The score said 3 out of 50, or something embarrassingly close to that. I had just received my Math exam scores. My teacher was shocked to find out that I wasn’t the brightest kid in Math. She had expected me to do better. As she added supplementary notes to her judgement, I stood in front of her frozen. My eyes still fixated at the red ink that wrote “poor job”. It only got redder. I was always the well-disciplined kid in class, “teacher’s pet” as they call it. With a score way below her expectations, she probably felt not only disappointed in me, but maybe scared that what if she wasn’t a good teacher. In that moment, I think we both shared feeling ashamed and embarrassed for not being good enough.
Being “not good enough” is not okay for most people. It is a mark of disdain. People scoff at you for not being a “good enough” student, a “good enough” teacher, a “good enough” son, daughter, parent, person. “It must be his fault that he failed his exam”. “Of course, she couldn’t make it, she was only wasting her time”. You must have heard someone around you saying this, when that’s exactly the last thing you want to hear. Hear it long enough, and you don’t even need anyone else to say it to you. We internalize these criticisms and start believing in them. Persecuting ourselves at a time when we need help and support, we refuse to empathize with ourselves. We refuse to lower unrealistic standards of success that have been set by by others for us. We may end up in a dreadful cycle of self-criticism and condemnation. This can lead to a passive or even a regressive state where we don’t want to do anything anymore. “Since I know I’m already a failure, why even try?” is what someone might think.
I sometimes rationalize my perceived failures by coming up with excuses. I might blame someone or something in the environment: the weather was too hot; I woke up on the wrong side of the bed; the planets aren’t aligned for my success and so on. While all this time, I completely ignore how I am feeling in these difficult moments.
For most of us, we have learned to rely on ourselves. We feel that nobody is going to help us. No one is going to ask us, what do you need right now? How can I be there for you, to ease your suffering? Is there something I can do to help you? Tell me what you need?
If you have ever felt this way, I’d like to hear from you.