Editor’s note: Jan is a longtime Planet Waves reader and psychologist who is offering this feature to answer one reader letter per week. If you have a question you would like answered and explored in this forum, please email her at Drjanseward [at] gmail.com. Please note, depending on volume of emails, not all letters may be featured. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. We’re really excited to see what our readers come up with! — amanda
Hi Dr. Seward,
I have just read and reflected on your wise and insightful answer to the question you received last week. I am someone who is blessed and grateful to have ‘woken up’ and I am in the process of developing a new sense of self and whole new life — all of this in mid life when most people seem to be ’settling in’. I feel like I am newly awakened to all the possibilities and potential the universe has to offer.
It has been an exciting and joyful discovery yet I am struggling with an issue that I hope you can help me with. In this new phase of my life, I have made a complete change, leaving a successful career of many years to become a graduate student to pursue a degree in something I feel passionate about.
I have completed my first year and I’ve received consistent validation and affirmation from my colleagues, professors, friends and family. I have never had a second thought or regret and know without reservation that I am doing what I am ‘supposed’ to be doing. However, I often find myself feeling surprised by all of the validation, affirmation and encouragement that is coming my way.
Why is it that I (along with many other people I know) struggle with feelings of inadequacy and unworthiness? Why is that even when one is doing good things and doing them well, it’s hard to really integrate that firm belief into one’s being? In other words, ‘own it’?
In your answer from last week, you speak of sense of self — are we who we think we are or how others see us? It was interesting to contemplate this, and led to my question. I appreciate any wisdom or insight you can offer me.
I suppose my question can be further clarified: Why is it that so many of us find it difficult to see the ‘positive’ in us that others see so clearly?