Everyone you’ll ever encounter is struggling against great odds – whether they’re a pauper or a king, an optimist or a pessimist, the queen of sanity or a fool. We, each of us, battle daily to conquer our fears and vulnerabilities, and to answer that which lies beyond us. There is nothing so sure in any of us than that we are unsure.
So do you ever think the goals we set each other are too high? I’m not saying we shouldn’t reach as far as we can but more that for those of us who struggle with life sometimes goal setting can be a project in itself. Have you ever tried to set yourself a realistic goal when you’re unwell? For those that don’t have a mood disorder or similar mental issues I can only describe it as something like filling your mouth with peanut butter then being told to give a lecture, now, immediately, in front of a crowded room.
You see, when you have a mental issue of some kind you end up in the oddest situations. You can be going along great guns then you’ll wake up in the morning and find yourself in some strange and barren place that looks nothing like where you left off the night before. When you’re a bit nuts then truly the dots don’t join up for you all the time, at least not in the obvious way. There is almost always a connection between emotion and reality, no matter how crazy you might be but finding it isn’t a simple thing.
Mind, I do think you can apply this line of thinking to your life even if you’re not a bit off balance to begin with. It never hurts to treat yourself, and those you encounter with greater care. Your reasons for doing so may be somewhat different but it’s the same deal, really. Is it not harder to bury your head in the sand than to face the fight we all fight with every ounce of reason we possess? If we do not face it, if we turn away then there is less of each one of us in the world, and so less firm ground upon which any one of us can stand and say: I am not afraid.
So when I speak I do not aim so much to be kind as to go gently in this world, taking a hand in mine where it is offered. I search, and I struggle and when I grow weary of the fight I want not so much love itself as to be filled with the knowledge of love, to be sure that relief will come in the solace found in company, to understand something of comfort when I look into someone’s eyes, less than to be understood in this instant.
Sitting where the waves meet the shore I think to myself that there is no worry so large that the tide cannot wash it away. That tide is built between us, in the rush of emotion that passes through each of us at the brink of day. There is nothing that it cannot soothe, nothing so unknown to any heart that it should forever be borne alone, no heaven or hell so distant to imagination that it cannot be made comprehensible.
In the unmasking of the troubles we face we can know one another a little better, and then the odds we battle are not so momentous, nor the goals we set so impossible because what has been glimpsed once can be seen again. Maybe not by the same eyes, and perhaps not in the same way but with the same potential if we share compassion, and consolation and peace.
I have always set my goals too high and way above what I would expect of anyone else. However, normally I am excellent of making a list of realistic to do lists. But, since I’ve been unwell (I like that word today), I cannot make realistic to do lists. Luckily, my husband and especially my therapist remind me. My therapist keeps telling me that I try to act like and can’t accept that I am a trauma victim. Even, writing it seems unreal. So, I have the same unrealistic expectations for being unwell…yes, I am very hard on myself…that is why I’ve been in therapy soooooooooooo long. :-)
“There is nothing so sure in any of us than that we are unsure.”
That phrase is so simple, but it makes so much sense.
Great post.
A brilliant post, much food for thought, expressed with such clarity. I often find that the people that give me most concern in matters personal,political and religious, are those who fail to acknowledge their doubts and uncertainties!
Although I’ve always been something of an idealist/perfectionist, it is only since the advent of my current health problems (ME/CFS) that I’ve started, of necessity, to set more realistic goals for myself.
Accepting ones limitations is the beginning of liberation.
Goals? I’m sorry. Footie, Ice Hockey anyone? *rolls eyes*
I have almost come to treat that word with great disdain. Well, there are a few words up there but I am referring to “goals.” I’ve never been very good at setting them at all! Much less achieving the ones that may have been set. Well, the significant ones? The ones that I feel mattered?
Nonetheless, even if they aren’t consciously set they are achieved. You live your life. You do achieve successes whether you realise it or not and I think that is the most difficult thing when you have a mood disorder or any other dx that makes you a nutbar. We can not see them for whatever reason we feel like crap at any given time. To whatever degree of crap we feel. In fact, we may not even know we feel like crap.
Anyone confused yet?
Here’s an example that might illustrate it. I’m not sure.
Someone once left me a comment on my blog and they said that they were “jealous of my successes.” I just about fell off whatever I was sitting on at the time!
A) I do not think I am really all that successful! Mentalness: I feel like crap even though I am stable, not upset, I am not in the deep pit of depression where I would feel terrible! In my mind: I am not successful, therefore I feel like crap. Cogito ergo sum.
B) Commenter felt like mental crap because they felt some kind of inferiority? Even though it was veiled as a compliment? And yes, commenter was a mentalcase as well! Not sure but I think commenter may have been depressed so knowledge of feeling like crap at the time.
C) We crazies just love to compare ourselves with everyone in the world and feel we should be “better,” don’t we? Oh, that’s just so much fun… Yet another way to feel like crap.
Goals too high? Wowee. Wrong person to ask on that one. At least for me regarding my own life. Perhaps if I have, when I have, I’ve surely fallen flat on my face! More feeling like crap.
Gee, have I said “crap” enough times?
If you are seriously unwell, I don’t think there can be much goal setting beyond trying to get yourself back to a healthier state, trying to feel well or a bit well or just a teensy bit well. Even if it’s dragging yourself out of bed to get a glass of water if you are thirsty. That may seem like more of a goal in the immediate sense or not even one at all. However, as I said above, it may not be a conscious goal. But it is actually achieving a goal of self-care; even if it’s just a wee one. That’s actually big time! Self-care is really important. You could have just chosen to lie there and remain completely parched.
Realistic goals can only begin to be set when you are feeling well and/or stable. At least that is what I think–or on the road to getting there. You still may not feel all that great but maybe after you start getting out of bed you may have a shower or something.
The trick is, start off slowly! Oh…soooo slowly. It is only then will your confidence build–or have a chance to do so. And it is so very difficult because our sense/s of confidence/s are shattered so easily.
I hope this makes…was it even relevant? I really blathered on here.
@CC – Is it just me or does that seem like a really common thing? To expect that much more of ourselves when we cut others as much slack as they need? I know for me it’s a lot about denying I need at all. I hate admitting that I might need, yet I am learning to be alright at asking for very specific needs to be met. Funny how that works.
@James – Yeah, it just seemed to fit in my head. Good it did in yours too =)
@Malcolm – It’s interesting you put it in terms of freedom. I mean, that’s what we’re talking about here really. Not just emotional health but balance and liberty to be as we really are. It’s knowing who that person is that’s the trick. It’s hard to feel free when you’re uncertain, yet as you say those who deny their uncertainty run greater risks than those who at least acknowledge it.
@PA – Indeed you do live your life. You go on, whether you’re setting goals consciously or not. Sometimes you feel like a blind and stumbling fool while you’re at it but all the same you’re at it.
One thing I learnt in many hours of (largely enormously irritating) cognitive-behavioural therapy was that I often have really big goals whirring around in the back of my mind even when I can barely manage to crawl out of bed to go pee. That somewhere in that darkness is a storm brewing, a storm filled with some pretty big and strange ideas about the way the world is/should be and who we are in it. So I think that’s maybe what I’m referring to more when I talk about the goals we set for one another. I kind of think of it as the backdrop on which we pin our storyboard.
It’s a fruitless task to attempt to realise these things when you are that low (or that high) but in the aftermath you can. And as you say, slow and steady, baby steps.
It’s cool the question got you thinking =) That was my only real aim in posing it. Goals mean a lot of different things to different people. I’m not so task-specific about goals as some, I don’t suppose. I rather think of them as general ideas pinned to my mental dartboard, and if I ever hit anywhere on the board then I’m doing bloody fantastic. I tend to do better when I imagine George Bush’s head on said dartboard ;)
I really didn’t know where I’d end up with the thoughts I had, and still don’t really. I’m still mulling this all over. There’s a lot of ground to cover, no?
While I was reading what you wrote, I felt like a deer caught in headlights…basically, it means that you are right!!!
Yes, lots of ground to cover…it’s endless…it really is. I think that’s why I closed my comment saying what I did. Blather…make sense?
And I knew exactly where you were headed with the dartboard reference. Absolutely.
hmmm …. LOTS to say here …
just a quick comment: when i have those times when my mood changes all of a sudden, i’m actually grateful: then it’s crystal clear to me that i’m dealing with whacky body/brain chemistry again. it helps me to understand intellectually that i am sick and need to do something about it (i.e. i can actually set a little goal: do A, B and C to at least mitigate the situation). i find it much worse when it slowly creeps up on me.
Well, I won’t say I’m altogether grateful, Isabella but there’s a fair bit of relief, something like that, for me. The knowledge that it can be fixed, relatively easily, is good for sure.
But yes, there is also reason to be thankful that sometimes it is just that obvious. There are probably a lot of people who wouldn’t get any help at all, whose diagnosis would be missed, if at least sometimes it wasn’t so plain and sudden.