I personally am a fan of talking therapy. If you are thinking something is worth asking a therapist about, it is worth asking a therapist about. But beyond the generalities, thinking you are not good enough is absolutely right in the targets of the kinds of things it can be helpful to discuss with a therapist.
Consider the propositions:
1) everyone is more competent than you at everything and
2) you can carry on a coherent conversation on lesswrong
I am pretty sure that these are mutually exclusive propositions. I’m pretty sure just from reading some of your comments that you are more competent than plenty of other people at a reasonable range of intellectual pursuits.
Anything you can talk to a therapist about you can talk to your friends about. Do they think you are less competent than everybody else? They might point out to you in a discussion some fairly obvious evidence for or against this proposition that you are overlooking.
I asked my friends around. Most were unable to point out a single thing I am good at, except speaking English very well for a foreign language, and having a good willpower. One said “hmmm, maybe math?” (as it turned out, he was fast-talked by the math babble that was auraing around me for some time after having read Godel, Escher, Bach), and several pointed out that I am handsome (while a nice perk, I don’t what that to be my defining proficiency).
Originally you expressed concern that all other people were better than you at all the things you might do.
But here you find out from your friends that for each thing you do there are other people around you who do it better.
In a world with 6 billion people, essentially every one of us can find people who are better at what we are good at than we are. So join the club. What works is to take some pleasure in doing things.
Only you can improve your understanding of the world, for instance. No one in the world is better at increasing your understanding of the world than you are. I read comments here and post “answers” here to increase my understanding of the world. It doesn’t matter that other people here are better at answering these questions, or that other people here have a better understanding of the world than I do. I want to increase my understanding of the world and I am the only person in the world who can do that.
I also wish to understand taking pleasure and joy from the world and work to increase my pleasure and joy in the world. No one can do that for me better than I can. You might take more joy than me in kissing that girl over there. Still, I will kiss her if I can because having you kiss her gives me much less joy and pleasure than kissing her myself, even if I am getting less joy from kissing here than you would get for yourself if you kissed her .
The concern you express to only participate in things where you are better than everybody else is just a result of your evolution as a human being. The genes that make you think being better than others around you have, in the past, caused your ancestors to find effective and capable mates, able to keep their children alive and able to produce children who would find effective and capable mates. But your genes are just your genes they are not the “truth of the world.” You can make the choice to do things because you want the experience of doing them, and you will find you are better than anybody else in the world by far at giving yourself experiences.
I personally am a fan of talking therapy. If you are thinking something is worth asking a therapist about, it is worth asking a therapist about. But beyond the generalities, thinking you are not good enough is absolutely right in the targets of the kinds of things it can be helpful to discuss with a therapist.
Consider the propositions: 1) everyone is more competent than you at everything and 2) you can carry on a coherent conversation on lesswrong I am pretty sure that these are mutually exclusive propositions. I’m pretty sure just from reading some of your comments that you are more competent than plenty of other people at a reasonable range of intellectual pursuits.
Anything you can talk to a therapist about you can talk to your friends about. Do they think you are less competent than everybody else? They might point out to you in a discussion some fairly obvious evidence for or against this proposition that you are overlooking.
I asked my friends around. Most were unable to point out a single thing I am good at, except speaking English very well for a foreign language, and having a good willpower. One said “hmmm, maybe math?” (as it turned out, he was fast-talked by the math babble that was auraing around me for some time after having read Godel, Escher, Bach), and several pointed out that I am handsome (while a nice perk, I don’t what that to be my defining proficiency).
Originally you expressed concern that all other people were better than you at all the things you might do.
But here you find out from your friends that for each thing you do there are other people around you who do it better.
In a world with 6 billion people, essentially every one of us can find people who are better at what we are good at than we are. So join the club. What works is to take some pleasure in doing things.
Only you can improve your understanding of the world, for instance. No one in the world is better at increasing your understanding of the world than you are. I read comments here and post “answers” here to increase my understanding of the world. It doesn’t matter that other people here are better at answering these questions, or that other people here have a better understanding of the world than I do. I want to increase my understanding of the world and I am the only person in the world who can do that.
I also wish to understand taking pleasure and joy from the world and work to increase my pleasure and joy in the world. No one can do that for me better than I can. You might take more joy than me in kissing that girl over there. Still, I will kiss her if I can because having you kiss her gives me much less joy and pleasure than kissing her myself, even if I am getting less joy from kissing here than you would get for yourself if you kissed her .
The concern you express to only participate in things where you are better than everybody else is just a result of your evolution as a human being. The genes that make you think being better than others around you have, in the past, caused your ancestors to find effective and capable mates, able to keep their children alive and able to produce children who would find effective and capable mates. But your genes are just your genes they are not the “truth of the world.” You can make the choice to do things because you want the experience of doing them, and you will find you are better than anybody else in the world by far at giving yourself experiences.