Today I learned to ask for help. Yesterday I learned that maybe it is okay for me to ask for help. This might seem a little crazy, but for my whole life I have - endured? - the sense that I ought to be able to do things better. It's not perfectionism at work here, but a strong sense of - I am a reasonably intelligent woman and this task (whatever it may be) is well within my capabilities - therefore I need to get organised and get it done. In elegant contradiction to my thinking, however, the thing rarely gets done on time and I suffer an inordinate level of anxiety and self-loathing over my inability to move forward with things.
Overwhelm is an almost constant companion, or at least the feeling of overwhelm so that I feel like I cannot do things that are well within the scope of my abilities. I love to do the planning for my projects. I create lists and checklists and mind maps and calendar plans with everything mapped out ready to go. It is all easy to manage and makes so much sense to me. Then my emotions well up and I am essentially paralysed. I have thought this through endlessly and had decided that maybe I am lazy or lack ambition and motivation. We've all heard the idea that motivation is created through action; it doesn't just happen as a rule. But the real action was so slow moving and frustration with myself has meant that I spend a lot of time wanting to run away. I don't know where to or away from what but just to go! Anywhere! Running away from myself. It can't be done. The problems always go with me.
I was the one at university who always had to apply for extensions as I could rarely meet a deadline for submission of my work. I often got High Distinctions for the work, but I was unable to start it until the deadline was so close that I couldn't possibly get it in on time. It made me a nightmare to work with on group assignments I'm sure, but my anxiety would get in the way of me actually doing the work. I would 'do it' in my head and often would sit and write it all down almost without requiring editing before submitting. The grades were good but it was highly stressful and highly inefficient. It has felt as though I was self-sabotaging at every opportunity and I am sure my behaviour has been viewed by others with a mixture of dismay, anger and disbelief.
Words and writing are my playground. I love them so much. But to produce writing at someone else's behest is agonising to me. It is like the worst kind of torture (drama queen enters here). I spent a lot of my university days, which I commenced in my 47th year, consumed by a weighty anxiety that rode on my chest just above my sternum and radiated a dry burn with every inward and outward breath. It was exhausting and made living really hard. It was ever-present, perhaps a side-dish for my trip along Menopause Lane which coincided nicely with time at university, or a product of having to 'perform' in pracs and presentations (and the fact that my performance would be judged/graded). It was such a tough time even though I loved being at university so much. It felt to me like coming home! But I suffered so at the same time. I don't believe I ever experienced anxiety as a physical presence prior to those years, but that is how it manifested then and still does today.
One of the things that sends me into paralysis (the freeze part of fight/flight/freeze) is the need to create work in tables - like lesson plans and rubrics and term plans and so on. I produced an integrated term unit plan at uni for one course. It was 70 pages long. All tables. All fabulous. High Distinction. But the lecturer commented on the assessment that I would have to find a different way to do it or I would never survive as a teacher. I resigned at the end of 2019.
Tables -they send me into an absolute panic and I have to fight that the whole time to try and produce something that is 'right'. I experience a massive fear of getting it 'wrong'. I can't work out what headings to put where or how things flow and relate to one another unless someone actually sits with me and talks me through it. I believe that I should be able to do these things and find it ridiculous that they are such a struggle for me. It makes no sense to me and I berate myself internally for not being able to do this easily. It is usually a logical process to follow but my lizard brain doesn't let logic in to play. So I have learned to be avoidant and to find ways to not do these jobs that were integral to my job as a teacher.
I graduated from university with a Bachelor of Learning Management (Early Childhood) with Distinction and gained permanency straight out of university with the Queensland Department of Education. I was asked if my portfolio, which was used for my interview and application for work with the department, could be used as an exemplar for future students. Of course I was honoured and said yes. They interviewing panel told me it was the best they had ever seen. I have loads of evidence that I am capable of functioning at a fairly high level. But still I struggle.
Yesterday I had the privilege to hear from a visitor about some professional development she had done the day before around ADHD and ADD. As she described what kids with ADHD go through, it sounded just so much like me and the challenges I have managing and organising my written work that I have to believe that this is what I have been dealing with for most of my life. The penny dropped. I don't need a professional diagnosis to know that this disordered brain pattern and behaviour pattern is part of why I have been in such a difficult place. No doubt there are other factors but this is absolutely part of it.
This is all so relevant and important to me right now as I have signed up to write a book. It is about a subject I am passionate about and I hope that it will impact positively on the lives of many children and their families. So the stakes are high. But I am not managing a mere two or three thousand word essay in this instance. It is thirty to forty thousand words and it's a lot to wrangle into some sort of order.
The problems started right at the beginning of the writing journey when I was presented with the publishers proforma for organising the writing. It's a table. It's a form. And I fell instantly into panic mode and there I have stayed for the past nine months. I have copious mountains of notes, both physical and digital. I have stacks of reference books around me. I have everything I need to put this book together but the anxiety over those proformas has meant that I have stumbled and fumbled and agonised my way to the point where I have twice asked for 'extensions' or moved the dates for editing and publication believing that more time will solve the issues but no. It has not and still I sit surrounded and confounded by the inability to organise it all. Fear not if you have paid in advance for a copy of the book. It is still happening and it will be a better book, I promise you, for the process that I'm going through.
So today my life has changed, due to that simple conversation over a cup of tea yesterday. Today I gave the publishers a call for help. I haven't asked for help before because I felt like I was at fault and that I should be able to make sense of this thing and get it organised. I know what organisation looks like so I couldn't understand why it was so impossible for me. Today I have understood that I need to step back and put into place some simple tools for organising my way forward. A chat on zoom with a very helpful staff member reassured me and we moved the dates yet again. The difference is that I will be keeping in touch regularly and asking for help if I'm feeling stuck or overwhelmed again. I thought it would be foolish to ask for help and that I would look stupid. I thought that no one would understand what I was going through. But having a sense of it being my 'wiring' and that actually I am okay and not 'faulty' or slack or lacking some basic component has allowed me to be vulnerable enough to ask for help.
Tonight I am breathing easier. It is not an easy thing to write a book. There are millions of books out there written across history and thousands more are being released every year I'm sure, but still it is not an easy thing to do. This book has asked me to write it. It would not let me alone. It is taking me on a journey of personal growth and discovery that I could never have imagined. Maybe if I'd known I would not have started. Ignorance is sometimes bliss. Tomorrow is a new day and I am feeling confident to move forward again.
The funny thing is that I would always encourage others to ask for help and to seek professional help when they need it. I in no way see it as belittling or demeaning to ask for help. Please if you need help with something ask. Please if you seem not to be able to figure out things that other people can do in a fairly straightforward way, be brave and ask for help to work it out. My fear was looking silly for not being able to work it out for myself but in the end I look silly for not accessing help a LOT sooner. It was available to me all along. I only had to ask. I hid behind changing deadlines to try and make myself figure it out on my own but I needed assistance, even just to talk it over to make it less of a weight on my shoulders.
That is a big confession and I hope it might help someone out there that is trying too hard on their own. I envy people who are able to ask for help easily. I hope this is a good lesson for me too, to start to work more with other people and to not be afraid of that. I still don't understand fully what goes on with my brain, but I do know that I would have walked away from this project, ashamed and defeated, if I had not asked for help with it.
A perhaps interesting aside: so many people have told me they cried when they watched the film The Notebook. It didn't move me in that way. I wept when I watched A Beautiful Mind. I understand the madness of trying to organise thoughts and information. I don't think I'm crazy at all. I just needed a little help.
Friends, family, be patient with me. Even at sixty-two I am still trying to grow up and figure out just who I am. I appreciate you all and thank you for reading me.
With love
Kerry <3
PS Here is the book - available for the pre-release price of $23.95 including postage, if you wish to order https://tinyurl.com/superpowerlunchbox
