Published on 12, July, 2020
I can only enjoy good things if I 'deserve' them, and that means I must either work hard before the good thing or be sad or tired before the good thing.
It doesn't make sense because people's worth is not in their productivity but my brain is still being difficult.
It makes it hard for me to take long breaks, more than one day of taking a break gets me all depressed and guilty.
And I always have a general sense of guilt for everything; examples:
I don't know how to change this. Is it my own ableism (like feeling bad for not having a driving license even though I know driving was overwhelming and stressful for me), is it something my parents taught me, or something else?
Any thoughts are appreciated. Thank you!
My situation is so similar! I can’t drive due to unexpected panic attacks and my mom also drives me. I feel guilty and not worthy most of the time. But with the driving issue I explain it to myself this way: as a responsible individual I better don’t drive a car in order to not harm anyone as I would have lost control over the vehicle. It helps me.
Very good explanation. Another thing I've told myself is: Some people just have no way they can drive, like blind people, and you wouldn't think they're worthless because of that. Our situation looks more 'invisible' than things like blindness but there's really not much difference.
Another thing that has helped me recently is learning that free will is an illusion, like you wouldn't expect a dyslexic person to get better at reading, you wouldn't tell them: Just try harder, it's in your control... There's no control and free will.
This sounds crazy and it's a concept that will take time to get known by the general people, I learnt this mostly in an interview with Robert Sapolsky in the StarTalk channel on YouTube, you can listen to it if interested. It's really good!
Thank you, interesting I will search on YouTube. My opinion about free will is that there is some kind of freedom but very much limited. For me free will is for example a choice what do I do with my free time. Do I listen to others telling me what I should do or do I listen to my intuition. I chose the second one. I feel like much too late, but better later than never. And I like your explanation with the driving. Of course people with many various disabilities like for example blindness or epilepsy can’t drive and they are not less worthy than anyone else.