Fear Of Being Well

Started by Bach, February 25, 2021, 03:04:16 AM

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Bach

This is something I've been thinking about a lot lately. I have a fear of feeling good and being well. I've come to understand that when I was a kid the safest thing for me around the mother was to be a little sad and a little unwell. Not TOO unwell, because the mother would be annoyed when it turned out to be something normal for a child and not anything life-threatening, but definitely not healthy and happy because the mother would be even more annoyed by that. Either way, her annoyance would lead to rejection and berating, and now I'm not emotionally comfortable unless I'm a little sick or a little down.  If I was a little sick or a little down, I might get mild sympathy and maybe some ice cream or a small gift if she was in a benevolent mood, and would be left alone/ignored (i.e. not abused) if she wasn't. Feeling good or happy or well is TERRIFYING, because once in a great while that was okay, but it usually led me into trouble, and I never knew how or when or why I would get a bad reaction. I've been talking about it with my therapist, and tapping on it but so far it feels like it is only getting worse. Some of that might have to do with the time of year and with my birthday coming up. I hope so. This is all just too much.

rainydiary

Bach, I experience this too and it has been on my mind of late also.  I appreciate you articulating your experience because it helped me see how I was always trying to "guess" the right state which definitely couldn't be too sad or I would be punished but too happy or feeling good would also be punished.  What a messed up way for a child to be raised.

These days I try to notice when I feel good but mostly notice that I am almost actively trying to make myself feel bad or find drama or whatever because it still feels unsafe to feel good.  The best I can right now is physical - during exercise or yoga I am very aware of how to make myself feel better and do my best to feel good then.  Emotionally though....still work to do.

I think what you notice about the approaching birthday could be important.  There are holidays and events that I tend to react to in this way too.  I hope that you discover some helpful things in response to your questions. 

Bach

rainydiary, I want to express my gratitude for your understanding and your response. I didn't know whether I was making any sense at all. Although I hurt for you having had to experience things that would give you that understanding, it's reassuring to know that it's a real thing and not just a crazy Bach thing. Somehow that heartens me to believe that continuing to process this response will help me develop strategies to lessen its burdens. I accept that I will not be able to rid my life of sickness but I really really would like to at least be able to feel good about feeling good when I'm fortunate enough to experience that,

Thanks again for your reply. If you're good with hugs, please accept this one :hug:

rainydiary

Bach, I appreciate your response.  I agree - it is helpful to hear the stories of others here and be like "Ah, it isn't only me!"  And then in the same turn to have a heart full of empathy and compassion because we know what the other is going through. 

I haven't done this for myself but came across this idea through my work.  The activity is to create a "feel good menu."  I think the idea is to list things that help you feel good.  Part of this I think is learning what feels good to us and tolerating it.  I would be curious to see my list written down.  For now I am in a place of realizing when I may be doing something that doesn't feel so good and seeing how I can adjust to feel better.  That sometimes goes ok, but it is still effortful. 

I hope you find some ease today. 

Alter-eg0

That makes so much sense, Bach.

For me personally, getting better (when I was still deep in therapy, clinics, medication, depression, eating disorders, etc) was absolutely terrifying. Mostly because for me, being ill had become a way to hide from the world. If I was ill, nobody could expect anything from me. Nobody could expect me to be a functional adult. Nobody could hold me responsible for anything. I didn't have to move in with my life. And I didn't need to have boundaries: my illness was my boundary.
I remember when I started to recover, that I cursed the fact that I was feeling better. That weird phase of discovering that you want to live, and that you want things from life, but you're scared. And that feeling that once you're considered recovered, people probably all expect you to be better and happy all the time. Like you can't have hard days anymore.
Which obviously isn't true, but it feels that way.

Also, I didn't want to hope. Because then i'd have something to lose. And my illness was also a way to get connection (mainly in the form of people going through the same thing) and to feel "special". Those were things I didn't really have other ways to go about. I never learned to get connection or attention in healthy ways.

I still feel this way sometimes. When things get hard, it would be so much easier to be able to retreat back into that cave. But now I feel like I can't do that anymore. I actually have to deal with things, and be an adult (which...well, honestly, who doesn't want not to be an adult sometimes, haha).

We just need to keep in mind that every behavior has a function, a positive intention at it's core. It's built to meet a need, however unhealthy the means may be.
And even if you don't like it, it deserves to be handled with compassion and respect. In the end that makes it easier to find new ways.

So yeah,

Bach

Quote from: Alter-eg0 on February 26, 2021, 07:52:26 PM
That weird phase of discovering that you want to live, and that you want things from life, but you're scared. And that feeling that once you're considered recovered, people probably all expect you to be better and happy all the time. Like you can't have hard days anymore.
Which obviously isn't true, but it feels that way.

This is so well said, and really sums up my struggle for the past 15 years, ever since I discovered that there were other ways than pharmaceutical medications to treat my depression and anxiety and started a quest to find which ones would work for me.  I've learned enough by now to have identified that this fear of being well underlies everything, is completely insidious and has been bringing me down way deep in my subconscious for pretty much my whole life.  I wrote this post the other day after one of those thoughts bubbled up just enough for me to "hear" it and realise its significance before it sank back down and pulled my mood down with it.  Having had that opportunity to consciously observe that process was really eye-opening, and I wanted to make sure to express it before I either forgot or thinking about expressing it became too scary.  And then there's this:

Quote from: Alter-eg0 on February 26, 2021, 07:52:26 PMAlso, I didn't want to hope. Because then i'd have something to lose.

I've known for a while that the fear of being well is an issue for me, but now with this insight into how it sneaks up in my brain, I've also got a much better understanding of how I can rationally circumvent it, and how hard it is to do that, and it's just a big messy feedback loop of "AAAAAAHHHH!!! IT'S EASIER TO JUST BE SICK!!!!"

So, yeah  ;)