Confession No. 3: I Don't Know What is Most Important
I am a compulsive overachiever. Talk to pretty much anyone who knows me and they'll tell you I have a tendency to over commit and a stubborn denial of my own limitations. I'm a bit of a fixer too - I want the world to be this perfect, better place and I will stop at nothing to do that. I will go above and beyond to help you when you need it. I am in the business of people pleasing, and I have a hardcore fear of and complete inability to say no.
As a result, I burn myself out, a lot.
Case in point: last night I had a sudden panic about everything I needed to do this week and stayed up until three am to finish homework that isn't due for another ten days, just to give myself more time later on (I am still struggling to understand my own panic fuelled logic on that one too).
It's become most apparent this year, my final year of high school. I have set myself high goals and standards; nothing unattainable, but certainly not easy. I have also committed myself to the student leadership team, my dance group, a part-time job and a gruelling fitness routine.
I will say that's barely anything, and I don't think it is; kids do much more than that with much higher results all the time. People around me will say that's not all I'm doing and somewhere along the line I've taken on too much.
I don't know if I believe that, but what I do know is this.
Confession Time: two nights ago I had what I can probably recognise now as a panic attack, over a jumpsuit I bought earlier that day.
(DISCLAIMER: I don't know how comfortable I am using the term 'panic attack'. I have not been diagnosed by a medical professional, and I do not have a professional understanding of what a panic attack is. I can, however, conclude that what I felt was entirely unreasonable for the situation and I did not have any ounce of control over my emotional and physical reaction to a seemingly inconsequential issue. I am self aware enough to recognise that what happened was a definitively unhealthy response. Basically, the conclusion to this little side note is that my experiences do not reflect anyone else's, nor do I claim to have any knowledge on the matter aside from what I myself was feeling at that particular point in time.)
Anyway... the whole scenario still seems a little surreal to me. I could feel myself needing to pull it together, and I was talking to myself in the third person, telling myself to do just that, but I didn't know how to apply that advice. My mum came in and attempted to calm me down (and proceeded to make me even more furious in suggesting I had "bitten off more than I could chew") and suggested that I sit down, work out what I was doing at the moment, and list what was most important to me, so I could redirect my energy to the items on the list that meant the most. She was telling me to prioritise and to do so in a concrete manner, a written list I could refer back to.
It was, by all accounts, a reasonably good idea.
So I made a list.
As a result, I burn myself out, a lot.
Case in point: last night I had a sudden panic about everything I needed to do this week and stayed up until three am to finish homework that isn't due for another ten days, just to give myself more time later on (I am still struggling to understand my own panic fuelled logic on that one too).
It's become most apparent this year, my final year of high school. I have set myself high goals and standards; nothing unattainable, but certainly not easy. I have also committed myself to the student leadership team, my dance group, a part-time job and a gruelling fitness routine.
I will say that's barely anything, and I don't think it is; kids do much more than that with much higher results all the time. People around me will say that's not all I'm doing and somewhere along the line I've taken on too much.
I don't know if I believe that, but what I do know is this.
Confession Time: two nights ago I had what I can probably recognise now as a panic attack, over a jumpsuit I bought earlier that day.
(DISCLAIMER: I don't know how comfortable I am using the term 'panic attack'. I have not been diagnosed by a medical professional, and I do not have a professional understanding of what a panic attack is. I can, however, conclude that what I felt was entirely unreasonable for the situation and I did not have any ounce of control over my emotional and physical reaction to a seemingly inconsequential issue. I am self aware enough to recognise that what happened was a definitively unhealthy response. Basically, the conclusion to this little side note is that my experiences do not reflect anyone else's, nor do I claim to have any knowledge on the matter aside from what I myself was feeling at that particular point in time.)
Anyway... the whole scenario still seems a little surreal to me. I could feel myself needing to pull it together, and I was talking to myself in the third person, telling myself to do just that, but I didn't know how to apply that advice. My mum came in and attempted to calm me down (and proceeded to make me even more furious in suggesting I had "bitten off more than I could chew") and suggested that I sit down, work out what I was doing at the moment, and list what was most important to me, so I could redirect my energy to the items on the list that meant the most. She was telling me to prioritise and to do so in a concrete manner, a written list I could refer back to.
It was, by all accounts, a reasonably good idea.
So I made a list.
Things Katy has to do this year
- Finish high school with the scores to get into my university course
- Take my dance photos and like how I look in my costumes
- Get a job as a swim teacher (including completing the training)
- Lose another 5kg
The list went really well. I have set goals, I know exactly what I want to do and where I want to be and when. The issue was prioritising them.
Look, here's the thing; I know that school should be my number one. But I look at that list and I think that honestly, right now, the most important thing to me is to lose another 5kg.
And that scares me. Logically, I know what my priorities should be, but what they should be and what I want them to be don't currently add up. Not to mention that what I want them to be is not healthy either, and I know that. Like most women I have a long and torrid history surrounding my weight and my body image and my crippling self-doubt and loathing that are all interlinked in ways I'm intimately familiar with and ways, I'm sure, that are screwing me over without me even knowing. I am well aware of this fact, but I am struggling to understand and acknowledge how to overcome this.
So here's what I pose to you: how do I teach myself that I should be prioritising things that will come to be a long-term gain (such as attending the university I want to)? Should I be more inclusive of some kind of goal that has to do with my emotional and mental wellbeing too?
I want so badly to be able to say I have plans and aims and goals and they're healthy and productive and I am proactive about achieving them. But they're not. And at the moment, I can't quite tell whether my goals are actually the help they're meant to be, or whether the destructive and seemingly unachievable nature of them is more of a hindrance.
Always,
Your resident teenaged disaster
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