All The Help Offered To You Leaves You Feeling Miserable And Useless
And why it may not be your fault after all.
How come you’re struggling so much when there’s so much help available?
Have you tried:
Breathing?
Drinking water?
Yoga?
What’s wrong with you, when it’s all laid out so simply?
What if the problem isn’t what we’ve been told it is?
What if we’re missing the critical component, the linchpin, that makes healing possible?
No One Cares How Smart You Are; It Won't Matter Anyway
This is my conclusion, after over a decade of overthinking and innumerable late nights and deep dives in every direction.
Overwhelm looks a lot like paralysis. Which looks a lot like doing nothing, from the outside.
Safety comes from acceptance, compassion, understanding.
Validation.
It doesn't come from shitty attitudes that belittle your struggles.
It doesn't come from well-meaning platitudes and regurgitated 'wellness' advice columns.
If this was about knowledge, I would have been 'cured' over a decade ago.
I'm smarter than you. I read wider than you.
I don't say that to brag, I say it to make two points:
First, I bet you bristled at that line, didn't you? That's what it feels like to be told to just 'try harder,' or 'put in some more effort.' I have no idea who you are, your intelligence, your lifetime of experiences. I have no way to know if what I say is true or not. All I know is that intelligence is not what is stopping me.
Second, I remember the strangest things and connect the dots between seemingly unrelated points of knowledge across space and time to create solutions or amplify understanding. It baffles some people. It seems like a super power to others. Most days it just feels like a curse.
What's the point of seeing these patterns, these similarities, these inner workings of systems if I can't do anything about them?
It's like a sci-fi horror where the protagonist predicts things that are about to happen and tries in vain to stop a catastrophe. It never really works, does it? At best, the protagonist makes no difference to the final outcome happening just as they predicted. At worst, the protagonist's actions make things worse for themselves and other people.
That's how it feels inside my head when things are bad.
My prescribed medications aren't helping enough. Life events feel so far beyond my control. I can't maintain healthy relationships. I'm breaking at the seams trying to hold it together.
The immobilization you see is the success of my efforts to not give in, to not to give up.
Don't worry, I'm already drowning in self-loathing at my seeming inability to function like a proper adult. Nothing needs to be said.
Don’t offer a drowning man a bottle of water.
Now here’s the catch: the wellness advice you see everywhere DOES WORK.
Well, maybe not absorbing sunshine through your asshole, but lets keep things mainstream and results-based, shall we?
Regulation of the Autonomic Nervous System is the current wellness industry darling.
It’s true: the activation of your Sympathetic Nervous System is responsible for much of the way you feel. The anxiety. The frustration. The need to escape. The urge to hide.
This is your body in survival mode. I could write volumes about our Fight/Flight/Freeze/Fawn response. It fascinates me.
And the wellness industry is right, by being aware of, and actively working with our Sympathetic Nervous System, we can learn to control it and calm ourselves. This is our conscious mind soothing our unconscious mind.
The very real, and frankly very obvious part that is missing from all of this well-meaning advice is that you can’t begin to heal while in the situation causing the harm.
To mix metaphors, if your mind is the Inner Citadel of your Castle then your Autonomic Nervous System is like surrounding town and the castle walls. They keep things running, and raise the alarm when raiders approach.
The tower bells ring and work stops as the people retreat inside the fortified walls. Soldiers line the parapets, prepared to defend against any threat. Officers shout orders and direct the efforts.
You can’t lower your defenses while still under attack.
Even when the threat has disappeared there is tension. Scouts cautiously report the all clear, that the enemy has retreated. The decision to reopen the gates will come, and still the people will need reassurance from the leadership that they are safe to return to their lives.
This return to normalcy is Self-Regulation. And just like in our castle analogy, it is impossible until the attack, and the perceived threat of attack, has faded.
Sure, learning Self-Regulation is an important skill.
I just hope you have the opportunity to use it properly. Because just like a castle that reopens the gates while the attack is ongoing, no amount of Self-Regulation will prevent you from being overrun and destroyed.
I already told you what is missing, but I’ll re-emphasis the point: you need to feel (and actually be) safe. Then you’ll be amazed at how effective the mainstream advice can be!
And if you’re looking to support someone struggling like this, providing that safety looks like acceptance and compassion, even if you don’t understand.
You don’t need to understand. What they need is someone to validate their experiences as real.
That’s what puts the ground back under their feet.
That’s what gives them the space to stand up again.
Thanks for reading From The Fringes. Here’s another post I think you’ll find interesting:
