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“What’s Wrong With Me?” Is The Wrong Question
Confession: I’m one of those people who assumes that if something is wrong, it must be my fault. Even where there is zero actual evidence of any causal connection, my brain will somehow find proof that it’s my doing.
Which is why for a long time I thought burning out was my fault.
I didn’t work hard enough, wasn’t strong enough, failed to be a ‘good’ person who persists through challenges, who doesn’t give up.
A lot of this thinking was planted by the ideas my father (and many of his generation) had of what constitutes success.
Dad grew up in poverty and uncertainty and made his way into the middle class by way of a university degree and a stable career as a teacher and high school principal in South Australia. He told me later that he’d never enjoyed teaching, that in fact he mostly hated it — but this didn’t stop him doing it from his late teens until his retirement at the age of 60.
The message was “don’t enjoy yourself or do what interests you, work hard at something of which society approves. Your joy is secondary (at best); academic and career achievement is what matters.”
As a little kid, I strove to manifest a string of As on my report card, because that garnered Dad’s approval and helped me side-step his anger and rejection. Once…
