TheSkaFish
Jedi Guardian
This is a long post. I just feel like getting this off my chest. I read that talking about insecurities and negative feelings can help release them so I thought I might as well try to untangle some knots.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea that my entire self, my entire personality has turned out "wrong", so to speak. I feel that my personality is almost entirely composed of insecurities. Like I mentioned in another thread, I have had a lifelong battle with this feeling that I am just not good enough, whether it is for making money/getting a good job, learning skills to proficiency, being creative/artistic, getting a girlfriend (especially the ones I'm attracted to), or pretty much anything. I have always worried that my abilities are fixed, and that my level of ability is low. I have had a hard time taking action on many things and I am hardly ever in the mood to do anything that takes effort because I have a hard time shaking this feeling that I'm just going to fail. I have been a quitter in life, and if I have a hard time with something or don't get it right away my first instinct is to give up, that it must be the thing is just too hard for me. Not only that, but I am also quick to assume worst-case scenarios, not only for me and my own life but the entire world. I have developed a habit of complaining since I was a small child, and it doesn't take much to get me started ranting about the various people, groups, institutions, and situations I feel have wronged me. I've also been prone to anger outbursts. Often times, I have felt like my life is out of my control. I struggle with spells of feeling weak and powerless.
I've been retracing my steps to find the roots of these problems, to try to understand where I've been going wrong in my life, why, and what I can do to fix it.
I've been reading a lot of web pages lately about bullying during one's childhood years and the effects from it on self-esteem, self-image, confidence, and on the feelings it can cause after the fact. As I've mentioned in other threads, I went through some bullying growing up. There was this group of smug little shits that really had it in for me. Unfortunately, most of them lived on my street so it wasn't something I could get away from easily. Maybe it was because most of them liked sports and I was more of a reading, toys, and make-believe kind of person. Maybe it's because they thought they were from a wealthier background than me. Maybe it was because I was quiet, agreeable, and friendly, and not aggressive or menacing and they could tell I was confused and didn't know how to fight back. Maybe it was because I didn't have a lot of friends. I can only guess. Nothing physical ever really happened, besides a snowball fight (it was clearly not a friendly one) in which I actually grabbed one of them and threw him down to the pavement because I decided I wasn't going to let him run up and whip a snowball at me point-blank. What did happen was a lot of verbal abuse, and a lot of coming over on to our property uninvited. This lasted pretty much grade through high school. Just a lot of disrespect of us in general.
At the time, I was completely confused as to why this was happening or what I could do about it. I didn't have a muscular build and there were at any time between 3 to 5 of them and 1 of me, so I didn't think physically fighting back was an option unless I used some kind of weapon like a baseball bat but I thought it was no use because I'd just get in trouble for that and no one would listen to my side of the story, I'd be labeled the bad guy instantly for using physical force even though they were verbally abusing me and I was outnumbered, even if I was just trying to defend myself, trying to make it stop. Plus I just didn't want to get on the path of being a violent person, because I thought violent people always lose in the end and I thought getting in physical fights would upset my family and officially make me a bad kid. I wanted to stay nice. I thought maybe the problem would just go away on its own, but if I fought back physically it would only increase hostilities. I also didn't know how to deal with their insults because I wasn't very good at that kind of thing, I wasn't interested in "comebacks" or any of that, I didn't want to start swearing because again I didn't want to be bad, and I just wanted to enjoy my life and be into the things I liked instead of worrying about getting good at fighting with people. I just didn't know what to do. My parents meant well, but didn't really seem to know what to do about it either. And the bullies' parents were either completely ignorant or in denial of what kind of people their kids really were. They were the overly-permissive spoiling type who acted like their kids could do no wrong. So, nothing was ever really done about it and it went on-and-off for years until I finished high school, didn't see them much anymore, and eventually everyone went their separate ways.
In school itself growing up, I wasn't so much bullied as I was just disregarded, I guess you could say. I was a social outcast, not at all popular. Again, I wasn't muscular or athletic, I wasn't a socialite, nor did I have money. I didn't know how to make friends or what to talk to people about. I didn't think anyone liked what I liked and I didn't express my interests because I was worried others thought it was childish and would mock me mercilessly from then on. I didn't want to let down my guard and make more enemies, because I had to see these people every day, I didn't want to have to fight against everyone all the time and didn't think I had the physical build to win fights, and I already had enough ******** to deal with so I just kept quiet for the most part. I was shy and had few friends. People were verbally unfriendly to me here and there, but I wasn't so much constantly bullied by any one particular person or group at school as I was just generally received with either cold hostility or indifference. Almost nobody seemed to want to reach out to me. I didn't really fit in well. Everyone was so interested in acting older than they were, but I wanted to actually be a kid. I wanted to hold on to my innocence while everyone was in such a rush to throw theirs away. I didn't listen to popular music (including a lot of bands that I would enjoy a lot later) because I thought that no one my age could really relate to it and that people just wanted to look "cool" acting angry and rebellious, using it as an excuse to talk about sex and drugs and swearing. My home life was pretty good, and I had no real reason to rebel. I thought I'd be throwing my future away, snubbing and hurting those who cared about me and being "cool" didn't seem worth it. I didn't see any appeal in acting dark, brooding, rebellious, and cocky when my life was nice and it was easy to be friendly. I didn't see any appeal in drinking, smoking, getting high, and petty crime. I was into things like Star Wars, action figures, and LEGOs while most of the other people were into sports, adult TV shows and comedies, and later rap, weed, drinking, and sex. I'd say I had a higher sense of morality than most people (I didn't lecture anyone on this, just personal beliefs), who were lewd, crude, cocky, cliquish, and disrespectful of anything and everything for seemingly no other reason than thinking it was "cool" to be jerks. I didn't like how people acted like they were "better" than others because they had money. I didn't like all the swearing and sexual slang they were into, and I didn't like how they talked about girls. It just seemed so low-brow and unpleasant. I always thought of myself as an intellectual and I aspired to be nice and friendly. I think this would play a role in my confusion about dating later in life.
Not that the girls were very friendly to me either. They might as well have actually been from Venus. I didn't understand them at all. I couldn't relate. I had no idea how to talk to them or what to talk to them about since it didn't seem like there were any who liked the same stuff I liked. I didn't know how guys and girls "liked" each other, I thought it was all about looks and social status, things you just had to be lucky enough to have had from the beginning and not things you could build and develop. And I felt like I had neither. I had heard that girls liked confidence but I thought guys had confidence because they were born with the right things to give them confidence such as looks, money, or talent, or had a naturally confident personality. The ideas that personality was the key component of attraction and that confidence could be built instead of born with didn't occur to me until after college.
I had other miscellaneous insecurities that didn't come from any one area of life. I was insecure about my ability to be successful and make money. I thought maybe my family just didn't have the genetics for it. I know that sounds terrible, I know it's irrational, and not even true but that's what I feared at the time. I thought maybe there was some relation between social success and money, like both came from the same quick, sharp, predator mind that I just didn't have. I worried that I just didn't have the right kind of brain for making money and that a poor person is just what I was because I didn't seem to have a lot of natural aggression. I thought I wasn't smart enough. I thought I had a brain for being nice, not for being successful and that like predators and prey, people suited to kindness or success were fundamentally different.
I had a bad self-image, thinking of myself as a weak, low-status person. I was insecure about my looks, thinking I was too thin, lacking the muscle necessary to win fights, thinking that I looked weird and ugly. Girls didn't seem to want to talk to me much. I thought that I just wasn't good enough for anyone. Like I mentioned I had a hard time expressing myself for fear of unwelcome attention. It wasn't even until partway through college that I began wearing shirts of things that I liked. Due to the bullying and general unfriendliness I was given, I had a lot of anger and shame. I had anger flashbacks about how I should have fought back against the bullies and stood up to those who acted like they were "higher" than me. I had a negative disposition and didn't want to put much effort into my appearance and mannerisms because I didn't want to feel like I was sucking up to anyone. I felt ashamed that any of it happened and that I didn't stand up for myself and feared that if I were meant to be a successful person I wouldn't have been a social outcast. I didn't have any outlet or way to express or relieve myself of these feelings of anger, shame, and inadequacy.
I thought I was over this once I started expressing myself and because I'm not concerned with the actual people involved. I know that I don't need or even want their friendship or approval. fresia them. But what bothers me is how it may have subconsciously influenced me to see myself as a low-status person, as someone with no power and no abilities, as a victim which could have screwed me up for the things I wanted in life by causing me to feel a lot of self-doubt. I wonder if it influenced me to have a negative attitude about life, people, success, and myself. It's been hard for me to have confidence of any kind, because my confidence and self-worth, -image, -efficacy, and -esteem were attacked early in life. They weren't really given much chance to grow and strengthen. I realize that there are many people who had it way worse that pushed past it to great success, so I don't feel like I can use this as an excuse. But I haven't been able to release these feelings yet.
I am unsure how to express myself sexually, for various reasons. For the record, I'm a straight guy with no fetishes or anything startling. I had this feeling for a while that I didn't want to be sexual because I wanted to maintain a level of pride and dignity, I didn't want to act like a caveman. I thought that the lewd crowd was needlessly unpleasant, tasteless, and not thinking for themselves. I didn't want to act like the machos that I felt were cruel, sexist, elitist, and shallow. I wanted to be different, I thought that by being kind and seeing girls as a person first and the opposite sex second that I'd be a breath of fresh air from guys who just want the same old thing. Do I want sex? Yes, but more than that I want a real connection. I want someone to feel like I am special, and I want to feel like they are special to me. But, when I look at my problems, anger, shame, self-doubt, bad self-image, a feeling of being powerless, friendly instead of rough, inexperience and insecurity even talking about sex, much less being assertive about it - I realize that I'm pretty much exactly what women don't like. I never cultivated my masculinity because I thought it meant being like the guys I didn't want to be, but at the same time, if I want a girlfriend it's necessary to have it. I'm still confused about how I can express my masculinity enough to be seen as an attractive, sexual being, but without selling out because I don't think I'm entirely wrong. I don't want to have to start being lewd and brutish, I want to still be nice and friendly. But I don't want to give off vibes of weakness either. I don't want to keep botching things with people that I could have been really happy with, making a bad impression because of my insecurities.
I guess I'm just looking for a way to get rid of all this, beat my insecurities, fix myself and feel empowered.
I've been thinking a lot lately about the idea that my entire self, my entire personality has turned out "wrong", so to speak. I feel that my personality is almost entirely composed of insecurities. Like I mentioned in another thread, I have had a lifelong battle with this feeling that I am just not good enough, whether it is for making money/getting a good job, learning skills to proficiency, being creative/artistic, getting a girlfriend (especially the ones I'm attracted to), or pretty much anything. I have always worried that my abilities are fixed, and that my level of ability is low. I have had a hard time taking action on many things and I am hardly ever in the mood to do anything that takes effort because I have a hard time shaking this feeling that I'm just going to fail. I have been a quitter in life, and if I have a hard time with something or don't get it right away my first instinct is to give up, that it must be the thing is just too hard for me. Not only that, but I am also quick to assume worst-case scenarios, not only for me and my own life but the entire world. I have developed a habit of complaining since I was a small child, and it doesn't take much to get me started ranting about the various people, groups, institutions, and situations I feel have wronged me. I've also been prone to anger outbursts. Often times, I have felt like my life is out of my control. I struggle with spells of feeling weak and powerless.
I've been retracing my steps to find the roots of these problems, to try to understand where I've been going wrong in my life, why, and what I can do to fix it.
I've been reading a lot of web pages lately about bullying during one's childhood years and the effects from it on self-esteem, self-image, confidence, and on the feelings it can cause after the fact. As I've mentioned in other threads, I went through some bullying growing up. There was this group of smug little shits that really had it in for me. Unfortunately, most of them lived on my street so it wasn't something I could get away from easily. Maybe it was because most of them liked sports and I was more of a reading, toys, and make-believe kind of person. Maybe it's because they thought they were from a wealthier background than me. Maybe it was because I was quiet, agreeable, and friendly, and not aggressive or menacing and they could tell I was confused and didn't know how to fight back. Maybe it was because I didn't have a lot of friends. I can only guess. Nothing physical ever really happened, besides a snowball fight (it was clearly not a friendly one) in which I actually grabbed one of them and threw him down to the pavement because I decided I wasn't going to let him run up and whip a snowball at me point-blank. What did happen was a lot of verbal abuse, and a lot of coming over on to our property uninvited. This lasted pretty much grade through high school. Just a lot of disrespect of us in general.
At the time, I was completely confused as to why this was happening or what I could do about it. I didn't have a muscular build and there were at any time between 3 to 5 of them and 1 of me, so I didn't think physically fighting back was an option unless I used some kind of weapon like a baseball bat but I thought it was no use because I'd just get in trouble for that and no one would listen to my side of the story, I'd be labeled the bad guy instantly for using physical force even though they were verbally abusing me and I was outnumbered, even if I was just trying to defend myself, trying to make it stop. Plus I just didn't want to get on the path of being a violent person, because I thought violent people always lose in the end and I thought getting in physical fights would upset my family and officially make me a bad kid. I wanted to stay nice. I thought maybe the problem would just go away on its own, but if I fought back physically it would only increase hostilities. I also didn't know how to deal with their insults because I wasn't very good at that kind of thing, I wasn't interested in "comebacks" or any of that, I didn't want to start swearing because again I didn't want to be bad, and I just wanted to enjoy my life and be into the things I liked instead of worrying about getting good at fighting with people. I just didn't know what to do. My parents meant well, but didn't really seem to know what to do about it either. And the bullies' parents were either completely ignorant or in denial of what kind of people their kids really were. They were the overly-permissive spoiling type who acted like their kids could do no wrong. So, nothing was ever really done about it and it went on-and-off for years until I finished high school, didn't see them much anymore, and eventually everyone went their separate ways.
In school itself growing up, I wasn't so much bullied as I was just disregarded, I guess you could say. I was a social outcast, not at all popular. Again, I wasn't muscular or athletic, I wasn't a socialite, nor did I have money. I didn't know how to make friends or what to talk to people about. I didn't think anyone liked what I liked and I didn't express my interests because I was worried others thought it was childish and would mock me mercilessly from then on. I didn't want to let down my guard and make more enemies, because I had to see these people every day, I didn't want to have to fight against everyone all the time and didn't think I had the physical build to win fights, and I already had enough ******** to deal with so I just kept quiet for the most part. I was shy and had few friends. People were verbally unfriendly to me here and there, but I wasn't so much constantly bullied by any one particular person or group at school as I was just generally received with either cold hostility or indifference. Almost nobody seemed to want to reach out to me. I didn't really fit in well. Everyone was so interested in acting older than they were, but I wanted to actually be a kid. I wanted to hold on to my innocence while everyone was in such a rush to throw theirs away. I didn't listen to popular music (including a lot of bands that I would enjoy a lot later) because I thought that no one my age could really relate to it and that people just wanted to look "cool" acting angry and rebellious, using it as an excuse to talk about sex and drugs and swearing. My home life was pretty good, and I had no real reason to rebel. I thought I'd be throwing my future away, snubbing and hurting those who cared about me and being "cool" didn't seem worth it. I didn't see any appeal in acting dark, brooding, rebellious, and cocky when my life was nice and it was easy to be friendly. I didn't see any appeal in drinking, smoking, getting high, and petty crime. I was into things like Star Wars, action figures, and LEGOs while most of the other people were into sports, adult TV shows and comedies, and later rap, weed, drinking, and sex. I'd say I had a higher sense of morality than most people (I didn't lecture anyone on this, just personal beliefs), who were lewd, crude, cocky, cliquish, and disrespectful of anything and everything for seemingly no other reason than thinking it was "cool" to be jerks. I didn't like how people acted like they were "better" than others because they had money. I didn't like all the swearing and sexual slang they were into, and I didn't like how they talked about girls. It just seemed so low-brow and unpleasant. I always thought of myself as an intellectual and I aspired to be nice and friendly. I think this would play a role in my confusion about dating later in life.
Not that the girls were very friendly to me either. They might as well have actually been from Venus. I didn't understand them at all. I couldn't relate. I had no idea how to talk to them or what to talk to them about since it didn't seem like there were any who liked the same stuff I liked. I didn't know how guys and girls "liked" each other, I thought it was all about looks and social status, things you just had to be lucky enough to have had from the beginning and not things you could build and develop. And I felt like I had neither. I had heard that girls liked confidence but I thought guys had confidence because they were born with the right things to give them confidence such as looks, money, or talent, or had a naturally confident personality. The ideas that personality was the key component of attraction and that confidence could be built instead of born with didn't occur to me until after college.
I had other miscellaneous insecurities that didn't come from any one area of life. I was insecure about my ability to be successful and make money. I thought maybe my family just didn't have the genetics for it. I know that sounds terrible, I know it's irrational, and not even true but that's what I feared at the time. I thought maybe there was some relation between social success and money, like both came from the same quick, sharp, predator mind that I just didn't have. I worried that I just didn't have the right kind of brain for making money and that a poor person is just what I was because I didn't seem to have a lot of natural aggression. I thought I wasn't smart enough. I thought I had a brain for being nice, not for being successful and that like predators and prey, people suited to kindness or success were fundamentally different.
I had a bad self-image, thinking of myself as a weak, low-status person. I was insecure about my looks, thinking I was too thin, lacking the muscle necessary to win fights, thinking that I looked weird and ugly. Girls didn't seem to want to talk to me much. I thought that I just wasn't good enough for anyone. Like I mentioned I had a hard time expressing myself for fear of unwelcome attention. It wasn't even until partway through college that I began wearing shirts of things that I liked. Due to the bullying and general unfriendliness I was given, I had a lot of anger and shame. I had anger flashbacks about how I should have fought back against the bullies and stood up to those who acted like they were "higher" than me. I had a negative disposition and didn't want to put much effort into my appearance and mannerisms because I didn't want to feel like I was sucking up to anyone. I felt ashamed that any of it happened and that I didn't stand up for myself and feared that if I were meant to be a successful person I wouldn't have been a social outcast. I didn't have any outlet or way to express or relieve myself of these feelings of anger, shame, and inadequacy.
I thought I was over this once I started expressing myself and because I'm not concerned with the actual people involved. I know that I don't need or even want their friendship or approval. fresia them. But what bothers me is how it may have subconsciously influenced me to see myself as a low-status person, as someone with no power and no abilities, as a victim which could have screwed me up for the things I wanted in life by causing me to feel a lot of self-doubt. I wonder if it influenced me to have a negative attitude about life, people, success, and myself. It's been hard for me to have confidence of any kind, because my confidence and self-worth, -image, -efficacy, and -esteem were attacked early in life. They weren't really given much chance to grow and strengthen. I realize that there are many people who had it way worse that pushed past it to great success, so I don't feel like I can use this as an excuse. But I haven't been able to release these feelings yet.
I am unsure how to express myself sexually, for various reasons. For the record, I'm a straight guy with no fetishes or anything startling. I had this feeling for a while that I didn't want to be sexual because I wanted to maintain a level of pride and dignity, I didn't want to act like a caveman. I thought that the lewd crowd was needlessly unpleasant, tasteless, and not thinking for themselves. I didn't want to act like the machos that I felt were cruel, sexist, elitist, and shallow. I wanted to be different, I thought that by being kind and seeing girls as a person first and the opposite sex second that I'd be a breath of fresh air from guys who just want the same old thing. Do I want sex? Yes, but more than that I want a real connection. I want someone to feel like I am special, and I want to feel like they are special to me. But, when I look at my problems, anger, shame, self-doubt, bad self-image, a feeling of being powerless, friendly instead of rough, inexperience and insecurity even talking about sex, much less being assertive about it - I realize that I'm pretty much exactly what women don't like. I never cultivated my masculinity because I thought it meant being like the guys I didn't want to be, but at the same time, if I want a girlfriend it's necessary to have it. I'm still confused about how I can express my masculinity enough to be seen as an attractive, sexual being, but without selling out because I don't think I'm entirely wrong. I don't want to have to start being lewd and brutish, I want to still be nice and friendly. But I don't want to give off vibes of weakness either. I don't want to keep botching things with people that I could have been really happy with, making a bad impression because of my insecurities.
I guess I'm just looking for a way to get rid of all this, beat my insecurities, fix myself and feel empowered.