Uncomfortableness and Mental Health

How do we develop the core beliefs we hold of ourselves? Generative AI says the core beliefs are mostly formed when we are children and are then re-enforced through our experiences and interactions throughout life. They are shaped by family, culture, and significant events and are difficult to change. These unconscious thoughts are formed before the age of 7. 

For all the work and self discovery, I have done, I really cannot pinpoint how my childhood would have started such a low self-esteem belief system.  It just doesn’t make sense.  I was catered to as the baby of the family, my needs were all met, I never had any harsh criticisms, in fact I’d say I never even experienced criticism.  I don’t know if I am correct with this thought but somehow, I believe I got the idea that you had to be perfect to be loveable.  I think you had to be pretty, thin, smart, and that determined your worth as a person.  If you were not pretty, overweight, and not smart, then you were a disappointment.  Again, I will say, I don’t know where these ideals came from in my mind but somehow as the youngest child, I had to be equal or better than my siblings and anything to the contrary of that was a failure.  My parents never said anything like that out loud and they were not harsh or critical. They very much led us to do our own thing and go our own way and did not pressure us at all. 

Somehow, I believe that I equate being loved with doing well. I definitely have a hard time with being vulnerable to any type of failure or to even express when I believe I am a failure.  I keep it to myself I believe because if I said it out loud to someone then they would pity me or then it would in fact be a true statement because they would re-affirm it for me.

Possibly that is part of growing up in our older generation where we hid anything shameful and wanted our families to look like pillars of society even if they were crumbling underneath.  Everything was always about how it looked, what the neighbours thought, our worth only derived from the protection of our made-up perfection. 

I’m trying to find in myself how to work on these negative beliefs that we hold so we don’t always revert back to them. I read something the other day that we are self sabatogers because that way we know and can control the outcome.  Is this similar?  Are we critical because that is what we can always fall back on for the reason for our failures?  Like it is the easiest choice, the easiest place for our mind to go to come up with the answer. 

I felt like such a failure yesterday, I felt like a loser, I regretted all my decisions, I envisioned myself dressed in a clown costume on a stage and no one was laughing, I was just completely embarrassing, embarrassing to myself and embarrassing to others.  People pitying me and feeling ashamed for me, standing there in my clown costume.  I wanted to hide under the table, crawl under covers, take my make up and my clown nose off and just be normal.  Normal so no one had to feel uncomfortable around me.  Normal so they didn’t feel sorry for me.  Normal so they were proud of me instead of ashamed of me.

Yesterday I felt uncomfortable, and I felt like maybe people I know don’t interact with my social media or with my events because they are uncomfortable around me.  Like they want to laugh at the clown and tell the clown that she is doing a good job but looking at me sitting there like a clown is embarrassing for them.  They themselves want to rub off my make up, rip off my red funny hair, give me different clothes to wear so they can be comfortable looking at me.  They don’t want to laugh at me or with me, because deep down they just have this huge amount of pity for me. 

I think it is that thought of pity that is the hardest for me.  I don’t think you can pity someone and find them successful at the same time. Asking people to read my book, sometimes feels like a homeless person asking for change.  I don’t want to be that. 

Okay so let’s go worst case scenario.  I’m sitting there with my books at a table while people walk by and people put there head down, they are ashamed, they don’t know what to say to me, they don’t know how to talk to me, they are unsure of my demeanor, my reactions, maybe I am a fruit loop and I start yelling at them and chasing them down the mall throwing my book at them.  Maybe I look like a beggar on the street.  They think I need money and want to walk by and throw me some change. 

Are any of those scenarios true? I mean people can think it but is it actually a true statement? Will I ever act like that, do I need change to afford a cup of coffee?  No. Do they maybe get uncomfortable around me? Yes.  What does that change for me? Do I stop believing in my message to help others out who are like me? No.  Why would I quit doing what I was doing? Is it because I am worried about what they think? Or am I mostly worried about what I think?

Maybe I’m the one who is uncomfortable, I am the one embarrassed of the clown, I’m the one who pity’s myself.  After all, if it was just for other people, then I could just use those famous words, well “let them”, I can’t change their opinion of me.  However, it is worse when it is actually you yourself that is the biggest critic of them all. 

Wow I came full circle right back to my beliefs about myself.  The truth is I had other people come up to me who had suffered from other mental illness, and they made me uncomfortable.  The truth is, I didn’t want to give them compassion, I just wanted them to stop telling me about it because I didn’t want to know.  I didn’t want to hear about them cutting themselves, about their addictions, about their shunment in society.  I didn’t want to be them.  Since I was a child, I never wanted a mental illness because I dealt with the shame of my relatives who had different forms of it. 

When I was really little, my uncle who had schizophrenia and a lot of outward differences in “norm” behavior would call me over to sit on his lap.  He would say “come over so I can hold you, oh to hold, to hold you.  Michelle, born November 24, 1975. Oh, to hold you. “He was not scary, and he had never done anything wrong to me.  However, I knew he was different, and I remember really, really contemplating in my 4- or 5-year-old mind, should I sit with him? It’s not that I was scared, more that he made me, here is that word again, “uncomfortable”. He was different.  He was the person sitting at the table in the clown suit while the rest wore suits.  He was the one we didn’t invite over to suppers with the other side of the family. 

Someone similar to him, walked up to me yesterday and asked me “how it felt to be beautiful and yet still be so mentally ill for others to see”.  Obviously, this interaction really has stuck with me because I can’t get his face out of my mind, how he looked at me, almost like I could hear my uncle calling me to sit on his lap.  My thoughts automatically thinking but I’m not like you.  Also, now that you seem to be putting me in your group, how do I not feel judged and ashamed when I am judging and shaming you, just like we did to my uncle when I was little.

I think If I could go back and make things right, I would go and sit on my uncle’s lap.  I’d ask him when he was born. I’d ask him about his favorite food. I’d ask him what kind of music he likes. What he watches on tv. Some of it of course would be over the top, with planes chasing him, etc. but some would just be him.  A person like me, who has a physical illness in their brain, and who deserved compassion and love.  I need to start treating myself like I should have treated my uncle.  Like we all should treat those with any kind of illness, just pure unconditional love.  They never asked for this, I never asked for this, it doesn’t matter where it came from, it doesn’t matter how it started, what matters is that we are all human, all trying to do our best everyday, no matter how different that looks to each one of us. 

I hope the next time you see someone who looks like a clown, and no one is laughing, you remember that they are human, just like you, and instead of being uncomfortable you can find compassion, understanding, and kindness to give instead.   

Chat again soon,

Michelle