I realized I had the “I’m not a math person” false narrative a few months ago! Which I imagine comes from a higher-level belief I learned super early on, that runs parallel to the “I’m in a story in which I’m the hero” delusion. That (almost subconscious) belief is something like “if I’m not instantly amazing at something then I suck and I should give up”.
But it’s not even that well defined. I’m more muddled than that.
It could be a barely-conscious rationalization for something closer to “I don’t like how I feel when I fail, it hurts my identity that I’m bright and special and the hero of the story, so I’ll stop trying, stop looking at it, and when prompted I’ll have a new identity-piece ready: ‘I’m-not-an-X-person’”.
I’ve now tried making a new identity-piece story that’ll help (feedback welcome if there’s a flaw to it that I missed). It goes something like—“I expect that when I learn something new I will suck at it, and that’s OK”. I realize this could lead to me persisting in things I’m genuinely terrible at when I should instead put my energy on something different. So I have a safeguard mindset that goes “get feedback from people who won’t be scared to hurt you, and evaluate if you should be doing something else to achieve the goal.”
More comments-
I realized I had the “I’m not a math person” false narrative a few months ago!
Which I imagine comes from a higher-level belief I learned super early on, that runs parallel to the “I’m in a story in which I’m the hero” delusion. That (almost subconscious) belief is something like “if I’m not instantly amazing at something then I suck and I should give up”.
But it’s not even that well defined. I’m more muddled than that.
It could be a barely-conscious rationalization for something closer to “I don’t like how I feel when I fail, it hurts my identity that I’m bright and special and the hero of the story, so I’ll stop trying, stop looking at it, and when prompted I’ll have a new identity-piece ready: ‘I’m-not-an-X-person’”.
I’ve now tried making a new identity-piece story that’ll help (feedback welcome if there’s a flaw to it that I missed). It goes something like—“I expect that when I learn something new I will suck at it, and that’s OK”.
I realize this could lead to me persisting in things I’m genuinely terrible at when I should instead put my energy on something different. So I have a safeguard mindset that goes “get feedback from people who won’t be scared to hurt you, and evaluate if you should be doing something else to achieve the goal.”