Is it possible to help me understand what is going on?

Hello,

First, I'll say yes there are a lot of ways a therapist can help you understand what is going on in your life. They will do this through making sense of your situation and how you are feeling with it, offering ways for you to understand a situation when in high emotions. It sounds like you're trying to balance school and the struggles with that. Also, it sounds hard when you feel like your family is pushing your boundaries or limits as a person.

I won't be able to fully answer your question and it can be helpful to move away from thinking 'I'm crazy' and understand what you're going through. An example would be saying, I feel this when my family does this. It can be helpful to remove the term 'crazy' and understanding your emotions more clearly. For example, 'I have a hard time trusting myself around my family because they treat me differently or say I'm this or that.' Sometimes an invalidating environment or an environment that doesn't understand how you feel, misinterprets you, makes it so you can't express how you feel, which can play a huge role in how you feel as a person.

The other side of this is your biology. Just by being born, you may be more sensitive to certain emotions. For example, I know I'm more sensitive to anxiety as a person and that's okay. I understand my baseline may be different with anxiety than guilt, jealously, etc. We all have different baselines. Also, another part of biology looks at the idea that impulsivity is wired in how we're born. Sometimes we are born with genetics that make it much more difficult to manage how we feel, think, etc.

The important piece of this is first saying, "I'm not crazy" and move into understand why you experience what you're experiencing through your own biology and how your environment interacts with you. The synthesis or transactions of both your biology and the environment (people around you) impact everyone. 

To reiterate, I would try these two exercises...

Am I more sensitive to impulsivity or an emotion?

Am I impacted by an invalidated environment and how? (You likely are if you're second guessing if you're crazy or not).

Lastly, trying to understand how you feel and how it makes sense. An example would be, "My mom says I'm crazy and it makes me think I must be." Notice she said it and you're thinking that. Crazy is not accurate and often a judgment or shortcut in language. It's helpful to note how what she says makes you think and feel vs. what is fact. Another example would be if we just met and I said you're crazy. It wouldn't make sense because crazy is a subjective term and could mean a lot of different things vs. you went skydiving before and that's something I wouldn't do.

I hope this helps,

Mitchell Daas, MA, LPCC