'I'm 35 and I Feel Like a Shell of a Person!'

Blaming yourself for every emotion you feel will eventually make you numb.

Elle peint aussi (1959) by Dorothea Tanning

Dear Polly, 

First, I want to express how much I love your writing and advice. You have no idea what it means to see myself in your pieces. 

I am 35 and feel like a shell of a person. I don’t know who I am, and at the same time, I dislike who I am and how I act. I've spent my life molding myself to please those around me, seeking their approval, trying to make them laugh, often at my own expense. This has left me feeling like a fraud, unable to live according to my values (whatever they are), and feeling disgusted with myself. In social situations, I either tell a stupid, mean joke and regret it or stay quiet and feel awkward. Lately, I've opted for silence to avoid embarrassment.

As a teenager and a fresh immigrant, I felt invisible — rejected and bullied at school by my peers and at home by a father who, when he wasn’t yelling at us, would give us the silent treatment for weeks if we brought home bad grades, constantly comparing us to others. Growing up, I had undiagnosed ADHD and what I now recognize as depression, making school extremely difficult, so bad grades were a regular occurrence. In a house where it felt like our worth was intertwined with our achievements, my lack of accomplishment has wreaked havoc on my self-esteem. 

Recently, my father gave us the silent treatment again when we challenged him about getting my mom a phone with an internet plan, which he had refused for years, deeming it a waste of money. He also recently scolded (read: shouted at) my 33-year-old sister in public, at a restaurant, about something she did that he found offensive. These incidents reignited my anxiety and deep fear of ‘getting in trouble,’ particularly with men, but also my anger and resentment. Am I too old to still be affected by this? I don't know why I am telling you about this, maybe to add context? Maybe I blame him for my low confidence?

I feel developmentally, emotionally, and professionally behind. I can be negative, cynical, overly critical of myself and others, self-deprecating, lazy, and with a disorienting inferiority AND superiority complex. I want to be more open-hearted, curious about the world, disciplined, and have better relationships with myself and others. I admire those who dedicate themselves to solving problems and developing ideas. I want to dedicate myself to something, to feel passionate about anything other than the opinions of others and whether or not they like me.

Unsurprisingly, my tendency to please others has led to me not knowing myself or what I want. I  can’t even bring myself to definitively say whether or not I want kids. I go back and forth on this question, considering too many other people’s opinions, and soon, I’ll be aged out.

I am writing to you because I don’t feel like I am living a big enough life. While its not all doom and gloom —  I have signed up for a new, social hobby that I love —  I still feel like I am asleep. Everything feels impossible and I give up so easily. I am frozen, afraid of failure, of success, of expectations. I tell myself to stop making excuses. It’s been 15 years of feeling sorry for myself. If I want to be a lawyer, a doctor, a florist: I need to get up, start at 0, and do the hard work. But… I can’t seem to. I resort to short-term relief to make myself feel better. I solve other people's problems and ignore my own. Recently, I’ve begun telling myself it’s because I just don’t care. That actually, all this time, I haven’t really been ambitious. Overzealous colleagues who elbow their way into, and me out of, projects used to ignite a fire in me. Now? I don’t care. Maybe I am okay with my quiet, mediocre life after all.

Any advice?

Love, 

The Eldest and Saddest Immigrant Daughter

Dear TEASID,

“I can be negative, cynical, overly critical of myself and others, self-deprecating, lazy, and with a disorienting inferiority AND superiority complex.”

These words describe all of my favorite people.

And if someone is never negative, never cynical, never overly critical of themselves or others, never self-deprecating or lazy, and has zero tendency to feel inferior or superior, I tend to experience them as a sort of object in the room, a human throw pillow. What is there to say to someone who doesn’t frequently feel lazy? How do you live on this particular planet, with Kendrick Lamar and Kate Bush and Bjork and also the guy who pinches teenagers’ asses in public places, and not flip between feeling superior and inferior, disgusted and in awe, over and over?

Who doesn’t want a bigger life, whether their life is small or medium or extra large? Who doesn’t wake up randomly on a Saturday and feel pure despair that they will never be Bjork? Who listens to Kendrick Lamar without wishing they were Kendrick Lamar (including Drake)?

Interesting, weird self-hating ovens like you and me (and all of my favorite people) have complicated reactions to the world every minute they’re alive. That’s part of what gives us our spark, our will to move and breathe and feel strong emotions and share ourselves with others. Laziness and grumpiness and superiority are widely loathed and discouraged, but these sensations often fuel the greatest art and the strongest connections. How do you create the album “Mr. Morale” without feeling negative and cynical? How does Dostoevsky write The Idiot without feeling overly critical of himself and others? How do you bond with another self-hating oven without making distinctions, some insecure and some grandiose, about what you two have in common that many other people don’t?

Leaning into life necessitates leaning into your darkness, your fears, your ridiculous compulsion to become someone like Bjork, someone who raises their darkness and their fears to the level of art, because that’s what it takes for her to move and breathe and feel strong emotions and share herself with others. When your father’s denigrating remarks sink into your body and live there permanently like toxic waste, they can pollute and block your ability to lean into life. He probably doesn’t realize this, but his rigid views of what makes a person useful and good have gone from making you incredibly anxious to making you numb.   

You probably got tired of trying so hard just to fulfill other people’s ideas of what you should care about and embody. That’s normal. It’s normal to back away from the overly critical voices that echo inside your head until you can’t move forward. This is the furthest thing from lazy. In fact, what you’re seeking in your immobile, unmotivated state is RELIEF. You needed a break from the self-imposed pressure to become perfect. And you still need a rest from the steady, running narrative that plays on a loop in your head, the one that tells you that everything you do is pointless and shameful.

I mean, you make being funny and friendly sound like a major flaw! I used to be like that, too. I turned away from my ability to get a room full of people laughing because it felt shallow and attention-seeking. I started listening to the one person in the room who didn’t like someone else getting attention, when I should’ve listened to my own heart. Goofing around is good! Not many people let go enough to do it!

Instead, I decided to try to be more impressive and less ridiculous, more positive, less superior, more normal — and I overcorrected and became insecure and anxious instead. I also lost some of my passion for hamming it up. I treated my joking around as a vestige of anxious, youngest-child ass-kissing, and I resolved to be more appropriate. And then I just stopped caring as much. I cared less and less and less.

These kinds of cycles can happen over and over again over the course of your life. I’m in a similar cycle right now. I’m not giving myself enough space to be a giant fuck-up, which some part of me would like to do. I’m not allowing myself enough room to be a little superior about how repetitive and superficial and devoid of charm so much of our culture is at the moment. How the fuck am I supposed to write great things if I can’t feel exhausted and repelled by a lot of what I read and see?

The other day I lay in bed reading this profile of Diane von Furstenberg that was so good. It depicted her as a complex, flinty, voracious, flirty, self-aggrandizing, good-hearted human being. It took a lot of well-chosen words to paint that picture, and Maureen Dowd did an exceptional job with it. She took us right to the edge of disliking DVF and then pulled us back. Best of all, there was nothing predictable about it. New York Times profiles sometimes follow very dull routes to the same dull conclusions, but this one was an adventure.

If you didn’t have conflicted feelings about the world — and celebrate those conflicted feelings without shame — it would be very hard to become Diane von Furstenberg. If you never doubted yourself or felt angry or sad, you’d never bother to write a book or a song or a poem or design a dress or build anything at all. You wouldn’t bother to say words out loud or make friends, because you’d be perfectly serene without other humans around most of the time.

And strangely enough, after I read that DVF profile, I felt like I was allergic to everything. I hated everything else I read that morning, including my own writing. I had a piece I needed to publish but I couldn’t hit the button and make it public because it wasn’t good enough. And then I doubted the book I’m writing, and I doubted most of my recent decisions. I doubted my career and my mothering skills. I was filled with the sense that my day would be difficult and annoying and that I would probably stall out and not finish anything ever again.

So I got up and walked around the house. This was harder than it sounds because I recently broke my toe by stubbing it on the leg of my bed, another stupid thing, another regrettable accident. But as I was thumping around the house, I had the thought, “What if I just let myself have A DAY OF BIG DOUBTS? What if I allow myself to call my new book stupid and pointless for a while, and I give myself the right to acknowledge that I am not that good at some parenting things and not that great at managing my career a lot of the time?”

I sat down for a minute and reflected on this. I could feel my body relax almost immediately. I started to think about the nature of anger and doubts and fear, and how they function in our lives, how they’re sometimes essential to everything we do, because they battle-test our commitments and they force us to face reality.

Here is reality: I am lazy. I am superior at times. I am overly critical of myself and others. I have big doubts every time I take on a big project. I stubbornly want a lot of things to be easier. And if I give myself a hard time for long enough, I start to feel numb, to care less. I stop sticking my neck out and goofing around. I hide.

That doesn’t feel good.

More reality for you: Most of us are like this. And if we pressure ourselves to be better, better, better all day long every day, eventually we either panic completely because the anxiety becomes too intense, or we give up on everything and experience ourselves as indifferent, unmotivated, and detached.

That’s why the primary advice I have for you is this: You must replace your father’s insults with your own acceptance, love, and celebration of how tenaciously you’ve refused to become what he wants. You must start to truly, deeply recognize that your anger, your superiority, your drive to make people laugh, your self-doubt, your impatience with others — these are the things push you out the door and into the world where life is lived. In order to lean into life, you have to lean into these so-called bad traits a little. You have to experiment with a DAY OF DOUBT in order to reaffirm that your chosen path is worthwhile, or to choose a different path. You have to try out a DAY OF ANGER in order to understand who you are, what you like and don’t like, and what feels worth doing to you.

No, you aren’t too old to be affected by your father’s words. We never put these things behind us completely. Instead of making you feel ashamed or stuck, this realization should allow you to see that everything you feel is understandable, forgivable, and even valuable.

No, you aren’t behind on everything. There is no behind on anything. You’re extremely young and you can choose any path forward that you like. IT’S NOT TOO LATE. I’m going to write that on your forehead and every forehead I see. It’s never too late. Never ever ever. Be where you are and do what you love.

No, you aren’t doomed. You have strong opinions and strong feelings like everyone else alive. The only person who’s certain that this means you’re doomed is your father. You need to understand that his perspective on you is a total aberration. Your hesitation to do things is an act of rebellion, but it’s time to stop reacting and start supporting your own desires. Supporting your desires includes recognizing that lots of career moves aren’t going to motivate you because you think they’re stupid and shallow, or repetitive and pointless, or utterly predictable. Without disgust, without laziness, without a shitty attitude toward a lot of what you see out there, you would never bother to try anything. Making people laugh always includes admitting what you think is absurd and obnoxious and idiotic. You don’t always do it for approval. Sometimes you do it because it’s enjoyable, because you’re funny, because you want to engage with the people around you. Sometimes you don’t understand your motives at all, and that is FINE!

You’re allowed to do things for no reason. You’re allowed to be a person with enormous flaws who makes repeated mistakes. These things make you MORE likely to succeed, not less. Big flaws are a manifestation of passion. Big mistakes are a manifestation of trying very hard, of leaping in without apology, of experimenting.

You’re probably reading these words and thinking that I’m talking about me and me alone. I can fail and it’s cool. I can be flawed and I’m still lovable. Trust me, that’s not how it looks and feels for me. I’m exactly like you. I often return to a sensation that I’ll always be outmatched, I’ll never work hard enough or be daring enough to make something truly spectacular, I’ll never live up to my potential. Yesterday I read that DVF profile and I thought, “Some people have magical lives and some play Wingspan three times in a row.” And then I played Wingspan three times in a row.

I might play it again right now. I like playing Wingspan in the morning when I should be writing. It feels more indulgent that way.

It’s fine to give yourself some room to do stupid shit, to be a lazy asshole who thinks she’s better than a lot of people. It’s actually THERAPEUTIC to fuck off when your shame is so big that you’re not allowed to do anything, ever (because your shame says you have to be pure and productive and obedient at all times). When your father only affirms good grades and doesn’t give affection to a flawed, full, complicated person who is just as smart and strange and conflicted as he is, that means he’s deathly afraid of his own darkness. That might make you angry now, but eventually you’ll just feel sorry for him, because that’s not a joyful way of life.

You’re looking for a way of living that’s better than that. The more you dare to look, the less indifferent you’ll feel. The more space you dare to give yourself to be whatever you want to be, the more motivated you’ll be to engage, to connect, to explore, to create, to love.

Give yourself space. Your father’s worldview isn’t working for you. Build a new one from the ground up. It doesn’t have to feel like work. Find the joy in constructing a worldview that works for you. Celebrate the process of solidifying your own philosophy, your own faith in yourself. And then keep building.

You are precious and lovable. You deserve joy. You should feel proud of who you are, even when you’re not building anything, even when you feel angry and sad and critical and insecure. I’m proud of you for writing this letter. I’m proud of you for feeling these words. I’m proud of you for caring again in this moment — caring more than feels bearable, caring and caring and caring way too much, until your heart is full.

Caring too much makes the path forward difficult from time to time, but the reward is a life full of passion, humor, delight, and strong connections with others who dare to care the way you do. That’s why all of my favorite people care too much. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Polly

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