Feeling better today

It's at night when I get morose. It's when I let myself think about what I don't have, and when I let myself get tired, hungry, stressed or cold. It's when there's too much noise, or I've had a hard day.

After a good night's sleep, I'm up and at work, feeling productive. It may surprise you to know that I've come a long way in my career. I was the golden girl when I was young, rose to the top of my peers at job after job. I never applied for a job, they were offered to me in a steady succession of upward mobility. I'm making ten times what I made in my first job out of college, four times as much as I was in the early 1990s, twice as much as I made at my last job. I've never actually asked for a raise.

And I think my work is adequate at best. I wonder how well I'd do if I actually tried. I know I'm smart, I come off as extremely competent and my reasoning and writing skills have taken me far. People pay me just to think (which is a good thing, because I can do that). It's when I have to actually do things that I fall into procrastination, have to do the old trick of forcing myself to work for two or three minutes diligently before moving on to another subject (more fun) for a few minutes, then back to forcing myself to work. I think 10 minutes is about my limit for actually working on one specific thing, though I can go for hours if I'm really engaged.

I think my skill set and way of working is commonly called "multi-tasking." Boy am I glad I work in this generation instead of one that requires attention to one task long term. I could never be a surgeon, I guess, or a heavy machine operator. I could probably enjoy being a 411 operator, though, getting to talk to different people all the time. (Though I'd grow bored after a week or two and would want to find ways to change the entire process just because it looked like a challenge.)

I'm a walking dichotomy, a split personality (but not in the psychological sense). It's like I play one character at work, then leave the office and leave that persona behind and become "Incompetent Woman." "Sad Woman." "Lost Woman." "Unloved."

The truth is that all those women live behind the mask of Competent Woman, too, and they peek out all the time. I fight constantly to deal with criticism of my work, and grow defensive on the inside though my goal is to Never Let Them See Me Sweat. Never.

I'm afraid if I start sweating I will start leaking from other body parts, like my eyes and my nose. And once I start crying, I will cry a puddle in this office, and salty water will seep under my door and stain the carpet, run down the hall seeking exit, flood the entry way and lead people to nod their heads and say "I knew she wasn't for real."

Tonight, I just want everything

It's a refrain I hear myself repeating: I wish he/she understood.

Most often I blame any failure to connect on some inability I have to articulate what I mean, or on my needs being too out of whack.

Tonight, I am lonely and sad. I want something I can't have, and I get that. But I still want it and still grieve its loss. What is it? Nothing less than happiness.

Out of whack. But I still wish someone could get it.

Do you think I'm scary?

I always kind of laugh nervously when I find out someone thinks I'm scary.

I mean when I'm not acting scary. Like when I'm just being who I am. Or when I'm not conscientiously trying to be someone who I'm not. Something like that.

Not when I'm shrieking.

I asked a trusted friend about this yesterday -- am I bizarre? I get these looks from people sometimes, as if I'm over the top. Oh, I know what it reminds me of ... that song, "Something To Talk About" by Bonnie Raitt.

The part where it says "Laugh just a little too loud, stand just a little too close." I feel like maybe I'm doing that now and again. I wonder if people want to, oh, back off a little.

My friend said absolutely not. I'm not bizarre. I talk normally. I am smart, quick, have a great vocabulary and love to use it. I love to talk and love the repartee. Oh yeah, and I'm powerful. I know what he means by that, but am uncomfortable about it. I am just powerful. In person, in email, on the phone. In my blog? You'll have to tell me. I know about this, and I can use it to my advantage in business. I can run right over people who get in my way.

I try not to do this in my personal life. You would see me roll over and hide my eyes at a PTA meeting, for example, if someone criticized me -- I wouldn't be fighting back. (Unless it was about one of my kids -- I stand up VERY WELL for anyone else in the world, especially those who can't ...)

I don't want to be scary. Bizarre. Would I trade powerful for powerlessness if it took away these effects, too? Probably not.

What my friend told me -- which is absolutely true -- is that I need to find more people like him, people who like me as I am, scariness, intelligence, powerfulness, silliness, sadness and all.

Boy is he right.

The Impostor Syndrome

I'm a fake. They made a mistake hiring me, and they'll fire me when they figure it out.

It's called "the impostor syndrome," and it's all about low self-esteem and not being able to internalize -- believe -- our successes while being all too willing to accept our failures.

This syndrome is common among bright women, especially gifted women who find themselves pushed to the head of the class, admitted to the best schools, hired to important positions. A feeling of panic can well up, a sense of dread, a paralyzing fear of "Oh my god, what have they done?" It's often possible to "fake it" for years. The dread never leaves, the fear of not being good enough is always there, but the work is usually done anyway. (And, ironically, it's usually brilliant work, but that's because we're lucky, or it's a fluke.)

It's time to get over it. A woman named Dr. Valerie Young has these tips to overcoming the syndrome on her site The Impostor Syndrome. There is a lot of information there on what the syndrome is, too.

Here are her ideas, in a nutshell. Read the full descriptions on her site:

1. Break the silence. We don't need to be ashamed of feeling this way. Many of us do.
   
2. Separate feelings from fact. Sometimes we all feel stupid, but just because we feel that way doesn't mean we are.
   
3. Recognize when you might tend to feel fraudulent. If you're one of the first or few women in your field it would be natural to feel like you don't fit in. Take your self-doubt for what it is: A normal response to being an outsider.
   
4. Accentuate the positive. We excel, in part, because we seek perfection. The trick is to stop obsessing. Do a good job when it matters most; forgive yourself when mistakes happen -- they will happen.
   
5. Develop a new response to failure and mistake making. Instead of beating yourself up for making a perfectly human mistake, see if you can learn from it and move on.
   
6. Right the rules. If you’ve been operating under misguided rules like, “I should always know the answer,” or “Never ask for help,” start asserting your rights. You have just as much right as the next person to be wrong, have an off-day, or ask for assistance.
   
7. Develop a new script. When you start something new, instead of automatically telling yourself, “Wait till they find out I have no idea what I’m doing,” try thinking, “Everyone who starts something new feels off-base in the beginning. I may not know all the answers but I’m smart enough to find them out.”
   
8. Visualize success. Do what professional athletes do. Spend time beforehand picturing yourself making a successful presentation or calmly posing your question in class. It sure beats picturing impending disaster and will help with performance-related stress.
   
9. Reward yourself. Break the cycle of continually seeking ­ and then dismissing ­ validation outside of yourself by learning to pat yourself on the back.
   
10. Fake it ‘til you make it. Now and then we all have to fly by the seat of our pants. Instead of considering “winging it” as proof of your ineptness learn to do what many high achievers do and view it as a skill. Courage comes from taking risks. Change your behavior first and allow your confidence to build.

I like that last one the best. It's one of my greatest weaknesses, err, skills.

Being nice when I least deserve it

One skill I am struggling with is "not making it worse."

There are a couple of ways I can make things worse. I can take a bad situation and make it significantly worse by yelling louder, throwing things, making threats, refusing to give up, oh I could describe some doozies.

Alternately, I can make things worse by taking a bad situation, or a mistake, and beating myself up about it. If I'm already upset, telling myself I'm an idiot really doesn't help anything. I can hear the dry voice of my therapist saying "Well, it really doesn't help anything to say that, you know," when I tell him so.

It doesn't help to deny myself access to friends, or to things that make me feel better. No, you can't go out to that movie, you made a fool of yourself at work today. Not only does it not help prevent me from making a fool of myself at work (if that even really happened vs. just being a huge fear of mine or a misrepresentation in my mind), but it makes me sadder and angrier and hate myself more.

In the first case, my goal is to walk away. Hang up the phone. Give up the fight. Don't have to win. Don't make things worse.

In the second case, my goal is to be realistic about how bad my screwup was, and to attempt to fix it. If it is something that can be fixed, apologized for or somehow changed, I should do that. If it is not (i.e. spilling food down my shirt), then I should not fixate on it, I should not make it bigger, I should not theorize that everyone in the office saw it or is giggling behind my back. I should be realistic.

I need to not make things worse.

Training 'that voice'

The voice in my head tells me "You don't belong."

I hear it all the time. I hear it along with a clanging noise, a false note, a claxon sound. It tells me "danger danger danger," and suggests I step aside, step aside.

So I do. I so want to belong that I try. I show up, I raise my hand, I speak well, I get compliments on what I say and how I say it. I get it, and I usually get it well.

But I never really feel like I belong. I see a sidelong glance down the table, or a subtle note being taken. I feel a fakey smile or sense that someone feels threatened. Am I imagining this? Yeah, sure. Probably. Much of it is because I am set up to expect them not to want me. It feels like the lunchroom in junior high, and even high school. Like the school bus and having nowhere set to sit.

But some of it is not made up. Some of it is my keen sense of people, my ability to read through some of the things people are saying to actually hear what they want to say. I'm quick to take offense, sure. But that doesn't mean there isn't offense offered.

I don't always act on the instinct to run. I stay, sometimes. I usually regret it, but not always. Sometimes it's OK. When I manage to stay, it's because I am telling myself "It's only a story, you are hearing rejection where there is none, they have no reason to outright reject you, you are OK."

And then I doodle on my scratch pad, drawing broad swirls, and count my breath. In, out, in, out, in, out, up to five and back down to one. It's only a story.

If I do this 5,000 more times -- about the number of times I have believed the story -- it might help.