Quote:
Originally Posted by clg311
I've been OCDing over a job offer letter that should be coming but has not and it is really stressing me out and probably would a normal person. But I said to my Dad that it may not be God's Will for me to get this job or perhaps something has gone wrong... he yelled at me and said that I was having a distortion of reality.
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I don't see what's so off the wall about your thought. Both things are possible, and your consideration sounds like something that a normal person might think especially as a way to let go of some of the stress. I think that the Christian practice of "putting it in God's hands" is a culturally sanctioned way of way of removing stress that we can't really do anything about.
There are two things that bother me about the above, though. First, you say that you are OCDing over a job offer letter - but you also aware that it would stress out a normal person. I don't know exactly what you mean by OCDing, so I don't want to minimize what you are actually going through - but I also hope that you do not unduely attach an non-vanilla feeling to a disorder. -hold that thought a moment, and I will explain better after I explain the other thing that bothers me.
The other thing that bothers me is your Dad calling it a distortion of reality. Again, I don't know the exact way in which your interaction happened, so I may have missed some of the meaning - but I have experienced "crazy labels" being slapped on me for normal behaviors, and I have experienced that some people, upon learning that I have a diagnosis, start slapping crazy labels on me for normal behaviors or normal reactions even more often. I slid down a lot when they said those things to me enough that I started believing them.
A diagnosis can do some good things, but labeling can also do some harm, especially when we start labeling ourselves. We can lose ourselves in the labels, and minimize the experience itself or even not even acknowledge it as a normal experience.
I hear you trying to be realistic about your life, and that is good. Don't psyc yourself out, of course, and if the letter really should be coming, it probably will, but not being a VP wouldn't be the end of the world (and not just because of any disorder either - most people never get to be a VP and they end up just fine).
Quote:
Originally Posted by clg311
I am also expected to keep climbing the corporate ladder and everything that comes with that.....I have come to the realization that I may not become a VP, maybe I will, but just hard to have such high expectations when you battle an illness that makes these high goals even harder to achieve.
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Who is expecting this of you? Parents often put high goals in their children's minds to motivate them, which is admirable I suppose, and we do generally want to make something great out of ourselves so their goals can feel like our own, so their goals can feel like our goals. This can make it hard for us to differentiate between a "high goal" and a happy goal - and because we made that earlier prejudice that some goals are high goals so other goals would be low goals, or somehow less important, we might be deprived of some of the happiness that our happiest destination could give us, if we even figure out what that is.
Quote:
Originally Posted by clg311
I just want them to be understanding. But it is hard when you live in a World where you have a secret and you are in a "normal" job, living the "normal" life and yet you are not "normal," but you are expected and judged as if you were.
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What do you mean that you are expected and judged as if you were normal? It sounds to me like you are expected to be superman/wonder woman and judged as if you should be. I've read and heard that bipolar is caused by heavy stress. Being overpushed may have caused your disorder, or at least contributed to it. Again, I don't know you or your situation well enough to say for sure, but I wonder if in fact you might actually wish that you were being judged and expected to be normal, rather than superman/wonder woman?