MY WORST PART

I’ve talked a lot in the past about how our mental health journey isn’t linear and how it’s normal to expect backslides along the way. I know that my OCD, anxiety and depression are likely to flare up in the future. And I’ve gotten to a place where I don’t judge myself when it happens. The same can’t be said for my tendency to feel like a failure and compare myself to other people in my field. I catch myself judging these harmful thought patterns and often feel ashamed that I haven’t somehow “risen above” this type of thinking.

I logically know that my career status doesn’t denote my value as a person. Yet I still find myself questioning my worth whenever a project doesn’t move forward or my subscriber count goes down. Then, on top of feeling like a failure, I get mad at myself for caring about this sort of thing in the first place! I see someone tweet about a recent success, feel jealous and then feel disgusted for feeling jealous. I try to tell myself that I don’t need to have my own TV show or a best-selling book to be happy. I can even point to all the times in my life when I have been happy without those things. But lately the feeling of inadequacy is growing and my inability to squash it has become even more frustrating than the feeling itself.

I have tried so many different tactics to snap myself out of it. I remind myself that I am not entitled to success. I point out that the world is not a meritocracy and so the fact that I haven’t achieved what I want to achieve isn’t a reflection of my talent. I try not to fight the thought that my career is over and instead say, “Okay, my career is over. So what?” I list all the things I have already accomplished in my head. I seek validation from the people around me that I am not as big of a failure as my brain tells me I am. I try to remember that even if my reach is smaller than I want it to be, I am still helping people. I even attempt to take a wider perspective that given all the atrocities in the world, I have an incredibly privileged and lucky life.

None of these things have been working. And it’s getting hard not to hate myself for it. 

Because the thing is, I don’t want to be the kind of person who is obsessed with their own success. I don’t want to be glued to my phone to see how many shares my latest TikTok got. I don’t want my self-worth to be tied to whether other people are doing the things that I want to be doing or not. I am ashamed by this part of myself--especially as this part seems to be taking over more and more of my brain. I have fought so hard to build this wonderful life for myself and yet I am having trouble noticing anything other than what’s missing.

Shouldn’t I be better than this? (If I believed in shoulds.)

Sometimes I wonder what I would be like in a different environment. If I had a more traditional career, would I constantly be fixated on my next promotion or would I be more at peace? It’s easy to blame my tumultuous industry for making me feel insufficient, but I think in the time of social media, so many of us feel inferior regardless of our job titles. We always find ways to compare ourselves to others and come up short. It’s exhausting. And, for me at least, it's disappointing.

It breaks my heart to think about carrying these feelings with me through the rest of my life. I don’t want to be 55 and freaking out because I don’t feel successful or accomplished enough. And it’s not like I can just work really hard to make sure that doesn’t happen because so much of my career is out of my control. What I can do though, is imagine of version of myself that isn’t consumed by all of this. I can create her image in my mind and remind myself that my future self is unknown. Just because I haven’t been able to grow in a certain way before now doesn’t mean I won’t.

Throughout my life I’ve identified parts of myself that I don’t like, and I’ve actively worked to change them. I’ll admit that this part has been stickier to navigate and dispose of than others. Maybe instead of judging myself for that and giving up, I can just extend my timeline. I can’t expect to stop comparing myself to other people instantly. But I can hope to see some improvement in this area over the next few years. I can hope that by the time I turn 40 my mood won’t be so dependent on my level of internet fame. I can have some faith in my future self that I won’t always feel like this even if I always have before--because that’s not the person I want to be.

While I can’t immediately change who I am, I can dictate in what direction I’m heading. And I am pretty freaking excited to get there (eventually).

xoxo,

Allison