How do you talk to yourself?
Hey!
How’s it going?
Given everything, I’m trying to treat myself better. I’ve been dealing with constant negative self-talk lately (I’ve no one to blame but myself). Like you’d expect from people who love you, my family and friends add their voices to the mix to try to balance it out. They reassure me I’m not terrible at everything, not a hopeless case. That I am fun to be around, despite being a bit Eeyore-y at the moment. They point to things I’ve done, said, accomplished as evidence of reasons to be cheerful.
They’re right, of course. I’m too biased to see these things clearly. I’m also, currently, too unwell. But if I can step back - way back - for a moment, I can remember times people have complimented my writing or I’ve been told I did a good job or that something I said or did made someone’s day a little bit better. If I listened to my inner critic, I’d think I was the worst, most inept person to ever live. The chances of that seem quite slim, when I think about it.
I do think the way we live, or at least the way I live, invites crippling self-consciousness. If you have a social media profile, you have an endless stream of people to compare yourself to. It would do me the world of good to uncouple from this, and yet I find myself scrolling more the more my overall wellbeing dips. On one hand, it takes me out of my head and focuses my attention on all these strangers going through their own things instead; on the other, I defer to them, prioritise them, root for them over myself. I believe they can do anything. I’m annoyingly optimistic and think that anyone can make strides in what they set their heart to. Everyone except me, of course!
My partner and I have spent a lot of time talking about TikTok lately. We’ve been using it more at work, and she knows a million more things about it than I do. She often says that I’d be good at it. Not like an influencer, just that people would like the way I talk about things. Which is funny, because all I hear when I speak are the false-starts and the pauses and the uncertainty. But to her, it sounds natural and, online, would sound like a real person is talking to you.
On a similar note, I used to have a couple of thousand followers on Twitter before I abandoned ship. The bigger that number got, the more I’d second-guess what I was posting. I had all these followers from different fandoms - film, music, wrestling, Scotland - that I felt like I had to satisfy everyone at once with each message. It had to be topical or relevant to their interests, all of them, somehow.
In moments of clarity, I realised people were following me for me to be me. I never thought of myself as ironic or incisive like others were, which seemed to be what was cool, and beat myself up for that. But when I let my sincere, rambling side come out, people tended to like it. There were other people with dry, detached voices and I didn’t need to be one of them. I made my Twitter account to live-tweet Glee; anyone who got on board back then saw my unbridled enthusiasm for things as a perk, not a bug. I came to think my Twitter feed should look curated, finessed, but it ended up feeling a bit unnatural, not overly social, and under pressure to perform instead of just be myself.
A lot of the best opportunities I’ve had in writing came when I was at my least self-conscious. I set up a recurring film review series on a Scottish affairs site that emerged out of the independence campaign. That led to them expanding their arts coverage further to include theatre and literature too. I was invited to contribute to the Glasgow Film Festival’s retrospective screenings brochure based on reviews I was churning out at a good pace. Even at work, I created (hosted, produced, etc…) a podcast that has thousands of downloads. I could’ve talked myself out of all those things, but some days are good days, and it’d do me some good to remember that some things just go well. No buts, no asterisks.
There are other things. I hate my smile. My teeth are wonky because a dentist never pulled out a babytooth when he should’ve, so the next one grew in a bit askew. But no one’s ever commented on my smile negatively. If anything, people are kind about it. It’s imperfect, and I think people like imperfect. Every wannabe leading man in Hollywood looks exactly the same because they’re all striving for this perfect ideal, but we all just want more Willem Dafoe. I really shouldn’t say ‘I hate my smile’ because it’s such a mean comment to make. I’d never tell anyone else that, and if anyone said it to me I’d think them rude. But it’s habitual, and it’s easy.
There’s a real social danger to negative self-talk too. At times I’ve ended up believing that others think as little of me as I do, which has never been the case. It means I’ve downplayed my influence and presence in the lives of others before. It’s a reckless way to be. What I do and say actually matters, even if there are times I don’t think it does. Even if I don’t owe it to myself - though, I think I ultimately do - I owe it to everyone else to take my place in the world seriously.
So I’m trying to be me again. The people who matter don’t want me to be anyone else, and it’s exhausting trying anyway. I will never complete a sentence without hesitating or going off on a tangent or tripping over my words, and that’s fine, because that’s how I talk. I am naturally sincere and heartfelt, and we’re kinda starved for that in the world at the moment, so I’ll try to embrace that being dorky isn’t always a bad thing. I will never change the world with my writing, but if that’s the only marker of success, then we’re all failures and that’s just not the case. I watched a film at the weekend called Primavera and was pretty satisfied with how the review turned out.
I started therapy today and we talked a lot about this. I’ve to engage with my inner critic over the next fortnight. Try get it to back off, or at least not be such a prick (my therapist didn’t use these exact words). It was my first ever therapy session. I’m trying to be proud of me.
Things aren’t so bad. I’m a real person. I can only do my best and try to leave everything a little better than I found it.
Speak soon,
Scott