Can anyone relate?

[HesOkIthink]

Overall, I feel a sense of inadequacy to everyone else, I often feel as though I am not confident enough, interesting enough, good looking enough or funny enough, I feel my life compared to others is quite boring and for the most part lonely, I feel, compared to others that I do not have a lot of friends and the friends I do have are busy most of the time which amplifies these feeling of loneliness. I feel disconnected, like I haven’t found my people, or people that get me, that know me. I can’t stand to be in my own company for too long, especially on weekends when there’s the added pressure from society to be surrounded by friends having a blast, yet here I am struggling to even organise a lunch with the 1 or 2 flakey friends I have. This makes me feel like there is something wrong me, like I am a socially inept loser, a loner. I want to belong to a group of friends that know me and love me for me, to have that feeling of family, to be invited to weekly dinners or drinks or activities etc.

I have also recently started dating someone, she is outgoing and confident and is constantly surrounded by friends of hers, her social calendar is packed – seeing this and seeing how much she enjoys her well balanced life reiterates those feelings of inadequacy for me. I started to feel nowhere near good enough for her, like I had nothing to offer her, like my life was way too uninteresting and boring for her, like I was way too uninteresting and boring for her.

I feel like a prisoner to my own mind, all I want is to be happy with who I am, to be confident on my own in my own skin, I don’t want to live in my head anymore, I don’t want to constantly be googling mental health symptoms late at night, I don’t want to feel irritable or restless, I want to enjoy life, I want to enjoy meeting people and stop caring so much about what people think of me. I want to come out of my shell, find out who I am and own that uniqueness. I don’t want to be a follower anymore, I want to be me, and have my own passions and hobbies and interests. I’ve thought about joining meetups and groups but I just can’t picture myself doing it alone, I don’t feel confident enough.

I have booked in to see a professional but there is quite a wait. I’m just wondering, can anyone else relate? What were you diagnosed with or what do you think I am struggling with?

[Helen72]

Hi HesOkIthink,

You're suffering from the same thing most of us deal with - a critical brain . Brains love to catastrophise and imagine the worst. Remember brains are always producing thoughts - whether you take them on is up to you. Also if you were boring I'm sure your girlfriend would never have become your girlfriend.

Having just a couple of friends is fine - I've got a half a dozen online friends and 2 in real life and that's fine. I'm bored easily and I'm not good at hiding it so I have a pretty small social circle. My mother forced me to have a big party for my birthday one year and it was just awful - I've never made that mistake again!

Ask your professional if they know of Acceptance and Commitment therapy and try not to label yourself 🙂

Helen

[Jesicca]

Hey HesOkIthink,

I have experience similar feelings to you, especially when I first started dating my boyfriend. I constantly felt worried that I wasn't good enough for him and that he would realise this. It sounds scary but honestly voicing these concerns to your partner is the first step in getting rid of these thoughts. I was so embarrassed and felt like if I told him this he would realise I was a fraud and notice that I wasn't good enough for him. But it's clear that your girlfriend sees the positives in you which is why you have recently started going out. Remember all the positives you see in her and I'm sure she would see just as many positives in you. Something that can make this difficult is negative self talk. So for example, I notice I sometimes catch myself saying something negative about my appearance or my behaviour and I'll then say to myself "that's so stupid, you know thats not true" as a way to make myself feel better, but thats just inflicting more negative self talk on myself. Instead, I've been trying to catch myself doing this and say something positive instead like "are you sure that's true or are you being a little harsh on yourself" or something along those lines.

In terms of confidence, this is unique and different for every individual. We all struggle with confidence, even someone who we might think is the most confident person probably struggles with confidence. That's why its important to talk positively to ourselves because this makes it easier to feel less scared of anything anyone else might say. A great way to do this is to write a list down of 10 things that you like about yourself. It might seem hard at first but there are so many things that makes us up as people that you might find that you want to write a lot more than 10. Are you caring, thoughtful, creative, compassionate, funny? Do you like reading, drawing, playing sport, listening to music, playing an instrument, cooking, cleaning, laughing, joking, smiling? Literally everything we do for fun is a positive thing to write about ourselves. When I first did this list I remember that the first positive thing I wrote was "I like to draw". It seems like that isn't something positive unless its "I'm good at drawing". But thats not true, the hobbies and feelings and behaviours and things we like doing are what makes us unique and what make the world such a vibrant place and its important to remember that you contribute to that vibrancy.

[bluenight]

Yes, I can definitely relate to what you've said. I want what you want too and it depresses me that my life is not like what appears to be everybody else. Everybody else seems to have their life together and I keep finding fault with mine. People say don't compare yourself with others and I can see the wisdom in this but I just find it hard not to. I think it's just normal to compare. But maybe we shouldn't just compare with people who are more blessed and fortunate than us, we should compare with those who worse off than us too.

Gratitude and acceptance have increased over time for me but it's something I have to work on continually and it gets easier. When you become more grateful you compare yourself less with others, and when you become more accepting of things the way they are, the things that you were longing after may start happening for you and then you realise those things weren't that important after all. Its funny how things work, I hope you know what I mean.