Fear and faking
When is it ok to stop? When can you say that no, that’s the limit, and be confident that you aren’t just being lazy or making a fuss? How do you tell if you’re being a hypochondriac, a drama queen, attention seeking with a low pain threshold and no ability to endure?
I have found that mostly I can push through pain, exhaustion and illness alike. It comes at a cost, as I get ever more tired and eventually mired in depression, but it can be done. Today, it took me an hour to work up the will to haul my tired and hurting body out of the duvet, but here I am. With the mantra ‘it’s just pain, it doesn’t matter’ I have pushed through all kinds of things. Memorably, I went to seven (out of the necessary ten) centimetres dilated pre-birth with no pain relief, and the people around me treating me like I was making a fuss, and probably over reacting about saying it hurt. In hindsight I think if I’d been screaming they might have taken me more seriously.
Through much of my life, the message has been simply that I’m a lazy hypochondriac and all that other stuff, and if I’d just pull myself together and make an effort I’d be fine. There is nothing wrong with me, apart from my attitude problem. The one time I tried to talk to a doctor about the exhaustion and the things I struggle with, I got it from him, too, and have not been able to face going back for another round of humiliation and blame. I’ve been told (not by professionals) the muscle pain is because I am too tense, and if I made the effort to relax, I would not have a problem. And yet I watch people make, what seems to me to be epic amounts of fuss over injuries so minor I wouldn’t even mention them.
I do not know how you tell when it’s ok to say ‘I can’t’ because when it comes down to it, mostly I can. Sure, my hands are hurting today, and I’m thinking slowly, but I can write a bog post. I can sort my email and do a few jobs. If there was something more important to do, I could push and get it done. As a consequence of that, and because I’m used to being told I’m not trying hard enough, I find it hard to stop. The last few years have brought me, for the first time in my life, people who suggest I should be gentler with myself. People who tell me that it is ok to rest, and that I am not lazy. I have trouble reconciling these perceptions, and I feel like a fake. I fear that the people who are being nice to me will eventually realise that I am a lazy hypochondriac, and the warmth will go away.
Some of this is about the balance between comfort and utility. For most of my life, the only thing that has seemed to matter is how much use I could be. I am surprised when that’s not the size of things. I do not know how to handle it. I hear the people who encourage me to think that my own comfort and feeling of wellbeing has an innate value, and I struggle to know what to do with it. It is the difference between being a useless thing, and being a valued person.
Machines are not supposed to stop, and if they do, you apply the appropriate duct tape equivalent and keep going. People are not machines, but if the people in your life do not allow you to be a person, it can be hard hanging on to that. Permission to be a bit inconvenient now and then, is a powerful thing.
