06-08-2018, 03:09 PM
(06-08-2018, 06:33 AM)Tigerismyspirit Wrote:(06-07-2018, 05:38 PM)mat422 Wrote: So I don't know if this is the answer, but for most of my life I've been afraid. Most of my fears seem ridiculous or stupid and that's why I feel like I have no worth. Instead of my fears being something to overcome, I viewed them as an indication of how worthless and incompetent I was. I've never been ok with the idea of being afraid or showing myself understanding for it. It's always been this thing that hangs over my head and I feel I have to hide. I always felt everyone else could live their life and do things more easily than me and it made me feel defective in some way. So basically fear became the trigger for feeling worthless. But they fed off each other. The more worthless I felt, the more I feared people getting to know me, and the more fear I felt the more worthless I felt about the fear.
The solution seems to be starting to understand that fear doesn't mean I'm worthless or incapable. It's just a problem that needs to be solved and I shouldn't feel bad about having these struggles in my life no matter how ridiculous it might seem compared to other people.
You pretty much summed up my life situation as well, mat. I feel like I resonate with you the most in terms of life experiences.
I'm always glad to hear when my posts might helps someone out. A lot of us suffer in silence, thinking we're all alone. But knowing others share our struggles can make us realize we aren't the failures or worthless individuals we've so often told ourselves
Had some more insight into these self worth issues too. It's very rarely just one thing, I've come to realize that so it's important to be open to sort of interlocking issues. But I've started to see that I've always been more of a sensitive person. I was emotionally impacted a lot more than most people, it's just my nature. But unfortunately we live in a world where most people can't see beyond themselves, so when someone is different it's "wrong". The cumulative impact of this caused me to basically stop being who I was naturally. But you can't just not be yourself or trick yourself into being someone different than who you are. All that happens is you disconnect from yourself and live a life of suppression. Gradually I trained myself to think nobody cared what I had to say, what I believed in, what I was passionate about, how I felt, or who I was as a person. So I just became muted, blah, no life to myself, existing but not truly living. The absence of any part of myself was more appealing than the potential consequences of being rejected for who I was.
I was having some trouble at work today working out this database query. I felt the familiar feelings of being incompetent. But then I stopped and realized maybe my other skills are just undervalued in society. Maybe it wasn't that I was incompetent, it was that here in the US its heavily skewed towards a certain type of individual. I have a gift for exploring my own emotional landscape, empathizing with others, being creative, etc. I may not be as great as others at solving logical problems involved in coding and database structure, but I can certainly learn. The thing is I'm not going to beat myself up over who I'm not anymore because it's largely a load of crap what I've been led to believe about worth in society.
I am different and I'm not going to see that as some handicap anymore. I'm going to embrace it and grow from it. Some people may not like it, but it's not my responsibility to contort myself into what other people want. And even if I'm still not the most confident or I get afraid at times, it's fine. I have my challenges, I'm facing them and growing from them. Some people like to nitpick and point out how others aren't as confident or sure of themselves, but they never get to see what they've been through and their attempts at growth. I'm doing my best and that's all that matters. I don't have to get this 100% perfect, I just need to keep moving forward.
INFP
