Home→Forums→Emotional Mastery→Feeling like a fraud
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Libelulla.
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December 7, 2015 at 6:03 am #89131
LibelullaParticipantI have been struggling with the issue of authenticity for quite some time, but I have yet to understand how to be – or how not to be – with certain people. I find it easier to just not be with them, this eliminates the torment of self doubt and hatred that results from certain conversations and comparisons. I am on a constant rollercoaster of feeling empowered by my qualities and attributes to not feeling good enough for certain people.
My husband and I own a company. I work in the office and do not have (nor want) a leadership role in the business. I have a ‘friend’ who is the wife of one of our employees. When we met she was quite friendly and polite, but as we spent time together – through out her relocation process with which I helped her – I began to feel that she resented me. She would make sly comments about the size of my home, the school my kids went to and the fact that I was ‘perfect’. She ended up buying a large house, sending her kids to the same school as mine and she constantly flaunts that she is a great cook, that she loves european design, she does not buy things that are cheap, her facial cream cost $$$$ etc. etc.
While initially I felt flattered that she was ‘copying me’ in so many things, at he same time I began to feel that she had a refusal of me. I began to feel that no matter what I did she would have a certain look of disdain, a certain comment darted at me like ‘people who always smile are annoying’. I also suspect that she talks bad about me to other friends we have in common because as few of these friends have gravitated towards her and do not seek me out any more. If I think about it they are more like her, in the fact that they are stay at home moms, they are slightly overweight, and they love to criticize people who have something more than they do (money, looks, talent…).
Overtime I began to think that maybe I offered too much, I did too much, I shared too much…My friend has a saying that “too much generosity sometimes causes envy”. My friend is convinced that I am the victim of her envy. Could this be?
I can understand that and it may very well be what happened here, but rather than accept that I did my part and be solid in my knowledge of who I am and what I am grateful and get on with my life as she has gotten on with her life since the move (it has been two years since we have stopped communicating and have a very superficial friendship of circumstance), I still feel offended and refused – as if I had done something terrible. As if I was not good enough for her to be my friend, or that I am not authentic enough. I feel like a FRAUD.
She has become a sort of torment for me. I always think of her almost as if her refusal of me has caused me to seek her out and understand her, know what she likes, how she dresses…figure out a way to please her and regain her admiration.
When I am at a party and she happens to be there I find myself looking at her and I having mixed feelings, almost as if I want to be friendly, but then I feel like shunning her as she has shunned me. All this makes me sick for days.
Why can I not let this go? What is it about her that touches me so deeply inside? Why am I needing her to validate me to feel that I am authentic and real and worth being friends with???December 7, 2015 at 6:40 am #89132
InkyParticipantHi Libellula,
I had this experience a couple times.
With these types of people they either admire/follow someone, or they think that you are close enough their level so they feel competitive! It’s a way of protecting their own feelings. Obviously she feels threatened by you!
I know the feeling ~ I was good enough for you five years ago but now I’m not good enough for you! What changed? Nothing. Therefore, she must have found out something about me.
You are NOT a fraud. And she did NOT find anything lacking ~ far from it. Oh, sure, she might say that, but deep down SHE wants to do what you do, have what you have and be what you are! Believe it! Otherwise she would not have pointedly sent her children to the same school, bought a McMansion, or made pointed comments!
Also know that she does this with dozens of other people. Which is sad. And even if you’re the only one she does that to, sure, it’s more personal, but still sad.
The best thing to do is seek sanctuary in politeness. The next time you see her, make eye contact, smile, and say “Hello” and when you leave the party, touch her arm gently and say “Goodbye” with a smile. In ten years she will have other issues and nemeses.
Best,
Inky
December 7, 2015 at 8:39 am #89140
AnonymousGuestDear Libellula:
The ideal in your quest for authenticity would be to have no contact with this woman and with the other women who gravitate toward her, sharing her values and sentiment. For you to be authentic would be to have nothing to do with them at all. Anything else compromises your authenticity, so I see your concern as valid. Some fraud is an issue, some lack of authenticity is indeed happening in your life and is a problem.
In your current predicament, then, you are trying to make things better by pleasing her or taking the responsibility for things not being well. Just like a child/ a little girl does, taking the fault for why the parents don’t love her. A child becomes inauthentic as a result of HAVING TO live with and be in the ongoing company of a rejecting parent. This woman rejects you, disapproves of you, is irked by you and you want to fix it.
I would further minimize being in that woman’s company, be minimally civil, spend not an extra moment with her, none! Be careful to not even smile to her when it is not authentic. While in her company, be authentic, make sure you are not doing anything at all, smile or word or gesture, aimed at making her approve of you, changing anything about her attitude.
anita
December 7, 2015 at 10:54 am #89147LibelullaParticipantThank you for your responses, Inky and Anita.
My intuition tells me to avoid her and I have done so physically for some time. The problem is my mind seems to go in a spin there is a mention of her in a group or specifically when I know that there will be an occasion in which I have to see her.
As both of you suggested, I always act politely towards her, but I have learned to not share too much with her and be as neutral as possible. Anita, I will work hard to avoid the people pleaser perm-grin, as I know it well, around her. Your comments were spot on as I have a mother who did not recognize anything about herself in me and was not very affectionate with me at all. Maybe it is this very mother figure that this woman in question brings to mind. Judgmental, critical, envious and unhappy with herself. I cannot be sure of what her issues are, but I know what my mother’s were and this, this searching for answers, for authenticity and freedom from other’s stare and what it implies, is all about me. Only about me. I am the only one that can work this out and it is not about being in the wrong as both of you pointed out, it is about not letting others make us feel shame for who we are.
Thank you both for your insight.December 7, 2015 at 11:15 am #89149AnonymousGuestDear Libelula:
The feelings of being disapproved of by your mother, that hurt and distress, pay attention to it as those feelings are triggered around this woman. Acknowledge those early feelings still circulating in your brain, process them, tend to that hurt little girl in you and you will remove the extra intensity attached to the interactions with that woman.
anita
December 7, 2015 at 3:47 pm #89178LibelullaParticipantAnita, it is processing the emotions that is hard work!
It could be that I have amplified this woman’s dislike for me because I have projected my distrust and fear of rejection on her.
I will persist with protecting my inner child and keep clear of the people who want to hurt her…including myself. At times I believe we are our worst enemy. The persecutor within whispering in our ear all the abuse and hatred we have accumulated in a life time…the ticker tape scrolling in our minds. This is what I am fighting. The feeling of being a fraud because I was never validated and not always being capable of validating myself in front of the inner and outer persecutor.December 7, 2015 at 7:01 pm #89187AnonymousGuestDear Libelulla:
It is hard work. Very hard work. The woman you described sounds like a very unpleasant person to be around on her own right, regardless of your prior experience. Without your prior experience you wouldn’t be so distressed around her, but I imagine you would still dislike her and prefer not to be in her company.
Do persist with protecting your inner child and keeping clear of people who will hurt her. Unfortunately you can’t keep yourself away from her. Part of you (Superego) is your mother, internalized, her voice, criticizing you, invalidating. It is an automatic voice. On auto play. There are way to shrink it, modify it, silent it over a … long time. Notice when it speaks and hush it, over time. This voice in reality a set of neural connections, or pathways in the brain, firing electricity and releasing chemicals. Over time there is a way to weaken those particular connections and form new ones (neuroplasticity).
It really is doable, can be done. But it does take work, often not so hard as consistent, again and again. It takes months to years, but it does happen. If you persist doing the work that needs to be done (“shrinking the toxic inner critic” I think the name of one of the articles by a pete walker on his website, you may want to read).
anita
December 8, 2015 at 7:41 am #89225AnonymousGuest* One more thing: when you feel like a fraud, inauthentic, around that woman or otherwise, how does that feel? What is the secondary feeling, meaning, what do you tell yourself when you feel like a fraud? “Something is wrong with me” or “I shouldn’t feel this way!” or “I want to be authentic, why can’t I be authentic? I hate this feeling!”?
This is what I found out from personal experience, the fastest way in this slow, difficult process is when you feel like a fraud (or when you feel anything else that distresses you), is to go to self empathy. When you feel inauthentic around that woman, you can think: “I was so hurt when my mother disapproved of me that I was willing to be any which way, any which inauthentic way, just so that she approves of me”
With that kind of insight and understanding of your inner child, deep motivation, you can view your inauthenticity not as a character flaw, or something being wrong with you but as your motivation to be approved of, loved. And then it makes sense. Once you compassionately understand yourself this way, you RELAX and voila, you find yourself authentic.
anita
December 9, 2015 at 5:20 am #89294LibelullaParticipantI think her refusal fuels my narcissism. This idea that I have to be liked, I have to be accepted, I have to be loved.
When I can say this is who I am, take it or leave it, then I set a limit to my narcissism. People like this woman can no longer affect me if I do not give them the authority to validate me because I am as I am and I have already accepted that I am not going to be liked by everyone.December 9, 2015 at 5:31 am #89295LibelullaParticipantIt is not always easy. I write this now, but I can only hope to apply it consistently.
I like the idea of ‘going to self sympathy’ and in order to do that I have to stop thinking that I have to put on a show for people, fill voids with chatter and ‘smile all the time’. Once I pause, I give myself space and I can go to that place of self-sympathy and realize…I do not need to respond to this person’s refusal. It is about her not about me. I can only thank her internally for having made me aware of my own narcissism and my need to please everyone, to be accepted and loved by everyone. Such a hard position to maintain. I would be much more content rather to be loved by a few, but love with all my flaws and ambiguities. No more theatrics, no more building altars for people who cannot accept me for what I am…Including myself, that part of me that is so hard on me, that has so many expectations, so many needs and makes my days laborious and heavy with analytical thoughts. Lots of work ahead.December 9, 2015 at 9:49 am #89304AnonymousGuestDear Libelulla:
I guess when you don’t get to please your own mother, to be accepted by her, liked by the most important person in the world, then, your mother, then you want, you need EVERYONE to accept you and to like you. That injured child (and I am thinking of me at the moment) still needs to be accepted and approved of, still waiting, needing that stamp of approval: “APPROVED!”
You build altars for people as you wrote, so to place them in that high and mighty position of your mother and then wait for that approval coming from above, from up there on the altar.
The self empathy, or sympathy is helpful because when you feel and validate the pain of that little girl, you go down to her level, her short height, and you make eye contact with her, and you tell her: I SEE your pain. I understand. It was not your fault, not your lack. That way you no longer built altars and look UP THERE and away for validation. You go down on your knees so to be as short as the little girl, there you give her the approval.
anita
December 9, 2015 at 3:29 pm #89317LibelullaParticipantThank you, Anita. Writing in this forum has helped me a lot.
There is a Christmas event tonight at which this woman will be and this exchange has given me the necessary insight to feel more calm and confident in being in her presence without feeling that I owe anything to her…but only so much to myself.
I am glad that I was able to share my feelings and get help to think things out. I feel more ready, I am taking that little girl’s hand and saying “let’s go, don’t be afraid, I will be there to support you. You do not have to do anything but be your beautiful self.”December 9, 2015 at 6:29 pm #89338AnonymousGuestI like that, Libelulla, I like what you told your little girl, very much so! Since it worked for you to post here, please do post again, share about the Christmas event? I bet you didn’t execute your plan perfectly, hope you made progress (“Progress, not perfection). And I hope you tell this to your girl-inside, that you don’t expect perfect execution from her. How did it go…?
anitaDecember 10, 2015 at 11:45 pm #89438LibelullaParticipantRightly so, Anita, it is about working on things and not necessarily getting everything right all the time. For me the awareness and the ability to place myself first is what was important last night. It worked as much as I gave myself the space to be myself. I have to say that I felt more comfortable than I have in a long time. I felt more self possessed and less vulnerable to the stares and comments. Afterwards, I had minimal reactions of what before was a torment of going over all that was said and the glances and faces etc. I feel that in small doses of this woman I can slowly work on ‘putting her in her place’ within me and use the same technique for future narcissistic mothers I may encounter.
I was surprised by where my thoughts took me with these posts. I realized that there is a part of me that is narcissistic, that needs to be accepted, liked and admired by all and this is what pushes me to prostrate myself to those who accept me the least. The realization of this to me is already a great step in the direction of being more self accepting. It is okay for people not to like us and that does not reduce us in any way.December 11, 2015 at 12:20 am #89439LibelullaParticipantI found this article on the sight with some good points.
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