Sometimes the most piercing blade is in the form of a compliment.
“You’re always so put together.”
“You’re so on top of things.”
I know. People mean it as a compliment. But for some reason those words are suffocating, and they weigh more and more each time. Your smiling face and confident demeanor don’t count much when you are alone because all you can think about is how much you need to rise up to the pressuring demands that deliver in a silver platter called compliments. When you’re alone, you’re the embodiment of insecurity.
You’re right. You’re not alone. You’re not the only feeling this way. There are fellow overachievers out there thinking the same thing — as if they are barely achieving much when everyone lauds them of their accomplishments and efficiency. You may be highly functional, but you may be neither happy nor functional inside.
I recently talked to many people about this. Apparently, something called high functional depression is a thing. Depression is a manifestation of high functionality and superficial jubilance, and even incredibly extroverted social behavior. So far, depression and happy faces were mutually exclusive but little did we know, they may in fact have a lot more overlapping than expected. You can be laughing and joking all you want, but you may be hurting inside.
And it’s okay — it really is. It’s okay to be different inside out, no matter what others tell you. It’s totally normal to feel like you have a shell out there that everybody applauds you for, and inside the shell, you are just a scared little child. That’s totally okay. It’s okay to be depressed and be smiling. It’s okay to feel like you don’t deserve to be depressed because people have it harder than you do. Everyone thinks you have your shit together, so it must be that you don’t have it as hard as others do? Nonsense. None that doesn’t change the fact that you are depressed. And depression is not something you earn. It is something that is.
So for all those people who battle the happy depression of overachievers, listen up. You, although it doesn’t seem so, are fighting the battle with a million others.