NOMTW – Okay, you first. It is very easy for someone wonderful to feel that way. Here is the secret. Your less Gdly side (your yetzer hora, if you will) wants to see if it can rob you of your simcha and menuchas nefesh. When you haven’t accomplished much or are socially inept, or if you have other failures, then putting yourself down is a piece of cake. You can be called a loser, a failure, a bum, you name it. But if you have accomplished a lot, and polished yourself up, and really done well with yourself, the button to push has to be internal. No sense arguing with reality, instead your core is doubted, attacked, belittled. All your motives and strengths are questioned. But it is ALL A SCAM!!!!!! This is a piece of you trying to drag yourself under and steal your glory. Just think how stupid it would be if your Y”H tried to tell you you were a failure, it wouldn’t work because you have diplomas to prove it. But if the Y”H decides to attack your insides, who will tell him what a fool he is? YOU must. Pull yourself up and say, “You know what? I’m not so bad. I have some great qualities and my depression/inner voice/y”h is just trying to unhinge me. I AM NOT FALLING FOR IT!”
I read an awesome R’ Twerski story where he speaks to a girl who was using and cutting. He asked her how she could destroy her beautiful self. She laughed and said everyone thinks she was just garbage. He said, “You’re right, and that scar on your face is really ugly” to which she replied that she didn’t have a scar on her face. R, Twerski explained to her that his insult didn’t hurt her because she KNEW for a fact that she didn’t have a scar. If she KNEW FOR A FACT that she wasn’t garbage, she wouldn’t believe that insult either.
You may have been told that you will never be good enough, or maybe you are expecting perfection, or maybe you are hoarding faults of yours that you (very) mistakenly think negate your richness. Well you need to just tell that little voice that it is full of baloney, and that you are awesome and have friends and can call yourself good things even if you are still a work in progress. Call its bluff.
I always believe that people like me because they don’t know me. That when they find out who I REALLY am, they will not like me anymore. It always keeps me from feeling secure in anything, waiting for that day to come. But it isn’t real. I worked hard to find out where it came from, but that isn’t the point. The point is that it isn’t true, and you cannot give it credence.
You will have to forgive me if I gave you the wrong shmuz, maybe this isn’t what you are about. But in my anonymity I was willing to take a chance 🙂