i know you dont want the "other people feel insecure" lecture but you do have some thinking errors in your post and you need to recognize that. especially when you use the word "most"...change it to "a few"

i will admit that i can now say that i fit the bill for a lot of your statements but it wasnt always that way. it has taken many years of meds and therapy to get me here. it has taken a lot of hard work, a lot of changing my thinking, like changing those thinking errors i am talking about above to get me here. but you know, still, some days, life just sucks and i am right down there at the bottom thinking i cant do **** again.

it all started with one indisputable fact. I came up with one indisputable fact. one good thing about me that I could not deny no matter how bad I felt about myself. for me it was that I was a good writer. I have always gotten A's on my papers for as long as I can remember and write professional evaluations today that receive praise. there is no denying that I am a good writer. so when I started running off that list of bad things in my head, I could say, yeah, but I am a good writer to compliment myself and feel good instead of bad. soon I found more good things about me and added them to the list. it took awhile but eventually I started believing that I was a good person with these good qualities. this is how I built my self esteem. this took about 3 years to believe i was good and worth loving.

then there is the fact that when you do bad you feel bad, when you do good you feel good. when you have a negative thought, that is going to lead to a negative action to a negative feeling. so if you have a positive thought, you will take a positive action and feel good. you have a choice, which would you rather feel? when you feel good, it raises your self esteem, bad, it lowers it. sometimes you have to work for it, but there is positive in everything. i hate my job could become i enjoy the people i work with.

but i still have a long way to go. because of my mental illness i dont feel i have control over my life. i have control in that i choose to take my meds so i dont go crazy but my agoraphobia doesnt let me leave my home without having a panic attack. i dont plan or get things done....you should see the mess my office is.......i am confident in what i do because i know my subject matter and have been doing it so long.......i know right from wrong because i was taught that.......i still dont control my emotions so well but better because i took dbt and learned how to regulate them.........i am not a people person and have no desire to be...........my judgement and confidence are good because i have high self esteem and i have worked hard on eliminating thinking errors with CBT,,,,,,,

so it takes a lot of work and a lot of time but you can get there with the proper treatment and commitment........