Sub-human

There have been lots ups and downs in my life recently.... what I'm learning is most of it "normal" life stuff, and to some extent I'm just going to have to deal. What I am realizing is that I make things harder on myself. Whether I'm doing it on purpose or not is still debatable... I kind of stumbled onto it and over it in therapy this evening.

I was asking T if normal life for everyone felt like bouncing from one crisis or dramatic situation to another? If I understood her correctly, to an extent, yes.... some of that is just life. What she pointed out is that most people don't walk around all time feeling like they're already overloaded, so for a lot of people, adding one more drama is not fun, but it doesn't make you feel like it might push you over the edge. The only times I feel things are manageable are the brief periods between "life events". The rest of the time I feel like I'm stumbling around trying to keep my balance and maybe even take a few steps back away from the ledge I feel like I'm always trying not to fall over.

This led into a conversation of me feeling the need to always keep my feelings under control. I have a huge fear of overreacting. Then this led into a conversation that basically ended in me admitting that I base how I'm allowed to feel about a certain situation or event based upon those also involved. If my emotions are more intense than someone I deem to be closer to the situation, that is wrong. If someone else is reacting stronger to a situation than me and I am closer to the situation than them, then that is wrong. But not b/c I think I am under reacting. I assume they must be overreacting and it reinforces my resolve to never be like that overreacting person.

We dug a little deeper, and what I think it boils down to is that we consider ourselves sub-human. Not completely worthless, but not up to par. We start off worse, at a deficit that we're constantly trying to make up for. The thing is. Nothing can make up for it. We spend the majority of our life trying to be the best at everything. Not b/c we have to be the best just to be the best, but we're afraid if we're not really good at it, we won't be accepted. We have to be the best daughter we know how to be, the best friend, the best girlfriend, the best employee, the best client, etc... If we fail in any of those areas, those specific people may decide we aren't worth their time, attention, love, whatever... So the question is, how do you change who you are at your core? Or as my therapist says, it's not my core, it's my perception of my core... So how do I change a fundamental belief about who we are as a being? Is that even possible?