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ScienceGeek

Always feeling behind

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Most of the time I'm alright but there are times when I feel like I'm always behind everyone else. People my own age had been and finished uni before I even started, then people who started the same time as me have finished and I have another 2 years to go! My peers from school are getting on with their careers now, have children and are starting to work their way up the ladder and I feel like I'm not even on the starting line. I just don't feel like I belong anywhere, I don't identify with my peers at uni because they are a lot younger than me and their experiences are very differnet to mine, but I don't identify with people my age either because they are all about families, children and everything that comes with it and careers.

 

It hurts when I see people my own age getting on with their lives and feel bad that I am not at that point in my life. All my life I've felt perpetually behind, always trying to catch up with my peers and failing miserably. I am proud of where I have got to, but it's just that little niggle and it hurts when I'm reminded how far behind everyone I am. Anyone else feel this way? I come from a big family and I think that doesn't help either because everytime I see my family they ask when we are going to start a family and when I'm going to get a "proper" job :wallbash:

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i also feel like way about everyone especially work girlies my friends the list endless so you are NOT ALONE! gets me frustrated and low at times when over think these thoughts drives me mad crazy!

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I have the same feelings. But I feel more in tune with people younger than me, if I had a choice between ages. Looking back, I was not able to know my own abilities to go any faster, but I have taken on everything that came as an opportunity, so have achieved quite a bit, which would be probably more than others would. Everything I have achieved though was much later than others.

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First off, you are only young! It's ok, and in the words of the great Douglas Adams 'Don't Panic'!

 

Some people are slow burners, and take a while to get up to temperature. I do hate the pressure of having to keep up with this stupid 'normal'. You are you. Good bits, bad bits and all the in between bits. You are making progress in life, and working towards a future. Don't listen to other people's agendas.

 

I'm 32, still coming to terms with my own sticky life, it took three attempts to get a degree, I was professional, with proper job, but then mental health took nose dive, so coudn;t work, then built back up slowly, have dogs instead of kids as not ready yet! Whats my point? Life isn't perfect, and you can't please everyone, so best thing is to please yourself. Sounds like you are making great efforts and doing a good job, so try to let the others' comments go in one ear and then out the other.

 

:rolleyes:

Take Care.

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Yes I feel this way most of the time.

 

You're right to be proud of where you've got. I think the answer is to try to focus on that and remember that you're doing the best you can do.

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My daughter has often expressed similar feelings - she's 22 and yet to start uni so most of her peers have now left. I keep reminding her that some of them will probably be at home struggling with children while she's out having fun as a student.

 

K x

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I feel the same in many ways, personally I get the feeling that either: I am wasting my life or: my life is wasting away... is there a difference? Everyone tells me what I've achieved when I moan to them but to me it feels like nothing, I haven't done the 'life progress' stuff like marriage, kids, job and it gets depressing sometimes as though this stuff defines what is right. As this is my first ever post I should've wrote in meet and greet but hey I'll do it another time..... I just wanted to be another voice who at least partially understands - good luck :thumbs:

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Me too!! Even though I have achieved a lot of things that make me proud of myself, it's all still slightly 'not quite right'.

 

Ho hum...

 

Bid >:D<<'>

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that "dont feel like i belong anywhere" has been ever so present for me. in relationships, career, family/social life, most hobbies etc..this is what has led me to search for help.

In hindsight, maybe i wouldn't mind to have under-achieved in areas of my life, if i wasn't "so intelligent, talented, patient, kind" etc. like some close friends have described me in the past, if it made me a bit more "normal".. :S

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Just to throw a spanner in the works or a devil :devil: in the advocate (:huh:), everyone who's replied is either on the spectrum or has replied in relation to a family member on the spectrum. I just wonder how much these same feelings are shared by others not on the spectrum. There are many many models and norms of how things should be done and social pressures to do things (uni, getting married, making babies) and at particular ages, but I wonder how many actually fulfil these norms and how many 'NTs' also worry about feeling behind? :unsure:

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Well thank you Mumble for saying that - and I'm glad it came from you not me because actually I was thinking that I identify with a lot of those feelings too - i.e. not fitting in or doing things the right way when everyone else but me seems to have access to the instruction manual and figured it all out! Somehow though, it feels impolite and insensitive for someone without AS to butt in and say so on a thread where people with a dx of AS are comparing notes as it might seem to imply that I am undermining the effect of AS by suggesting that everyone feels like this - which is not the case.

 

I'm not criticising anyone on this thread in particular or even on this forum in general, but sometimes there does seem to be a subtext in threads like this that all people without AS breeze through life, "get" all the social rules and manipulate them with ease and enjoyment and don't experience negative things such as isolation, the feeling of being out of step, or the effort of trying to conform. Again I'm not minimising the effects of AS but I do wonder if some people with AS tend to have an unrealistically rosy view of what life is like for the rest of us?

 

K x

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I like your post mumble, and can appreciate your points Katherine :robbie: I think the thing your describing could also be called 'grass is greener' syndrome ;) I think we all are guilty of this, as people, because a hell of a lot of people never seem satisfied. I know I'm not!

In a weird way I'm proof of your point because even if I always had AS, I believed that I was NT (even though it didn't feel like it) and nothing has really changed in terms of the content of this discussion and when I thought I was NT it definitely was far from rosy :D

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I guess you could say that if life for someone with AS was no more difficult than for anyone else, it wouldn't be classed as a disability?

 

Just a thought...

 

Bid :)

Edited by bid

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I guess you could say that if life for someone with AS was no more difficult than for anyone else, it wouldn't be classed as a disability?

I don't think I'm saying that life isn't more challenging in particular respects or requires different ways of approaching tasks for those on the spectrum, however, in terms of the specific thought of being behind, not doing what's expected, feeling everyone else has everything sorted and rosy, I think that applies across people and is perhaps a much more common feeling than people are happy to admit - because admitting it suggests a perceived degree of failure. :)

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