the stories we mistake for ourselves.
A note on identity, imperfection, and learning to separate the two.
filed under: inquiry i: how do we become who we are?
I discuss topics that are often thrown around in social media, school systems, self-help books, articles and blog posts. This need for discussion stems from having experienced firsthand the resulting diluted meaning of these topics that now perpetrate society. When you are constantly bombarded by exposure to topics like anxiety, negative self-talk, perfectionism, not fitting in, etc., they begin to lose meaning. The real-life consequences that can stem from these topics become numbing to us, or simply commonplace in conversation. Terms are used casually or even jokingly, dismissing the internalized states that many of us currently experience.
I once wrote blog post on tumblr about the truth of perfectionism. I remember being in a therapy session back when I was 16, where I was discussing with my therapist the way my brain worked when confronted by tasks. After I finished speaking, she paused for a moment, then said, “Vaneeza, you are a highly successful individual, and you are suffering from a high level of perfectionism.” She shared information and articles about perfectionism for me to read for the next few minutes. After reading them, we had a discussion.
“I don’t feel like what I’m experiencing fits into this article.”
“Perfectionism isn’t just an “issue” I deal with. Perfectionism is debilitating for me.”
If you read my previous post, you will recognize this mentality in my discussions on my struggles with perfectionism. Because for me, perfectionism wasn’t just a problem. It was an obsession. Like, a real obsession. It wasn’t just about being perfectionistic. I was a perfectionist. And there was a difference.
You might be wondering how this is relevant to negative self-talk. But the relevance is in that statement above. Once I started viewing it was what it was, a genuine, obsessive problem that had real-life consequences, only then was I was able to actually get out of it. By developing my own reasoning and logic. No social media post about it helped. My intuition did. Which is why this isn’t going to just be another post you read or view, but about how to build your intuition and logic to change the way you think. I am a firm believer that real life isn’t bubbly positivity and beautifully curated instagram posts. Real change isn’t pretty, glamorous or aesthetic. It’s built on doing things you don’t want to do. Not just romanticizing what could be or what has happened. It’s about being present.
Sometimes we don’t realize how much something is affecting us until we start falling apart. In my opinion, romanticizing these issues is one of the biggest sins of the 21st century that we have indulged in without intentionally meaning to, when what we wanted to do what bring about awareness. And today, I’m going to apply that logic to negative self-talk. I’m going to talk about my very real experience with it, and how it affected my life severely.
And then I’m going to talk about how and why it is important to stop just dealing with it, and start reframing it.
Keep reading for a real, authentic conversation.
the reality we refuse to face.
I am not going to give you the “we all have negative self-talk, and that’s okay” speech. Because yes, everyone has an inner self-critic. But what you are feeling is not about that. I want you to run a little experiment. You just messed up a really important task. First thoughts? Pick below what aligns the most.
I'm so stupid. why did I do that.
I’m so incredibly incapable.
This task was written poorly, but I did my best to interpret it.
Honestly, who even cares. It’s not that serious, and a learning opportunity for me.
It’s fine. It was just a mistake, and they don’t define me.
When you read those first few, you probably thought, “Yeah, that sounds like stereotypical negative self-talk”. When you read the next one, you probably thought, “External blame much?”. The second last one, sounds like someone who doesn’t care about anything at all, because yes people do care?! And the last one? cringe. Typical, social-media bubbly positivity post.
Take a moment to think about that.
Did you think about how your response to reading each of those statements was self-talk itself? Yes, you just talked to yourself about each of those, formed an opinion, and internalized it. We do this with everything around us, through our five senses, which are used to interpret, subconsciously.
Now, go back to what I thought you probably thought for each of those. How accurate was I? Completely? Some of them? Not at all? Somewhere in between?
I wanted you to do this little experiment because I want you to start this article with your inner voice in mind.
The issue isn’t having an inner critic. Developing an intensive inner critic can stem for many personal reasons. Maybe you grew up with a constant need to be perfect, had a lot of pressure on you, or were constantly put down. The issue is how we use it.
Negative self-talk begins the moment a mistake stops being something you made and starts becoming someone you are. It’s when you get emotional about yourself, and how you exist in the world, and how you contribute.
There is a way to detach. We all have the ability to do so, and it’s important. Why? Here’s my raw experience.
I’ve struggled with negative-self talk since I was a child. I’m not going to explain my personal reasons, since as I already mentioned, it’s not relevant. Essentially, when I performed poorly on anything in life, it felt like a sinkhole of thoughts. They wouldn’t stop. They festered.
Here’s the harsh truth I had to force myself to see. People like to portray negative self-talk as something that makes you feel terrible about yourself, solely. And it does. But for me, negative self-talk, in a twisted way, also made me feel good. It was addictive. Negative self-talk wasn’t just a coping mechanism. It was an escape.
when self-criticism becomes an escape.
The reason why I felt a high after negative self-talk is because I found a distorted satisfaction in making myself feel terrible as it enabled me to place the blame on something external (yes, your innate state of self can be considered external). All that you are doing is blaming your innate state of being. It took me a long time to admit this to myself, but negative self-talk wasn't just making me feel worse. In a strange way, it was protecting me. Every time I criticized myself, I no longer had to confront the much simpler reality that I had made a mistake. Instead, I could shift the blame somewhere else. Not onto another person, but onto my identity. The problem stopped being what I had done and became who I was.
when mistakes become identities.
Negative self-talk used to be this unfortunate reality of existing, something that simply “happened” to me. An uncontrollable force which would dictate how I moved through the world. But in reality, it was a tool for my own self-destruction. My identity, my sense of self became commanded by my inability to accept myself as human, not the state of being I strived to be. I know this can sound a little contradictory, since the entire premise of negative self-talk is thinking you are worthless. But that itself is comparing yourself to a standard you wish you could be, isn’t it?
My negative self-talk started shifting from this little problem I had or, in my distorted way, a “necessary tool for perfection”. It became obsessive, like my perfectionism I mentioned before. And it took me to dark places. Very dark places.
During that period of my life, I read The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. I know the book has become something of a caricature of itself online, reduced to an aesthetic more than anything else. But that wasn’t what it was to me. It wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t romantic. It was uncomfortably familiar. For the first time, I saw patterns of thinking that resembled my own reflected back at me. Seeing them exist outside of myself made me realize they weren’t simply part of who I was. And patterns, unlike identities, can change.
Looking back, my reflections now sit in the understanding that had I stopped confusing my identity with my mistakes, I could have found my way out far sooner.
when the conversation changed.
I do not know exactly when my thoughts shifted.
There wasn’t a single, burnished moment or sentence when everything suddenly changed for me. Crystallizing it from the future, I think it happened gradually. Quietly.
The other day, I made a mistake at my internship. A few years ago, my initial reaction would have presented as something like this.
I’m so stupid. Why did I do that.
I’m so incredibly incapable.
Instead, what surfaced surprised me when I reflected on it.
It’s fine. It was just a mistake, and they don’t define me.
Honestly, who even cares. It’s not that serious, and a learning opporunity for me.
and sometimes, if it was genuinely true,
This task was written poorly, but I did my best to interpret it.
Those are the same statements I had asked you to read at the beginning of this essay. Only this time, they no longer felt forced. Or like some sort of toxic positivity bubble.
They felt…. calm. It is difficult to describe the state of calm that now gently progresses through my state of self. For most of my life, I chased emotional extremes. Either it was the satisfaction of doing something perfectly, or the punishment that followed when I didn’t. Somewhere along the way, I stopped chasing intensity and started gently allowing calm into my life. Not an aggressive happiness. Just a soft feeling in my heart, often even bringing about the slightest lift of the corners of my lips. And that? That is what I started to realize life is about.
Our innate states of self don’t seek calm (even if we think we are), when in a negative talk-spiral, because it doesn’t provide that high or low. But calm is what you need. It’s not flashy or pretty or exciting, it simply exists.
Sometimes the old thoughts still reappear. They always will. But the difference? They don’t stay very long. Sometimes I replace them. Sometimes I laugh at them. Not necessarily because the mistake is funny, though sometimes it honestly is. Its because I have stopped expecting myself to be anything other than human. Looking back, I took myself incredibly seriously. Every mistake I fell into felt like evidence in a trial against my own identity, and I treated it like that. But somewhere along the way, I realized that learning to laugh at myself was not dismissive, it was freeing. Because if I dismissed my mistakes, I don’t allow myself to learn. I let my emotions take control when there are many valuable lessons from making mistakes. Learning to laugh made me realize that nothing is as serious as I thought it was. I wasn’t standing outside as an observer to humanity, witnessing everyone make humble mistakes. I was apart of this race and just as goddamn human as the rest of them.
In reflection, I don’t think the biggest change was my thinking. It was my willingness to participate in my own life that blossomed from it. I began saying yes to opportunities I would have once avoided. Travelling to Europe without my family with a group of people I had never met, networking solo, moving away from home for an internship, dressed the way I wanted. Taking risks I had spent years convincing myself I wasn’t capable of taking.
None of those opportunities appeared because I became more confident. They had always been there. I had simply stopped believing I belonged in them.
Maybe I wrote this for one person who needed to read it. Maybe I wrote it because I needed to remember it myself. I’m not entirely sure. What I do know is that I no longer think negative self-talk is a harmless habit of the mind. It quietly shapes the way I move through the world. It decided which opportunities I believe belong to me. Which risks I take. Which versions of myself I think I am allowed to become.
Perhaps that’s why I struggle when these ideas are reduced to aesthetic slogans online. They were never trends to me. They were ways of moving through the world.
For a long time, I thought my biggest obstacle was fear. I now know it was believing that every mistake had something to say about who I was.
