So I was talking to my therapist about how if you saw my functioning level at home you would never think I could hold a job or go to school. I can barely take care of myself and struggle with the most basic of tasks. But in school and work I have always been incredibly high functioning and tend to perform very well. A’s and the occasional B in school, and my bosses always love me at my jobs and I’ve had no problem holding them long term.
She said in these things I am “performing” for other people. In school I perform really well because I am afraid if I fail I will fail my parents and be an embarrassment. In work I feel I must please my managers and do well for them. But when it comes to taking care of myself…that is solely for my benefit. Thus I do not see it as important and lack the motivation to do it. She said this comes from my issues with self esteem. I do not see myself as inherently valuable. She says if my self worth would improve I would likely function the same at home as I did in work and school because I would be just as motivated to do things for myself as I am for other people.
The thing is building up one’s self esteem after it has been destroyed is challenging.
summary: I always thought my poor functioning when it comes to taking care of myself was due to negative symptoms or something similar. But due to my high functioning in activities where I am “performing” for others like in work or school, my therapist thinks my poor functioning taking care of myself is because I do not value myself and have very low self esteem. It is true I have very low self esteem and never thought of this before.
Remember it’s a spectrum and there are lots of things going on - some may be more prevalent than others in terms of functioning, and others not so much. This is a complex thing we’re dealing with, but hopefully we will get there together.
Therapists are just one role that helps us. It takes a multi-disciplinary approach to solve our issues
I have had something similar, where I would do very well at university but where my place was a dump. Do you put much effort in thinking about how to make your place look pleasing? This may sound circular, but I found after some friends and family realized my place was so bad, and helped me with painting and some refurnishing, this sparked my ideas about how to further prettify the place and I started to see the potential of how nice it could be. Whereas first this was simply something that I did not concern myself with. I keep it so much tidier lately - still not up to many people’s standards but at least the dishes get done every day and I clean the floor every week. I really sit to enjoy my place now. My contrarian spirit tells me that pretty things and nice furniture do not matter to me, but if I am honest I feel so satisfied with how it looks now, and this encourages me to keep it tidy. It is a bit of a chicken and egg thing, but so are many things in our situation.
Hmm I did not think of that. I have never really lived in a place i felt proud of that looked really good to me and that I thus felt more motivated to keep clean. Thats a good idea!
