everything I do.
I still can’t accept the diagnosis–and I apologize for not being comfortable enough to be more open. And yet I’m having to acknowledge to myself that it may be true. It’s just a label and people aren’t labels and blabbity-blah-blah, but it’s still a source of difficult emotions for me.
Another flash of insight that I’ve had stems from an incident that happened a couple of weeks ago. A coworker was getting married and just myself and another person was going to attend the wedding. As soon as I informed the secretary that I was going, I was given all this high-intensity attention about the dress and shoes I was going to wear. I hadn’t picked out anything, but I wasn’t too worried about it. A couple of people–including the director of my division–told me that I needed to bring in my attire before the wedding so that I could get their approval. And so they could outfit me accessories. I brought in my dress and shoes, modeling for them, and they were really nice in letting me borrow their jewelry. For a whole week, it was all anyone could talk about when they saw me.
Very sweet, right? And yet, I’m realizing why they wanted me to go through all the trouble: I’m a slob. I’m horrible looking. And they didn’t trust me to “clean up” good enough to not embarrass myself at the wedding.
So now I’ve got a complex about how I look. Not enough to actually change my style, mind you, but enough to make me not want to enter any beauty pageants anytime soon.
This might be an unpopular piece of advice but unless this diagnosis arose out of something causing you a great deal of difficulty in your life, get a new hobby!
The old mantra of it is only a problem if it is a problem applies I think.
What I mean is does it actually matter one way or the other to your quality of life?
If it doesn’t really you’re wasting your time worrying about whether it is true or not.
Mental health professionals are under pressure to produce results just like anyone else, part of that is diagnosis.
Every opportunity to see ourselves through ‘new eyes’ is a gift, no matter how painful. I have to disagree with the ‘ignore it and move on’, advice.
Initially you rejected it outright. Since then you’re seeing things, you feel you might have been blind to, previously. Keep reflecting. Keep observing. It sounds like you’re on the right path, to me.
Lots of people get diagnoses that it takes time to accept. Give yourself some time already. And tons of people look back at who they once were and think, WTF? Don’t sweat the past or magnify the little things!
It’s rarely what befalls you in life, so much as, how you take it, how you deal with it, what attitude you bring to it.
Sounds like your coworkers are good people and watching out for you, congrats on that. And good luck to you in the future!
monstro, as a fellow accessories-challenged person who has also needed coworker assistance with wedding duds, I think you’re being overly harsh on yourself.
Adults don’t have that many opportunities to play “dress up.” Weddings, though, are a socially acceptable excuse for dress up. If your coworkers were acting enthusiastic and excited, it was probably because you were allowing them to play dress up with you. I think you were a really good sport about it too.
The French writer Michel de Montaigne - often called, alongside Shakespeare “the first modern human” - refers to “wisdom at the expense of myself” - i.e., a lot of wisdom he acquired over the years came from realizing just how fallible and foolish he is - indeed, how all of humanity is.
Personal insight is an ever-shifting thing - it varies from category to category and from time to time. I suspect we all have pillars of belief which prop up our identity but block our awareness, so if you think you had one of your pillars pointed out to you, well, maybe you’re one up on the rest of us
ETA: Rather than second-guess your self-awareness, you ultimately will need to focus on the *awareness *you are experiencing now and how to process through your news…good luck going forward.
I know the mental health industry is a favorite punching bag around here, and perhaps with good reason. But I don’t think my doctors were anything less than thoughtful in their assessment of me. So It would be pretty distasteful for me to ignore what they’ve told me just because it makes me uncomfortable. Presumably, I sought their help for a reason–because of quality of life issues. A diagnosis can be useful in getting help.
So while I understand what you are saying and appreciate the intent behind it, I don’t agree with it. I’ve spent the past five years ignoring and disregarding diagnoses and throughout that time I continued to suffer. I have enough insight to see that the suffering could have been alleviated a long time ago if I had just listened to what was being said.
Following one’s gut is only good advice if the gut isn’t full of shit.
There’s a joke in here somewhere about waiting X hours after eating before you go deciding things, but I’m not feeling witty enough to excavate it.
But really, this is so true. I struggle with this so much myself, with deciphering where reasonable motives end and reactionary behavior begins. The line can be hard to find.
Well there you go, as I said you’re the only one who knows for sure.
I’m not anti-mental health industry BTW, but there are limits to what it can offer. If you go in with a problem that is impacting your life you’ll probably get help, if you go in soul searching or looking for the meaning of your life in the DSM you’ll probably just waste your time. And it isn’t that mental health professionals are incompetent, it is just that they have a limited tool set with which to work.
Hell you want a funny story about lack of personal insight? I’ve always bitched about the fact so few movie fans are willing to read subtitles, I mean what is the big deal right? Same for non-english music, it seems to annoy most people. I was bitching about this to my wife and she looks at me like this :dubious: and says:
“Uh hello your mother is from germany, you’re used to hearing different languages which most people are not, so no wonder you don’t find it annoying.”
In my experience, most people who try their hardest and fail spectacularly are the ones refusing to acknowledge something about themselves. We are all ashamed of our flaws, the things about our personality that we do not like, and some of them may even be quite serious. But we all have them, and there’s no use pretending otherwise. I like to think of myself as a person fiercely committed to honesty with myself about myself. Sometimes that means confronting things I don’t want to deal with. But if I didn’t address those things, it would be like stumbling through life in the darkness.
One thing I have learned is that I can be immature, lazy, a bad driver, neurotic, paranoid and self-centered at times… and the world doesn’t end just because I’m a flawed human being. I think a lot of people live in terror that something like this might be true of them. They fear the worst wiil happen as a result. I think we all allow ourselves our quirks, but when it comes to the ugly stuff, the stuff that affects our quality of life and the people around us, we don’t want to see it. We don’t want to be unworthy of the love or success or whatever it is we most desire.
But the truth, in my experience, is that self-assessment is the damage control that us flawed human beings need. It has nothing to do with worthiness and ignoring it will not make it go away. Whether it’s being a shitty parent, an alcoholic, a narcissist… we have to stop being afraid that it’s true. We have to see that we can be royally flawed and still survive and be loved and have a life worth living. The worst will only happen if we refuse to face the truth.
Monstro, you are not a slob. If you were, I would have done an intervention on you a long ass time ago.
You do have a style that reflects lower than average attentiveness to looking sexy or glamourous, but it fits your personality. I think your co-workers are being over dramatic because they dont have hobbies. And I think you encourage them by indulging them in all this “let’s critique your clothes and make you over” stuff. Most people would be offended by all this, but you just laugh along with them, so it snowballs into them now dressing you for this wedding.
That said, having revelations about how people see you isnt supposed to always be a comfortable experience. No one wants to find out that they’ve been blind. But the question is how much value should we assign to our self-worth based on these insights. Even if an outsider’s perception is based on truth, it’s not the end of the world, for instance, if you were a sloppy dresser. We can’t all be fashion plates. People still love you, and want to be around you (hence your invitation to the wedding), and that is what counts.
And if the diagnosis is true, while that means coming to terms with this new “identity”, it doesnt change the fact that you are just one more person going through the human experience, and are no less deserving of love and respect than the most average of us is. We all have issues. No one is perfect. Especially those who look perfect.
It’s possible that some people live their whole lives without really learning anything about themselves. Consider yourself lucky that you have the capacity to do this instead of giving into self-delusion and rationalization.
I do my damndest to NOT be aware of my emotional state, it’s how I get through life. I’m pretty aware of my own opinions, though, but don’t take them too seriously.
How insightful are you about yourself? I am extraordinarily introspective, but my actual insights are hit-or-miss.
Do you think you have an accurate assessment of how you come across to people and the reasons behind your feelings/actions? Probably not – though it’s probably more accurate than the assessment some others have about themselves.
Do you think you have strong awareness of your emotional state and opinions? Most of the time.
Has someone ever held a mirror up to you and pointed out things about your personality…and now you’re completely blow away and can’t not stop seeing them? I’ve always known that I am hypersensitive to condescension, but because of that awareness I’ve also always tried to keep a grip on my reaction when I’m feeling condescended to. A few weeks ago it was pointed out to me that not only do I sometimes fail to keep said grip, but sometimes my overreaction comes across as downright mean. And not just to random condescending strangers: to people who I care about!
That revelation really threw me for a loop. I’m actually still dealing with the emotional fallout (feeling like a horrible person, fighting the urge to withdraw from what’s left of my social life [not because I don’t want to face myself, but because I don’t want to hurt anyone], etc.). I have my faults, but I never would have thought “being mean” was among them. I was pretty shocked to realize that what I thought of as appropriate reactions or maybe mild overreactions were, in fact, severe, and that I nearly cost myself two significant relationships (a close friend, and my boyfriend).
Now I frequently find myself wondering what other negative personality traits I’m not aware of, and I actually worry a little about interacting with other people – especially at work, where my job requires bottomless patience and tact. I thought I’d gotten good at those two things, at least professionally, but now I wonder.
I’m not thinking very highly of myself these days.
