It’s amazing to me the willingness people have to diagnose themselves with serious mental health disorders.
No one walks around claiming they have pancreatic cancer or diverticulitis without consultations, MRIs, second opinions and blood tests.
Yet, proclamations of having ADHD or OCD without even the slightest discussion with a healthcare professional or even a true understanding of what those disorders actually are are as easy to find as opening up your Instagram stories.
{SPOILER ALERT: If you’ve ever interacted with someone who truly suffers from attention deficit disorders or has so much anxiety that they sleep 90 minutes per night or are late to work every day because they need to turn the hall light on and off exactly 66 times before they can leave the house because of crippling obsessive compulsions, then you will know that most people who say “I’m so OCD” have no fucking idea what they are actually talking about.)
There is, however, one mental health “disorder” that I do believe that the vast majority of the population suffers from and they’d be well in their right to self-diagnose.
And that is self-doubt.
I’d say for every remarkably confident first-guy-to-rip-his-shirt-off-at-the-pool who believes they are truly God’s gift to your backyard barbecue, there are hundreds of us who are crippled by impostor syndrome. Riddled with insecurity and the belief that we are one move, sentence or decision away from being exposed and having their entire lives implode on them.
As you can probably identify by my deliberate choice of pronouns above, I am one of those people.
Could I give you a several paragraph deep-dive into my history, my decisions and my experiences in an effort to give you a more clear understanding of how I’ve gotten here?
Sure. But then I’d feel like I have to Venmo you $250 for the therapy session and, quite frankly, I don’t want the pressure of coming up with five thousand creative captions for every payment I send. (“Thanks for reading my blog, Steve. Glad my suffering has put some money in your pocket. Maybe now you can get that pet Iguana you’ve had your eye on.”)
See. It’s already exhausting.
Since I won’t be sending you my cash, let me at least provide value by providing some solid advice on how I combat that potentially loud voice in my head when he yells “Go back to bed, Dan. No one gives a shit about what you are doing.”
One quick caveat. I am not a mental health expert or therapist. I am simply a meathead with a keyboard who is willing to discuss things that a lot of people are not. I do not offer medical advice. Should you need medical advice, seek someone with appropriate qualifications.
The first thing I try to do when the pangs of doubt grow in volume is to take action. Do something, anything, everything that will get you moving, change your perspective and quiet that voice.
It will surprise no one to hear that I find exercise an amazingly effective and impactful method here. If you need to think things through, a nice, chill walk is perfect. If you need a mental break, try training with enough intensity that all you can really think about is your body, your breath and the weight on the bar.
It can be challenging to start a training session when you aren’t feeling great about yourself. The old “I don’t have the energy or desire to train right now” self-talk is easy to engage in. But I will tell you from personal experience that I am yet to ever not feel substantially better by the time the session is over. So, as hard as it may seem, find a way to get started.
Even though exercise is my weapon of choice, I’d say an even greater method of taking action would be to do something that actually addresses the issue you are facing.
Feel like you are not as smart as the other post-graduates in your cohort? Pick up your text book and read an extra chapter.
Worried that your health and body fat percentage are getting away from you? Spend the next two hours meal-prepping for the week.
Will these actions instantly solve your insecurities? No. But taking action against them will begin to change your feelings and beliefs. And if you can take action consistently over a long enough time horizon you run the very high chance of not only overcoming your doubts but developing enough skill that your level of success will be undeniable.
The second thing I try to do is fight every instinct in my body and play big.
Playing big is, essentially, resisting the urge to shrink back into your shell like a hibernating turtle (do turtles hibernate?) and pull back your actions and activities in order not to be “found out” and exposed as a failure.
This is when you need to double-down and do the exact opposite. Put yourself out there, invest in yourself, start aggressively making moves.
The only way out is through.
The saying “shoot for the moon and if you miss you’ll land among the stars” applies here - except that saying is actually backward as the stars are further away than the moon, but you get the point.
Play big and you may not walk out of the carnival with the giant teddy bear but there’s a really solid chance that you’ll go home with a small stuffed penguin, a ceramic frog playing the banjo and two goldfish in a plastic bag.
Regress into scarcity mode and you’ll achieve nothing. And this will perpetuate the circle of self-doubt. Go through enough cycles and you are on the road to increasingly more dire mental health issues.
I don’t intend to be cavalier here. I often struggle to put these practices into action myself. But if I take the emotion and fear out of it and look at things from the 10,000 foot view, I do believe in what I am saying.
I also believe that, basically, no one really knows what they are doing. How could they? Life is dynamic and ever-changing and always requires some level of feeling like you are catching up. Some people are just better at masking it. There is almost no benefit in comparing yourself to others.
I believe in you, boo. Go out there, take a risk and play big.
Your Uncle Dan has got your back.