Every situation has a silver lining – discover a mindset that heals and enlightens.
November 8, 2021 · 9 min read
We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. ~ Joseph Campbell
“I don’t feel like myself. What is wrong with me?”
“I feel like I lost my identity and my sanity. I’m feeling lost in life”.
There could be a lot of reasons to feel that way. Still, nearly all the cases have one thing in common – a change in behavior and thinking.
Though, don’t fear. You’re completely fine. Nothing is wrong with you. Nearly everyone goes through the same stage as you do, whether it’s milder or harsher condition.
It’s part of our consciousness. If we didn’t think and would behave only based on our instincts, we wouldn’t have these thoughts.
So, you’re completely fine. I’ve also been in this situation. You can easily revert your condition and become normal again. Here I’ll show you how to do that.
If nothing helps, I still have one trick under the sleeve at the end of the article.
13 signs that indicate something is wrong with you
Here you might find and correlate to some signs which make you feel that something is wrong with you:
- You feel like losing your mind. The burden is too big on your shoulders. You feel overwhelmed and your mind collapses. Everyone has certain limits how much we can take of mental stress.
- You feel lonely. Loneliness comes from isolation and lack of attention. Loneliness can make you feel like an outcast and that you are too different to adapt to societal standards.
- You feel unworthy. You may feel unworthy for affection of other person, or for any life amusements that you’d like to achieve one day (or perhaps you already achieved them and you feel empty).
- You have no self-respect. When you devalue your strengths and yourself as a person in general, you will definitely feel that’s something is wrong with you. You will feel that everyone is superior to you.
- You feel worthless and disappointed in yourself. Disappointment indicates lack of achievements in your life. It also indicates that you don’t feel confident enough in your abilities to accomplish any goal you want.
- You care too much. Caring too much about everything is the main source of pain that you feel. It not only gets you hurt, but it also puts in a bad mental state which can result in developing anxiety and depression.
- You have trust issues. You don’t trust anyone but yourself. While it makes you more analytical and logical decision-based person, you will feel like an outcast. You will feel very lonely and your mind eventually might give up on you.
- You are extremely worried about your fears. Consequently, you will start making a lot of unrealistic or overly exaggerated scenarios in your head and you will only grow your phobophobia.
- You feel like life goes nowhere. You have a mindset that it doesn’t matter how much you try, you still end up in the same place and you basically achieve nothing. Or you feel that life has no meaning and everything is pointless.
If you don’t like the road you’re walking, pave another one. ~ Dolly Parton
- You think negatively. You don’t trust yourself, you think that you will fail at everything, you believe that learning something new is a waste of time and takes too much effort, and you believe that you’d rather live a fixed life which would embrace no changes.
- You experience anxiety. You are in a constant state of worrying which never leaves you away. You see dangers everywhere and looking for ways how to respond to them in the safest way. You feel tension, panic, nervousness, and restlessness.
- You feel empty and lifeless. You don’t feel excitement to live life, you feel exhausted, tired, and go through activities that make no sense to you.
- You feel extremely stupid. Finally, you feel as if everyone understands concepts a lot quicker than you, you lack skills, and you aren’t exceptional by any means.
Why do you feel that something is wrong with you?
You’re experiencing a crisis of your mind and it makes you feel uncomfortable in your own skin. Essentially, your mind is playing tricks on you more than you’re doing something about it. We’ve all been there, including myself.
Go within every day and find the inner strength so that the world will not blow your candle out. ~ Katherine Dunham
A lot of us have the talent to make scenarios in our head. We don’t align the reality and what’s going on with our thoughts. In other words, our minds distort the reality and exaggerate the situation.
Consequently, feeling that something is wrong with you is, in a sense, normal when you face such circumstances.
What to do when you feel like something is wrong with you?
Like with every stressful situation, first you must calm down. If you won’t calm down, you will never be able to think clearly.
People are emotional beings. We do a lot of acts based on our feelings. While some of them might be beneficial, the other ones can backfire tremendously. All in all, we have brains not just coincidentally.
When you will calm down, you will be able to assess the situation clearer. Until then, you will provoke your mind to set up more unrealistic and frightening situations.
Consider doing one (or more) of these things to calm down:
- Listen to soothing music.
- Meditate and focus on your breathing.
- Take a shower or a warm bath.
- Take a walk in nature.
- Exercise, do something more active.
- Call someone you trust and speak up.
The Phenomena of Impostor Syndrome
There’s a very high chance you’re experiencing an impostor syndrome. You might suddenly feel as you’ve lost all your abilities do execute tasks and you feel like a fraud.
It happens mostly to high-achievers. Despite your competence, experience, education, accomplishments, you still feel like something is wrong with you. Perfectionism is precursor of this phenomena.
As a natural perfectionist, you will start working harder until you start losing your mind and you will feel like a fraud of your own self.
Breaking impostor syndrome can be done only in one way – by not acting like an impostor. You will need:
- To develop a healthy outlook to mistakes and see them as lessons rather than failures.
- To understand that actions are separate from feelings. Actions speak louder than words or thoughts.
- To overtake the steering wheel of self-talk. Stop self-criticizing and be more positive.
- Forgive and accept yourself. If you’re thinking that something is wrong with you, you must stop this habit and understand that nothing is perfect.
What Is Wrong With Me: 15 Ways To Figure Yourself Out
1. Turn on your analytical thinking
The first step is to acknowledge that you are capable to think analytically. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t succeed in Math or Science. You are capable of analyzing your thoughts and emotions.
Firstly, assess where this feeling comes from. Does it come from your relationships? Does it come from your finances? Or is it related to your happiness and passions?
Finding the root cause for the problem is especially important because you have to treat the cause of the problem rather than the outcome.
The methodology you would have to use is Root-Cause-Analysis (RCA). You have to understand:
- What happened.
- Why it occurred.
The cause can come from:
- Physical aspects. Tangible aspects, such as rapid weight gain, occurring pimples, etc.
- Mental aspects. Intangible aspects, such as feeling lonely, negative thinking, losing interest in your hobbies, etc.
- Environmental aspects. Aspects that you can’t control. Someone contributed to your current emotional state, such as rude people, loss of your friends, etc.
Essentially, you need to determine what events led you to feel that way. It’s even better if you write them down in sequential way.
Then, determine under what conditions this happened. Do you feel unsupported? Are you experiencing other problems, such as depression, severe anxiety?
Assessing the situation in detail will help you to understand your current position better. Nevertheless, I will keep on providing with more solutions in further sections.
2. Go through your vital life areas
You could feel that something is wrong with your mind and life because you’ve been neglecting your health.
A tree that is unbending is usually broken. ~ Loa Tzu
Check your sleep. Irritation, anxiety, unhappiness can come from lack of sleep. Generally speaking, people need from 7-9 hours of sleep to function properly.
Check your traumas. If you have recently experienced any traumas or you’ve been followed by your childhood traumas, you need to assess them immediately. Traumas will haunt you like a ghost and won’t leave you alone until you learn how to accept them.
Check your addictions. Obsessions over unhealthy habits can lead to stress and anxiety. Addictions can come not only in forms of physical substances. They can also come in other forms, such as gambling, working excessively, mindlessly surfing on the Internet, and others.
Check your physical activity. Staying all the time in bed might lead to mental dysfunction and unhappiness. Many studies have proven that physical activity helps to raise mood levels.
3. Check for gaslighting signs
Gaslighting is an occurrence when other person leaves you confused by manipulating your emotions.
You may be left doubting the reality, feeling powerless and insecure, you question yourself what is wrong with you, and you face a lot of other problems.
Gaslighting is based on lying, shifting your focus and blame, gossiping about you, making you feel uncomfortable in general.
If you have any suspicions that you’re experiencing this, you have to talk about this with the other person or cut off the relationships.
4. Shift your mindset
If you are having a lot of self-doubts, most likely you’re possessing a negative mindset. You need to focus on acting instead. If you think that something is wrong with you, that’s because you are stuck in the same place.
Nothing is impossible. The word itself says: ‘I’m possible. ~ Audrey Hepburn
Here are some ways which could help you prepare yourself for such act:
- Prioritize your own well-being. Concentrating on your health will constantly remind you that you need to look at life more positively and face the changes.
- Focus on long-term success. Having a narrow mind will rarely lead you to a better place. Instead, when focusing on your daily tasks, remind yourself why are you doing this. Give yourself 3 good reasons.
- Accept the failures. Failures are not mistakes. They are only lessons that require to be mastered. The faster you accept your mistakes, the sooner you will face new changes.
5. Focus on yourself
You might think that something is wrong with you because you either:
- Give yourself attention not in the right way.
- Don’t give attention to yourself at all.
For a good mental health, you need to start living for yourself and not for others. Contrary to popular belief, self-care is not selfish. You can’t take care of someone well if you can’t cooperate well with your own feelings in the first place.
Consider doing this:
- Live in the moment. Don’t think about the future or past for a moment. Live now and enjoy the process.
- Don’t rely on other people. That means you can have a great time on your own and you don’t need others to make you feel happy.
- Spend your time productively. Mindless scrolling through Internet simply takes away your time without no results. It’s easy to drown in social media. Instead, pick a book, write a journal, practice your hobbies, and do anything that seems more beneficial.
- Give yourself a break. Sometimes all we need to do is just to relax. You need to do this activity periodically and not only when you feel overburnt. It’s the key for a healthy mind.
6. Don’t blame the environment
While there are definitely scenarios when someone is responsible for your bad reputation or well-being, but we way too often exaggerate and underline the environment or others for our unhappiness.
Blaming others is a defense mechanism and a place of comfort. We all like to believe that we would be perfect if others didn’t get in our way. This could be one of the reasons that make you think something is wrong with you.
You got to go down a lot of wrong roads to find the right one. ~ Bob Parson
Such mindset poisons our outlook of the world and impacts well-being negatively. To fix that consider doing this instead:
- Identify when you shift the blame on others. You need to be mindful of your actions in the first place.
- Take responsibility for your actions. Even if you truly believe if it’s not your fault, think what you could’ve done better instead. How could you prevent such state of mind or situation that you’re in right now?
- Be empathetic. Understand that no one is perfect and so are you. We are all human beings that make mistakes despite our existing experience. Make some room for mistakes.
7. Focus on your values
If your mind is still insisting you “What is wrong with me?”, it could be a very solid explanation that you’ve detached from your identity.
You need to find yourself again by focusing what’s important to you. Focus on your strengths and hang onto them. Try to figure out what your personal values are.
Here I present a few values that could help you identify what’s important for you:
- Determination.
- Health.
- Relationships.
- Creativity.
- Achievements.
- Adventures.
- Freedom.
- Honesty.
- Responsibility.
Your values are based on your current experiences and habits. If you can identify how you act, how you feel, you will find correlations to the values.
Be mindful of your principles.
8. Indicate your triggers
Another reason for you thinking that something is wrong with you is that you haven’t indicated your triggers yet.
The moment you identify your triggers to confusion, the more control you will gain over your life. You need to take ownership of your own life.
Here’s how you can indicate your triggers:
- Pay attention to your body. Whenever negative emotions overflow you, stop for a second. Think what just happened and what triggered your emotion.
- Be mindful not to repeat the mistake. It sounds very simple, but not a lot of people do this. Once they identify the trigger, they feel accomplished. They relax themselves and step on the same rake over again. Therefore, be cautious of not doing the same mistake.
9. Stop building bridges
If you feel like something is wrong with you, a very valid reason is that you don’t ever get a sense of achievement. Our brains are designed to thrive on success and use it as a fuel for our upcoming actions.
The more goals you set to yourself, the more you distract yourself. You can’t complete 5 goals simultaneously and expect for results of good quality. It’s very likely that you will drop all your 5 goals in the first place.
That’s the most common problem that people make in life – they believe they’re capable of taking a lot of things at once. If it happens that they’ve managed to build 90 percent of the bridge and need to push the last 10 percent, they don’t realize that. They’re just too burnt out. There are no tangible results to grasp.
The lesson is that you need to focus on one or two goals maximum at once. If the goal is extremely important, then it should be the only goal you must prioritize. You can’t build business or focus on your mental health if you’re coping with 4 other things.
10. Release your feelings
Feelings are like a volcano. The more you hold them, the more they build up. Eventually, you will experience an explosion of emotions.
In such scenario, you will lose control over yourself and you might even hurt other people. Again, it’s a common reason for you to think that something is wrong with you.
Anger, resentment, and jealousy doesn’t change the heart of others. It only changes yours. ~ Shannon L. Alder
You might feel emotionally overwhelmed. You need to identify how you feel. It’s probably not only just anger or disappointment. There could be way more feelings that you didn’t identify.
Take your time and write your feelings down in a journal. Try to recognize the patterns: what triggers those feelings and what you do after you feel them.
It’s very important to recognize and accept your feelings. They’re inseparable elements from our minds and body. Take some time to assess yourself.
11. Assess everything from a third person view
See, humans act based on their current emotions and their life experience.
What you should try to do is become a stranger to yourself and try to see yourself from a third person view. Imagine that you don’t know yourself and you’re starting to get to know yourself.
Some of our feelings can take control of our minds and we lose clear thinking. Having another person’s opinion can be invaluable experience and can help you to understand yourself better. You can spot your imperfections and what you should improve on.
You can start by practicing watching through your window and assessing other people. Think how their body language corresponds to their personality, feelings, and character in general. When you’re ready, move to assessing yourself and spotting your own imperfections.
12. Stop overthinking
Overthinking is like alcohol or any other drug to our body. We lose clear thinking and can’t assess the situation in the right way.
Overthinking is, perhaps, the most common reason why you feel like something is wrong with you. Creating scenarios in your head makes you feel incomplete and feel miserable. You start creating unrealistic situations in your head and you scare yourself.
The situation won’t get any better. It only gets worse.
To be lost is as legitimate a part of your process as being found. ~ Alex Ebert
To stop overthinking, consider this:
- Challenge your thoughts. See how valid they are. Realistically, what are the chances of that situation happening?
- Be mindful of your mental state. Recognize when you are overthinking. Then, ask yourself a question: “How does it benefit me?”. While there are some benefits to overthinking, but when it overtakes your mind it’s not healthy anymore.
- Shift your focus to problem-solving. Overthinking is mainly an act of creating different negative scenarios in your head. Instead, think how you could solve your main problem.
As soon as you find the solution to a problem and recognize the positive in it, you will instantly ease your mind.
13. Detoxify yourself from unhealthy lifestyle
Unhealthy lifestyle is linked to a lot of major problems. This is one of the most overlooked reasons to your thinking that something is wrong with your life.
Inactive lifestyle not only is linked with physical negative risks, such as obesity, high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, but also with mental health – depression and anxiety.
It’s important to take care of your body. Have you ever heard a saying that “Your body is a temple”?
Your body and mind are reflections of your lifestyle. Consider cutting out processed foods, eating more vegetables, fruits, fiber, drinking more water, and exercising more. You’ll notice significant results and boost in your mood and health.
14. Trust yourself
Trusting yourself is one of the most essential acts you can do in your life. It builds your confidence and you are able to make decisions faster and with less effort.
All doubts, including your thinking “What is wrong with me?”, come from lack of self-esteem. If you don’t trust yourself, you will always need validation from other people. You will never feel comfortable in your own skin.
Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today. ~ Will Rogers
Consider doing this to start trusting yourself more:
- Accept your feelings. One of the mistakes that a lot of people do is trying to deny “weak” feelings and hiding them. Instead, accept them. You have to learn to live with them.
- Establish a good relationship with your inner critic. Too often we bash ourselves too hard. We think that we are not enough and we can push ourselves even further. You need to establish the limits and have a healthy relationship with your mind.
- Change your habits. Any sort of addictions, surfing mindlessly through Internet hurt your self-esteem. You need to start proving your self-worth through activities that build your confidence. Any DIY projects, activities related with creativity, will make to trust yourself more.
15. Overcome your fears
People naturally are afraid of pain. It’s understandable that you might think that something is wrong with you mentally.
People that live in fears will regret themselves later in life. Face the risks, face the fears, and see what happens.
After all, it’s mind over matter. When you’re overwhelmed by fears, you are under anxiety and stress. You simply can’t think clearly. Therefore, it’s important to calm yourself down first.
When you’re trying to overcome fears, it’s important to understand this:
- Be prepared to fail. It’s nearly impossible to execute a task without failing at it first. Comprehending that a failure is nearly inevitable is the first step you must learn.
- Recognize your excuses. It’s the number one thing that stops you from facing the fears. It’s easy to create a million of excuses in your head. You need to stop this habit.
- Find the positive in your fear. Imagine what will you benefit from overcoming your fear. Will you become happier? Will you become wealthier? This reason is enough to overcome the fear alone.
When Nothing Helps
You’re overthinking. Hear me out.
Our minds are complex structures. They tend to play a lot of tricks on us. When we go through life challenges and we constantly seem to fall and fail, we give up on ourselves.
I’m not going to lie and I won’t sugar coat this. It’s seriously super hard to push yourself through life challenges and keep your hopes high. When everything is slipping out of your hands, everything looks hopeless, you simply think: “What is wrong with me? Why everyone seems to do so good in life and I just suck at everything?”
But I’ll tell you this.
Life is not a competition.
Life is not about becoming the best at everything.
Life is not about gaining respect from everyone.
Life is all about this…
Life is all about finding what you want based on your values and happiness concept. You shouldn’t feel happiness only when achieving your goals. You are supposed to feel happiness in waves regardless of achieving goals.
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one. ~ Elbert Hubbard
To feel happiness, you first must know what unhappiness feels like. That’s because if you are constantly living in a state of happiness, you’ll get used to it. It will become a routine. That’s why happiness comes in waves.
Every problem is within your mind. Every solution is within your mind. So what are you going to do about it?
Believe in yourself. Embrace the happiness with an open heart. Don’t let negative thoughts conquer your mind. You are capable and worthy of everything.
Final Words From Delightful Mindset
Life is unpredictable. It has to do a lot of with how we perceive it and how we approach it.
Look, nothing is wrong with you. You are only going through exhaustion of your mind. You’re completely fine and it’s normal to experience such feeling. You are human like everyone of us. We all experience our lows and peaks.
You need to look at life simpler. It only becomes hard if you make it hard. You are capable of everything if you believe it.
The sooner you trust yourself, the faster you will return to your true self and embrace the happiness.