Fuck Being "cool"! Fuck Being "normal"! 2020 Will Be All About Being Genuine And Kind While Learning

I’ve been trying this out and it’s been quite helpful 🤗

AvPD theory: social perfectionism

Avoidance as social perfectionism.

“This relationship will be doomed from the start ... so there’s no point trying to make friends.”

“I’ll inevitably say stuff wrong and make things awkward ... so there’s no point in starting a conversation.”

“I might be having a good day, but I won’t always be energetic, clever and likable ... so there’s no point in reaching out.”

These examples share some common links:

negative self-esteem

avoidance of anxiety/discomfort

seeking control and certainty

trying to meet others’ expectations, or avoid disappointing them

Thoughts, anybody?

(more here!)

so heres a thing my mother always said to me growing up when i broke something on accident that i think is really important

and i know, from watching my friends and seeing their panic and terror when something broke, that not only were not nearly enough children told this thing, many children were punished in place of being reassured

and thats heartbreaking

so heres the words from my mom that i was always told, and theyre the same words that anyone who never got to hear them should hear now, courtesy of my mom, who has repeated those same words to many a friend of mine and now to you

if i ever broke anything, the first words out of her mouth would always be and have always been, “are you hurt?” 

i would say no

she would say, “thats okay, then”

and i would ask why

and she would say “because it was just a thing- even if its a nice thing, or an old thing, or an expensive thing, its still just a thing. it can be replaced, or we can live without it. there is only one you. there will only ever be one you. you will always be more important than just some thing.” 

What Boundaries Look Like 👀

Oh gosh, that feel. Figuring out when my "back off" anger is appropriate or an overreaction is something I still struggle with.

I almost always check what other people think, to see how my reactions correspond ... But some of the people around me have issues with boundaries, too, so that isn't always a reliable measure. Sometimes, negative stuff gets normalized, and that's hard.

But I'm getting to the point where I'll stick to my own opinion even if someone else says I'm overreacting. Because the thing is, even if something is "objectively" okay, it might not be okay for ME. And my individual needs & preferences are important.

The people in my life should care about and respect what I need. And if they don't want to, that's their shortcoming, not mine.

I’m so wary of people in my life and I feel like they are violating my space and privacy (if that’s true then that’s fucked up???) I can’t tell if I’m being paranoid but it’s causing me so much discomfort that I just want everyone to leave!! me!! alone!!!

hey, remember how a while ago i wrote a book about how cooking is a pain in the ass and keeping yourself alive is endless drudgery? it’s been pointed out to me that maybe, here in 2020 with…all this…it’s the kind of thing that might be useful to people.

so hey! i wrote a book about how cooking is a pain in the ass. i literally called it cooking is terrible, and you can read a bunch of posts (mostly asks) about it in my cooking is terrible tag.

you can buy it through most ebook retailers, you can request it at your library, you can buy it on gumroad and amazon and kobo and a bunch of other stores, and there’s also a paperback on amazon.

i’m actually a pretty good cook, and i love a cooking project, but the day to day of having to eat (multiple times??) and do dishes and plan everything is just like. so much more work than i care to put into it. so i started making lists of things that you could do if you were literally only going to spend, say, five minutes in the kitchen, and ways you could cook that required as little equipment, time, and energy as possible.

it was partly written for my kid, and partly for me, and partly for anyone else who’s disabled or pressed for time or struggles with executive function or just fucking hates cooking. if you’re staring into the barrel of 2020 and only just barely dragging yourself out of bed, it’s for you, too.

also, it’s been marked down to $2.99 us on all the sites i can do it on, because i think it’s nice when we do things like keep ourselves alive, and i’d like for people to have a slightly easier time of that. 

love 2 learn new things

Hey friend, in case no one told you today:

I just thought it may be a good time to tell you that you did great today. Even if things weren’t perfect, you did your best.

I see your hard work and I see how much it took to do the thing. Great job!

I’m really proud of you.

Your purpose in life is not to love yourself but to love being yourself.

If you goal is to love yourself, then your focus is directed inward toward yourself, and you end up constantly watching yourself from the outside, disconnected, trying to summon the “correct” feelings towards yourself or fashion yourself into something you can approve of.

If your goal is to love being yourself, then your focus is directed outward towards life, on living and making decisions based on what brings you pleasure and fulfillment.

Be the subject, not the object. It doesn’t matter what you think of yourself. You are experiencing life. Life is not experiencing you.

I’ve always struggled with social anxiety and self-confidence in different areas. It waxes and wanes in amplitude, but it’s always there. This affects my ability to do research as I struggle to do things like use the phone, send emails asking people to do things in a timely fashion, and finish work due to perfectionism.  It was really bad a couple of years ago, during my PhD. We had official annual meetings with a member of staff to check on progress back then, which were a good idea but terrified the students. I always had mine with a member of faculty a lot of people are scared of. I’m not sure why, maybe because their courses were very difficult and they was a strict marker? I’d heard they’d mellowed over the years so maybe, like a fear of the dark, students’ wariness passed down the generations.  Whatever the reason, I’d never been scared of them, and always saw them as a fair mind when it came to assessing my progress. I wouldn’t believe myself or my friends mostly, but I’d trust them to tell the truth. On my last meeting they knew I wasn’t very well. I always cried in these meetings through stress/lifting of stress, so true to form the box of tissues were ready and they offered me a fruit tea. I had the summer fruits. It was really sweet and calming, and I didn’t need the tissues that year. We spoke at length about why I was struggling within myself when my work seemed perfectly fine, even really good in places. And we got talking about anxiety when not at work. Turns out both of us have similar social anxiety problems! We both struggle to go in a shop with no or few other customers, because we hate being watched by staff. It’s really specific but I bet it’s common haha. We both hate using the phone, even ordering take away is difficult! Maybe this is why I wasn’t scared of them?  At any rate, it was great to know I wasn’t alone, here was a full professor with the same problems I have, still doing science! But, I asked, how do you do it? How did you get this high up the ladder and not quit, or not take it out on yourself? How are you not anxious all the time? Oh, I am anxious, they said. I was really bad for years. Wouldn’t use the phone at all. But then I was made Head of Department.  That’s terrifying! What did you do? Well I was still anxious, about using the phone for example. But I realised, the Head of Department uses the phone to call people to get things sorted quickly. And at the moment, I’m Head of Department. That’s the hat I’m wearing. The Head of Department picks up the phone and the Head of Department speaks to people to Get Things Done. That’s a role I’m performing, that’s all, and people expect me to be the Head of Department. And it helped, and now I can use the phone because I’m used to it.  Hearing them say that was a bit of an epiphany. They weren’t saying “just suck it up”, it’s a complete reframing of the interaction. 

YOU might not like using the telephone to ask so-and-so to do something, but Scientist-In-Charge-Of-Making-This-Thing-Work DOES call Collaborators to remind them, and then Collaborators can respond that they forgot, or they have it scheduled in for next week, because it’s their role to do something. 

YOU might be scared of going into that shop, but a Potential Customer does go into shops and look around. Potential Customer might be asked by Sales Rep whether they need help, and Potential Customer can say just browsing. Sales Rep may watch Potential Customer browse, but that’s okay, because they’re waiting to perform their role. And when Potential Customer leaves the shop, they aren’t that role anymore, back to self. Interaction done. 

YOU might not want to email that person to ask them for a reference, BUT a Final Year Student DOES send the email, because part of their role is to get a reference at the end. And the person receiving the email also has a role, and that is Someone Who Sometimes Gets Reference Requests, that they can response Yes or No to. Then Final Year Student can get their reference about Final Year Student or can move on to someone else. Interaction over. Slate clean. Sometimes we get so caught up we forget that many of the things we do are divorced from our own self, and we worry about judgements from other people. But in a lot of our interactions, especially at work or school, we have a set of roles and rules. When it’s getting really hard for me to do things like email, phone, or go somewhere, it helps me to think of that Professor’s first day as Head of Department, them sitting there with that weight of responsibility and internally screaming as they pick up the phone the first time, because that’s what Head of Departments do. If they can do it and normalise it, I know I can too. One day! :)