Inferiority complex + indifference

Hangouts Rants
1

Feels like my inferiority complex has started to come back at full force recently, due to the start of a new poly sem, yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy.

Every night when I sleep, it echoes in my head that I suck. Every time I try to start my assignments, it tells me that I’ll never match up to the others, and I’ll get paralysed by these thoughts, unable to continue my task and start to doomscroll to distract myself.

It’s so utterly comical that I’m unable to move past this.

And every time I take a step to try to affirm myself that I’m not that bad at what I do, I flub my tasks and mess them up for myself in front of others. What the hell am I even doing?

Small, insignificant matters of late also tank my self esteem. Like who cares?? I don’t?? But yet??? They keep echoing in my head???

For example, in my usual school friend group, a few of them got selected to do special stuff for the school, while the rest of the cohort who weren’t chosen would do something else. Idk why I keep thinking about why I wasn’t chosen, as if my skills were ever that great. I’m literally as average as could get. I’m not even sure why I’m so worked up over this.

And another issue that has been eating me from the inside lately is my indifference towards certain things. I’m not even sure if indifference is the word to even describe it, but..?

There was a module where they told us to pick something we’d like to do branding for. They said everything was free game; we could pick whatever we wanted. For most people, this is great, but for me? It’s terrible. I don’t know what I want to do. I couldn’t pick. A lot of people chose to do it for things they were passionate about, like for their side business or hobby, or some people were just vaguely interested in a brand they wanted to emulate, but for me, I had nothing. I don’t even know.

And in another module, we also had to pick a topic for ourselves, and that they advised us to pick topics we cared about, as it would be a longggg project, and also the fact that it was our Final year project, to be displayed at the grad show maybe.

I randomly picked a topic, and did my research and the usual stuff to present for consultation, and was immediately called out by my lecturer. He figured that I didn’t really care for my topic, and gave me the whole spiel about choosing a topic I cared about so that I would have more energy and passion to keep me going throughout the whole thing.

But I don’t know what I like. I don’t care for most things. He was more enthusiastic about the topic I randomly thought of than my initial idea, so I felt that I might stick with that, but I still feel like I don’t care all that much about the topic. I feel 0 affinity with any of the topics brought up.

I feel like ignoring this problem wouldn’t really help, but I’m not even sure where to even start tackling this :skull:

2

I understand how you must be feeling right now it can be exhausting to constantly fight those thoughts that tell you you’re not enough. Semester 2 of poly is a fresh start, and you may have new goals, both academically and outside of academics. What you’re describing, the overthinking and constantly comparing yourself with your peers, suggests that you may be overly stressed. It can be daunting to see your peers being more successful than you, while you may feel like you are never progressing, and that is normal. But what you are seeing is just the fruits of their labour and not the time and effort they put in to achieve something even though it may look effortless. Maybe for now, instead of trying to force motivation or meaning, focus on being kind to yourself, write your goals down on a piece of paper and list ways on how you will work towards it, set realistic goals. You could start by asking for help from your friends such as asking them how they found out they were passionate in what they do and how they did it. You can do this.

3

Hey @Len ,

Thank you for sharing your struggles. It certainly isn’t easy to have to deal with these thoughts daily on top of your poly commitments. I wanted to tell you that you’ve done amazing in hanging in there despite these thoughts and feelings :slightly_smiling_face:

Often times we find ourselves comparing with others, and I feel that this is bad but very common in our society today. This is because most of the time, doing so just makes us feel not good enough or that someone is better than us and that whatever we do is pointless. This can be scary, as it reduces the worth we see in ourselves. But doing so makes us fail to realise the uniqueness we have, and that each of us can contribute or bring with us our own unique way of doing something. For instance, you may be able to see or catch things the way others don’t. I think you’ve also probably heard before people saying that the only person you should compare to is yourself, and as long as you improve from who you were before, that’s enough. But I think it’s easier said than done, as most of the time we’re so used to comparing with others that not doing so feels weird. I also really struggle with this, especially when relatives and people around me do so too. What I try to do is that whenever the negative thoughts that “I’m not good enough” comes up in my head, I do some positive self-talk and like telling myself “I’m human and it’s ok to make mistakes”, and keep doing so even if my body doesn’t believe it, as I feel that I have to make this a habit too before my body believes this. Do you think it’s something you’re open to trying?

With regards to your indifference towards certain things, it could be that handling all these thoughts and feelings is make you exhausted and burnout, and sometimes we can lose interest even in the things that we once enjoyed. Whenever possible, maybe you could try stepping away and taking a break or rewarding yourself whenever you accomplish a task? These small acts of kindness to yourself could make you feel better :slightly_smiling_face:

Know that you deserves kindness and that you’re no less than others. You’re also a person of worth and that no one can take that away from you. Hang in there and stay strong :flexed_biceps: :heart: