I have a confession to make.
I have a mistress.
Oh, she’s a sly one, she is. That’s right, out of the blue she’ll appear and whisper in my ear, whisper things so insidious that at first I don’t hear them.
“What?” I say, straining to hear her better.
My mistress obliges me.
“No one likes you,” she breathes, oh so softly, into my waiting ear, “You’re a failure, and people don’t like you, and nothing you do is right.”
Soon I find myself nodding along with her. After all, my mistress has been with me for so long. She must really know me, right?
She knows me, all right, and all too well.
Her name is self-deprecation.
It’s been defined as being the Fear of Not Being Enough, or Fear of Inadequacy; not being able to live up to your own or someone else’s standards, leaving one feeling weak, insecure, and incompetent.
And oh my does it ever have a hold on me, sometimes. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, because if you have this mistress it can eat you alive. It can make you give up before you ever start trying. It can make you want to crawl into a deep dark space and live there forever. It can make you quit jobs, end relationships, self-medicate, give up on your dreams, give up on life.
There is a bright side to all this, however.
It turns out that everyone has a main fear. I happen to have two, aren’t I lucky? One is the fear of Missing Something, and the other is as above, the Fear of Being Found Wanting. Fun stuff, huh?
The trick is to realize that these fears protect us from something, and once you know what that is, it’s all downhill from there.
Working on it. Sometimes, noticing something is half the battle.
May 24th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
She’s two timing you. She lives with me as well. What a BITCH, tells me that I shouldn’t even bother thinking about maybe someday saving money to perhaps go back to school. . . I have GOT to break up with her.
May 24th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Ooooh. The one who lives at my house is Fear of Being Disappointing. Ack. What a difficult houseguest she is…now, how to evict her?
May 24th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
“tells me that I shouldn’t even bother thinking about maybe someday saving money to perhaps go back to school. . . I have GOT to break up with her.”
You can’t break up with her. She’ll follow you to school. Preview: even the second graduate level degree isn’t enough to finally Be Enough.
May 24th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Ah, but you’ve recognized her! And as you’ve written, that is the beginning to her end. Keep arguing with her; when she whispers those lies into your ear (and they ARE lies!), come back with something positive about yourself. [Hint: Write yourself a list of positive things to say about yourself, and make sure you believe them, or they won't work.] When you first start doing this, she will get more insistent. But keep at it, because eventually she won’t show up as often. Then she will get even sneakier, and come up with new lines to whisper in your ear. Keep responding with the positive things, and don’t engage in argument with her. As another has written, she probably won’t completely go away. But eventually she will pose less of a threat. Keep fighting her!
May 25th, 2007 at 10:15 am
I don’t know. Maybe you should listen more closely. Your mistress just might be able to give you the clues you need to really end that fear of not being enough. If you run from that fear, instead of face it, you might just end up doing things from the fear of not being enough. You know precipitate knee-jerk type things that only end up causing you to do just the kind of things that deep down inside you, you wish you hadn’t.
Because once you have done them, you then have to begin the same-old/same-old task of justifying them, to yourself and to those who you acted that way towards and thus, your mistress remains with a strangle hold on you. I think its better to face the mistress with a clean really intense self-study using the honest approach. It’ll be scary but you’ll come out clean.
Run, and she remains the monkey on your back.
June 4th, 2007 at 8:11 am
I think self-deprecation has come into vogue, in a way that cannot be healthy for people (I won’t get all diatribey here, I promise) — but I like the way you’ve personalized the issue here without going off the deep end
Also (and I swear this isn’t supposed to sound like spam), but have you heard of Indie Bloggers? You might have seen something like it over at Jason’s spacemonkeypants site. Well I’m sort of a content hunter for them (I’m also a member!). This post, and actually a lot of your stuff, would be very good additions to the Indie Blogger community. If you feel like joining and contributing stuff like this post, let me know!
-Mike
Oh! http://www.indiebloggers.org