Hi EC! Been a while, but I felt the need to break the hiatus to ask about the feelings/thoughts/whatever I’ve been having lately. I find it difficult to find the words to pin it down, but I’ll try here. I’ve noticed over the summer that I’m getting bouts of pretty negative and anxious feelings. When I’m with people I feel pretty good about myself, for the most part I can have a good time (bar a few nagging thoughts and having to analyse their reactions in conversations). But when I’m alone, it’s just… I’ve developed this tendency of looking at myself and almost judging myself on almost a nightly basis. I’m off to uni very soon, and naturally at this point people might look back at the last 5 years to take stock before they enter a new phase in their lives. I’m no exception, but the more I look at that, the more I question myself. I did very well in school, but that just isn’t enough for me to call myself “smart” (other people do sometimes but I can’t really find the merit myself). I made a few friends, but not many and I’d hesitate to say I’m super-close to any of them or could lean on them for something crucial. I can’t stop comparing myself to other people and coming out short. Other people have hobbies, talents, a good grasp of their beliefs, attributes, and are socially experienced and seem comfortable talking about themselves. Meanwhile, I feel like I can’t assuredly describe any of those things about myself. Sure, I sort of entertain myself but there’s nothing yet I’m truly passionate about and I don’t feel motivated enough to really scratch the surface of anything I try (I just think “you’ll lose interest after a week like the other things you thought of and you won’t be brilliant at it anyway”). I’m still even unsure of what I value or stand for. I guess that’s a good thing in that I’m not going to hastily subscribe to beliefs without taking a good look at them first, but I still criticise myself for it. In general I’m just not confident at showing myself to other people when I’m not sure there’s anything really to show yet. I’ve come out of high school with more questions and less confidence than when I went in, it would seem. I don’t know much of who I am or want to be and find myself constantly wondering if I’m interesting enough for other people, or creative or intelligent or pretty much any attribute you can apply. So there’s that. I mostly just sit around listening to music and debating with myself whether I’m worthy, and keep telling myself I’m not yet, or at any rate somehow less than the peers I know. Idk, I’ve kind of lost my self-conception lately so I can’t stop analysing things, and I really want a closer connection with someone, which I didn’t feel the need for earlier. Because of that, I’ve lately got a bit of a problem with finding something about myself to believe in. Plus, I don’t think I’m a competitive person at heart but maybe there’s an element of “if I’m not amazing at it and other people aren’t impressed why bother”. Sometimes I’m not really living in the real world and getting sh!t done (e.g. uni paperwork which I’m very behind on) but just evaluating myself in this imaginary space or worrying about the future without engaging with the present. Recently I tried just writing it down, a negative thoughts log and tried to write myself up a framework of how I view, and should view, myself (which I crossed out about 5 mins after writing). I’ve heard that can help, and the negative thoughts log did somewhat. Has anyone else felt like this? What are some other ways you’ve found to shut up the inner voice and just get on? Maybe I haven’t related the essence of the actual problem, or this is just incoherent (feels that way) but I’d appreciate any help. I mean, talking about it can’t hurt that much so I thought I might as well.
Stapler. In all seriousness though, you sound a lot like me. I too switch from thing to thing and get bored easily. I too second guess myself at everything and I've had that mental debate before. I find that just distracting myself helps shut up the stupid voice. I flick from hobby to hobby but I've come to be okay with that because that's what I do.
What I usually suggest is that people look at themselves the way they look at others. So, pretend you have a friend that's like you. Would you say he's "worthy"? If he's good at football or video game design or painting or coming up with story ideas, is that OK even if others are better than him at it? Lex
Thanks for the replies guys. I guess I just hold myself to overly high standards... maybe I need to stop beating myself up so much, because I guess I wouldn't be so vicious if it was someone else I was looking at. It's a fine line between wanting to improve and just being unreasonable. It's very strange - and probably invented in my head - but I'm just afraid of disappointing people, including myself. Like, sometimes I think about all the opportunities I've been given and feel almost guilty, as if telling myself "well with all this given to you, if you don't use it to do something really amazing what kind of person are you?". And on some levels I get a little jealous about other people's interests/talents because I feel like that's missing in me. So I think too much about what others think of me then think about myself and how much I should be thinking of what other people think vs. what I think. This is all over the place now. But I'll be giving both strategies a go, along with some others. After all, it's uni so there should be enough societies and shenanigans to keep me away from myself for a good while Bleh...
