You know that feeling when even the easy stuff feels hard?
You answer the emails, pay the bills, remember your sister’s birthday, and mostly manage to get a wash on before you have to resort to your only-for-emergencies underwear.
But every little task seems to take more out of you than it takes everyone else, and you can’t quite work out whether everybody else is genuinely finding life easier or whether they’re just better at hiding it.
You keep waiting for life to get back to normal, without quite noticing that this has become normal. The trouble is, the finish line keeps moving. Before long, an ordinary Wednesday feels like a marathon.
The closest I’ve come to describing it is this.
It’s like trying to eat soup with a fork.
You’re trying just as hard as everyone else. It just feels as though you’re getting half as far. After a while, it’s hard not to wonder if the problem is you.
A lot of people come to therapy because they think they’re “not coping”. The reality is that they’re coping remarkably well. They’re holding down jobs, looking after families, remembering everybody else’s needs and somehow keeping the show on the road. It’s just costing them far more than anyone else can see.
Sometimes it’s people-pleasing that’s quietly got out of hand. Sometimes it’s discovering you’ve been expecting far too much of yourself for far too long. Sometimes it’s discovering you’ve been trying to navigate the world with a brain that works a bit differently. And sometimes it’s not just one thing. It’s a pile-up.
One of the biggest shifts I see in therapy isn’t people suddenly becoming happier or more confident. It’s the moment they stop assuming they’re the problem and start getting curious about why life has felt so bloody hard for so long.
Because before you decide you’re rubbish at eating soup, it’s worth checking the cutlery….