Feeling like I can't do anything well

Post Reply New Topic

I decided a couple of weeks ago that I would make my husband a sweater for Christmas. I can't knit anything real fancy, but I do know how to follow a pattern for a simple sweater. So, I start making the thing, and in certain places you have to do a special stitch called an "increase" to build the sleeves onto the body of the sweater. It's not difficult once you understand what you're doing, but you do have to keep track. Well, I have LEARNED that I cannot do anything like this unless I give it my full attention. So yesterday, the whole time my kids were in school, I worked on this thing. Once you get past the neck-shaping, it's a breeze, but I wanted to be sure to get that bit right. Everything was great, until I looked at it and realized one stitch looked funny. So I began ripping out, and then realized it wasn't actually a mistake, but by then it was too late. I spent all this morning re-doing what I had ripped out, again, paying VERY close attention to what I'm doing. (Without being all stressed out) I got a lot done. And then, I held it up, and somehow I had put some of my "increases" in the the wrong spot. So basically, what I'm making is a sweater that is going to have one sleeve hitched on with a crooked, crappy-looking seam. I don't want to give my husband a crappy-looking sweater. So, I have to rip that bit out again.

Now, I don't have a problem with re-doing a job, and I'm not a perfectionist. But my god, EVERY flipping thing that I do is like this. I don't mean just this week, or just when I'm feeling a little down. Everything in my entire life. I have basically accomplished NOTHING (except my little Lego movie), because every time I attempts something, no matter how careful I am, there is something unusable about what I've made or done. I've given up on cooking meals for my family (my kids are picky anyway) because if I try to make something reasonably nice, it gets screwed up.

It's been the same thing with every job I ever had. My work needs to be redone by someone else, or doesn't quit fit the bill. I suppose anyone should expect that to happen from time to time, but always??

The only exception has ever been with school. For some reason, I can start a term paper at midnight right before it's due, type a bunch of bollocky nonsense, and I get an A+. Somewhere I've got a BA in Anthropology. That and $3 gets me a pretty nice drink at Starbucks.

Is being complete inept an AS thing? Whether it is or not, it's not exactly working miracles for my self-esteem, I'll tell you that.

I don't think so but I do think we typically tend to expect to be able to do everything right. At least, I do and I've heard others mention it. You're expecting too much from yourself. Everyone makes mistakes sometimes. I'm sure not everything you've done has failed. You're just feeling down so you're looking at the negative right now. Everyone fails sometimes, no one succeeds all the time and no one fails all the time. Everybody has thier own strengths and weaknesses

If you're still depressed, consider picking up a copy of the book Feeling Good by David Burns. It's a very good book about cognitive therapy and it helps you uncover your self-defeating attitudes. I thought it was really great and I see some things in your writing here that are addressed in the book. Consider it

I do this kind of thing to myself all the time too. Hugs.

(you know... internet hugs. Cuz of course I hate being touched )

I so relate to what you're saying. Knitting is one of my special interests. I taught myself to knit a few winters ago and went nuts with it--hats for me, hats for my kid, hats for my kid's friends, hats for my husband, scarves for everyone, two knitted quilts--but I have a hard time getting to the next step because I'm afraid I won't be able to do it right.

Like yourself, the only thing I've been able to really master is written school-type stuff. I love knitting, the textures, the colors, and all that, but I have such low self-esteem when it comes to doing anything with my hands that I psych myself out before I even start. Like this winter, I want to learn to make socks, but I keep putting it off, like it's freakin' rocket science.

I just got done making a knitted pillow for my loft space. It's the most complicated pattern I've done so far. I love color stranding, and this was a navajo design, and it was fun. At first, I kept noticing how this and that weren't right. A couple of times I unravelled much of it to try again. And now that it's done, it's highly imperfect, but I don't care. Who's going to come and examine it? I love it.

But I understand a sweater is something else, because it's a piece of clothing. I want to make my husband a vest, but I'm afraid to start. If I had more confidence, I swear, I'd do nothing but learn knew knitting skills and make all kinds of things.

Come to think of it, this is what holds me back from enjoying most of my special interests. I bomb out when I realize that I just can't get it right. Right being a relative term, of course. Like with languages. I have a hard time hearing a foreign language and speaking it; writing it, I'm fine. And then I realized, duh, I'm the same way in English.

It's just a question of accepting yourself and enjoying the process. So you get it wrong 10 times. It's okay. The main thing is to enjoy the process and have some faith in yourself. I'm talking to myself, you understand, as well as to you.

First, it sounds like you are trying new things, which is not something that people who are afraid of challenge do. Some people wouldn't try to do a new thing for a gift but do something they know how to do well already, so there's no stress. So the part about combining making a gift for your husband with a new learning experience is very AS -- always ready to learn. (But that is a little more stressful and mistakes happen).

Second, it sounds like you can tell when you don't think something's right and want to go back and redo it. There's an old joke about how hard it is to know how things are going while you are knitting, so that people finish and there is one arm higher than the other or something really out of whack. So you are double-checking more carefully and being more precise, which is normal.

I always screw things up, but because I'm such a perfectionist. I pick at things and I also get so involved in what I am doing that I lose track of the "deliver a working product on time" idea. So I don't cut corners, but do everything as perfectly as I can. When I try to make a new meal, like homemade pumpkin ravioli, I can take so long to make it that I might serve dinner at midnight. It doesn't occur to me to cut corners or skip something just to get the job done. Once in a while, I make a new dish, and it comes out brilliantly the first time, but that is rare. I usually have to make something, or do something at work, several times before I am good at it. And the first time I am usually slow, erratic and very nitpicky.

I think that it has something to do with being a perfectionist (having very high standards about what will make me happy) and also treating everything that I do as a new learning experience. If everything is a new learning experience, I am more focused on how I am learning, instead of whether or not I'm doing it good enough to "make the deadline with a working product". I get too immersed in the process of learning how to do it perfectly.

The downside is that most of the things I do the first time or two, it's all messy, overdue or too picked over. The upside is that I get really good at stuff I do more than a couple of times.

I still wish I could learn how to switch gears from "perfectionist" to "satisfactory" when I need to just kick out something on time that is "good enough".

Don't know if that is helpful!

If you're getting such good grades for the "bollocky nonsense" you write, maybe your resuts are a lot better than you think? Some people are a lot better at theoretical stuff than practical stuff. Could be perfectionism, that's very Aspie.

I once wrote a post on this forum that I thought was very weak, and then somebody's said yes I agree completely, thanks for posting, and I looked again and my post seemed a lot better - though still not good enough for my own ridiculous standards.

I think knitting is actually quite difficult.

I hope you keep trying with practical things. You probably don't need to - you could just be the brains of the family and let others do the manual work - but it's nice to learn skills and I think you'll find your niche in the end.

I've taken up Photography. Being NLD, I know I'll never amount to much on the technical side of it (visio-spatial and motor skills limitations). But oh do I have "feeling" in my subjects and composition to make up for it! Besides, I've decided to only compete with myself. And I wouldn't take on assignments or make gift cards out of my photos, at least for now.

Lego movie eh? I'd be interested in seeing that.

Elderwanda,

From one craft/artist to another- you might not ever be 100% satisfied with whatever project you're working on. That is part of the miracle that is creating something unique, like a swaeter or a quilt: Mistakes are a part of the process- and part of the character of the finished product.

Time to whip out the ol' checkbook for mistakes and write yourself an open check.

Nice catch!! I didn't notice that line. I want to see too!! I love Legos!

You are SO not inept. You've learned to knit, you've got a family and a place of your own, and, oh, yeah, you graduated from college. More than I've done. (Although I have learned to crochet.)

What you are is frustrated, and believe you me, I've felt that way too. You want to do things perfectly, just for once, and then you make a mistake that throws everything else off and are about ready to put your fist through the wall out of sheer annoyance at yourself and the world.

I think it's probably impossible to do something perfectly, by the way. Not that you won't hit "pretty good" if you try for perfection.

Your story would sound familiar to a lot of ADHDers, BTW. I'm not diagnosing you or anything, because lots of Aspies have ADHD traits, but maybe some of the stuff that works for them might work for you.

Maybe you have to consciously factor in the extra time and effort for false starts and messing up. Like, for me, I used to try to get ready in the morning in a half hour (not including breakfast or a shower) because that's how long it would take me if I were actually doing everything right. But then I'd misplace my keys or leave my homework someplace or forget my lunch or wear two different shoes or run out of underwear... and the half hour would turn into two hours... So eventually I just gave up on the half hour, and gave myself an hour and a half to get ready, and wrote out a list of all the things I needed to do, in order. Turned out that meant I'd get ready in an average time of forty-five minutes and have the rest of the time to do what I wanted or whatever else needed to get done, and on a horrible day it would mean I still had enough time to catch all the mess-ups...

It's very liberating to actually give yourself room for error--to make plans on the assumption that you will mess up. Oddly enough I discovered this concept in one of my engineering classes--when you crunch the numbers after an experiment, you have to actually make allowances for an expected error rate, rather than assuming you will always be accurate. Go figure that I'd learn something like that in a class that's supposed to be the furthest thing from practical.

Thanks everyone, for the nice responses. I think my problem is that it takes me so LONG to get something done, sometimes because I'm just slow, and sometimes because I mess up and have to do it over five times. And the process of cleaning up after myself is so exhausting, so I tend to get all flustered by the chaos around me.

Okay, now I'm just rambling! Never mind.

I did post the Lego movie on the introductions board, once, for some reason. I'll post it again. (I feel like I'm exposing myself somehow!) Be advised, it's 13 minutes long. It's the story of a man who has a strange reaction to his lemon-scented bubble bath. I've put it on a blog, rather than on You Tube, because it's too long for You Tube (and You Tube creeps me out for some reason anyway.)

link to "Lemon Zing"


If you happen to like the music at the beginning and end of the movie, there is a link to the musician's website. His name is Jeff Oster. He's my best friend's husband, a really nice guy, and it would be great if he could quit his day job...but I wouldn't say any of that if it weren't for the fact that his music truly is amazing, so it's definitely worth a look.

There is also a 3-minute celebrity chat show in which the star of the show is interviewed. If you have ever seen celebrity chat shows, and find them as irritating as I do, this is meant to take the Mickey out of those. My little actor guy talks a bit about the movie. (Right now, he's sitting on the table next to my chair, holding a Lego can of Guinness.)


link to "Celebrity Spew"

Callista, that's a wonderful idea! Reminds me that, due to my visio-spatial difficulties and the common traffic jams here, I used to get everywhere too late, which would cause a chain of mishaps each time. One day I decided to always calculate half an hour or one hour more for the drive, and since then I've never been late again. As you say, it's wonderful for the worst-case drives, and on a good day I enjoy a leisurely breakfast on location before everyone else arrives, and have time to prepare mentally for the social interaction ahead by becoming acquainted with the location, rather than be the last one, unprepared and all flustered and apologetic.