Hi Mistica
I'm 32 and work part time as a sales assistant. I should be able to do a lot better given that I have a degree and honours cum laude. Like you though, I struggle with the feeling that I'm generally incapable. In fact, I get nervous if I am alone in the shop, even though it is small because there are so many things I feel I might need help with.

I don't feel 'young', but I feel like I missed some kind of basic competence lessons that everyone else got somewhere down the line! I think a lot might be rooted in having a NPD mother who was unable to validate me, or foster my independent development. Unfortunately because of all this I am not able to support myself financially and so I still stay at home which makes me feel even more pathetic.

Lately though I have been reading up more about NPD and the necessity of getting out of my situation, and I'm feeling like I need to do whatever it takes and so feel more motivated with this goal...

I have worked with the CBT distortions before and believe they are an excellent way of addressing things, but I do have T and don't think I could cope without therapy. You say that

'I've done a lot of things that other people would say was difficult and required a lot of skill and intelligence, including grad school and running my own business as a professional musician'

which suggests that you are unable to own some of your very special qualities. Perhaps a T would be able to help you with this. Also, there are many factors that lead to a business/ job working out, low confidence is one of them, but there are also a lot of external factors too. It seems like you have automatically attributed much of it to internal attributions. This suggests that you are biased against yourself.

If you felt unchallenged through most of school you are almost certainly highly intelligent and thus selling yourself short. But as you say that

'it just doesn't really make sense to me, but I can't just shake it off and not feel that way'

it seems that rationally you know that - but that emotionally you cant accept it. Perhaps if you can find some root to your negative self image you may find it easier to work on. After all, you can already see that what you KNOW about yourself and the way you FEEL about yourself do not fit together very well.

Its a very long response but i think I'm talking to both of us here, and hoping I can take my own advice too!...