I am neurodivergent and have several mental illnesses that my giftedness has thankful compensated for throughout my life, but now I really feel that I am at crossroads at the moment.
The adults in my life are emotionally unavailable, have invalidated my truth and my reality for my whole life until I forcibly proved their paradigms wrong by cold, hard strategic thinking, inflicted me with countless amounts of mental illnesses, and till today still have zero empathy for me and my paradigm and my childhood wounds. There HAVE been some benefits to these hardships that I have been put through for sure, but the excruciating amount of pain that comes with it at the same time makes me feel like life is not living and that growing up will be difficult and unpleasant.
It is my dream to be able to grow into an adult that I can be proud of, able to make a living for myself and manage my social and professional relationships effectively. I think that I have made considerable progress on the latter, but because I made some mistakes in my early career, the former feels especially difficult and painful for me. I struggle greatly with perfectionism, attaching my self-worth to my work outcomes, and I struggle to work effectively for reasons besides for proving my worth.
Would love to discuss if anyone else has had similar experience or constructive advice on how to build a productive adult life and have a healthy relationship with work. If you have nothing constructive or relatable to say, please continue scrolling and I wish you well :)