Why Am I So Neurotic and Why Can’t I Stop?

The weird, challenging life of a neurotic person.

I have always been a thinker.

Even as a child in primary school, I was a very thoughtful, introspective kid. The teachers used to be concerned about me because during recess, instead of playing with other children, I would pace around the perimeter of the big paved section of the schoolyard and just…think. I was maybe eight or nine years old.

When I was ten, my family took our first trip to Arizona. In the touristy gift shops, we encountered “worry stones,” which were flat, smooth stones with a machined divot. The premise was that, when you were anxious or worried, you would rub your thumb in the divot to get out excess nerves.

I gravitated towards them immediately. My father, being a bit of a snark, commented, “you’re ten. What do you have to worry about?” My reaction was to heave a sigh and simply say, “plenty.”

Of course, when I hit twelve and puberty started, my mental illness manifested. My eventual diagnosis of bipolar explained a lot of my weird quirks. It also brought a whole new list of challenges with it. For a long time, I struggled, but eventually, I overcame many of my challenges and morphed into a functional adult.

Well, as functional as could be expected from someone with wild mood swings and anxiety through the roof. My meds control the bulk of it, but I still have depression and mania, and the anxiety has pretty much always been there.

Throughout my life, the neurotic streak has been with me. From the awkward, anxious kid pacing the playground to a nervous, neurotic adult, I’ve never been able to shake the nagging anxiety that plagues my existence.

I worry that I am not good enough and will never be good enough. I compare myself to my father and sister, neither of whom I care to see or talk to, and find myself sorely lacking. I worry that my friends aren’t really my friends, that they’re just stringing me along out of pity or some spiteful game.

I stress that I’ll never have enough money, that my work is subpar, that I am ugly and my voice is terrible. Every decision is filled with angst over whether it’s the right choice, whether I’m accomplishing anything with my life or just spinning my wheels.

I’ve never had good self-esteem, and the neuroses nag at me and tell me that I’m not good enough, that I’m never good enough, that I’ll never be good enough. I’ll never live up to the standards set for me by my father, or my family, or my wife, or my friends, or whatever group I’m angsting about that day.

Nothing I do is worthwhile, so why bother? I create and get good feedback, but they’re obviously trying to make me feel better about my awful work. I pick up hobbies and make music or crafts, but the nagging voice tells me that they’re garbage and I’ll never be good at them, so I put them down, dejected.

In Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, they are referred to as “thought distortions.” You have some sort of thought about how someone else perceives you or how you’re not good at something, some sort of negative self-talk, and you take it to heart. Never mind that objectively, there’s no logical reason for that negativity, you experience it all the same.

Part of CBT is learning to overcome those thought distortions. That’s the part I’m struggling with. I can see all of this in a detached way, but I can’t do anything about it. I have a thought distortion, some sort of negative image of myself or how others perceive me, and objectively, I know it’s not true, but I feel it in my heart anyway.

No matter what I do, I can’t stop myself from feeling bad about myself. My neuroses nag at me, tell me I’m terrible and a garbage person, insulting my very being.

My logical brain tries to fend them off, reminding me that I’ve had my friends for over a decade, that my wife loves me and has no reason to lie to me, that my work got me headhunted by a former boss. Every time, no matter how sound the logic, it gets overwhelmed by negativity, especially when I’m feeling depressed.

I put down projects because they’ll never be good. I slack off at my job because I’m obviously terrible at it, so why bother? I neglect my friends and wife because they clearly don’t care about me anyway.

The negative self-talk is a regular feature in my life. When I’m feeling good about myself, it tends to be not as common, but it always returns when I feel bad. It sows doubt in my brain, making me question everything about myself and my life, dragging me down once more. It sucks me into a funk and holds me there, whispering lies in my ear and telling me that there’s no resistance, only acceptance that I’m a bad person and nobody will ever love me.

I like to write positive articles with tips and advice on how to navigate the world with mental illness. I don’t have any here. This is an ongoing struggle for me, something I deal with regularly, and I haven’t figured out how to overcome it yet.

Rather, this article is intended as a bit of catharsis for me, exposing my pain to the world in the hopes that it will not feel so bad. Maybe someone who reads it can relate to it. Maybe somebody who experiences the same thing will take comfort knowing that they’re not alone in their suffering.

Maybe I’m deluding myself. Who knows.