Lately, I’ve been realizing just how challenging it is to recognize my own harmful habits and ways of thinking, interrupt them, and embark on a healing process.  Although something like this has happened several times in the past, it only took a few deadlines and assignments to launch me into a spiral of over-analysis, self-criticism, anxiety, avoidance, and distraction.  All the while, I felt powerless to stop this process, and I really hate that!  

You see, what I had been struggling with up to that point was a couple papers, a presentation, replying to emails, doing weekly readings and assignments; all pretty mundane tasks, but ones that can feel like mountains with impossible summits some weeks.  Even so, as I start to slip and fall behind, one part of my brain reassures myself that I’ll catch up on everything “over the weekend,” no problem, without the need to ask for help or communicate in any way.  Another part is already recognizing the warning signs, pointing out my flaws, and criticizing myself on where I need to do better.  The most destructive side deals with all this noise by shutting down completely. Sleeping in until 3pm, skipping meals and classes, being anxious to leave my room, neglecting self-care, and raking up my screen-time on Genshin to do nothing but avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid has indicated there is a bit more than academic stress below the surface.   

Perhaps a more helpful illustration would be that my brain feels like an old, slow computer with too many tabs open that’s struggling in vain to restart itself.  

One evening, I attempted to repress any and all thought by immersing myself in the lore and storyline of Steven Universe.  In this short stint of escapism into the character development of the titular character, I wasn’t prepared to have my harsh reality regurgitated back to me in a few short lines: 

“Oh, don’t worry!  I fixed that too!  I can fix anything!  I can just keep messing up and fixing things forever and you’ll never have to know or think about any of it!”

Beyond my initial thought of: damn, he just like me forreal, an uneasy feeling started to sink in that I could relate to this scene to an uncomfortable degree.  Like Steven, I approach my problems with a similar, hyper-independent mindset—that I can fix my own mistakes without anyone ever knowing better, not because I’m just that good at covering my bases, but because I don’t WANT anyone to know when I’m slipping.  And ironically, the people who are looking can tell there’s something wrong.  And because of this handyman mindset, I haven’t addressed the root cause of anything—all my problems have made me and my habits worse. 

I’m good at pretending everything is okay and like I’ve got it under control until it just isn’t, and everything comes pouring out.  My stress and distress bleeds between the gaps I can’t cover and starts to affect my personal relationships, my jobs, and my schoolwork. I can understand my situation and know somewhat where I’m going wrong, but I never seem to have the foresight to avoid it in the first place. And okay, this is something that takes practice, and healing isn’t a linear process, but I’m not sure my parents, professors, and future employers would like to wait.

But how does one ask for adequate help beyond “may I have another extension?” How am I honest in my own understanding of myself, and what I want to address to my professors, in a way that’s truly authentic to the help I need and can feasibly get from them? Is that just my responsibility to close the gap?  I say nothing because I don’t have the words to ask. 

Quite frankly, all this self-analysis makes the inside of my head feel too loud, and I can’t live like that all the time, much less be 100% functional. I’ve built up levels of perfectionism and people-pleasing that are unsustainable, and similar to Steven, I’m starting to lose myself in attempting to keep it all together. I almost can’t tell anymore what I’m doing because I genuinely love to do it, and what I’m doing to fulfill the expectation of others.

This is a lot of stress and guilt and distress for one body to hold and it’s manifesting itself in odd ways that are hard to manage.  It’s dawning on me that throughout my 20s and probably further, one of the hardest obstacles I’ll face may be in realizing that I’m not the person that I thought I was or that others think and made me believe I was.  In fact, I do have issues, like anyone else, and it’s my responsibility to manage my reactions and how I deal with them.

Maybe there is something poetic in the fact that I returned to a show I only casually watched in my childhood to have such deep self-reflection in so many years later. In any case, I will probably be watching the show from the beginning over my fall break!