I mean yes, change is hard and takes time and happens in sometimes-unnoticeable ways, but come on — throw me a bone and let me have something immediate to help keep motivating me toward the long-term change. If it were as simple as “keep doing it every day”, don’t you think I’d be doing that already?
I recently learned about dysthymia - basically a form of long-term functioning depression. Idk why I’d never heard about it before, but it for sure resonates with my experience.
Apparently, we should be able to get ~50/50 external/internal validation. For example, most healthy people can apparently do chores or something and get an internal sense of accomplishment that supports the external validation that is having completed chores.
The problem is, for some folks (hi there) we can’t really put up the internal validation part. Like, I’d be expecting the completed chores to make me happy, but that’s just not how it works. I need to be active in validating myself and saying something like, “good job dude!”
That shit is hard - especially if it’s like the total opposite of what you heard growing up.
That shit is hard - especially if it’s like the total opposite of what you heard growing up.
Oof ouch owie right in the childhood.
Yelled at for not doing it right, backhanded compliments/browbeating/guilt trips when I did do it right, and a long chain of doing things right not mattering at all in the face of a single misstep that didn’t have to be some warning sign of an imminent monumental derailment but was always treated as such.
“So you want us to throw you a parade for doing what is expected of you?”
No. I want basic aknowledgement that I did it, with no strings attached. None of this “Wasn’t that easier? See how easy that was? Maybe next time you’ll just get it out of the way. Wow, it’d be so great if you did that all the time.”
I just want you to say “Thanks for taking care of that” like a normal family would.
Haha, oh, that is childhood trauma I’m remembering, ha! Isn’t that crazy.
This is why I’m never having kids. Took your comment for me to realize how obnoxious and condescending that was for my parents to treat me like that, God knows how many other awful mannerisms I’d repeat.
