I Stopped Treating Myself Like A Problem

Not in a dramatic, movie-moment kind of way. More like… I ran out of energy to keep auditioning for normal. I was tired of being the before-version of myself. Tired of waking up and immediately scanning my own life like a crime scene: What did I do wrong yesterday? What’s the missing piece? What book, what course, what “practice” will finally make me a person who can cope like everyone else seems to cope.

Piles of stacked hardback books

My self-help shelf (spilled over onto the floor next to my bed) was proof that I’d been trying. It looked like hope from the outside. It looked like discipline. It looked like a woman “doing the work.”

But it felt like pressure. Constant. Quiet. Heavy.

Every spine was a promise. Every promise came with a threat: if this doesn’t work, it’s you.

I read them. Highlighted them. Took notes like I was studying for an exam I couldn’t afford to fail. I signed up for courses with names that made my chest loosen for ten minutes. I booked sessions. I listened to podcasts while folding laundry, gardening, and lying awake at night with that familiar buzzing in my body, thinking, just tell me what I’m missing.

Sometimes it helped. Briefly.

That’s what makes it so confusing. I’d get a week of relief. A few mornings where I felt lighter. I’d have a moment where I thought, okay, this is it. I’ve finally found the thing that’s going to make me consistent. Calm. Normal.

Then I’d crash.

Back to the spiralling shame. Back to the confusion. Back to the exhaustion that doesn’t feel like “I need a nap” exhaustion. It feels like your whole nervous system is soaked through. It feels like your bones are full of wet sand. And when it happened, I didn’t think, maybe these tools aren’t built for my brain. I thought, I didn’t do it properly.

So I tried harder.

I made more rules. I tightened the routine. I talked to myself the way you talk to someone who is failing on purpose. I got so good at performing “fine” that nobody could see the cost. I looked like I was coping. What I was actually doing was trying to earn the right to exist without being a burden.

Then I found out. I was neurodivergent.

And it didn’t land like a cute label. It landed like the lights coming on in a room I’d been bumping around in for decades. It explained why “just be consistent” felt like being told to hold my breath forever. It explained why the strategies everyone swore by worked for a minute and then turned into another reason to hate myself.

It explained the collapse, the shame, the guilt, the frustration, the hiding.

Because I wasn’t doing self-help to help myself.

I was doing it to fit in.

To be easier. To be less. To stop making other people uncomfortable. To stop needing things. To become a version of me that didn’t require patience, rest, accommodations, or understanding.

So who was I helping anyway? Not me.

And once I could finally see that, something in me went very quiet. Not fixed. Not healed. Just… honest. A few days later, I stood in front of the shelf and started pulling them down one by one. Books with dog-eared pages. Books with highlighted lines that once felt like life rafts. Books I bought at 1 a.m. when I could feel myself slipping and I needed an answer fast.

But, I didn’t get rid of all of them.

I got rid of the older ones. The ones I never went back to. The ones that were basically just monuments to panic and self-blame. The ones that made me feel like I was always behind.

I filled two full large cloth bags. The weight of them shocked me. Not just physically. Emotionally. It was like I could finally measure how long I’d been carrying this belief that I was a problem to solve.

I gave some away to my book club friends. I dropped the rest at the thrift store. Handing them over felt strange, like I was giving away something I’d sworn I needed to survive. Like I was quitting.

But I didn’t feel like I was quitting. I felt like I was putting down a weapon.

I kept a few special ones. Not the “fix yourself” ones. The ones that feel like a companion. The ones I return to when I want to understand, not when I’m desperate to become someone else.

Then I went back and rearranged my shelves. And instead of replacing the empty space with more advice, I replaced it with my actual life. I put up my kids’ art. The messy, colourful pieces that don’t try to be impressive. The ones that exist because someone made them and that was enough. I stacked a few pretty books. Not because they were going to save me, but because they felt like me. I added plants. Living things that don’t respond to shame. Living things that just need light and water and time.

When I stepped back, the shelf looked different.

Not empty.

Intentional.

And the room felt… bigger.

Airier.

Like my house could breathe.

Like I could breathe.

Because that shelf wasn’t just a shelf. It was a scoreboard. A daily reminder that I was still a project. Still not there. Still not fixed. Still one book away from finally being acceptable. And without the old books staring at me, something softened. It was refreshing not to see them. Not because I’m anti-growth. Not because learning is bad. But because I finally saw the trap I’d been living in: most of what I called “working on myself” was me rehearsing how to take up less space.

And I’m done rehearsing.

I spent years trying to become someone easier to live with.

Now I’m learning how to live with myself.