Dear Girija:

(Do you feel comfortable with me addressing you with your real name or do you prefer I go back to gj?)

This morning I re-read your previous threads, something I didn’t do yesterday, plus just a bit from this thread. I will quote your writings from the beginning of this thread and from your previous threads.

– Please take your time reading this long post. Take your time to let this in.

You wrote about your mother: “She was never those things I was expected to be. She only pointed out I was doing something wrong when did not fit those standards. There was no role model for that”

– your mother sent you the message early on that you don’t fit her expectations but she didn’t show you what you were doing wrong in comparison to what doing right looks like.

She criticized you but kept you lost in her criticism with no way out, no way to correct the alleged faults. You were lost in the land of the Flawed & Incompetent with no available path to the promised land the Adequate & Competent.

You wrote: “When some senior on the team is rude I am not able to convince myself that their rudeness is unwarranted and I keep telling myself I ought to be better but I don’t do anything“-

-You believe the rudeness is warranted because you believe you are indeed faulty and incompetent and he/she happened to notice it.  Next you tell yourself that you  ought to be better. The reason you don’t do anything is … that there is nothing to do, because there is no fault or incompetence to be corrected.

Like any professional you have to learn and improve, true to the seniors in your company as well. But there is no fault and incompetence about you. This is a false core belief, a core belief that is not true to reality.

The procrastination you mentioned and lesser performance on your part is not a result of being faulty and incompetent, it is a result of believing that you are and therefore believing that you will be found  out at any time.

A year ago, you wrote: “I’m not as good as all other tech savvy peers… I still was recognized for one feature I developed yet I’ve had to hear about how slow I am and not up to the standard the industry expects me”-

– but it makes sense that senior tech co workers will know more than newcomers, beginners. But you take this as proof of your inherent faultiness. You focus on any and all supposed evidence of a non-existing faultiness and dismiss all evidence of your existing competence.

This core belief is associated with a deep feeling of shame, which is emotionally painful.

“I don’t feel a passion towards coding when there is pressure to prove myself otherwise I enjoy it when I have a sense of the goal to achieve and also help from peers”- the reason you don’t enjoy many things, feeling that lack of passion and motivation you wrote about, is that where there is shame, there is no passion or motivation.

“I’m afraid to ask for help as I might seem too stupid.. I want to do well but have no motivation and am living in fear and shame”- you are afraid that if you ask for help, they will think or notice that you are faulty and incompetent. You keep living in fear that people will notice what you believe is true, that there is an inherent fault and incompetence about you.

“I still don’t understand how I can believe in myself … and accept my flaws. How do you do it? Know you are flawed and that these flaws are visible to anyone easily if they look”-

– you wrote it yourself.

You live in constant fear of being found out, of your faultiness being pointed out to you.

“My mom says I have everything a person my age needs”- except for the belief of being adequate and competent, a belief a person needs at any age. Without this belief life is miserable.

“the reason I’m so afraid is… that I failed because I didn’t change even when I had to.. I need to change now”-

– You need to change something, but you need to know what it is specifically that you need to change. You are not faulty and incompetent, this is not what you need to change. It is the belief that you are faulty and incompetent that you need to change.

“It always feel like the damage is done and I can’t improve. Honestly, where do I begin? It’s inherently a problem with who I am”-

– the damage is the early life forming of this core belief, which is glued in your brain by emotions of shame and fear. It is very difficult to change a core belief glued so well in the form of many neuropathways in the brain. The problem is not in who you are but in who you believe you are.

“this fear of judgement runs really deep… my goal in writing here was not just to ‘fix’ things at work but better myself as a person.. it makes me feel like a failure when I disappoint those around me”-

– the core belief of faultiness and incompetence exists not only in the context of your work life but in context of you living at home with your mother.. who instilled in you this core belief.

“I’m most happy when I’m by myself and calm”- because there is no  one around you whom you allegedly harm by your alleged faultiness and incompetence, no one  you are disappointing, no one you are displeasing, and no one who is allegedly thinking how faulty you are.

“I feel really powerless as a person, so I try to avoid challenges and don’t think I can face them… somewhere deep inside I’ve decided I won’t be able to handle things going bad”-

This core belief keeps you very scared because you don’t believe you are competent to face difficulties, to face tough times. This core belief is far reaching and encompasses everything in your life outside the few breaks you get when you are alone, being by yourself. Maybe being by yourself listening to music.

In summary of this post: the good news is that it is possible to change such a deep rooted, far reaching core belief. The bad news is that it takes a lot of time and a lot of work.

Do you know of people who deeply believe something that you know is not true, maybe certain religious beliefs? If you do, then you know that it is possible to deeply believe something that is not true.

In my life experience, I have never come across a woman in her twenties (and you are only 23) as intelligent as you are. I have no way to measure your IQ and am not qualified to do so. What I am referring to as intelligence is your insight, your curiosity, how far reaching your thinking goes. You are also a very honest person, honest with yourself, willing to look at reality, willing to examine it. You are a very evolved person this way, not rigid and limited, but open and capable, competent. As a matter of fact, I have never met a person your age who is.. more competent than you.

-Enough for now.

anita