I might come back to this tomorrow with more thoughts on words or reflections on self-compassion. But right now I just want to thank you for this reminder because I needed this right now. I just failed a deadline for two uni projects, for the second time in a row and spend the past few hours trying to minimize the damage. Or more like my family made me try to minimize the damage because all I wanted to do was admit defeat and call it a day. Yes, there were tech issues but also, I did not finish my project in time and I should've known computer programs and printers tend to break last minute and I failed to plan ahead for that so it really was my fault, wasn't it? I really felt it was safer to keep quiet than to admit to a professor I couldn't do it on my own and ask for more time, again. It's 11 pm now and I'm extremely exhausted so my thoughts are incoherent, but your text really helped but things into perspective again and I'll try not telling myself I'm used to be told or tell myself in these moments. Instead I'll try to give myself more grace in this difficult moment and come back to this tomorrow with hopefully more coherent thoughts.
I'm coming back to this months later and still find more aspects that resonate with me deeply. This time the sentence that stuck out to me the most was: "It's just that... I can get easily overwhelmed when I believe a task will take me too difficult or too long to complete compared to everyone else, so I often freeze when I think of how to best start."
That's it, another puzzle piece explaining why I get stuck on some tasks, that I never knew how to articulate. It's like I know this will take me more time to do than it does for other people, but instead of using this knowledge to give myself permission to take more time, to do it differently, to do it poorly even... I just subconciously judge myself for knowing I can't do it as fast as others, for knowing I'd have to start early and do it differently, for finding tasks difficult. Which inevitably and ironically just makes them more difficult to finish, continue or even start.
I might come back to this tomorrow with more thoughts on words or reflections on self-compassion. But right now I just want to thank you for this reminder because I needed this right now. I just failed a deadline for two uni projects, for the second time in a row and spend the past few hours trying to minimize the damage. Or more like my family made me try to minimize the damage because all I wanted to do was admit defeat and call it a day. Yes, there were tech issues but also, I did not finish my project in time and I should've known computer programs and printers tend to break last minute and I failed to plan ahead for that so it really was my fault, wasn't it? I really felt it was safer to keep quiet than to admit to a professor I couldn't do it on my own and ask for more time, again. It's 11 pm now and I'm extremely exhausted so my thoughts are incoherent, but your text really helped but things into perspective again and I'll try not telling myself I'm used to be told or tell myself in these moments. Instead I'll try to give myself more grace in this difficult moment and come back to this tomorrow with hopefully more coherent thoughts.
I'm coming back to this months later and still find more aspects that resonate with me deeply. This time the sentence that stuck out to me the most was: "It's just that... I can get easily overwhelmed when I believe a task will take me too difficult or too long to complete compared to everyone else, so I often freeze when I think of how to best start."
That's it, another puzzle piece explaining why I get stuck on some tasks, that I never knew how to articulate. It's like I know this will take me more time to do than it does for other people, but instead of using this knowledge to give myself permission to take more time, to do it differently, to do it poorly even... I just subconciously judge myself for knowing I can't do it as fast as others, for knowing I'd have to start early and do it differently, for finding tasks difficult. Which inevitably and ironically just makes them more difficult to finish, continue or even start.