Hate Expectations

Posted by fxckfeelings on June 11, 2012

People usually feel to blame (and are blamed) for poor performance unless they have a good excuse, like a clear medical diagnosis, a personal tragedy, an act of god, or some combination of the three. Otherwise, you’re stuck with the blame, because people worship good performance and assume there’s always a way for someone who has the will (even though we know, rationally, how absurd that is). So be prepared to fight inner and outer prejudices if you become disabled while learning to trust your own observations as you decide how to get the most out of reduced resources. After all, excuses are unnecessary when you know you’re doing your best.
–Dr. Lastname

I’m about to start my last year of college so I need to start thinking about what to do next. Until a few months ago, I’d always been planning to go to graduate school (I love my subject, and I don’t want to stop learning about it yet). Now though, I’m considering taking some time out and going home for a bit instead. I was quite seriously ill a few months ago with bacterial meningitis and since then I’ve been constantly exhausted, having trouble academically (something I’ve never experienced before) and had an unpleasant bout of depression. I almost dropped out but somehow battled through and passed my exams. The depression is easing off at last (I had CBT, which helped, and cut down on stress) but I’m still feeling a bit fragile. I feel like some time recuperating might be a better idea than moving to another strange city where I won’t have support from friends and family and the demands of grad school, as I’m worried that the stress might make me depressed again. Then again, it also feels like I’m letting my illnesses get the better of me and maybe when the year rolls around I’ll be fine and completely recovered and taking a year out is just lazy and I’ll end up stagnating while my friends move on to new and exciting things. My goal is to decide which course is right and accept it, even if it isn’t ideal.

When a severe illness or injury saps your strength and makes it hard to get out of bed, you wonder whether pushing yourself back to work will hasten recovery or cause a relapse. Sportswriters often debate this issue among themselves, which tells you that it springs from deeply irrational feelings.

According to them, the real hero is the one who plays hurt, regardless of personal cost, in the name of victory. Of course, if he plays badly, they decide he’s a glory-hogging bum who’s ruining the franchise, the sport, and the universe.

With that kind of thinking, you’re damned either way, so you’re better off developing your own method for deciding whether to work or rest so you can be your own, most honest critic.

During your recent recovery, you pushed yourself to keep working and discovered that your performance was good enough to pass, but barely, and that you’d become more vulnerable to stress. If you analyzed your disabilities more closely, you would probably have discovered that, in addition to fatigue, depressed feelings, negative thinking, and low energy, the meningitis (together with depression) affected your brain much like a concussion, damaging your ability to concentrate and multitask for many months.

Your feelings are telling you that any reduction in your workload makes you a lazy non-competitor who will get bypassed by his peers, which is exactly why you shouldn’t listen to them. Instead, continue to consider the factual measures of your actual performance, not the negative hyperbole in your head.

Consider the pros and cons of continuing with whatever degree of impairment you actually have. If it remains severe, you will work hard to produce lousy, uninspired papers that will win you fewer opportunities, less scholarship money, and a better chance of getting sick again and/or burning out. Sure, you’ll appease the inner voice that calls you a lazy sissy and fears that you’ll fall behind while others are getting ahead, but if that’s the only thing you’ll gain from going forward, then that inner negativity is better ignored than indulged.

Respecting those findings, define the level of performance that gives you a good chance of succeeding in graduate school. Then put together a rehabilitative program that includes doing work when you’re able, keeping busy, periodically re-assessing your performance, and moving ahead when you’ve got a fighting chance of succeeding.

It’s hard for a high achiever like yourself to tolerate mediocre performance, so respect yourself for bearing that frustration while you find out whether your improvement continues (which it probably will).

In the end, you will learn more and grow stronger from managing your impairment than will the lucky ones who never get sick and always take their health and abilities for granted. It’s your own version of the triumphant underdog, whether or not people (especially sportswriters) want to recognize it or not.

STATEMENT:
“It hurts to see my friends move ahead in life while I struggle to get through the day and accomplish very little, but I don’t control my performance. I will not let frustration and self-criticism prevent me from taking good care of myself and making the most of my actual level of functioning. It’s far harder to work hard when you get mediocre results than it is when you get As.”

I can’t stand the way I’ve ruined every job I’ve ever had. I’m smart and have two graduate degrees, so I don’t have trouble getting hired for well-paid positions. After a few months, for reasons that have nothing to do with the job and everything to do with me and my weird personality, I start to feel alienated and disconnected, at which point I begin to spiral down until I can’t function and have to leave before I get fired. It has happened so many times that my resume makes no sense, but I can’t figure out why I do this to myself and how to make it stop, I worry that it will get harder and harder for me to find a job or make a living until finally I’ll have to wait tables or just become homeless and starve to death. My goal is to figure out why I do this and stop before it’s too late.

Don’t hold yourself responsible for performing at a high level when something you don’t control gets in the way, even and especially if whatever that something is is mysterious and hard to define (unlike meningitis [see above] or even a clear cut depression). All I can tell you is that the inner meltdowns that you’re describing happen to other good people and that our lack of understanding shouldn’t surprise us. For all our scientific advances, there are lots of things we don’t understand that are beyond our control– call it “dark matter syndrome.”

So don’t expect to control this problem simply because it hasn’t been legitimized by a good diagnostic name, or because it’s happening in your own head. Trust the fact that you’ve defined its power by doing your best to overcome it. When at last you don’t succeed, change your expectations.

Instead of forcing yourself to look for a job you know will do you in, accept the fact that a weakness in your personality won’t let you tolerate those jobs. Regardless of how much you need the money, you’ve got to figure out what it is you can’t tolerate and stay away from it.

It may feel like you’re failing if you take a job for less money and admit you can’t perform at the high level that you and everyone else think you can. It’s never humiliating, however, to make the most of your equipment when it’s prone to unexpected breakdowns. If you learn and accept your limitations, you’ll find pride in what you do.

STATEMENT:
“It’s hard to feel like a winner when I’m forced to settle for low-paying jobs, but I know I’ve got a subtle but severe handicap and I’m proud of the adjustments I’ve had to make in order to find work that I can do without causing a breakdown. I will push myself to do my best, within the limits imposed by fragile health.”