To feel inferior (and to cultivate it)

[Aquarius]

This thread isn't necessarily about me, but I'm using my background as introduction and example.

I have a huge inferiority complex. Back in my second school I was bullied. Students would run a poll who's the most popular guy/girl in the class.. me and my female friend were on the last places on the lists, that everyone could see.
Next school, I didn't have any bullying issues, so I was fine throughout the vast majority of the time there, just in the last year, my graduating class arranged an event where we sold ourselves in an auction (for teachers and students) for a day, to collect money for our graduation party.
I was the one that went away for the lowest price.
Third factor, my dad, always criticized me. Even when I did something damn right and well.

All these experiences were decisive for the rest of my life, as I had "proof" that I'm not as valuable as others. Hence, I never attempted a career, believing I won't be good enough for anyone or anything. Whenever mum or friends said that isn't true, I would attack them shouting that I have proof.

I was in that role until this year (I'm 39 now). Over the past 15 years, I dropped contact with many friends because they had a career, which made me feel inferior once again.

Just recently, thanks to therapy, I became concious that the reason, why I got bullied at school, belongs to the past. The reasons don't exist anymore. Likewise, my dad treated me that way, because he has a severe personality disorder that he isn't aware of. Hence, it all has nothing to do with myself.

Still, I kept "cultivating" that role, because leaving that role would make me more insecure. Having a "proof", and even if it's the "proof" that I'm crap, kinda gave me at least some stability. For decades. To learn that I am just normal, and that things don't need to stay as they are (as I keep them), kinda made my world break apart.

Now, at 39, I kind of have to leave the "bullied child" behind that I kept inside of me for so long. It feels good, but also a bit insecure indeed. And every now and then I find myself going back to my old "inferior" role, until I realize that it's mostly me creating / cultivating this difference between me and the others. I find it hard to accept that I'm not leagues below others. I find it hard to leave that role behind, get a job, looking for a boyfriend, make music, finally, at 40, become what I could have already been at 20 or 25. If it wasn't for feeling inferior, for so fucking long.

So, I hope that - with this insight - I can help some people.
If you feel inferior, maybe ask yourself if it isn't you who cultivates that role? Maybe it's you who gets yourself down?

Do you have any experiences to share?

[LJay]

To share, well just that we have some common experiences.

Your post is very, very inyeresting and deserves some attention.
Therapy would be a real privilege.

[5sigma]

It's so hard to supress, let alone silence the voice of the "bullied child" but look how far you've come in doing so. That's worth some self-esteem points surely!

I don't know what sort of school you went to but in mine, the ones ranked as the most popular were generally the least pleasant. I'd hazard a guess that some of those near the top of that poll were likely contributors to your bullying. If so it was a good list to be at the bottom of.

School was unpleasant for me as well - no specific examples like yourself but I was just a general target of mockery and that still haunts me in adulthood. If I walk into somewhere like a coffee shop and hear laughing my default, yet unconscious, assumption is that I'm being laughed at. Which is kind of conceited because there's nothing all that conspicuous or noteworthy about me.

Any inferiority I feel is social. If I'm talking to people in a bar or whereever, the voice in my head says "You're boring this poor person to tears - just stop talking", or "They're just being polite - really they just want you to go". It's not easy to switch that off and it generally makes me avoid talking to new people.

But I try not to correlate that with my 'worth' as a person. I don't know what metric you use to determine what 'league' you occupy - As long as you're generally nice to people, nothing else should matter.

[Pix]

While I've experienced bullying, it wasn't chronic. Many shunned me, but I was happy with having quality over quantity.

But I did have PTSD that haunted me until I was about 30 (arguably it still does, but it's very minor now, not disruptive as it used to be). One aspect was the nightmares (especially at certain times). I realized that I was operating on a "child's reality" for a lot of it. Locks, self-defense, none of that worked. I even ran slower reflecting shorter legs.

So I used self-hypnosis to find my "child within" and teach her what I know, and slowly shape her to become an empowered adult. This was a long process, but I saw increasing results, and my dreams reflected it first when locks finally did work, as did self-defense. (Speaking of which, I just dreamed I was a runaway on the streets again last night, but it was quite the twist to start using skills I wouldn't learn until years later, like Krav Maga, and then fighting with a Wing Chun butterfly sword against two guys with bats. ) And my waking PTSD symptoms also started to fade until they're barely noticeable today. I think the part of my brain that was afflicted with PTSD was "jammed into childhood" so to speak, and my self-hypnosis helped work that out.

That shouldn't sound so unbelievable. How we use our brain affects it as much as it affects us. As a brief example, one guy in his 40s was going in for brain scans over a disorder he had but surprised the doctors as the part of the brain that memorized was growing by a lot. Turns out that since he'd lost his earlier job he'd taken a new one as a taxi driver and had to memorize a lot of new routes! (Conventional wisdom is that he shouldn't have been able to do that, that at 40 the brain is "fixed" and any changes are likely to be bad as it starts to fail.)

[meridannight]

That shouldn't sound so unbelievable. How we use our brain affects it as much as it affects us. As a brief example, one guy in his 40s was going in for brain scans over a disorder he had but surprised the doctors as the part of the brain that memorized was growing by a lot. Turns out that since he'd lost his earlier job he'd taken a new one as a taxi driver and had to memorize a lot of new routes! (Conventional wisdom is that he shouldn't have been able to do that, that at 40 the brain is "fixed" and any changes are likely to be bad as it starts to fail.)

you are talking about this:

navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of the taxi drivers

hippocampus is the part of the brain responsible for acquiring new memories.

about the brain: it does have plasticity even in adults, but to a limited degree. most of the plasticity that occurs is related to learning and memory, (which makes a lot of sense: without it we wouldn't be able to acquire new memories as adults, which clearly is not the case).

a huge factor that affects changes in the brain in every person is synaptic plasticity. synaptogenesis (i.e. creation/growth of new connections between different neurons) is not limited to the developing nervous system only. mature neurons are capable of restructuring their connections and growing new axons even.

actual neurogenesis (growth of new brain cells, neurons) in the adult brain can only occur in a few select regions. olfactory bulb is one of them (neurons involved in the sense of smell), then there's the dentate gyrus which is in the hippocampus. these two are of which i know for sure. in primates, neurogenesis has also been observed in the association areas of the cerebral cortex (involved in higher cognitive functions).

someone did an estimate on the neurogenesis in adults and came up with a figure of one new neuron added daily for every 2000 existing neurons (this number has been taken from Levitan, Kaczmarek -- The Neuron: Cell and Molecular Biology, 3rd ed.). for the 15-33 billion neurons in the human cerebral cortex it would make 6.5-16.5 million neurons daily, which still comprises only 0.05% (but i am not sure if the 2000 was quoted in relation to brain as a whole, it most likely was but since i don't know where Levitan got this information it should be taken with caution).

so, yes, the adult brain exhibits plasticity, but only in certain aspects and only to a degree. there are brain regions and functions that are fixed once the development is over and that cannot be changed (they can, of course, be affected by disease).

[Cridders88]

It's so hard to supress, let alone silence the voice of the "bullied child" but look how far you've come in doing so. That's worth some self-esteem points surely!

I don't know what sort of school you went to but in mine, the ones ranked as the most popular were generally the least pleasant. I'd hazard a guess that some of those near the top of that poll were likely contributors to your bullying. If so it was a good list to be at the bottom of.

School was unpleasant for me as well - no specific examples like yourself but I was just a general target of mockery and that still haunts me in adulthood. If I walk into somewhere like a coffee shop and hear laughing my default, yet unconscious, assumption is that I'm being laughed at. Which is kind of conceited because there's nothing all that conspicuous or noteworthy about me.

Any inferiority I feel is social. If I'm talking to people in a bar or whereever, the voice in my head says "You're boring this poor person to tears - just stop talking", or "They're just being polite - really they just want you to go". It's not easy to switch that off and it generally makes me avoid talking to new people.

But I try not to correlate that with my 'worth' as a person. I don't know what metric you use to determine what 'league' you occupy - As long as you're generally nice to people, nothing else should matter.

I think you've made some excellent points there. My experience of school sounds very similar. And the thoughts I get when speaking to people are similar too. I am constantly questioning myself, thinking I could've said something wrong, or I could have said something better. Makes me very socially anxious when meeting new people. When I hear people laughing I often think, irrationally, that they are laughing at me. Bullying certainly has a long lasting affect, right into adulthood, even though the bullying has stopped.

[Pix]

I just got curious...are there those here who were NOT bullied or abused who imagine people are always judging them, criticizing them, mocking them on the internet? Or always ranting? (Conversely, are there those who were raised this way who don't?)

I've frequently had people misinterpret what I say because they imagined the worst possible tone of voice into whatever I typed, which just baffles me. It gets even weirder, like I'd joke about something, laughing about it to myself and inviting others to laugh, but they instead "hear" me ranting furiously, which is disconcerting. And I mean more than one person. Another is that I'm not even thinking of a person, but they assume something I posted (possibly even a joke) was in reference to them when I wasn't even thinking of them at all.

It's not just me, I've seen plenty of flame wars in which was obvious to me to be a mutual misunderstanding (they'd imagined the worst possible tone and intention in each other, and then it became a mutually self-fulfilling prophecy). (It's ironic how plenty of them also imagine themselves "positive thinkers." But at the same time, to acknowledge obstacles and difficulties is to give up and admit defeat which isn't what I'd personally call positive, let alone assuming the net, and probably everyone else, is out to get them.)

Granted, this is all less likely to happen in real life where expression and tone are evident (though it can still happen). But if so, I'd like to bring it up the next time someone says bullying and abuse is a normal part of life that "prepares them for the real world" when to me it's obviously a toxic form of socialization that makes having a healthy relationship almost impossible (even with each other).

I'm just not certain that chronic bullying and abuse is behind it (if it is, then the victims are legion). It's not like I had a perfect childhood but I'm not like that (one guy even apologized because I mistook his attack on me as joking around--he'd mistook my own joking around as a personal attack--and I was surprised he wasn't joking). It could be something "tribal" in the brain as well, which is very weak in my own brain (and perhaps if I had stronger "tribal circuits" then I'd feel more threatened by "other tribes" out there and thus more prone to seeing all posts by unknown people in the worst possible light), and not have much to do with one's experiences growing up.