Shattering the Fraudulence Paradox

First of all, I just wanna say that I feel like a total waste of space for not being able to make time to actually write my Apo Reef travel blog. I'm not gonna make promises anymore as I'm prone to just breaking them and pretending to not give a shit.

But I will write it.

Just not now.

'Cause I have emotional stuff I have to get off my chest.

And for once, it's not negatively emotional.

But I'm gonna have to start off with the negative shit and progress to the positive ones.

God, why do I blab so much?

Okay. Here it is.

I think we can all agree that 2016 had been a shitstorm of a year and forever will I remember it as the year I got depression, intellectualized it profusely, and tried to convince myself that I was just having a moment. Which I am not. And I almost did something stupid about it.

I'm not really sure if I was legitimately depressed. I didn't exactly consult a psychiatrist about it because (1) it's not covered by our company healthcare plan and (2) I'm not about to burn thousands of pesos just to be told that I'm essentially sad and just making a big deal out of it. I've always thought that someone who comes from a generally resilient nation shouldn't have problems like anxiety and depression. I mean for God's sake, we're Filipinos. We're raised to be surrounded and loved by our families and friends, and we can basically look deadly natural phenomena in the face and laugh. We are a happy people, and we're not collectively rich enough to have problems as trivial as clinical sadness. And again, that's just me generalizing and fundamentally judging people.

In the midst of my wanting to just end it all, I came across an article in Psychology Today that did nothing but convince me that I'm better off killing myself. You can read that article here but I wouldn't recommend it if you're already suicidal. It's entitled Captives of the Mind and it's the story of American writer, David Foster Wallace.

His story spoke to me in a way that's just frickin' spot on. Here are some quotes from the article.

He had been troubled since adolescence: brilliant, yet stricken with self-doubt and, at times, a paralyzing self-awareness.

He wanted to excel—first as a student, and later as a writer—and he wanted others to recognize his genius. Yet, as soon as he succeeded—if he earned an A-plus or received critical acclaim—he grew uneasy, and then despairing. He wanted to be a good person, but suspected something crooked about the way in which he’d achieved success, something false in himself.

Contradictory impulses—yearning for greatness yet feeling like a fake with every new achievement—pushed him further into himself. He wrote about the phenomenon in his short story “Good Old Neon,” in which an advertising executive describes his own suicide posthumously: “The more time and effort you put into trying to appear impressive or attractive to other people, the less impressive or attractive you felt inside—you were a fraud. And the more of a fraud you felt like, the harder you tried to convey an impressive or likable image of yourself so that other people wouldn’t find out what a hollow, fraudulent person you really were.”

Wallace was haunted by the “fraudulence paradox,” as he called it in “Good Old Neon.” As an adult, he was always on high alert, always sensitive to signs of the beguiling impostor that, though he must have known exists in all of us, he could not allow for in himself. He once scribbled in the margin of a book, “Grandiosity- the constant need to be, and be seen as, a superstar.” Something about this notion stuck and became a reflexive thought—one that made him feel very bad—when he encountered something that threatened his sense of credibility. And any number of things could threaten his sense of credibility: critical praise, academic success, romantic attention, somebody laughing at his jokes. These were all land mines and, prompted by them, Wallace felt an immediate split between how he was perceived and who he really was. In such moments, his life became a lonely performance. Everything else receded into the background. The feeling encompassed him more strongly each time he experienced it, gaining traction in his mind.

The fraudulence paradox. I didn't know there was a name for it.

It was the answer to the million-dollar question my bosses always ask me—"You are the best at what you do. What's with all the behavioral issues?"

After reading the said article, I knew it wasn't commitment issues or just plain laziness. At the peak of my every achievement, I'm being swallowed whole by the notion that I'm undeserving of the victory and that I'm nothing but someone who's just good at pretending to be really smart. That's why the pep talks don't stick for a long time. That's why I easily lose focus. That's why I'm having behavioral issues.

But I guess I haven't gone through enough shit in life to actually be overpowered by such paradox. There's no capture. I'm still in control. And it's mostly because no matter how hard I try to isolate myself from the world, I simply have a surplus of people who won't stop bugging me about what's bothering me.

That's a gift we often take for granted, isn't it? The people we have in our lives. Not necessarily family but those who make you feel like you're not alone. Looking back, I realized that not everyone is as blessed as I am and that taking my own life would have been the greatest dick move I'd ever done.

Three weeks into 2017 and I've gotten a raise, been praised by our associate director in front of my teammates, completed two stages of the Management Trainee selection process with flying colors, and just basically been showered with commendation for the work I did last year despite the inconsistencies. So far I feel like I'm kicking ass at life right now, which I can't do if I'm lying in a coffin six feet below ground.

So what have I learned so far?

Three things.

Mind over matter.

Believe in yourself.

Count your blessings.

Damn, today just set the bar for happiness this 2017.

#freeyourself
#mindovermatter