Basically the title. I’m so tired of feeling this way and I genuinely want to start taking steps to get better and stop this horrible feeling but I don’t know where to start. I’m hoping someone on here with similar experience can point me in the right direction.
I’ll give some relevant info on myself first. Basically, I’m a young woman, diagnosed autistic. While I am high functioning (and honestly pretty social), it’s definitely not easy. Its impacted my self esteem quite a lot. Growing up, I was ostracized by my peers and even bullied in junior high. I was treated as though I was stupid by many adults in my life, including those close to me, and wasn’t given any of the support I needed despite adults around me knowing I had a disability. For a long time, I was essentially ridiculed (or at least it felt that way) by nearly everyone I interacted with, and I had no idea why. While I’m doing better for myself now, I still cant help feeling stupid, weird and worthless.
I think a lot of my self worth is tied to how I view myself in terms of intellect and success. During my first years of uni, I went through a really difficult period involving DV (which I won’t get into details here just cuz that’s a whole thing) and it led to me failing classes, withdrawing classes, and getting lower grades because I was so depressed and traumatized that I did not care and could not get myself to do anything. I basically gave up on life and didn’t think I had a future worth fighting for. I was planning to take myself out, but decided to keep pushing for whatever reason, and now here we are. Since, I’ve made deans list twice, won academic awards, been involved in my campus community, and I’m in the process of applying for grad programs, but those failure haunt me. I feel I will never make up for it. No matter what I do. I feel like my life is completely ruined because of something someone else did to me (although of course, it’s totally my own fault for actually failing the classes lmao). I keep feeling like I’ll never get into the grad programs I desperately want to get into. And knowing I was capable the entire time, but just going through events that prevented me from reaching full potential, hurts me deeply. I’m also stuck in the loop of “others have it so much worse, I have no right to feel this way, I’m weak and whiny. Nobody would feel sorry for me.”
I’m just tired of feeling inadequate, and like I don’t belong and never will. I don’t know who I am, and I don’t know where to start figuring it out.
Sorry for the long rant. I just wanted to air it all out, and I would be beyond grateful if someone could share their experience/advice with me. Anything helps <3