I think I’m going to link this post around a bit (even if it’s way old – I only just found it).

One area I have internalized this is with regards to socializing. While I am fairly social much of the time my mental health issues sometimes make interacting with large crowds or loud places too hard for me. It’s not just being tired, being in these environments when I am not capable is so much it almost hurts physically, and can push me in much deeper disassociative places. So sometimes I need to be away from Big Socializing, but I feel incredibly guilty for wanting that.

I don’t always need total solitude, and actually most of the time I would really like small-scale socializing, but I feel to ask for that would be to interfere with people’s busy (there’s that word!) social lives. To not have a flurry of important events to go to makes me feel socially discarded, so if I am needing quieter time it usually means that despite knowing a lot of people I’ll be alone, because to ask people to hang out in ways that aren’t about those busy events feels like I’d be admitting social failure or something. And because that intersects with my mental health issues, it makes me less accepting of my own neurodiversity. Shame, rinse, repeat.

Oh, this is a question I dread. “What do you do all day?” And why the hell do people ask it? What answers do they think they’re going to get? What am I supposed to say? “Um, I like to read books. I talk with my friends. I watch TV. Sometimes I do a few minutes upright to put dinner in the crockpot or supervise my kid’s homework. Pretty much, in other words, the same as you do, but without the going-to-work and going-out and doing-lots-of-housework bits.”

Is this really so hard for people to imagine? I suppose it is.

* “The first law of thermodynamics: heat is work and work is heat” (as per M Flanders and D Swann) – I find this one particularly useful in the Australian summer, as a reminder of why I don’t want to be rushing about the place on a day where it’s 40C in the shade.
* Prioritising: things I want to do; things I am doing for other people which have fixed deadlines; things I am doing for other people which don’t have fixed deadlines; things I think I should be doing; things other people think I should be doing; things I can’t stand doing; things which will fix themselves if I just leave them alone for long enough; things other people will do for themselves.
* Some things cannot be rushed. No matter how much effort I put in, the plants won’t grow any faster. Let it be.
* The only task for which I am completely irreplaceable is the task of being me. Everything else can be done by other people – and sometimes it’s easier to let them do it.
* Embrace constructive laziness: sometimes it’s easier to spend three-quarters of an hour figuring out a way to make a ten minute task into a five minute task, particularly if you have to do the ten-minute task every single day.
* Just because you can doesn’t mean you have to.
* The law of Chinese Relativity: no matter what my triumph, no matter what my disaster, one billion Chinese don’t give a damn.
* A lack of planning on your part is not a reason for a panic on my part.
* Whose problem is this, anyway? If it’s my problem, I’ll deal with it as and when I’m able to. Your timetable, however, is not and has never been one of my problems.
* There is only one expert on what I am physically capable of doing. You are not it. Neither is your mate, or the doctor, or the guy behind the desk at Centrelink, or anyone else who isn’t inhabiting this particular body of mine.

I’ll admit, a lot of this is aimed at developing a very bloody-minded attitude toward the unspoken expectations of others, and the efforts of other people to make me internalise those expectations. It requires a certain degree of sheer, bloody-minded selfishness (lucky I’m depressive, eh?) and sometimes maintaining this selfishness is in and of itself a significant mental effort. Fortunately, the results are worth it.

His position was basically, he had it all, he was doing it all, so why couldn’t his employees? And it was… I couldn’t do it. But when I couldn’t balance work, AND studying wok-related material AND working from home plus whatever else – he gave me a hard time about it.
It got harder when I had some invasive pain for several months, since that required time to manage, too.

Eventually I got out of it. I switched jobs & I’m much happier now, the atmosphere is so much more welcoming… I don’t have to push myself so hard anymore. I think I’ve broken out of the Cult.