Affirmation #26 — I am doing my best, AND I can improve (with a tangent on racism)

I am doing my best, AND I can improve!

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At any given time, people are doing the best that they can with the skills and knowledge that they have in the situation they are in.

This affirmation is helpful to me in lots of different contexts: in therapy/treatment/skills, in school, in anything new I’m trying… It’s also a helpful way to frame reminders to other people when I want to give them constructive criticism. For example, I understand that my mom is doing her best as a mom and is busy with lots of things and is already cooking a lot, AND, I would like to have more food in the fridge that I can eat (I have digestive issues and I can’t eat a lot of the stuff she makes). 

I’ve also been thinking about this a lot recently in the context of racism, bias, and systemic racism and other issues in our society. I am a white woman, and while I think I am doing my best, I know that there are ways I can improve, too. 

It helps me to think of the things I’ve done well in the past so that 1) I give myself credit for the good things I am already doing, 2) I know which things to do more of, and 3) maybe I can see where I am lacking. 

So, in the context of racism, these are some good choices I think I’ve made:

• I chose to go my college in part because it has a diverse student body.
• I decided that I want to live in a town that is diverse when I grow up (the town I grew up in and currently live in is over 95% white).
• I took a class this past semester which discussed systemic disenfranchisement, colonization, etc. and where all the books we read were written by people from historically underrepresented groups (black, brown, female, gay, etc.). I wrote papers on these topics and discussed them in class with my peers. 
• I took a Afro-Cuban dance class and discussed it similarly. 
• I bought the book Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates several years ago (but haven’t gotten around to reading it yet). 
• At some point in the past, I tried (unsuccessfully) to explicitly follow black creators on youtube.
• In high school, I was part of a club intended to start conversations about race. However, I didn’t really participate. 
• I took an Unconscious Bias Workshop offered at my college a few years ago. One thing that I took away from the workshop was the idea to fill out a “Bias Reflection” once a week. I’ve only written in it a few times, but I think about it more often. 
• I’ve had some conversations about race with my friends.
• I watched the tv show “Black-ish” for a bit because I wanted to understand others’ experiences more. 
• I am writing this now… writing and publishing this is outside of my comfort zone! 

And here are some things I can improve on:

• Well, I could actually read that book, haha. I could also look into other forms of media like youtube (again) or podcasts or music, since reading seems to be kinda hard for me. 
• I can be more aware of supporting black-owned stores. Until this past week, I was not aware that that was something that I could do.
• I’d like to get more comfortable talking about race. So, I want to have more conversations with my friends about this. I want to be comfortable asking “is this okay?” about something I’ve said or done, and questioning others when they say racist, biased, insensitive, or hurtful things. (<– I think I’ve actually gotten better recently at saying, “what?” “what do you mean?” “that makes me uncomfortable” “I don’t like that” “oof” “yikes” “are you sure” about insensitive things people say. I can continue doing this more and keep an eye out in particular for insensitive comments relating to race.)
• I can take more classes like these ones and keep talking about the issues with my peers. 
• I like the ideas on this website: https://www.whiteaccomplices.org I can try do some of those. 
• I can donate to racial justice organizations. 
• I am in a leadership position in a sustainability club at my school. As a club, we have talked about Environmental Justice and Climate Justice and how environmental issues and Climate Change are ethical issues because they disproportionately affect (and will affect) people of color and people of lower socio-economic status. We tried to organize events in collaboration with a Black organization and a low-income club (which didn’t happen because of the pandemic). As a leader in this club, I want to organize more events like this. I also want to help our club become more racially diverse. We currently do not have many people with black skin who attend meetings. Though we explicitly say often that everyone is always welcome, I want to change the club so that black people do actually join and come. I’m not sure how to do that though. The partnerships on events might help. 
• I want to reach out to my congressman and others in government more. I could try to reach out about police brutality. That’s somewhere I could start. (though it sounds intimidating!)

I like the concept of being “anti-racist” instead of just “not racist.” That feels like a good goal, something that I can work towards. I’m on a journey now. 🙂

I have always cared a lot about other people and wanted things to be inclusive and just for all, but recently I have learned about more ways to actually make those things happen. 

I really like that it finally feels acceptable for me, as a white person, to talk about this stuff. In the past, I felt that I couldn’t contribute to discussions on race or racism or that it wouldn’t be right for me to talk, but the truth is that everyone has to be engaged in order for change to happen. I am part of society, too. And if there are things that I could improve on or could learn more about, it’s easier to change if I am actually talking about it. If I am unintentionally “part of the problem,” making things worse or even unintentionally hurting people, then I need to know that and address it. 

If anyone has feedback for me on how I am talking about this, I’d love to hear it! Or if you have recommendations for things to listen to or watch, I’d love to hear them, too! 🙂 Or ideas for things I can do to improve! 

Welp, that ended up taking a bit of a tangent. The message is still the same though: I am doing my best, AND I can improve! 

A key part of this dialectic is accepting where you are now without judgment. I am trying to click the publish button, and a lot of judgments are coming up. I feel like I’m not doing “enough.” I feel like I will be judged by the goals I set for not being ambitious “enough.” But this is where I am at now, and I can’t expect myself to be perfect instantly. That is unrealistic. Maybe it is sad that I am not already better about these things. Yeah, I think I’m feeling sad. 

I feel like maybe it is not my place to write about this, even though I literally just said that I want to talk about this more, and by writing this, I am doing exactly that. I also don’t want to put the burden on other people by asking them to correct me. But I’ve read this over and don’t see any glaring issues. I can learn through trying. I have to start somewhere. I guess I am being vulnerable. I am feeling vulnerable, and I’m feeling some shame. I hope that people will still accept me. 

Challenges and benefits of getting better

(Note: brief, vague mentions of self harm, eating struggles, deaths, and violence) 

I am happy and proud to say that I have been feeling much better recently!

My PTSD has almost disappeared! I have nightmares less than once week now, and their content is much less violent and traumatic. I can’t remember the last time I had a flashback! I’ve had many fewer intrusive thoughts, too.

I think the main reason for these improvements in my PTSD is that I’ve been doing Prolonged Exposure and directly confronting traumatic memories. I’m proud of this because I’ve put in the work and done things that scared me and were hard to do. I may write about this more later, but it really is remarkable to me how much it has helped.

I have so much more free time in my day now. Being upset took up so much of my days! I have more time available for going to class, doing homework, and hanging out with my friends, and sometimes I even have free time left over after that!

I got grades that I am proud of this semester; I took on a leadership position in a club I’m part of; I even tried flirting with someone I had a crush on!

Getting better is a change, and change can be scary

However, there are still struggles in getting better. It’s new and very different from how the past few years of my life have been. Change of any type is hard and scary for me, even when it’s positive change. There are new things to get used to.

Experimenting with the possibility of dating someone was a very stressful experience for me, even though I’m glad I tried and have grown from it and made a new good friend (I told him I liked him; he said he didn’t like me back, but we’re still good friends). There are a lot of situations I’m not used to being in. Applying for jobs? Having interviews that aren’t for therapy programs?!

It’s scary, but I’m growing. 🙂

Higher expectations for myself

As my mental health improved, my expectations for myself shot up. Before, I called a day a success if I went to all my classes and ate some meals, and I’d be proud of that and pat myself on the back because I knew it had been hard to do. When those things got easier and more routine, I felt that I needed to do more. I thought that since I was doing better, I had to take school more seriously and actually get better grades (in part to make up for the lower ones I’d gotten when I was struggling more). My mental health had been holding me back before, and it wasn’t now, so I felt that there was no excuse to not do well, to not do everything, to not be like my peers.

I didn’t see it at the time, but those were unrealistic expectations. There is a lot of room in-between managing to make it to most classes and getting straight A’s; it’s not strictly one or the other. I expected myself to be perfect all of a sudden. I wanted to be able to make up for all the things I’d missed out on over the years all at once.

Wanting these things did make me more motivated, and I plan to achieve many of the things that I realized I wanted — someday. I have to radically accept that I can’t do everything all at once, and I can’t do everything so fast. I need to be patient with myself. While it’s great that I am getting better and seeing improvements, I’m not fully better. It’s a slow process and something that I need to keep working on.

Not everything gets better

Another thing to radically accept is that there are some things in my life that don’t get better as my mental health gets better. I came home from college recently, and it was a bit of a rude awakening to see my parents arguing just as much as they had been when I left. My improvement hadn’t affected them — of course it wouldn’t, but somehow I just assumed that everything in my life would get better as my mental health improved. That’s not the case.

Therapy also can’t make up for the fact that I have two family members missing in my life. Opposite action can’t bring them back from the dead. I think that I am dealing with the losses better than I was a few months ago (I’m not incapacitated by sadness; I don’t spend most of my days lying on my bedroom floor crying; eating isn’t as much of a struggle), but they are still gone. I am still sad. The grief resurfaces every now and then.

Worries about things worsening

Another challenge is that I worry about my mental health worsening again. Now that I’ve experienced how good things can be, I feel a deeper loss when I’m temporarily feeling worse again. I know all the things I’m missing out on and feel sorry for myself.

When something goes wrong, I also worry that it’s the beginning of the end. Will I go back to being depressed and tormented by nightmares? Good things can’t last forever, right? Is this a temporary blip in my life, or a more lasting change?

If I check the facts on these fears, I can see that the gradual changes I’ve made over the past year have lasted so far. I can see that I have been doing the treatment recommended to me by multiple therapists who believed that it would improve my life, and they agree that I have made lots of progress.

Yes, more bad things are bound to happen in my life, but I do have better skills to deal with them now. I haven’t self-harmed in maybe four months? I “graduated” from DBT group, and I use the healthier coping skills that I learned there every day. I can get through things.

Same friends, new relationships?

When I became friends with the people I’m friends with now, I was struggling, and I was looking (consciously or unconsciously) for certain things in friends — sensitive, a good listener, etc. In addition, many of my friends have their own struggles with mental illness. I’ve also stayed in touch with some people I knew from group therapies.

As a result of these things, many of my interactions with my friends were centered around me venting/asking for support, or me providing emotional support to my friends. I was happy and grateful for that, and it enabled me to have deep, intimate friendships, but I’m not struggling as much anymore. What do we talk about now?? What if we can’t relate as much because we’re not in the same dark place anymore? What if my friend liked me because she felt like she was helping me, and now there’s nothing left to be helped? The dynamics have shifted.

I don’t think that any friendships will end over this, but I may end up more distant from certain people, and that makes me sad. I suppose it’s also possible for friendships to evolve as people evolve, and I hope that mine will, because I really do like my friends.

On the other hand, I am also making new friends. Now humor and playfulness are more attractive qualities to me. I want to laugh for a while with a friend more than I want to express to them how badly I’ve been feeling. There is a time and place for both, but I find myself wanting more fun now than I did before. This is another change that is scary for me at times!

My friends enabled my avoidance

Some of my friends also enabled some bad habits that I want to stop doing now. They let me and even encouraged me to avoid things. Part of my exposure therapy is not avoiding things that aren’t objectively dangerous. I don’t want to avoid things anymore, but the message hasn’t sunk in for my friends yet.

Several people know that I hate blood, decapitation, violence, and related things. When there are scenes in movies with those things, they say, “[My Name], don’t look!” They say, “I don’t think you’ll like this movie, it’s not for you.” When I ask, “What are you laughing at on your phone?” they say, “You don’t want to know, you won’t like it, it’s bad, trust me.”

I very much appreciated these warnings at times when I felt like I needed them, but now I feel like I can handle things. I know that avoidance makes my fears stronger. I don’t want to avoid! I am ready to face scary things!

It’s just frustrating that my old habits were so deeply engrained that they spread to my friends, and now I have to change my friends’ habits, too, not just my own.

Overall

Overall, I’m doing so much better now than I was a few months ago. A couple of weeks before final exams, someone asked me how I was doing, and I said “good”! She said, “haha, like the dog in the fire meme?”

“This is fine” meme — image from https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1401347-this-is-fine

Meaning, was I saying that things were fine when I was really super stressed out about finals? I wasn’t! I was serious that I was doing well! As I thought back on the conversation afterwards, I realized that I wasn’t just doing well, I was doing the best I had been in the past two years. That seems quite amazing to me.

I wrote this post because I think I had an idea in my head of “getting better” that was all perfect sunshine and butterflies, and I wanted to express the ways in which getting better is still hard. But the positives definitely outweigh the negatives. 🙂