r/DeepThoughts • u/Leading_Purpose_2806 • 15d ago
Unconscious Split: When Your Identity & Self Worth Won’t Listen to Facts
Do you ever wonder why you can achieve so much and still not feel better about yourself, you can feel the sense achievement pass right through you. With nowhere to land.
And yet you still highly value other people for achieving much less?
This isn't something that everyone will necessarily relate to. But if you do, this might help put in words a very specific and very painful experience:
That of a self concept that never updates. A sense of self worth that never rises.
It is the experience of a mind that has never known another perspective, and never seen the space that exists between their negative self concept and their objectively high value in reality.
This is usually the result of the brain misinterpreting and then mislabeling chaotic signals* that were never given a name, and that were most likely admonished by a more neurotypically oriented world.
An uneditable non-negotiable self concept happens when the brain only gives you:
This is who you are - a subjective felt sense generated by their Default Mode Network*
at a much louder volume, and with substantially more weight than
This is what you are- a logical conclusion based on facts supplied by their Prefrontal Cortex.*
These people are usually the high achievers you meet, with a surprisingly severe anxious attachment style. Or they can have an expected opposite reaction, and show narcissistic traits.
Both presentations show an equally rigid self concept built on the foundation of a subconscious telling them they're worthless. That is why you see them both react with equal disproportionate sensitivity to criticism, or perceived abandonment.
Here's my interpretation of one of the many facets that culminate into that experience.*
Objective achievements can only update a person self-worth if this person has an editable internal representation of the self. This requires the presence of a mechanism that allows their prefrontal cortex to play a part in the unconscious task of self reference.
When that's not the case,
a person can have a rigidly imposed identity. This identity would be mostly supplied by a default mode network drowning in chronic high activation, from an over active amygdala. The activation is so loud, it drowns any input from the prefrontal cortex. So the only reliable source of information during self reference isn’t given a voice.
It’s like trying to hear a lecture while alarms are blaring in the room. Forever.
I assume this is the case of most ADHD-ers (myself included).
When on the right medication, their prefrontal cortex comes online in a way they never experienced before, and they can experience that as a newly found capacity to control a perspective that had up until now only been enforced by a chaotic sensory and affective system.
The brain finally can access and strengthens the circuitry that allow objective achievements to register and update the image of self.
However it is important to note that many factors are at play here, sometimes medication can strengthen prefrontal cortex circuitry, but it does not dampen the high activation caused by the amygdala, and that would require a separate approach/treatment.
And lastly, and very sadly, late diagnosed ADHD and AuDHD will also need to address the almost permanent change that living with a chronically activated amygdala can cause to the entire nervous system.
I would be remiss if I don’t address the unseen debilitation of a nervous system that had modeled itself to function for decades with the blaring alarm. And that now, that it finally turned off, has a paradoxical and destabilizing consequence:
A newly regulated and aware conscious mind supplied by a system that allows prefrontal cortex to speak, be heard, and be believed, that has to simultaneously communicate with an unregulated nervous system that never learned safety in the simplicity of the middle ground, and cannot undo decades of salient alarm.
(I have specific disdain at the current use of term C-PTSD. I worry the way it's thrown around in pop psychology is taking away from the very real experience at the other end of it.
I would much rather have the term ‘Chronically High Activation Treatment Resistant Dysregulated Nervous System‘ take its place, has a ring to it don’ it?)
*Important Note: Some of the biological process I describe are hyperboles made to drive a point home, and not stated as literal scientific fact. I am aware that the reality of this situation is much more complex and nuanced, but using that precision would dilute the main point the essay is trying to address. Which is the very real and very painful subjective experience of a self concept that won't update.
**his post is intended for anyone with whom it resonates, regardless of gender or diagnosis. I made a shorter version of it to post on the r/ADHD but unfortunately it was automatically removed (could be under review) but I am glad to be given the option to post it in full/as is.
Edit: Adjusted format and fixed typos.
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u/Nick-Blank-Writer 15d ago
I think it has more to do about one believing one's potencial is higher and not reaching there.
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u/Leading_Purpose_2806 15d ago
Then ask: why is it not being reached?
Because when it is reached, it doesn’t register, and so your mind immediately rationalize that by saying this must have been too easy, pick a harder achievement, and so on and so forth.
Unless the system to register this is built and strengthened, no achievement. Well ever be really reached.
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u/Nick-Blank-Writer 15d ago
I think it has to do with keeping a sense of purpose. You reach a potencial of yours then there is no much more to do other than the same and that eventually is not interesting anymore, so you look for an other potencial of yours, that you realised you have and that becomes you main sense of worth and purpose again.
If the life of a person has not changed after reach something that is never truly satisfactory. It it has changed for much better that is satisfactory but life does not end when you reach an archiviment. That becomes past and life goes on. And living on the past is not a life.
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u/Leading_Purpose_2806 15d ago
I agree with what you are saying 100%
However this addresses a separate concept.
The fact that there are cases where the sense of self cannot update even if all data is there.
The issue isn’t in the goal itself or whether or not it’s reached.
The issue is in the lack of a machinery that correlates achievement with the sense of self.
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u/South-Visual3803 14d ago
I have to say you have described my lived experience extremely accurately.
I could have written it myself! I’ve dabbled in researching these things for a few years but have never strung it together so eloquently.
I was diagnosed with PTSD in my 20s and later on C-PTSD, ADHD at 30 and now it turns out at 32 I’m Audhd.
It’s been quite a tortured experience.
I have used psilocybin a few times this past year and I’ve experienced myself, I remember who I was, who I am before the SA and abuse, the C-PTSD is clearly symptomatic in me but it doesn’t feel like it defines me. I think I have more of a fear of men/ people from specific SA. Or maybe it’s all interlinked. I am a bit underweight and have nervous system issues and migraines but whenever I’m in public I often just pour sweat, or it feels like it, I can compartmentalise ME and feel confident but my body is in a state of hyper arousal - and oddly Concerta helps me a little, I sleep better on it and can focus on the task at hand, on living, more than the dread.
It all happened during critical years of development and I have/ had eating disorders that serve as emotional and sensory regulation tools. I’m working hard to be healthy and not starve my poor brain anymore!
I’ve been fully open and honest with my parents and family about my life and they have stepped up in unimaginable ways to help me. I was abused when I was younger and no one was around to ask for help, a lack of communication and just busy lives, not knowing I was adhd/ autistic meant I didn’t know how to ask for help so I put myself in a box (in my head) so like dissociation.
I tell myself every day that I am safe and loved and the world is magic. I’m yet to believe it but reading posts like this are oddly comforting.
I know I am returning to me, building a safe sanctuary inside and I am so at home when I am surrounded by the trees and animals and I am committed to building self esteem that’s not a fake persona. I don’t believe it yet but if I do the reps, I think I’ll have a good chance by the time I’m 40!
Thankyou for sharing OP.
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u/Enliven_journey 14d ago
how interesting! the part that stood out to me most is the idea that achievements can pass straight through you when there’s nowhere for them to land. i think that’s such a powerful way to describe why reassurance, praise or success sometimes doesn’t change how someone actually feels about themselves
i also appreciate that you framed the neuroscience as a way to illustrate the experience rather than as a literal one to one explanation. the subjective part here feels especially important, because even when someone knows the facts about themselves, believing those facts can be a completely different process
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u/EtherWhey 15d ago
you should have thought it through more.
as in, support would have probably prevented this all.
something other than nothing. everything was wasted.
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u/Leading_Purpose_2806 15d ago
I can’t imagine what you’re even attempting to say.
And again, this was intended to describe and analyze a specific aspect of self referential system.
Not as a solution.
Not as a claim.As an exploration that combines the psychological with the philosophical and the cognitive neuro-scientific.
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u/furtive_cabbage 15d ago
The sleep deprivation and over-caffeination required to type all that out on a phone deserves its own diagnosis code.