Feeling like there's no point and I'm delusional, extremely (aggressively) long rant
edit edit: you all gave me such kind advice and good ideas. it really helped so much! thank you all 🫂
edit: im still here because 3 of the other people are so amazing at instruction that I learn tremendously from them, even though they aren't the head person and are brown belts. like I want to move like these 3 people more than anything, and I am so happy when I go to their classes!
We are a MMA club and have a beginner bjj, advanced bjj, and women's bjj classes. I go to all three and cross train 1-2 times a week at 2 other places with womens only classes. One of them is taught by a 3 time world champ that currently competes and she is wonderful! Im turning 50, 5'2 and 165, but i lost 70 lbs and have replaced a lot of that with strength, mostly due to PT after shoulder and knee surgeries. I am autistic, have poor proprioception, and I'm hypermobile (ehlers danlos).
Our owner and head coach teaches advanced, a brown belt teaches beginner and women's (different people) and a brown belt/judo black belt/sambo red belt teaches sambo.
While the other people at the gym say I am progressing well (2 year white belt with 2 white stripes) i often feel like the judo instructor thinks im stupid even though we do a lot of tall-guy throws. Kodokan style is also a lot harder with weight or height imbalance compared to kosin judo. I got tired of being told i wasnt really trying when I am, but it's harder for me than it is for a 30 year old black belt (i mean duh) so I have to work more and it takes longer. The guy laughs and points out something youre doing wrong to anyone who happens to be near by while people are learning a throw. He did that to everyone but I hated it all the same. It stressed me out. So I stopped going to judo at yellow belt. I felt awful after each class even though I knew I was improving. Progress feedback in judo is more impactful 😀
In BJJ, the head coach gave me my first bjj stripe, but shook his head sadly and said "sometimes you gotta take lumps" twice while he was putting on the stripe. Other people he compliments an improvement or change and generally says positive things. I felt really bad and sad afterwards because of what he said, but i dont know if that was the right feeling to have because autism makes it hard for me to understand what people mean. Maybe i misunderstood. But it still makes me sad when I think about it. The other stripe was by the style creator during his paid seminar... so i feel like I bought it.
All of that and a healthy fear of leg locks has made me decide 6 months ago that I never wanted a promotion and I would gauge my own progress myself and through other people's responses to me, which have become more positive as I train. I increased my workouts, drilling etc. I found myself really improving.
So all that was fine until Wednesday. After a roll, my head coach said all i do is muscle through stuff and try to use strength, which is fine for womens class. Btw thats a funny joke if you train womens class, strength means diddly if the other woman is higher belt! Or nine years old. Looking at you, Avery, you little bully!
Anyway, he said i only use one tool in the toolkit and its useless. For the record my bench press is 20 lbs on a smith machine and i have a weak grip due to thumbs and fingers that dislocate easily. I have strong legs but not like she hulk! So I do not feel particularly strong as I've never been strong my whole life. I know guys are stronger than me so why would i bother with strength??? I was like, autistic brain, will parse this later to decode! Then he compared me to him with an anecdote.
He was a white belt for 7 years because he refused to use jiu jitsu. Apparently he regularly beat black belts using only wrestling, but once he did jiu jitsu, they promoted him. FWIW he was not saying I regularly beat people. He was humble bragging. So I think I am him in this scenario and only use my strength? I only have one chess peice on the board and ignore all the other pieces, another analogy. Though I dont know why he thought I needed multiple analogies 🤔
I have tried not to care about promotion , but a promotion is a form of external validation, whether or not we like it. So even if i do manage to win a competition in order to meet his criteria, I might get another sad head shake and "sometimes you gotta take some lumps" which hurt so much. I dont want to feel that again.
Its made me wonder why bother? I cant believe I spent 2+ years, 2 surgeries and a pulmonary embolism to do something so bad. Like everything i felt about my improvement when rolling and drilling, everything other people observed about me rolling, its all just a lie. Getting validation from my coach is impossible due to requirements i may never be able to meet. So i cant trust my own observation, other people, and will never get external validation by an expert. Or even worse, a pity promotion for the special needs weird old lady.
I have insomnia and im spiraling so bad. Its making me feel just awful. I love bij and judo so much but it feels like i am doomed to failure so what's the point??
Anyway if you got this far, sorry for the word wall!