Why am I like this? (and why won’t I change?)

I often feel like the ghosts in A Christmas Carol; ghosts for what was, is, and what will be.

I say this because sometimes I feel a bit haunted by what has happened and what is occurring. But the worst is the ghost that represents the promise of the future.

I struggle with Executive Dysfunction in the worst way, and always have. As a kid it was chalked up to perhaps laziness, the way I was raised. As an adult, it’s psychosomatic for sure. I think about all the things I need to do, get overwhelmed, suddenly feel so fatigued I can’t stand or my stomach hurts so much with anxiety I actually become nauseous, cannot eat. After not doing the things, I would lay around shaming myself in the worst of ways until I entered a cycle of depression. I was worthless, I was lazy, I had yet again flaked. It wasn’t long until I stopped being considered dependable to my friends, and with most over time the invitations stopped.

I’ve been doing my best to overcome this, but I would be lying if I said it did not cost me many jobs, many times I just could not get up to come in and instead I talked myself into quitting so I could lay in my pool of shame and guilt until the next job came.

Starting a business definitely has helped, but not always. I say I am my own boss, but my clients are my boss. They are who I have to answer to, and in coordination cases I must be signed in to their accounts, ready to answer their inboxes at any time. So my business stuff comes first, but as the business grows so do the things to do, people to contact, things to prioritize. And so my personal life suffers. I have had a bloodwork order out for over a month; I simply haven’t done it because I don’t want to take my toddler, and when I have a sitter I would rather go get content and do other things. I logically have no good reason why I have not done this, nor rescheduled the appointment to follow up on the results. I just can’t. But I will. One day it will move to the top of my list and having completed it, I might be motivated to cross off a few more things on the list. Or I might justify it being a big enough task I’m not doing anything else that day. There is no telling.

So let me get to the point in all this. I KNOW that I could grow my business to crazy-for-this-soon kinds of success. I know my brain, I know my ideas. If I wasn’t constantly getting in my own way, I would thrive. I would be able to do all the things my family and I have planned for the future, but now. But I just cannot seem to get out of my own way. As soon as I start getting into a place where I think I can take on more, do the next big thing…I just shut down. I cancel the bigger things, I hand off my big ideas to the next person…and then sit here wondering why I can’t be on the same level as everyone else. I can, but it takes a climb my brain isn’t willing to allow me to do. I scale myself back.

I am trying really, really hard to get out of my own way. In finding my niche and passions, it’s been easier to get out and get content because I’ve incorporated these outings into our life anyways. I feel like my content is more authentic and excited, because I am excited.

But that’s this week. Who knows what ghost will haunt me next.