Killing myself… with kindness

I’m a week late!!!!! I was doing so well keeping up with my posting schedule. With my new job I may have to aim for once a month for now. I finally found the inspiration to write something. It’s not long, but as I said in one of my previous posts… Anything is better than nothing.

I sometimes reach a level of frustration, which causes an automated response. It occasionally happened with customers that couldn’t make up their minds or were being difficult where I stared at them dead in the face and thought, “you make me wanna kill myself.” Me and my other coworker who suffered from depression joked about it a lot. It got worse with driving, though, I’ll be stuck behind some moron, and I’m in my car yelling, “Do you want me to kill myself?” I never mean it. It’s like yelling the F word; it’s the only thing that can express that level of anger and frustration. I’m not violent, and I feel bad breaking things, so hostile words and phrases are my only outlet, and it feels good to let it out. Could it be passive suicidal ideation? No, the thought of death terrifies me once more, so that’s a good sign. I’m just overly dramatic with my road rage.

I recently had an appt. with my psychiatrist, and we had the most unusual conversation. I was going on and on about everything I wasn’t doing. And she kept bringing up everything I was doing, and eventually, this is where the conversation went. I’ll put my words in italics;

I just don’t know what to do! I think you do know what to do. You know all the answers; you just don’t like them, but I think you know the right answer. But if I’m nice to myself, then I’m telling myself that having a messy room is okay, which I mean it is, but I feel like I’m allowing myself to be subpar. Erin, would you say any of this to a friend? Of course not I’d slap them silly if I knew they even thought any of this about themselves. Okay, so maybe you should extend that courtesy to yourself and give it a try. You have a lot to be proud of, so be kind to yourself and try to work on showering even if you can’t be bothered to wash your hair. That’s true. That’s why dry shampoo exists. Alright, I give the whole kindness thing a try. Clearly, shaming and criticizing myself isn’t working either.

So I tried it, and the first day was pleasant and very relaxing. I even picked up the trash without guilting myself into doing it. Today I washed the dishes. Tomorrow I’m hoping to shower and return an Amazon package to kohls. Today is going better than yesterday though. Yesterday around this time in the evening, it all went to shit. I started getting tense and anxious, pacing and thinking of everything I needed to do, and I tried thinking about everything I’d done and could be proud of. But all I could think was, I need to do this, I should do this, I need to do that, I shouldn’t have done this, I need to be perfect…

And I realized then how much of a problem I had. I woke up to a better-ish day today, but I would say both sides of my brain have reached an agreement. The mean side won’t keep hating if the nice side doesn’t start cheerleading. Considering how my first day ended, peaceful neutrality is a good place to start.When my brain starts going all perfectionist on me, it brings up the F word ‘you make me wanna kill myself’ anger, so I’ve decided to try to kill myself with kindness. After all, if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Roy Kent in Ted Lasso, it’s that there’s no bad feeling that can’t be overcome by cursing loudly and angrily. It’s weird though. It’s so dull when I’m not shaming and berating myself all day. I don’t know what to do with all this free time. I should have done laundry (see, there I go again. I didn’t even notice until I was editing), but if I’m this bored today, I’m sure I’ll have no problem staying busy tomorrow.

Sincerely,
LIBD