one fairly common experience of gifted children is wishing for pain. wishing you had some great big horrible thing in your past so that you can justify the pain you’re in, and so that you’ll deserve help. it’s exhausting and it fucks you up and to anyone out there who feels like they haven’t suffered enough to get help: you’re allowed to want help. you’re in enough pain. you deserve to feel better
holy shit yeah
is this one of those things that everyone actually does?? i just assumed i was a shitty person
Wait that’s normal?
It’s not “normal” as in “everybody feels this way so suck it up and quit whining”.
It’s “normal” as in “many people experience pain, loneliness, anxiety, self-hatred, and other symptoms of mental illness that feel like they ‘don’t count’ because there’s no real Thing they can point to to explain it, but their pain and suffering are real and ought to be taken seriously.”
However, when I say “many people” I actually mean “less than a quarter of the population”. The vast majority of people aren’t in massive internal pain most of the time. If this post resonates with you, I super recommend you look into mental health resources, because nobody deserves to feel this way, and there’s a very real hope that information, understanding, therapy, and/or medication can work together to help you feel better.
Fantasizing about being hurt or dying in some way so that everyone realizes how much pain you’re in isn’t a sign that you’re a terrible person. It’s a sign that YOU’RE IN A LOT OF PAIN. Pain that deserves help and that CAN be helped.
