A Moving Target
I’ve made a lot of progress with my mental health and my self-image, even becoming more outgoing and finding my voice to speak up about things that are important to me. I am incredibly proud of myself, and I find myself wanting my efforts to be validated by others. Unfortunately, that hasn’t always been my experience.
There are people in my life that I’ve known for most of my life, and these are the people who I want approval from. These are the people who made comments about me being too sensitive, too quiet, too emotional. The people who made me feel like I needed to change everything about myself to be accepted.
I’m about six years into my mental health/healing journey, and while I know that I have made incredible progress, it sometimes feels like I am expected to do more.
Sure, I’m more outgoing now, but I still get looks from people sometimes that make me feel out of place.
My anxiety about food has gotten much less intrusive in my life, but it could be totally gone if I just tried harder.
As for being too sensitive, that’s a bit more complicated.
I have been trying really hard to accept my sensitivity. I follow a lot of accounts on Instagram that post things like “Being sensitive is a good thing” and text posts about how is can be a super power. I do agree that being sensitive is not at all a negative thing—and I wish more than anything that this messaging had been around when I was growing up—but it’s very difficult to unlearn everything I heard as a kid. Even though I was never told I needed to not be sensitive, I heard the way almost every adult used it as an explanation, and it almost sounded like an apology.
You’re just more sensitive, they would say. Why weren’t the other kids sensitive like me? Why were they not told to stop teasing me?
I will likely never meet other peoples’ expectations for me, and that’s something I need to come to terms with and accept. Some places or groups of people aren’t the right fit for me, and that’s another thing I need to accept.
If you feel like you’re also facing a moving target, I hope you learn that you do not owe anyone a performance of perfect mental health or some perfect version of yourself that you can never achieve. I hope you believe me when I say that the work you’re doing on yourself is important, and you’re incredibly brave for doing it.
Be kind to yourself, everybody.
—Abbie
