Me and my Insecurities

For many of my 30+ years, I have believed I wasn't good enough.  

My wife, often picks up the pieces trying to help me see myself the way she sees me, someone smart, funny, capable, and full of potential. I could run a spreadsheet on how many times I have disagreed. 

For years, I have hidden under a cloak, this cloak is a better me, this has often in the early hours when I am awake meant that I have felt secure, hidden all day from the real me.  I thought any positive thing another person said about me was just an indication that they were fooled by my cloak. I believed if everyone could see who I really was, they would all change their minds about me. 

I've spent years convincing people that the cloak is me, but deep down inside I know it's all a charade. When I was a teenager, on several occasions I would talk to the mirror and wonder why I disliked myself so much, I knew all teenagers went through this. 

I know my wife knows how much sometimes I hurt and how much I hide the real me.  I found it hard that my wife accepted this but understood. She may not have known exactly what I was feeling on certain occasions but she always said she understood. 

All my teens and in my 20s I chased after accomplishments to prove to myself and to others that I was worthy of love, worthy of talking too or worthy of getting to know but I knew deep down inside me this was just not enough. I couldn’t do or be all the things I thought were expected of me especially by my sister, who I knew looked up to me so I always felt I always had something else to prove.

In my late 30s, I don’t hate myself anymore. Of course, there are still plenty of things about myself I wish were different, but my self-loathing has slowly been chipped away and replaced by self acceptance. Over the years I have read countless books and sourced various journals and searched through thousands of articles, listened to podcasts, cried till I couldn't cry anymore and even at certain stages spoken with someone with the hope of making myself better. I’m slowly learning to trust and value myself for who I am,  I know this will be ongoing. 

I have put a lot of pressure on myself to always know what I’m doing in my career and never make silly errors at work that along the course of my life because of this I’ve missed opportunities to try something new or promotions I never went for because I was so afraid of looking silly. I’ve given up on countless things over the years because I couldn’t do them as well as I thought I should be able, I set the bar high with my golf that being a beginner in any sport for me is just uncomfortable, even though I fully appreciate we all have to start somewhere.

My wife is teaching me that my value doesn’t come from getting everything right the first time. Instead, it’s the mistakes and failures and trying again that help me learn and grow and because of this I am proud of myself on occasion. 

For much of my life, as I have said, I defined myself by the ways I didn’t measure up to the person I thought others expected me to be. I didn’t know who I was because I so was protected by my cloak at all times. I’m slowly learning that being different from someone else doesn’t necessarily mean one of us is wrong, although if this someone is my wife I am wrong! In my 20s, I was neck deep in the trap of believing that if I could just do and say all the right things, then people would like me. I made it my responsibility to try to make sure the people around me were always happy. Why did I put myself under all this pressure?? Who was worried about my happiness??

The thing is, now I am in my late 30s, I realise I can’t control what others think of me, I can only be responsible for my own actions and intentions. I learnt to focus more of my time and energy on living in a way that reflects my values instead of trying to control other people’s perceptions of me all the time. A lot of things scare me. I’ve let my fear hold me back from many things I want to do like Go Ape or more importantly going for a job I knew I deserved and would excel at. Courage isn’t something someone either has or doesn’t and fear doesn’t just go away if we wait it out for a few hours.

The thing is, I am actually socially awkward and I don’t always click with everyone I talk to, but through taking the risk to reach out I’ve met some wonderful friends, but I know deep down inside, over the years I have stopped my wife and I having some wonderful friendships.

My mini me inside has been incessant and quite mean and over the years contributed to my eating and weight issues.  Countless times I could have a conversation with myself and argue with myself. As counterintuitive as it seems, often my mini me inside is actually trying to protect me. My mini me let's me know I’m awkward and annoying, maybe in the hopes that I’ll be careful to only say things that are sure to win approval in a crowd.

I downright suck at deciding what to do. I’ve made a lot of decisions based on what I believe other people think I should do. When those decisions aren’t a good fit for me, I’m quick to assume it’s an indication that there’s something wrong with me. Often decisions I am forced to make really go wrong! 

My condition made me think in the beginning that often I had no right to feel down, in pain or even sad because there is always someone worse than me but since the chest line I am trying to stop thinking like this, certain emotions are not wrong to feel.  I have gone through the turmoil inside because of this bevause I had tried to suppress my feelings, but they’d get stuck inside and I would lash out in unexpected ways. I hated myself for not being able to deal with emotions and control how I felt.  My Consultant has told me that jt’s not my job to control how I feel, it’s my job to choose my response to those feelings.