Oh helplessness. You and me have a long, and colorful history. You’ve been by my side, hanging out for over 9 years now. And I’m sure that you’ve served a good purpose, somewhere, somehow. I’m sure you’ve tried to protect me in some way.
But it might be time for you to move along now, and go search for new horizons. Or at least take early retirement. I hear there’s a nice settlement package if you leave quietly.
Allow me to explain
One of the unfortunate side effects of being diagnosed with a chronic illness as a child is that everyone starts to treat you like you’re helpless. And to a certain extent, you are helpless, in more ways than one – you’re helpless to do anything about your condition, and often times you’re too sick to help yourself do things like feed yourself. So for all intents and purposes, you feel pretty damn helpless.
But nobody ever explains to you that this feeling helpless right now doesn’t make you a helpless person. That I didn’t have to be a victim, that I didn’t have to see myself that way.Instead I internalized that helplessness, the thought that “I am helpless.“
Flash Forward to Now
I am no longer in that situation – I can manage my illness, and I’m well enough to take care of myself most days. In fact, I do pretty bloody well if I do say so myself.
So the original helplessness is gone. Unfortunately, the mentality stuck around and I struggle against it every single day. I am not some powerless victim, but a very strong, ingrained, lizard brain part of me says I am – I am a powerless victim, I am helpless in the face of day to day challenges that come up – money challenges, career challenges. The helplessness starts to sing its siren song of victimization and it’s hard to fight it. It’s so tempting to just lull yourself into not doing anything because “What can I do? Nothing.”
Money Triggers
Money is my biggest trigger it seems. Right now, I’ve got about $1000 in debt, and I need to buy a camera, a printer, a new computer, and a wireless router. Really, I need to come up with about $3000-$3500, and not even necessarily all at once. I could do it a bit at a time.
But when I sat down this morning to start coming up with plans for finding that money – strategies, plans etc. – and all my brain could think was “This’ll never work. Ever.”
And that’s usually what happens. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because I will try these plans and strategies and the helplessness will inevitably seep into them, and soon the edges will be tinged with desperation, and then I give it up as a lost cause. Self sabotage at its finest.
I’m really, really tired of this
I am so over being a victim, and seeing myself as some pathetic, powerless person.
But that doesn’t seem to make too much of a difference, because unfortunately, my arse is pretty comfortable in this chair. I have yet to find the right leverage to get me out of this mental rut.
I know that there’s something in here about claiming your own power and becoming a creative, proactive force in your life. And that horrifies the victim in me – “Oh my god, we can’t do that! I’m a victim!”
Yeah, yeah. I know.
But it’d be nice to feel like I’m happening to my life instead of my life happening to me. I’d like to inject some gumption into me.
So I turn it over to you.
Have you ever gotten stuck in the helplessness rut? What did you do to get out of out? Or, did you find ways to make the helplessness shut up for a bit so you could do your thing? Was it a process, or a decision? I’m just really curious.
I’d appreciate it if we could leave the “shoulds” at home though – like “you shouldn’t feel like this to begin with” or “you should have figured this out earlier” or “you should just snap your fingers and get over this already.” This is a place of kindness, compassion and acceptance. Shoulds are strictly forbidden.
Welcome to one artist's odyssey
On May 21st, I'm going on a quest. A quest for art, for meaning, for beauty, for truth. I'm picking up my life, packing up a suitcase and heading to rural France to live, paint and study art for the next 18 months.
Click here to find out how you can stowaway in my suitcase and join in the adventure!
8 Comments
There’s one question often helps me more than any other.
What if the universe was testing you right now?
Think about it. What if this very situation was some kind of test that the universe had put together just to see how far you can go, how much you can grow and what you can accomplish.
I find that snaps me back to thinking about what I *can* do rather than what I *can’t*.
Also, read through some of your old posts over the last year or two and see just how far you’ve come
I’ve got an active, conventionally disabling illness that attacks my nerves/tissue/organs etc. I totally get the same way… Except I’m a little less graceful about it.
I don’t usually mention the illness because people tend to see the illness… Not my art. Or anything else. When they ask about my cane (black with a silver skull top… Naturally.) I usually say I’ve got a disease that affects my spine… I just don’t want to discuss decades of medical history, the complexity of the whole thing, whatever crackpot treatment they’ve heard about and all while delicately negotiating the attending social stigmas.
With chronic illness, your potential suddenly has limits. Your control over your destiny is severely challenged when you lose control of your body/health. I’ve I had to drop out of school very late through multiple degrees, resign my commission, lost a relationship, been homeless and have massive medical/school debt that’s being slowly discharged via courts etc (I’m lucky – it’s not a route open to most US citizens). When you’re chronically ill you get a first-hand tour of how bad things can get in life. You’re taken to the edge (if you’re lucky) of the abyss and get a good look into it’s depths.
And there is no hole deeper, no darker time, than when you’re body has become a prison, when your mind is clear and willing but you KNOW there’s nothing you can do. Oh is that a fun time. And after that happens, you ALWAYS know it can and probably will happen again. Usually with little warning and there’s usually nothing you can do to stop or prevent it. That fuels a very reasonable, justifiable and proper fear. Not to mention a reasonable reluctance to do long-range planning.
But I don’t think that’s being a “victim.” Your mind is understandably worried about planning for the future when you’ve got a chronic illness. That fear is primal, animal, and hard-wired into our brain itself. And I don’t think that fear can’t be outright eliminated.
I think it can be tricked though, by breaking tasks into very small steps with very loose deadlines. And with as little self-judgment as possible. The smaller the task, the easier it is to do, the more confidence you’ll get, the more little tasks you’ll do, etc. And when you get sick, or don’t get something done, you don’t have the weight of BIG tasks hanging over your head.
Instead of cleaning a room, say you’ll pick up and put something away every other time you enter it. If you end up putting more than one thing away, or even clean half of it, great. But by doing very small tasks regularly, big jobs get nibbled to death. Obviously that can be scaled up or down depending on the day or your energy reserve etc.
The biggest mistake is to judge yourself by looking at other people or any external normative standards. You can only judge how well you are playing the cards you’ve been dealt. And be very careful in labeling anything you’re feeling as illegitimate or “victim” like. I think that comes from the same place as “that can never work.” I don’t think you’re concerns come from being lazy or self-pitying but from knowing how easily plans/goals can be derailed by factors outside your control.
Like all advice or feedback feel free to ignore the whole damn thing. What works for me or anyone else, may not work with you. You obviously are doing enough things right to have this website up, and very good paintings done.
I think the main thing that has gotten me out of every helpless rut I’ve been in has been seeing that someone else I respected and trusted believed in me. They saw things that I couldn’t see, and I decided even though I couldn’t trust my own judgment, I could probably trust theirs. Long enough to take the next couple of steps forward.
Yes! I love that. Love. That.
That’s where I get stuck – thinking about what I can’t do instead of what I can do. I know that some things are completely beyond my control but there are usually little steps I can take on my behalf.
Thank you! Must write this down somewhere
Ooooh. Yes.
And it’s funny, because I’ve recently made connections with some great people who totally believes in me and my art. Which I find crazy, but it gives me that little bit of hope.
I think it’s remembering to remind myself that others believe in me that’s important. It sometimes seems like the first thing I forget.
First off – wow. Thank you for sharing that. Not in like a cheesy, condescending way (ugh, no way) but in a “that seriously gave me some perspective” way.
You’re so right on the loose deadlines thing – most of the time, if I set a hard deadline for things (I will get x amount of commissions by April 31st) I send myself into a tailspin.
And the baby steps. I come back again and again to small tasks, little steps, not heroic marathons. It’s also where the feelings of helplessness really trip me up – it tells me I can’t do anything, nothing at all, not even little things. And I just get swamped with helplessness. It’s a feeling that drives me nuts, but maybe that’s the thing I need to make peace with – that on a semi-regular basis, I am pretty freaking helpless over the things that matter.
I’ve looked into that abyss too – it’s not pretty living in a prison.
And the reminder to not compare myself to normative standards – thanks for acknowledging that those exist too. People used to say to me “Normal doesn’t exist” when I’d get frustrated by my body. But this was coming from relatively healthy people.
This just really meant a lot to me. Thank you.
Oh Sarah, I adore you and totally believe in you. And I love Kelly’s comment. Yes, it helps to have someone I respect and whose opinion I value voicing their respect and belief when things look grim.
I admire your courage and your art and your heart–
Heidi
For some reason just doing regular chores helps me out of a rut. Just to accomplish something I guess.
I saw a book title once that read “Normal Is Just A Setting On The Dryer” It was by Erma Bombeck, and that helped me and I think of it often when feeling ‘non~normal’.