Feelings of Inferiority
Recently in group we talked about resentments, not in the sense of what we usually consider resentment, but in the sense of emotions that we feel over and over again, or “re-sentiments.” There were different resentments that we talked about, like guilt resentments, shame resentments, anger resentments, feelings of inferiority resentments, feeling of superiority resentments, etc. One that particularly stuck out to me were the feelings of inferiority. I was reminded of my psychologist, my relationship with whom has been complicated both my romantic feelings for him as well as my feelings of inferiority to him. Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve had this image in my head of what my soul would look like, if it were taken out and examined under the light, and it’s not a pretty picture. I’ve always imagined it to be the ugliest, vilest, most disgusting thing that you can think of, rotting and rancid. And while I imagine my soul to look like that, when I think of my psychologist, I think of crystal-clear waters, beautiful flowers, magical libraries filled with wonderful books. To me he is beautiful, and kind, and smart, and compassionate, and honorable, and funny, and he loves God – to me he’s perfect, not in the sense that he has no flaws, but the kind of perfect where I wouldn’t change a thing about him.
As you might imagine, having such disparate views of me versus him in addition to having romantic feelings for him has inevitably led to difficulties and layers of complexity in our therapeutic relationship, especially when you add my complex trauma/borderline personality disorder to the mix. He has told me repeatedly that he cares deeply for me and that I am important to him, but I have always had trouble with absorbing and believing his reassurances, I think because deep down I fear that I am not worthy of his care, and I have been afraid that one day he will finally realize this for himself. Many times he has tried to point out something that he has noticed and I have spiraled out of control and gotten angry, likely because I am afraid that he has finally noticed that I am not worth his care and that he is seeing how superior he is to me. We’ve now reached a point in our relationship where I no longer fear that he’s going to stop caring about me, primarily because at this point I feel like he has seen the deepest, darkest, most repulsive corners of my soul, and he still seems to want to work with me and care about me. But while I am no longer afraid that he will one day decide he no longer cares about me, I still have a deep sense of being unworthy of the care of someone as wonderful as he is. And perhaps you would say that I pay him to care about me, which is true to some degree, but the care that I want from him, and the care that he actually has for me, goes beyond that which exists because I pay him to do so. I have always wanted for him to care about me despite the fact that I pay him, or beyond the fact that I pay him to do so, not merely because I pay him to care about me. And he does; he cares about me not merely because I pay him to do so, but because now we have a relationship founded on hundreds of shared interactions and mutual connection.
However, despite knowing that he cares about me deeply, I continue to feel this sense of being unworthy of his care. Furthermore, I have long had the fear that even if the circumstances were different, even if context allowed, he still wouldn’t return my romantic feelings for him simply because I am not good enough, because I am too broken and messed up for someone as healthy and vital and lovely as he to love. Obviously I am not and never will be in a romantic relationship with him, but the part of me that fantasizes and dreams of that kind of relationship with him also fears deeply that he would never choose me even in a different context because I am simply not good enough. I fear that he would never love me, even if he could, at least not on a level of equals; that I am simply too broken and battered to be able to function in a healthy relationship like he or anyone like him would want and deserve; that he would leave at the first sign that I am not what he deserves.
But he told me that the question of whether or not I would ever be good enough for him is the wrong question to ask. It starts from the wrong premise, from the perspective of assuming that worth and value comes from accomplishment or what kind of person I am, rather than simply that I am a person. It’s not a question of whether I will ever measure up, but whether or not I even need to measure. He told me that in this question he could see the foundation of the way I view the world, which was taught to me as a child of trying to be something so that I could be enough. When I was young, I was always made to believe that I was the problem in our family, the reason that there was such dysfunction and unhappiness in our family and in my parents’ marriage. And I took that to heart, and I believed that I had to be a certain way in order to fix our family, that if I was good enough, smart enough, clever enough, talented enough – that if I was enough – that I could make my parents happy and make our family happy. And the reason we weren’t was because I wasn’t. Even when my parents’ fights weren’t about me, I assumed that they were: I would be called in front of my father and berated and verbally abused, so I could only assume that before I had arrived the argument had been about me. Honestly, even now, the reason I started my current DBT program is because I don’t want to mess up future relationships. I don’t want to mess up my relationship with him. I’m afraid of being broken for my entire life, and I’m trying to fix myself so that I don’t break any more close relationships and lose important people. I want to be good enough for my future partner, and I want to be good enough that I don’t hurt my children in the same way that I have been hurt. Apparently I’m looking at it the wrong way, I guess through a lens that is distorted, like my vision is impaired and I’ve been given the wrong prescription. And while I understand the idea of what my psychologist is saying intellectually, I still haven’t figured out what the right “prescription” is. How am I supposed to look at things? Like, I get the idea of people’s worth being based on their humanity, not on their traits or character or what they’ve done, but what about when we have been abused, when we have disorders, when we are genuinely do not function well in relationships because of the way we grew up? We have to become healthy, which in my mind, means that I need to fix the broken parts of me. Maybe this isn’t the most inspiring post, but I wanted to show you what it’s like to not have everything resolved, to not have everything figured out, to not just show questions after they’ve been answered, but while they’re still open and unanswered. This is what I’ve actually been working on and struggling with this week, and I wanted to share with you what it looks like to be curious about such a deeply foundational part of my being, and as I continue on my healing journey and figure out what the right “prescription” is, I’ll share with y’all what I’ve figured out.