This Doesn't Feel Like Me
This doesn’t feel like me
Psychological and mental health issues can make you feel like a different person. For instance, low mood can result in reduced enthusiasm and enjoyment from life. Likewise, anxiety and worry can lead to concern about issues that had not previously caused distress.
Not feeling like yourself alongside psychological distress only makes that distress more difficult to manage. But unfortunately, this altered state is a common feature of mental health issues.
What is wrong with me?
There is nothing wrong with you as a person. Mental health issues cause havoc in your thinking, emotions, and behaviour, not to mention all sorts of physical problems. Clusters of symptoms can make you feel like an alien in your own body. There is nothing wrong with you as a person, but you may have developed a psychological condition. Medical conditions do not instantly change who you are at a fundamental level (at least not in the short-term), so neither should a mental health challenge.
‘This doesn’t feel like me’ can progress to ‘something is wrong with me’. Low self-worth or self-esteem is more common amongst people who encounter psychological difficulties (1). Many excellent mental health campaigns have attempted to reduce the stigma of psychological problems, but discrimination still exists. Prejudice, mocking, and fear act as additional obstacles in the recovery from mental illness.
Why am I not good enough?
The combination of negative responses from others and reduced functioning (e.g., concentration, energy, confidence) can dent self-esteem. A common assumption at this point is that ‘I’m not good enough’, followed by a search for why you don’t measure up. But you need to back up and really think about the assumption that you are not good enough.
Some questions to evaluate this assumption include any of the following:
What are the specific reasons why you consider yourself not good enough?
If it is because you have lost confidence, for example, are you comfortable with that as a ‘not good enough’ criterion?
Would you tell a friend they were not good enough for losing confidence?
Symptoms of mental illness get linked with self-worth. In other words, your problems are thought to be due to character flaws. But this does not match our understanding of what causes mental illness. Problems result from a complex mix of life events, family experiences, environmental circumstances, relationships and the way we interpret the world. Self-blame and assuming you’re not good enough is unhelpful and just plain wrong when lined up against the scientific evidence.
Sure, you’ve got to take personal responsibility to recover, but never put all the blame at your own feet.
Can’t do anything right
Individual abilities and behaviour get distorted when a person assumes they are not good enough. For example, performance at work or during an exam deemed as unacceptable when other people would conclude good enough or better. What results is a vicious cycle of inaccurate perception and ‘can’t do anything right’ talk.
Again, you need to evaluate this thinking. Some helpful questions might include:
What other ways can I evaluate my performance (e.g., test scores, feedback from people)? What story does this information tell?
Are you over-generalising or excluding examples where performance was ok?
Does this thinking help me to recover from psychological distress? If not, what is a more helpful way to see the situation?
Summary
You don’t feel like yourself, something feels wrong, you don’t feel good enough or up to standard. These examples of unhelpful thinking increase the challenge of recovery from a mental health issue. However, you can help yourself by practising flexible thinking via the questions provided above.
Reference
Henriksen, I. O., Ranøyen, I., Indredavik, M. S., & Stenseng, F. (2017). The role of self-esteem in the development of psychiatric problems: a three-year prospective study in a clinical sample of adolescents. Child and adolescent psychiatry and mental health, 11, 68. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13034-017-0207-y