My self doubt cycle.

As I try and put my experiences into some sort of format to share coherently with others, I wanted to articulate when my self-doubt comes from.

This is completely horrible for me to realise in myself because I fight so much in the "Fitting In" section about portraying this external image of success and confidence that when I eventually break out of the cycle, it cat he's the world by surprise and I find myself on a precipice of my own creation.

It's not about being insincere or unauthentic, it's about struggling to accept elements of ourselves (or myself in this instance) which means you settle for a foundation of performance and therefore in effect you double your workload because you not only need to burn energy on the inner stuff but also expend energy on the projection of the exterior.

This is even more a factor in the neurodiverse population and has been fuelled by decades of societal masking to fit in and survive.

I was hoping that my "formal" ASD diagnosis would allow me to drop a mask, but as with everything in my life - it's never that simple and the ASD box has been formally ticked and they now want to assess for co-existing elements. Cue a series of new doubts, worries and fears.

But this cycle sums up as professionally as I can (for the book idea) how my self-doubt works. I'm hoping that I'm not alone in this and others may see it and say "relatable" otherwise I'm urinating into the wind as they say 😅. 

This is my Sunday thoughts and I'm also thinking of doing some actual face videos to talk about this instead of burning my fingers typing it all out every time but nobody wants to see my ugly mug ha ha.

Self-doubt cycle