inside/outside

[kitanzi]

It's kinda funny. I guess I seem a much different person from the outside than I do from the inside. I feel like a useless lump - someone tells me I'm funny or smart. I'm wallowing in self-pity, prickly and untouchable - a friend tells me I'm sweet and snuggly. I'm convinced I'm invisible and dull - a customer will comment that she's always glad when she gets me on the phone. Wow.

I knew that anyhow - that's true for pretty much everyone, it seems. It seems odd on the face of it and it seems to be generally lumped together as "low-self esteem" but I think a lot of it may be just that other people are necessarily judging us on what we say and do - while we're marking ourselves down for what we're feeling and thinking, which may be lot less fit for public consumption.

I may feel like I'm being an awful, whiny bitch, but ACat usually points out that I haven't been - I've just been doing it all in my own head, and inflicting it on myself. He may feel insecure, useless or boring, but then it's my turn to point out that no one called him anything like that, or even thought it - except for him. :)I have friends enough who get thrown into a vicious loop when their own voices drown out the outside ones, the ones that love them. I have friends who are afraid to trust that the good things people say to them aren't a trap or a joke, afraid of the people who want to flirt or be friendly or simply care - because they hear all the ugly things in their own heads. They hear themselves thinking all the ugly things they would never do or say, and they condemn themselves on those thoughts. They get caught in the cycle of that ugliness, and the uglier it gets the more they think they deserve it - because, after all, they are the ones thinking it.

Sound familiar at all? I can't say if it happens to everyone at least occasionally, but I'm pretty sure it happens to most everyone I know. I know it happens to me. This may just be stating the obvious to everyone else, but I think I want to have it here to look back at, when all that gets too loud in my head sometimes. If it helps someone else, too - well, that's something to be glad for.

Soooo....

Comments

[jenny_evergreen]

*nod of total understanding*

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

I know just what you mean, and you described it masterfully.

*big hug*

inside/outside

[zencuppa.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I understand what you're saying, and I used to do it alot . .

Then about .. Wow about eight years ago (after my divorce), I started thinking about what my friends were telling me about myself, and that I trusted my closest friends to tell me the truth *and* that I thought very, very highly of these friends.

And decided that if I couldn't trust them to tell me the truth, then who could I trust? That was the beginning of starting to feel much, much better about myself :-)

While I don't take everything at face value, I've learned that your *close* friends who have stuck by you, and do *not* try to push advice on you (versus offering it when asked), are worth trusting and taking seriously when they tell you about yourself.

And they see things that just stop you in your tracks (Like when one friend responded, when I said I was divorcing .. "I am not surprised." and when I asked why said "You never smiled very much.")

And on a purely personal level - I've also learned to chase someone down and apologize on the spot, when I *know* I've been an idiot . . I know there are times I've been/am an idiot/clueless/too selfish that I wasn't aware of it, but I figure that the most I can do (when I am aware), is to take care of it immediately for their sake and mine, while wincing and learning a bit . . .

Just my two cents, on how I have managed to quell some of those nasty "internal" comments.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

It happens even with ostensibly objective stuff, too. I thought for *years* that I must be ugly, because most photographs of me showed me as looking ugly. When mnemex and I went over some pictures from Mexico while we were there, he pointed out that (a) occasionally I came out looking quite nice, and (b) those were the ones he thought looked most like I actually did from the outside. He knew about the pictures of myself I didn't like, and he didn't like them either, but didn't think they looked much like me at all. I was really thrown to realize that something as basic as how I look -- something I thought could be determined by the simple expedient of looking at a photograph -- came across differently to people who saw me from the outside than it did from the inside.

[(Anonymous)]

"the outside ones, the ones that love them."

Please remember that there are quite a few in this category, OK?

Ann Onynous [hugs]

[bardling.livejournal.com]

This is true - and you describe exactly where it can become a big problem, but it is also true in the little things.

I once did a workshop on communication in my second or so year at Uni and was surprised to find that *everyone* in the group thought I spoke way too quietly and fast, so they couldn't hear/understand me properly. Where I had been thinking I was speaking as "normally loud" as everyone else. They also commented that I said very little, but of worth and encouraged me to speak my mind more often. Well, I worked on those two - possibly to the point of overshooting the desired middle ground a little for the other extreme. But it does go to show that self-impression and outer impression on others do not match and that self-impression can be corrected to be more realistic, with the help of feedback from the outside.

Obviously, for the more intimate emotional matters, good friends are probably the best people to trust - but for many things feedback need not come from friends.

[delennara.livejournal.com]

*nods*
good that we don't do or even say all that we think, isn't it?