I have always struggled with my self-worth.
There, I said it.
There’s something I’ve been in denial about for 20 odd years, but for as long I can remember I’ve been plagued by feelings of being inadequate, not good enough, not enough period. It started in childhood, coming from a family of very smart people, I never felt like I was smart enough, my grades were never good enough, my scores were never high enough, I wasn’t fast enough, I wasn’t coordinated enough. I was an average student, but average was simply unacceptable and my parents never failed to let me know that.
I was also never skinny enough, never pretty enough, never did my makeup good enough to keep high school girls from being assholes.
I never learned to take constructive criticism because I never received it growing up, the only criticism I got was the kind meant to tear you down, hurt you, make you doubt your own self-worth. And doubt it i did.
In fact, I still deal with those feelings today.
It just took me a while to realize it, and even longer to embrace it and remind myself to be gentle with myself from time to time, and that even if I always do my best I will still face failure in life and that is ok.
Being on the internet I am no stranger to threats, insults, and vitriol being disguised as constructive criticism, especially doing what I do online and going up against a corrupt system that seems to have no interest in changing unless forced to do so like the medical system.
There are few more toxic and abusive places to reside than #MedTwitter, and even worse #NurseTwitter, good god nurse twitter, I cringe even thinking about it. Let’s just say when it comes to the stereotype of boys who were bullies in high school grow up to be cops, and girls grow up to be nurses… some stereotypes exist for a reason.
I can handle them, in fact, I feel like if I have challenged a medical professionals world view to the point they make multiple hate posts about me over the course of 3 to 5 business days, or send me a DM to tell me how worthless I am and how I’m wasting my life I am doing my job.
However, it stings a little when it comes from a fellow patient advocate, which is exactly what happened the other day.
I met a patient advocate through Twitter a while ago, I thought what they were fighting for was an important cause, but it quickly became clear that this person was a little obsessive and unhinged when they started interrogating me though DM’s about why I wasn’t engaging with them enough for their liking, and when I politely asked they stop harassing me they went off on me about how toxic I was being and how I was hurting my cause, and how I, personally, a random-ass lady from Manchester with a few hundred Twitter followers, am responsible for why women aren’t taken seriously when they complain about harassment.
At the time I just ignored them, but then they sent me a dm on Instagram asking why I had unfollowed them, and I was honest with them.
But then they said something that made me think.
“Have you ever actually changed anything in medicine?”
It shouldn’t have, but this stuck with me.
Had I ever changed anything or was I just wasting my time? Was I was really just as worthless as I’d always been told I was?
In hindsight, this is clearly gaslighting from an unhinged and irrational individual, and I should have just blocked them from my feed and life like I had all the other irrational abusive people from my past.
But instead, I let it affect me just because it came from someone in my community who I thought wanted the same things as I do, to make medicine less sexist, abusive, and cruel. I shouldn’t have.
I should have never given this person the power to make me feel worthless, they are the ones going off a complete stranger for unfollowing them like a petulant child, and I do feel I handled the situation in a mature way.
And while this did hurt at first, I’d like to thank this person for making me confront the feelings of being not good enough and doing enough and not changing enough and realize that I am worthy, I am good enough, and I won’t let other people put me down like that again.
At the end of the day, if you are putting others down like that, you are the one with a problem, you need to reevaluate who you are allowing yourself to be, and you should delete the social media apps from your phone for a while.
If other people choose to attack, bully or otherwise be assholes because they are immature, irrational, or unhappy with themselves that says a lot more about their happiness and self-worth than it does mine.
Truthfully because of my childhood abuse and past abusive relationships I will probably always struggle with feeling not good enough to some degree, but now that I see that problem it’s something I can actively work on.
I am worthy, I am enough.
And so are you.
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