Trauma is in the past and I feel great and am making good decisions!

Note: there is some mention of cults and bodily functions

I am strangely doing really well overall. I feel emotionally healthy. I am making really good, wise-mind decisions.

I actually applied to a job and had two rounds of interviews and was offered the job!! It is very exciting! But there are also some things that didn’t feel quite right to me. And then when I got the formal job offer letter, it was a long contract, which I wasn’t expecting. I had been planning on going to a training for the job this weekend and starting, like, now (part-time, I’m still in school).

BUT I listened to my gut. I realized that saying yes to the job right away is really tempting because having a job and making my own money will make me feel really secure, especially since I am graduating soon, and I want to be more independent from my family (rely on their money less), and this job would guarantee that I would have something to do with my time and (what seems like) a good group of people to spend time with. So, I was tempted, and I was able to figure out and acknowledge why.

I also did a little google searching and was reminded that it’s okay to not say yes to a job offer right away and to take time to think about things. And to take time to figure out if the job is something I actually want to do. I was thinking that if I hate it, I can just leave, but one video said that if you leave a job after not being there long, it can have a “black mark” on your resume. I hadn’t thought of that. And some parts of the contract “survive” even after “termination,” apparently, so I could still be affected by things in the contract even if I left.

Anyway I was feeling some peer pressure and time pressure to start now, and there are some things I don’t like in the contract about not saying bad things about the company, and non-disclosure agreements and non-compete agreements. I was also getting some pyramid scheme vibes, like they were trying to recruit me right now to meet some quota. I once accidentally joined an intense Christian group that bordered on a cult, and this was reminding me of that whole experience.

I made the really good decision to just email and ask my questions, and to postpone doing the training instead of doing it literally tomorrow. I will have time to talk to my family and friends and maybe other people and get their opinions before officially committing to this.

I feel like this is a really reasonable thing to do. I didn’t let myself get peer pressured into joining too soon, and I’m also not ditching the whole thing and ghosting my interviewer without an explanation. I’m cautiously, maturely, wise-mindedly investigating more so that I can make an informed decision. I am listening to my emotions and checking the facts on them. This feels really good!! 🙂

And I also feel like, it will probably all turn out okay. Non-disclosure agreements are probably standard. I’m just new to them. And so it’s okay for me to ask questions and get more information and make sure I’m okay with stuff. And if I’m not okay with stuff, I can just decline the job offer. People won’t harass or pressure or keep calling me if I decide not to join. They are professional people in a real, reputable company and not sketchy bordering-on-a-cult members. Either way I am safe and can make a good decision and be okay.

It feels really good!

Elsa dramatically throwing away her crown and singing, “The past is in the past!” (Screenshot from this Disney UK Let It Go Frozen Sing-along video)

Other stuff in my life is going well, too. I made some other good decisions. 🙂 Last semester, classes on zoom were kinda awful, and I was not in a good place. But, there were two classes that I did enjoy and did do well in. They were both project-based classes, they both had group projects, and they both had me do stuff with my hands, instead of staring at a computer screen.

So, this semester, I made the really good decision to take entirely project-based classes. And I am loving it! I am thriving! I am so sick of zoom and cannot stand zoom lectures anymore. And I don’t have to! This semester I don’t have any problem sets or exams! It’s all project assignments, presentations, small quizzes, and reports.

Projects seem much more meaningful than normal school. I understand that I have to do the steps along the way in order to end up at the final product of the project. Like, I’m building a robot (!!), and it makes perfect sense to me that I have to design the parts, figure out what hardware I will need, test things out, etc in order to build the final robot. So, I’m motivated to do these things. I don’t procrastinate them. I’m even excited to do them. I’ll do them in my free time, or at 3 am, because I want to. And having group members that I am accountable to helps a lot, too. And it gives me built-in social time. Less loneliness for me! And regular, scheduled times to see people!

Yayyyy! I am feeling pretty good about myself, lol. I am proud. Of course I have to acknowledge that a lot of this is luck, too. If this wasn’t my senior spring, I probably wouldn’t have much, or any, say in what classes I got to take. And there was some luck in how I found this job, and privilege that I was able to go to a career fair to find this company.

I got an unpleasant reminder recently that my wellbeing is largely based on luck and not the hard work I do. I had been feeling better, physically, for a couple months. I was eating dairy-free probiotic yogurt every day, and my diarrhea had disappeared. But then my yogurt was too close to the back of the fridge, and the temperature was too low, and it all froze. I don’t really know what happened to the yogurt chemically/biologically, but the consistency changed, and it made me gag, and the bits I did eat didn’t seem to help my stomach like they used to (maybe the good bacteria died). My diarrhea came back. All that “hard work” went down the drain. It was sad, but it was a good reminder that there are things out of my control. The probiotics were what was helping me, not that I was going on walks or just magically making myself less stressed or healthy or something.

So, conversely, when things are going well, I want to be careful to not be proud of “how well I’m doing.” I can be happy that I’m doing well, and I can celebrate it. I can be proud of actions I took or decisions I made. But it’s not healthy for me to be proud of things that are out of my control. Because then when they go wrong, it feels like it’s my fault, when it’s not. It’s still out of my control.

So right now, when lots of things seem to be going well: I am proud of how I handled this job offer, and I am happy that I was offered the job in the first place. I am proud of the healthy habits I am keeping up with (like the action of eating my yogurt!), and I am happy that not many things are going wrong right now and that I am doing well overall.

Affirmation #19 — In this moment, I am safe

In this moment, I am safe.

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Look around yourself. Do you see any immediate threats? If so, please flee, fight, or do what you need to do to stay safe, but otherwise, hey! You’re okay! No one knows what the next moment will bring, but right now, you are safe.

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When I’m in a car and start to get scared that we’re going to tip over when we go around a curve or something, I look around and see that in this moment, we are not tipping over. In this moment, we are safe. Then the next moment comes. I look around. We’re still safe. The next moment. We’re still safe. And then my anxiety starts to go down.

Judgments and shame about applying to jobs

I’ve been struggling lately with a lot of judgments about myself. It seems that whatever I do, there’s a voice in the back of my head telling me what’s wrong with it.

I have a lot of judgments about where I think I “should” be in life, about things I think I “should” have done already, about the school I go to, about my mental health and its effects on my life… so many.

I feel afraid to put myself out in the world for fear of people gossiping about me, thinking negative things about me, and then ostracizing me.

I’m trying to apply to internships and jobs for the summer. I feel ashamed that I haven’t had a job before. When I think about applying to certain jobs, I immediately discount them because I immediately think of the negative things my family could say. I go to a “good” college, and people seem to expect more from me as a result. If I got a “typical” summer job, I can imagine that my mom would not approve. I can imagine her stare down at me and her sigh of disappointment, and then the twenty minute speech. I think she would either tell me to “just relax,” or to get a better internship and then give me a list of names or websites and tell me to email people… (“just relaxing” and staying cooped up in the house all day has made me really depressed in the past; emailing even one person is really intimidating for me and takes a lot of work; plus, I’ve already emailed people)

My purpose in getting a job this summer is to 1) make money and to 2) get out of the house.

Making money helps my long-term goals by making me less financially dependent on my parents, as I am now. I could also start saving for life expenses after college or maybe for grad school, if I decide I want to try to go there at some point. (Right now, my parents are paying for college, which I definitely appreciate, but I would likely be paying for grad school on my own.) I could also have “spare cash” to spend on eating out with friends and birthday gifts, and I wouldn’t have to feel so guilty every time I used my parents’ money.

Getting out of the house would help me get away from my family, be productive, have something to occupy my mind with, and possibly help me to socialize with people beyond my family. I suppose a theme in this is that I want to be more independent from my family!

So, I have good reasons for wanting a job (or internship). I’m sure that this is what I want. It’s valid to want a job.

I’m still in school, so of course I don’t have lots of experience. I’m still qualified in other ways. I’ve done things in the past. I’ve had a lot of schooling! I’m an okay person. I have some good qualities.

Some of my shame around not having experience comes from the fact that I spent most of last summer doing a partial hospital program for my mental health while my friends had jobs or internships, or both. But I can’t tell that to an employer, even though I was working hard and being quite productive, even though I wasn’t just hanging out at home as I normally tell people.

Sighhh

I think I just have to do my best with what I have now, knowing that the work I did last summer on my mental health was very valuable, even if I can’t tell everyone that.

Another thing I feel shame about is general formal interactions with people. I don’t know the proper etiquette. No one’s ever taught me! So I feel shame when I think I may have done something wrong, or when I’m not sure how to act, when to send an email, what to write, etc.

Shame signals that you have broken a group’s value and could be excluded, so when I’m applying for jobs and I could be rejected, yes, shame is justified! Shame is justified, but the intensity that I feel it is probably not effective. It’s probably more effective to send an imperfectly worded email than it is to send no email at all. The intense shame would prevent me from sending any email, but a little shame could make the email better.

Agh, it’s hard! And getting rejected is hard, too! I will keep trying… maybe not forever, because this is exhausting, but for a little more…

So, skills that will help:

• checking the facts and doing what’s effective
• self validation
• FAST (especially Stick to your values)
• fake it ’til you make it / opposite action
• being nonjudgmental towards myself, noticing judgments and saying “a thought is just a thought,” not necessarily believing judgments

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I was writing (most of) this at the time that I was struggling with this issue, in more of the way I write things in my journal than how I write them on this blog. So, if this seems a little unclear, like it’s jumping from one idea to another, or like some loose ends weren’t tied up, that’s why. I did try to go back and clarify things so that it can make some sense to people-who-aren’t-me.

And, a couple of weeks after I started writing this post, I am very happy to say that I did finally get a job!!! 🙂 It is not an internship, and it’s not full-time, but it will get me out of the house and earn me money, and I think it’ll be fun, too! I’m looking forward to it. 🙂 And if I find some unpaid, part-time internship, I could potentially do both things and still accomplish my goals of earning money and getting out of the house. Wooh! It actually worked out! 🙂

Alternatives to “Everyone hates me!”

Instead of jumping to the conclusion that everyone hates me, here are some more realistic and positive explanations.

When someone hasn’t texted me back:

• They saw it when they were in the middle of something and forgot to respond.
• They saw it when they were busy and want to take the time to write a thoughtful response.
• The message didn’t deliver because either I or they lost cell service or wifi.
• They forgot about it.
• They are waiting to confirm something else first before replying.
• They forgot about it, remembered, and now feel so guilty for not replying sooner that they’re anxious about the whole thing and aren’t replying at all.
• They’re going through a really busy time and have a lot on their plate.
• They’re going through a really stressful time and have a lot on their mind.
• They’re not checking their phone.
• They’re on a camping trip in a place without cell service.
• They got a new phone.
• They’re out of the country and not receiving texts.

When someone didn’t smile back at me:

• They’re caught up in their own thoughts.
• They’re worried about what they’re going to say next.
• They didn’t see me.
• They thought I was looking at someone else.
• They’re tired.

The vast majority of the time, people don’t hate me. There are many good reasons why someone would not reply to a text or smile back at me that have nothing to do with what they think of me.

Do you have any to add? Or any other situations where you might jump to a conclusion and there’s a more reasonable explanation?