[mistica]

I posted an introduction on the forum with the other introductions and will try not to just rehash all that. Self-esteem is a huge issue for me. I have over the years built up this inner recurring monologue that just keeps emphasizing negative thoughts about myself. I don't know how to overcome it. I have been in counseling, but had to leave that counselor due to a move. I just haven't really gotten up the initiative and courage (and am living really frugally for the time being) to find another counselor, and hope that they could be as good as the one I was seeing before. I just read the sticky (that I now cannot find, argh), 10 cognitive distortions, and I regularly practice 9 of those 10. It was pretty important to me to see that, but I think I need to see a therapist or just really spend time undoing those patterns of thinking.

What I specifically struggle with, is I feel very juvenile and immature and incompetent a lot of times. I am 27 and unemployed. I actually feel like I am incapable of working; like I won't do a good job at any job and could never be capable of anything other than the lowest-level work. I don't know how to explain it, but I feel like part of me is still a young teenager psychologically. Like I should still be in school, learning what exactly? I'm not even sure if that's it. 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. I felt like I didn't do a great job with those things, hence why I am unemployed right now. I have also had my failures; an office asst. position I had was hard for me in that I didn't always understand what was expected of me and just felt really uncomfortable and just had a very difficult time working with that supervisor. I feel like that experience just confirmed how I feel about my aptitudes, or that it was a self-fulfilling pattern because I didn't have confidence and that caused my poor performance.

I really don't know why I feel this way. I think part of it has to do with, I always got really good grades in school and did not have to try that hard; I was underchallenged, particularly in elementary school and even to some extent all the way through high school. But for all of my adult life including college, I think that somehow not believing that I can overcome difficult challenges has led to me always falling somehow short. I always tell myself it's impossible for me to be above average in anything, and that's always how I perform. I'm not sure if it is true that I'm causing this myself, if that really is the reason why I never did outstanding in anything. This issue is, I believe, severely impacting my job search, because I don't believe I have any skills or anything to offer, so how can I possibly convince an employer that I do have anything to offer??

I'm just wondering if any of this makes sense or sounds familiar at all to anyone else. I've never really been able to explain my lack of self-esteem adequately to other people (e.g. my previous therapist). Particularly the part about feeling young, and not feeling capable of working or being excellent at anything. It just doesn't really make sense to me, but I can't just shake it off and not feel that way.

[thesnowqueen]

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!...

[mj88keys]

I understand how you're feeling. It's hard to expect others to see you as something when you think you're the opposite. Self confidence and self esteem are difficult to come by and easy to lose
Try this: In the morning, after you're all ready for the day, stand in the mirror and pick one thing you like about yourself today. (Doesn't have to be physical!) The rest of the day, if you're feeling down or anything, tell yourself that one thing you picked over and over again until its embedded in your brain. Soon you'll have a huge collection of wonderful things (:
Stay strong.