Why am I such a fuck up?

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Why am I such a fuck up?

 

Why does everything I touch turn to shit?

Why is everything always like this?

Why can’t I be normal like everyone else?

 

Photo courtesy of Freepik

 

If you are asking these questions, you are not alone. Many folks feel the same way. In fact, search engines are asked ‘why am I such a fuck up’ thousands of times a month. We can’t all be as screwed up as we feel like we are, can we? If you’ve come here then you’ve probably searched online just like a hundred other people have today. This article will talk about some of the reasons why we think the way we do, and how to feel better about ourselves and offer some hope. When you’re done reading, considering going into the forum area where you can also find our live chat. Sometimes just being around other people who understand how you’re feeling is enough to keep going for another day. 

 

Life can be a meat grinder from day one. How we deal with life is often dictated by what happens to us as children. The things parents, teachers and other authority figures say and do get “locked” into our brains. For example, a parent says, “I wish you had never been born”, or “you’ll never amount to anything”. These hurtful words become like recordings that play in our minds over our lifetime and affect the choices we make. Of course physical and sexual abuse scar us also in horrible ways (I am a victim of childhood sexual abuse). I spent most of my life thinking I wasn’t good enough, that I was bad and ugly and useless.

It has taken many years of therapy to take down those recordings of abuse that played in my mind for so many years. That is the way out of these negative thought patterns. One technique of fighting these messages that my therapist taught is positive affirmations. The way affirmations work is pretty simple but requires patience and practice. One of my early ones was “I am beautiful and worthy.” It was hard to say, but I kept at it. This might feel silly at first but again, you have to keep at it for it to work. 

Here are some affirmations to get you started. You don’t need to pick many. Just choose one or two to get started:

  • I am a strong, capable person
  • I have done difficult things in the past, and I can do them again
  • I have experienced challenges in the past, and I am more resilient because of this
  • I am allowed to feel upset, angry, and sad sometimes—that’s part of being human
  • My personal boundaries are important and I’m allowed to express my needs to others
  • “No” is a complete sentence and I don’t have to explain or justify my boundaries
  • I am allowed to feel good and to experience pleasure in life
  • I am worthy of receiving good things and of accomplishing my goals in life
  • The past is the past, and my past doesn’t predict my future
  • I forgive myself for mistakes I made and I refuse to hold them against myself

I posted mine on my bathroom mirror, so I would have it in view several times a day. Another place would be the fridge. You can also use your phone to store and set reminders.

Photo courtesy of Freepik

Another area to be aware of is what is called cognitive distortions. This is a fancy word for the things that go through our minds that cause us to be unhappy in life. My therapist and other mental health professions educated me on these concepts and they were a life changer. Becoming aware of what I was thinking was the first step. I used journaling quite often to increase my awareness of my thought patterns.

Knowing the problem is the first step to fixing it. The following list, taken from an article by Harvard Medical School is a good place to start. 

Once you are aware of cognitive distortions in your thinking, you can combat them. One method is to write out a “camera check” of an event that is causing you difficulty. One one column, write what you believe is happening, then in the other column try and look logically at the situation as if you were a third person observer. I ferreted out many of these distortions in my thinking over the years and am still working on it.

  • Black-and-white (or all-or-nothing) thinking: I never have anything interesting to say.
  • Jumping to conclusions (or mind-reading): The doctor is going to tell me I have cancer.
  • Personalization: Our team lost because of me.
  • Should-ing and must-ing (using language that is self-critical that puts a lot of pressure on you): I should be losing weight.
  • Mental filter (focusing on the negative, such as the one aspect of a health change which you didn’t do well): I am terrible at getting enough sleep.
  • Overgeneralization: I’ll never find a partner.
  • Magnification and minimization (magnifying the negative, minimizing the positive): It was just one healthy meal.
  • Fortune-telling: My cholesterol is going to be sky-high.
  • Comparison (comparing just one part of your performance or situation to another’s, which you don’t really know, so that it makes you appear in a negative light): All of my coworkers are happier than me.
  • Catastrophizing (combination of fortune-telling and all-or-nothing thinking; blowing things out of proportion): This spot on my skin is probably skin cancer; I’ll be dead soon.
  • Labeling: I’m just not a healthy person.
  • Disqualifying the positive: I answered that well, but it was a lucky guess.

For more information on cognitive distortions, check out this article by Harvard Medical.

 

You are not a failure. Liffe has handed you some difficult things and your mind has done what it could to cope. You can feel better. You can have hope.

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