That Anxious Feeling

Today was just one of those days.  If it could go wrong, it did. The system was down. I had to go into the office. My sleep study was canceled. My tablet stopped working.  My anxiety is cranked to a 10.  That last one is what got me to pull this entry up and work on it some more.

Self-doubt colors everything that I do.  Who I am when I’m just myself isn’t enough.  I need to be more, to do better, and to overachieve just to feel almost adequate. 

I push myself at work to go above the job description and do more, and when I fail at my own standards I feel like I let everyone down. I can’t stand the idea that I may let someone down. Even when I receive praise, I have a hard time believing that I’ve genuinely done a good job on something. Instead it feels like appeasement – like I did a good job trying at something, or like I got credit for participating.  Today was horrid with the system being down and having to go in. It didn't matter that the system was what was causing the issue - I still felt like I wasn't doing enough.  Like it was my fault that something was wrong with the system. The whole thing left me drained.

Hanging out with friends makes me much more anxious then it should. I have a hard time believing that anyone wants to hang out with me because they like me. In my mind, I have to bring something more than just myself for you to like me.  When you don’t show up, I assume that I’m the reason. When you do show up and you look bored, that’s my fault too. I may joke about it, but only to hide the fact that I believe what I’m saying. If someone's mood is off - it had to be something that I said. And more often than not I walk away feeling like I did something wrong.

History has taught me that people can be used under the guise of friendship and then thrown away once they aren’t needed anymore.  People can laugh at their jokes, and share secrets in the hopes of finding something out, or getting ahead. Then one day you wake up and those people are gone, taking the friendship that you thought you had away.  And even though you’re hurt from their betrayal, it’s even worse because there’s no one to tell your problems to. Because the person that you told your worries and pain to is now the one that caused it.

And maybe in the present it’s all in my head – maybe it’s all my anxiety getting the best of me.  But that doesn’t make it any better. Instead it just seems to remind me of another way that I’m failing. And it doesn’t make the self-doubt better.  If anything it eats away at it more – making it worse. Reminding me that I’m the one that’s faulty, and any pain that I experience is my own doing.  Because I wasn’t enough in the past, if I was then they wouldn’t have used me. Because I’m not enough today, and I need to be more in the hopes of not being left.

Friendships, relationships, and even work.  They're things that I struggle with all the time. I'm single because I'm not worth anyone's time. I do things on my own because no one wants to do them with me. I don't do enough at my job because I can't do it all.

And I'm exhausted by it all.