Does popular, trite advice backfire for the mentally ill?

[voicelessagony2]

Example: "Fake it 'til you make it."

I don't know what motivational speaker I first heard that from, but I have heard it repeated more times than I can count from well-meaning friends, family, and advisors. It always comes up in reference to jobs and career advice.

I only now realize how profoundly easy it was, and still is, for me to internalize advice, and make it a fundamental part of my guiding values. (I have no identity of my own, I am a rag doll made of scraps of other people's passions, hobbies, and pursuits.)

On one hand, my interpretation of this advice (and I'm sure others like it) has helped me get where I am now, a consultant who makes decent money when I'm working, and able to carry on conversations with just about anybody of any rank or status. I'm pretty good at "faking it."

Only now, I have come to realize that after all these years of faking it, I am exhausted. I have faked it, but never really "made it" as the cliche promises. I feel like a fake person. I feel like an imposter on the job.

I failed to really examine that shallow advice and find out what happens next. Exactly how is one supposed to make sure that faking leads to making, and not to unmitigated disaster, or worse, learning how to lie? Or never learning the difference between a lie and a legitimate coping strategy?

[Whobuddy]

Oh, hey, I really hear you on this one! I faked myself right into a life that doesn't feel like it is really mine!

Also, common sense is really not common for me. When someone says That's just common sense, I am thinking Really?, that is news to me.

[flookadelic]

Trite advice is a big turn off for me. It is intellectually lazy on the part of the giver for a start as they are often repeating something rather than thinking about how it really applies in their lives, let alone the lives of others. In worst case scenario's they may even just be trying to make life easier for themselves by fobbing others off with pseudo-wisdom from a motivational poster they happened to come across on Facebook the previous day.

Well, that's my outer critic up and running.

Even the term "Fake it" has no real place in a dialogue that is supposed to contain some wisdom. Yeah, like being artificial is a really, really wise thing to do.

Better to concentrate on the sincerity of one's heart and learn to respect it. That at least has some authenticity to it!

I think for non-traumatised people "fake it til you make it" can be good enough advice...but to a person whose need to somehow fit in, to make it work because we are hiding and frantically paddling under the surface is acute then it can feel more like a life or death strategy. Sometimes I think CPTSD is just like the average human condition ramped up to an insane degree. Everyone hurts but if you are CPTSD Jeezy Creezy does it hurt SO much more! We all have moments of self doubt but if you are CPTSD it feels like the bottom has fallen out of your very being...So coping strategies attain such an importance that we forget they are just coping strategies, not actual principles we can live full, productive lives with.

Unlearning stuff is hard but at least it's easier when it so manifestly fails in it's main mission.

But then do we really feel we have 'made it' until a degree of self-acceptance and healing has taken place? Without that foundation there can be a lot of window dressing...but just being here, discussing stuff amidst people who have and are living this stuff marks, at the very least, a solid start in that direction.

You have a good heart, voiceless :-) and that is more important than any trite advice or results thereof :-) As far as I'm concerned you have most certainly made it.

[voicelessagony2]

Yeah, and what about "You can be anything you want to be." "You can do anything you put your mind to."

They forgot to tell me I have to PICK SOMETHING. I have been, always, and continue to this day, to want to be EVERYTHING AT ONCE. It took a colleague at a job a couple years ago to point out to me, that my professional interests are scattered. He was a very wise soul for his age, and he was as kind and tactful as a person could be in explaining to some nut job that she CAN'T be everything.

I immediately recognized the truth in what he said, and a career coach said basically the same thing about my resume - I need a narrative that makes sense.

But the problem is, nothing about my history makes any sense to me, and I am overwhelmed every time I try.

Personal branding. Online presence. Tag line, elevator pitch, etc. A freaking BUSINESS NAME. All of these things I understand, and I know they build credibility in today's professional world.

But they all shine a glaring spotlight on my absence of identity. I feel like an unprepared soloist, center stage when the curtains go up, millions of people waiting expectantly for something brilliant to happen... but I got nothin'.

I don't lack confidence. I earned my Bachelor's degree with a 3.9 GPA. I could learn rocket science if that's what I decided I wanted to do. But I have zero direction, and I have zero money, and the pressure is on full force for me to just get a freakin' job. And no matter what, I'm guaranteed that any job I manage to get right now, is going to be another "miss," maybe not a failure, but I am not READY.

I guess that's why I'm stewing in resentment over those STUPID inspirational messages that are constantly bouncing around in my head. Reminding me just how easy it is for them. Those who know who they are and have had their job title, their profession, nailed down for years. 

[marycontrary]

Oh Honey, you hit it so right on the head. Sloganeering severely pisses me off to a level that I feel I have to slap someone with a wet noodle.

Can you accept that your memory centers are temporarily injured? That if you give yourself a chance, and lower the stimulation and sympathetic nervous system activation, these centers will repair naturally, and you focus will start coming back....

The more angry you get at yourself, the longer it will take.

God, I sooooooo understand, being a fellow overachiever.

[schrödinger's cat]

I hate those messages.

...they are often repeating something rather than thinking about how it really applies in ... the lives of others. In worst case scenario's they may even just be trying to make life easier for themselves by fobbing others off ...

Exactly.

I've got a theory about this. I live in my head too much, sorry. It's like this. Most people think that things happen on a sliding scale. Take for example a lack of sleep. Most people know what it's like to not sleep enough: you feel tired. So they assume that true insomnia is like that, only worse. They think there's a seamless transition from "mild tiredness" on the left hand side of the scale to "really bad tiredness" on the right hand side.

BUT. On this scale, at some point, there's a red dotted line. When you cross it, things abruptly get a LOT worse. Also, you get new symptoms that weren't there before.

But people in general don't know that. They still think that "zero hours of sleep during the past week" is only a more tired variation of that one time they pulled an all-nighter to prepare for an exam. And for that reason, they'll chirp: "Sleeplessness? Oh yes, I know all about that! Just put your feet up for about ten minutes and you'll be fine!"

So I'm starting to suspect that the only good advice you'll get comes from people who (A) have the same problem, and (B) have the same stage of the same problem. If you're battling a depression, is it helpful if someone who's only ever dabbled in its shallows pipes up about how she "only needed to take a daily hour-long walk" and she was "just fine"? You've crossed so many dotted lines, going from "sadness" to "mild depression" to "ugh this is really bad" to "why can't the world end right now". Each of those dotted lines was a game-changer. Mere "sadness" rules DO NOT APPLY TO YOU. If you're in the armageddon stage of depression, you need to know the armageddon rules. You can snap out of "sadness", sometimes. You can't snap out of armageddon.

CPTSD itself is a prime example of how that works. If you get traumatized enough for long enough, without enough of a reprieve, then eventually things will cross a line. People who have been traumatized in a non-PTSD way will tell you: "you must confront your demons". But maybe you're in that raw, excrutiating, extreme stage of trauma right now. And in that stage, confronting our demons is as sensible (or NOT) as confronting the truck that's just flattened you. You don't confront the truck, in that stage. You move away from the truck. You avoid anything truck-shaped for a really long while, until you've begun to heal. Simple common sense. And if someone chirps up about "oh yes, I know where you're at, my brother once ran over my foot with his tricycle", then - well. They don't know any better.

Aaand I've de-reailed the thread. Back on topic. Sorry, I hope this didn't sound preachy. Thing is, my FOO bombarded me with "good advice" from an early age, and I got yet more "good advice" from people around me. So this was something I just had to figure out. I was just so relieved when I realized all that, I probably still tend to be a bit too over-excited about this thing. Also, it's probably a thing everyone else knew all along.

[flookadelic]

After finding a career I absolutely loved and was good at I had to retire due to my fibromyalgia overwhelming me. I found the career by volunteering at something I thought I'd enjoy and that would be worthwhile. I met amazing people and things just naturally developed from there. You can volunteer to tidy up gardens for the elderly to helping out at soup kitchens to...well...there are so many people who need our efforts. Placing effort where people need it never really feels like a mistake. Volunteering has a certain moral cachet to it which means one is free from criticism whilst doing it, and it can open up a new chapter of ones life. Just a thought.

[mourningdove]

Hi. I just want to say that I love this thread.

I actually once had a therapist push "fake it 'til you make it" and other trite advice on me as if it were therapy, and when I inevitably failed to fake it until I made it, I was shamed for not having tried hard enough and was eventually fired by the therapist! I had tried to talk about my past with her, and her attitude was like, "That's unfortunate, but we need to talk about the present." 

Sadly, I didn't know any better because I was young and she was my first therapist, so I believed that I was a bad person because I was not able to try hard enough to achieve results, and this intensified all the awful feelings that had led me there in the first place. So I have an enormous chip on my shoulder when it comes to all such facile suggestions.

[voicelessagony2]

marycontrary, 

I can absolutely, accept that my memory centers are probably injured, in fact, I didn't really know that was a thing... I mean, I've read about that since I first learned about Pete Walker, and it made sense that I probably have that, but how it manifests in my current situation, still wasn't sure.

However, somehow I seem to instinctively understand that I need this down time right now, and I trust that the game is far from over.

Also, just fyi, I'm fighting more than just my IC... I'm not putting that much pressure on myself, to get back in the game, but my boyfriend is! He tries to understand, (the worst part is that he thinks he DOES understand) but I have been unable - so far - to make him understand why I need this down time, and why I'm not ready yet.

cat,

LOL, don't worry you did not de-rail the thread! Thank you for the description. I've never seen anybody describe it like that, maybe that will help me explain it to my boyfriend or someone else. I do get that people in general just have no frame of reference. It's like trying to explain a migraine to someone who has never had one, and they say, "Oh yeah I get bad headaches too. Why don't you just try (ice packs or any random stupid home remedy)? It helps me!" I want to GIVE them a real migraine! (Idea for a superhero superpower, perhaps?) 

flook, I love the idea of volunteering, and I plan on doing that, but right now I can't even afford the gas to drive back & forth on a regular basis.

Mourningdove, Wow, sounds like you had a horrible therapist! I'm so sad/angry for you having to go through that. I'm so GLAD though, that you eventually figured out that the problem was her, not you! I have not had any therapists that bad, but I have had plenty who just IGNORED this whole PTSD or CPTSD aspect, in fact "helping" me rule it out as a possibility, (nobody ever explained what a flashback was, so I always said I don't have them) and although they helped me see that what happened to me was indeed squarely within the definition of abuse and assault, they did NOTHING to help me recover and re-build myself. So, here I am at age 47 just barely beginning to get the therapy I actually needed over 30 years ago. I had my second session last Thursday. Yeah, I'm a little bitter.

[schrödinger's cat]

Thanks, Voice. I've spent the past few days worried that I was too preachy. Phew. I like this theory a lot, because it finally let me understand why people say stupid things... Before, I was always torn: on the one hand side, people spout callous nonsense; on the other hand, they clearly mean well...

Voice and Mourningdove, my therapist wasn't exactly a paragon of helpfulness either. She didn't really listen, and she triggered me once with a failed attempt at EMDR. Back then, I was really struggling. Every little thing always had huge effects. Every little bit of kindness made a world a lot more bearable. Every little bit of cruelty or callousness made things enormously more difficult.

[rtfm]

I've got a theory about this. I live in my head too much, sorry. It's like this. Most people think that things happen on a sliding scale. Take for example a lack of sleep. Most people know what it's like to not sleep enough: you feel tired. So they assume that true insomnia is like that, only worse. They think there's a seamless transition from "mild tiredness" on the left hand side of the scale to "really bad tiredness" on the right hand side.

BUT. On this scale, at some point, there's a red dotted line. When you cross it, things abruptly get a LOT worse. Also, you get new symptoms that weren't there before.

But people in general don't know that. They still think that "zero hours of sleep during the past week" is only a more tired variation of that one time they pulled an all-nighter to prepare for an exam. And for that reason, they'll chirp: "Sleeplessness? Oh yes, I know all about that! Just put your feet up for about ten minutes and you'll be fine!"

OMG. YES.

So "Fake it till you make it" is my non-traumatized business partner's life advice. Every time he says it I want to hit him.  I want to scream at him that he has no idea what it is to be fake all the time.  But I don't, because he has no idea, and he is genuinely supportive and marvelous and considerate in the rare times I bring up my symptoms with him.  He just can't imagine this world.

The general presumption is that if you pretend to be something long enough, you adopt the habits and mannerisms and, ultimately, do become that thing.  I do think it has its place, even for me it helped a little in some important respects.  The more valid version was "what would happen if you were to act as if that very negative thing you believe weren't true?" and it's part of CBT.  I believe that if I enforce a boundary, I am in actual, physical danger.  I believe that because it was adaptive at the time, when I was a kid, because it was more or less true.  Now it isn't.  How do I unlearn it?  By setting up a different belief system, one that I don't actually believe in yet.

What that does is get me over irrational fear.  That lets me function.  It lets me face every single morning that I have to go to work and say "yes, I am having a panic attack. It is a physical response to a conditioned belief system.  I am going to choose to behave as if I believe the same as everyone else - this is not an existential threat to me."  I have to say that every morning.  The problem is (a) it's still fake and (b) it's still a fight, and (c) for the things I legitimately have reframed with this technique, the problem is that there's nothing to replace the old, problematic beliefs with!  I can pretend as if they are untrue (faking it) but then...what's true to replace it?  There's a void. And so I feel more fake.

I think Schrodinger's Cat nailed it - there's a point in everything where it shifts from being annoying but fixable to being disordered.  Anything that helps annoying but fixable is probably going to be counterproductive and insulting to those who live at the other maladapative end of the spectrum.  For those of us who have lived in fakeness all our lives....well...it's just insulting.

Woo - hit a nerve. Thank you for posting about this though!

[coda]

I think we all understand that a certain amount of platitudes and upbeat truisms figure into getting through polite, non-committal conversation and work situations. But they're not just wholly inadequate when you're really hurting - I agree they literally cause more damage. 

I grew up on phrases that were meant to dismiss, solve and (most of all) negate what I was feeling. There was no end to the greeting-card sentiment solutions, and they put an end to any depth or reason. Most of the time I felt I was dancing on broken legs but smiling was mandatory. It was supposed to be my "umbrella". Retch.

To this day, I am repulsed by the kind of cheap sentimentality that ruled my life and still pervades so much of our culture. The thin, cheery life-coach approach may indeed work for and inspire people who have never known the real depths of ongoing depression or trauma, but it's worse than vapid to those who live with terror. However well meant now, I think it actually re-traumatizes by reminding us of how swiftly and superficially our original problems were minimized. And we are just shamed all over again. 

[voicelessagony2]

I think we all understand that a certain amount of platitudes and upbeat truisms figure into getting through polite, non-committal conversation and work situations. But they're not just wholly inadequate when you're really hurting - I agree they literally cause more damage. 

I grew up on phrases that were meant to dismiss, solve and (most of all) negate what I was feeling. There was no end to the greeting-card sentiment solutions, and they put an end to any depth or reason. Most of the time I felt I was dancing on broken legs but smiling was mandatory. It was supposed to be my "umbrella". Retch.

To this day, I am repulsed by the kind of cheap sentimentality that ruled my life and still pervades so much of our culture. The thin, cheery life-coach approach may indeed work for and inspire people who have never known the real depths of ongoing depression or trauma, but it's worse than vapid to those who live with terror. However well meant now, I think it actually re-traumatizes by reminding us of how swiftly and superficially our original problems were minimized. And we are just shamed all over again.

Thank you for that, coda. You really do get it. You described exactly the thing I was trying to say, how it feels to have these smug cheerleaders, these absurd "inspirational" posters, these HR mandated feel-good BS propaganda... if we were to open a magic portal into our trauma, where they could see all of it, and the scars it leaves behind... they would probably throw up.

[schrödinger's cat]

Oh dear, yes. It's one of those things where, afterwards, I think obsessively about what I should have said and what I could have said*... because while it's happening, I'm tongue-tied. Like it's literally taking away my ability to even speak for myself. And maybe there is an element of silencing to this after all. Instead of listening, instead of being respectful enough to assume that we are actually knowledgeable about our own situation, those people simply slap their quick fix-its onto us.

*Only thing I've come up with: "You know, it's admirable how well you're coping with my trauma." So I'm still looking for something more constructive to say.

[voicelessagony2]

"You know, it's admirable how well you're coping with my trauma."

LOL!!! OMG I love it, I'm going to use that!