Too Much/Not Enough

I’ve been struggling lately.

First of all, I should probably say that there’s nothing wrong with my life. Actually, everything is ostensibly going extremely well. I’m getting my footing at work and in my new home. I’m establishing routines. I’m trying things and making tiny progress meeting people. This all sounds great. I should be perfectly content. Regrettably, my brain doesn’t work that way.

The battle I’m currently fighting is an old one. In one way or another I’ve been doing this dance my entire life. It’s a lack of balance combined with a lack of confidence and an easily bruised ego that keeps pulling the rug out from underneath me. Let’s all it the battle of too much and not enough.

Please note, those two aren’t fighting with each other, I’m battling it out with those two states of being.

Here’s what happens: It starts when I don’t complete a project, I slack off on the things I’m supposed to be doing, or I see someone else do the task I should have already completed. There are numerous other instances where I can veer off course, but those are the big ones. Once I realized I’ve “failed” I get this terrible sinking feeling in my guts that burns up into my throat and the “not enough” panic starts. I’m not good enough, I’m not strong enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not capable enough, I’m not perfect enough – and so on and so forth until I’m spiraling into cataloging every single fault I have be they physical, mental, or emotional. It’s excruciatingly painful and I do it every damn time.

If I’m lucky I can pull myself out of the “not enough” phase. Usually I knock myself out (sleep, I sleep, I don’t hit myself in the head with a bat or anything) and when I wake I’m a bit more objective than I was before I checked out. I’d say that probably 80% of the time I manage to pull myself out of the “not enough” tailspin and avoid the “too much” phase entirely. When I don’t? That’s when things get really weird.

Instead of berating myself for not being enough I switch to the opposite torture. I start to tell myself I’m too needy, too insecure, too high strung, too self-obsessed/self-centered, too empty, too fat, too ignorant, too desperate, too full of too many problems for anyone to want anything to do with me. To be perfectly honest, I know they’re two sides of the same coin, but for some reason feeling like I’m full of awfulness is worse than lacking goodness.

And all of this can result from something as small as not cleaning the litter box every day. I never know what’s going to trigger this self-loathing, and it doesn’t seem to matter how hard I try to keep it at bay. I’ve tried a variety of different techniques to avoid the spiral, but so far nothing has worked.

I’m afraid I’m going to be forever locked in a battle with too much and not enough.