Am I Good Enough?

I think a large majority of us likely relate to the idea of Imposter Syndrome, the harsh nagging voice in the back of your mind letting you know that every achievement; every ounce of value you may provide… is all fake. That no one around you is appreciative of you, the ones who do appreciate you are actually just being tricked. The barking madness in your mind keeping you from recognizing your very own success by dampening every positive thought with two more negative ones.

It’s often debilitating, trying to move through it. The glimmer of truth being obscured by your own mind. Seeing that you are a good person, that people do like you, and that you are good enough. Personally, I feel this way all the time and only through therapy and a lot of self-analyzing have I been able to curb the harsher points of it. It’s still present of course, I think Imposter Syndrom has a bench on the same bus that drives my self-loathing.

The key though is finding and surrounding yourself with reminders of your own success that can’t be hand-waved away by yourself. Your job, your relationships, hobbies, interests, number of books you’ve read, that one time you did that fuckin’ SICK backflip off the garage onto the trampoline when you were 12.

Find that part of you that you can’t say you didn’t do, and even if you did it with help you did it. It doesn’t matter how small, how inconsequential, how meaningless to other people. It means something to you and no one can take it from you.

For me, I turned to social media. For obvious reasons, I do not recommend this. It’s a lottery and a sunk cost more than any sort of healthy coping mechanism. But for someone who simply can’t stop talking and can’t stop verbalizing every minute thought, I had a release.

It worked for me by being authentic but I didn’t start immediately being myself. I was mostly just making meme edits on Instagram Reels and TikTok. Cathartic memes referencing my real life but put through a generalized lens to be as digestible as possible for people who might find that entertaining or relatable.

@cult_papa

#CapCut #ityslmeme #itysl #memes #funny #childrenofabuse

This was fun enough, I got a lot of joy and satisfaction seeing my posts resonate with hundreds of thousands of people and feeling validation that we are all experiencing the same life at the same time. I enjoy pouring a very personal piece of myself into the dumbest thing possible and seeing what comes out and how it’s received. Sometimes good, sometimes I get violently awful people who want to validate that inner voice telling me I am not good, not funny, and not worth the time or effort. They are wrong of course, but it’s difficult to ignore an appeal directly to the loudest most critical part of your own mind.

More Eyes, More Thoughts, More Doubt

Eventually, I started branching out with the new success as I gained thousands of followers on IG and TikTok. I hopped into Threads when Meta launched their Twitter alternative. I capitalized on a lot of excitement and optimism for a new place and made some really cool friends. People with actual voices, people with value providing both funny and informative content. I started being more and more “myself” to thousands of eyes. And the response was great! People finding what I would say resonating with their own perspective. People laughing at my jokes and validating that maybe I am kind of funny.

All of this began to slowly drown out the self-doubt that stopped me from doing anything. At least for a while that is. It ebbs and flows, mostly because I made the unconscious critical error of tying my self-worth to the success of every post. Every thought I let leak out onto the internet like a broken pipe suddenly held in its potential how well I was doing mentally that day. That wasn’t healthy at all. I post simply too often to hold so much value in the app to suddenly make sure all, however many thousand people followed me, saw and engaged with that post. No matter how heartfelt or earnest of a sentiment it was, not every thought deserves acknowledgment or validation.

When I would post something controversial I would obsess over only the negative responses. Putting on a brave face to say I wasn’t bothered, but of course I was. If someone is calling you a worthless loser and no one cares about you a thousand times a day it starts to make its way into your own mind. I started liberally using the “hide for everyone” and block feature on the app. Sealing away their rancid words brick by brick alone in the wall. Sometimes I hear them scratching at the surface. Their biting remarks breaking through to my ears. Sometimes I take down a brick and see what they are saying before closing it back up—If only to ensure I remain grounded in reality and don’t suddenly start sniffing my own egg-farts and thinking it smells like fresh cookies.

Then in May 2024 it was revealed RFK Jr had brain worms, and I immediately capitalized on it and made an account called “rfk.jr.brain.worm” on Threads. In the same week, I jumped to over ten thousand followers (now at just over 18K), all by just doing a parody of a worm inside the mind of the then-presidential candidate RFK Jr. With all of that success and suddenly prominent voices and even celebrities paying attention to something I was doing, even as a bit.

I tried to justify the platform I was being given by trying to also use it to highlight good things. Like the nonprofit for parasitic infections, Parasites Without Borders. Or I would make sure I spoke up in support of Trans issues, or really anything that caught my attention. Just to justify that I was “worthy” of the platform I was being given. I wanted to do these things and I wanted to be more than just a gimmick.

I ended up doing the same thing as before though, and I started tying the success of the account to my own worth. When the app stopped favoring my posts, and the fervor for the worm dulled down, it depressed me. It really made me wonder if I was actually anything or if the existence of the account was all people needed and it didn’t matter who was running it. I thought, they don’t like Me they like The Worm. Again, I was wrong. A few months into it I revealed who I was. I made a big show of it and of course, some of the people flocked to the real me just as much if not more.

Just Who Do I Think I Am?

The nagging feeling never leaves, and it would be far too simplistic of me to say that “you just have to remember you’re worth it!”. Because the reality is that doesn’t work, if all it took to cure someone of their anxieties was to say “don’t though”, we wouldn’t have mental illness. But a lot of conscious work to stay on top of your own self-doubt and verbalize a correction that you are not the worst thing ever—That the success you have been given so far is through being yourself and being honest.

Will I ever understand why anyone would care what I have to say or what I have to offer? No. And that was ultimately the core of the struggle, I didn’t like myself so how could other people?

The answer was simple, if I am always wrong and always dumb and no one should respect my opinion, then why should I respect my own opinion of myself? hmmmmm? What do you think of that self-loathing demon? Nothing? that’s what I thought, fuckin’ dork.

The reality is just coming to terms with the idea that I am going to be myself, and what comes with that comes with that. If people like me? Rad. If people Hate me? that’s fair. If I am being authentic all I have to worry about is myself. I can’t control the way others feel or think about me or the perception they have formed about who I am.

You can’t control anyone but yourself, so get really good at steering.