1w ago

Where does this dissonance come from? I have lots of energy & initiative to care for others but struggle to care for myself.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/5550838

For example, this week I spent 6 hours helping a friend fix their roof & 0 fixing the leak in my roof. Most of the meals that I cooked were when I had company or going to a potluck. It takes me until the umpteenth 'let me just squish it down' and the flies start buzzing to take the trash out....
...It feels like if I were a stranger, I would take better care of myself than I do, if that makes sense?
In general, I feel like I am a very values- and care-driven person. Like what feels meaningful is taking care of my community and working towards the world I want to live in. I have a good reputation in my community & activist circles for consistent work and following through on what I commit to do....
...none of that seems to apply to myself! My dishes sit in the sink for days, and I usually only bathe in preparation for public events.
This will not do! How do I treat myself like I treat others? Ahhhh!

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Lifehack: If you compost everything that's compostable, you'll never have flies in your trash.
I recommend one of those plastic coffee cans for storing compost, the biggest one you can find. Line it with napkins or paper bag so the gunk doesn't get stuck to it, and also to balance the C:N ratio.
Its just a lack of executive function you probably have ADHD
When you help your friends you get the dopamine hit which lets you hyperfocus
- All of the signs keep pointing to it
Sorry, but I'm gonna do the thing:
Have ya'll even read Marx?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
Karl Marx's theory of alienation describes the separation and estrangement of people from their work, their wider world, their human nature, and their selves.
Alienation is a consequence of the division of labour in a capitalist society, wherein a human being's life is lived as a mechanistic part of a social class.
Attempting to translate into more modern parlance:
Capitalism gaslights you so hard, so consistently, so utterly and totally, in every single aspect of your life, that it functionally gives you, a worker, a pleb, a persistent trauma complex that causes you to inherently devalue and dissociate from yourself.
Or perhaps more succintly:
Capitalism gives cPTSD to everyone it exploits, which is also often so thorough and normalized that many never even realize this is the case.
- It can be mental health and alienation, doesn't have to be one or the other.
  Then there's the consideration that a lot of mental illness is socially defined by deviating hard enough from the norm of a good wage worker, and not by the need to have a dignified, fulfilling life. But it doesn't invalidate the struggles we go through, or that we'd go through under other modes of production.
  
  What I am trying to say is that Marx was actually pretty prescient in broad psychological terms as well, that his description of Alienation...
  ...that just literally is his looser, less technically accurate, but still fundamentally accurate, observation/prediction that an increasingly exploitative capitalist society causes increasingly severe and deep-seeded mental health problems, which our more modern understanding of psychology can describe in more specific detail...
  ... it is just that uh, ironically, captialist psychology often doesn't explictly just say: a whole bunch of your stress and trauma is from work, is from social norms created by everyone commoditizing themselves, viewing themselves in a dissasociated manner as split between some core, true self, and then the... commoditized, wage-workerized, grindset-minded, corporate ladder climbing version of themself.
  But also at the same time, yes, modern psychology and other fields of science have shown that there is a strong genetic factor, heritability factor for many forms of mental health disorders/conditions... but also also, epigenetics is a thing.
  The whole picture is very complicated and multifactorial, and yes, mental health conditions shouldn't just be dismissed because 'its capitalism's fault, bro'... but they can be better understood with this knowledge in mind.
  Think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
  Capitalism keeps the proles in a near constant state of tension, fear, and anxiety, regarding the first two layers...
  How can anyone reasonably expect a mentally healthy society that is built on a precarious, shakey, unstable foundation?
  Had we a society where the first one or two layers were essentially granted to everyone, via UBI, or a fundamentally more equitable and less stratified society, etc... I'd be willing to bet that the 'Nurture' from that environment would greatly lessen the prevalance and severity of many currently common mental health conditions.
  Much of modern psychology also broadly agrees that true mental wellness, feeling fulfilled, 'thriving', comes from self-actualizing in at least some kind of formulation and expression of your own inner creativity into the actual, material world.
  ... But you can't get there without having your fundamental, basic needs taken care of first.
  Also, from having a decent 'support network', a social situation where one can just go socialize with a number of other people in a non transactional manner.
  ... But capitalism robs us of our time and energy, destroys the commons, the public square, destroys social cohesion, atomizes us, sells convenience and facisimiles of social interaction back to us, in an exploitative and detrimental way.
im pretty sure this is just a lack of self worth thing
i put all my energy to helping others so i don't have any left for myself
you get positive reinforcement and validation feeling good about doing something for others
when you do stuff for yourself you just do stuff for yourself and don't also have the associated extra dopamine from feeling good about helping someone
Were you praised as a child for prioritizing others over yourself? Were you actively encouraged to get in touch with your body and attend to your needs and feelings?
- Woo I got yes for 1 and no for 2.
  
  Same. It’s a fun combo. Fun for my therapist.
Dunno if our situations are similar. But I exactly have this problem. It was that my parents and older siblings hyper fixated on their own issues and didn't give a fuck about mine. So I grew up with that as my normal. Hyper stressing over everyone's problem is my basic state.
personally, i find it hard to care for myself when i'm not being cared for from others. not that i need someone all the time (very used to the solitude atp); it just makes me feel like "what's the point?", like the tree in the forest thing, why does it matter if i'm in shape or taking care of my hygiene or improving as a person if no one is there to even notice or acknowledge it?
i used to believe in the "do it for yourself" mentality but that's the same mentality that led to me being completely isolated. these days i've built enough resilience to continue healthy habits and take care of myself more than i used to, mainly out of spite, and i try to consider my life experience and body/mind/soul just part of my life 'experiment' that i'll see through to the end just so i can have a good laugh about it before it's all over.
I very much feel the same way. it's easier to give gifts than do chores.
I was thinking I had more to say but I don't actually, I think it really just comes down to that for me.
- It does feel like one of those simple-but-heavy problems.
This is why we need communes. There's nothing wrong with you except under a capitalist society, where everyone is isolated from another. In a community, "person who makes sure everyone else gets the help they need" is a very important role, and the self care blindspot can easily be counterbalanced with a second person who does the same. On top of that, many self care jobs under capitalism - taking out the trash, cooking, cleaning etc - are infinitely easier as community jobs, where everyone does a little bit, or one person just takes care of that job for everyone. With a shared workload and others around to remind you to do the self care, it all becomes extremely manageable.
I got the same deal but noticed my quality of help suffers if I don't help myself first. I do all the cooking at home and if someone's hungry I'm quick to feed them before myself but what ends up happening is I start making mistakes or delivery a poorer quality of care when I do that vs if I eat something first then help. Bigger goals I think I tend to take on other's struggles for them so I don't have to think about what I need to do too, it's left me stunted in many regards and I've come away frustrated when I'm not allowed to help (mind you I was never asked for help to begin with but that's another story)
For me it's because of low self-worth and self-esteem.
it's easy to know what you can tolerate, it's harder to tell yourself that you deserve nice things
it's hard to judge what other people can tolerate, but easier to give them nice things you think they deserve
if i care about someone maybe they'll care about me
You have more empathy than narcissism. All give and no take.
- Narcissism seems irrelevant to this matter based on the available information. Being concerned about your own well-being isn't narcissism.
  
  It's all a matter of balance.

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