Disappointment

I dislike Pop Psychology books – you know, that trendy “self-help” stuff. I used to read a ton of it in my twenties and thirties and it rarely helped so now I avoid it like the plague.

But the other day I logged into my MySpace page to check a couple things, and on the login page, was a link to a book who’s name just – wow, smacked me up ‘long side the head.

“Life Doesn’t Begin 5 Pounds From Now.”

Yea. No shit, huh?

Anyway, I went to Border’s at lunch that day, and bought the book. As I suspected, it really didn’t sing to me once I’d spent the 12.95 for it – all but one quote, which was worth the drive to the bookstore and the price:

“Disappointing another to be true to yourself goes against our entire good-girl socializing and challenges us to really stick up for ourselves, often the last person we would ever defend. But if we don’t, who will?”

*smack

One of the things I used to think made me such a good submissive is the fact that I absolutely will do whatever it takes to avoid disappointing someone, no matter what the cost to myself. That’s *never healthy, I don’t give a rat’s ass who you are or what you are. The cost to ourselves isn’t singular. When we do that, we also force the people around us to pay for those mistakes/choices/decisions as well. How? By having to deal with us when we feel like absolute *shit for having made them.

I have absurdly high expectations of myself. I hold myself to very high standards behavior wise. As a perfectionist/Type-A chick, you’d expect that, yea? But the problem is, I expect other people to do the same. I hold everyone to those high, sometimes unreachable expectations. I expect other people to be as strict with themselves as I am with myself and that’s just unrealistic, and downright self-defeating. As such, I am often disappointed with people easily. And when I am disappointed with someone, I turn it back onto myself, and blame myself for thinking that whatever they did to disappoint me is my own fault.

For god’s sakes, it’s no wonder that I used to get so damn depressed so easily.

I was in a real funk last week. I haven’t been in one like that for a good six months and I’d gotten very complacent in feeling good. This one came out of nowhere and pretty much hit me like a ton of bricks. It took over and colored pretty much everything that was said to me in a six day period. I spent a good three evenings after work curled up on the couch zoned out in front of the TV (something I don’t really do anymore) feeling crappy with no energy and no enthusiasm for much of anything. I hate when I get like that. I know it, as I’m in it, and I want to get out of it, but I just can’t find that one thing that pushes me out.

It faded slowly over the weekend, and I’m feeling relatively normal (ha!) today. I’ve got some energy and some initiative (I’m writing, aren’t I?) and work went better.

As with anything else, I’m trying to still unlearn some bad habits (such as the high expectations, now that I’ve actually got a clear idea of what that entails). Difference is this week; I know I can do it.