One interesting, not to mention ironic, thing about low self-esteem and anxiety is that it’s possible to think you’re more worthless than a fax machine in a penguin enclosure and yet still think the world revolves around you.
We don’t do this egocentric thinking on purpose, and we’re not being arrogant. But we do, nonetheless, walk around assuming we’re the centre of the universe.
You can’t see the whole picture
Let’s take an example. We go into a shop and end up asking the assistant for something. They audibly sigh and grumpily lead us to the thing we want; it’s in a very obvious place.
We sheepishly thank them, buy the thing, and get out of there as fast as we can, all the while cursing ourselves for being so damn stupid. Even the shop assistant was frustrated by us. Why can’t we just think things through more? Why can’t we be less dim?
Except, that’s not necessarily what happened, is it? There are a lot of shops in the world, and they’re all laid out differently. How are we supposed to intuitively know their organisational structure?
I mean, sure, I have worked in a supermarket in my youth and sometimes I did get people asking me where the eggs were, while we were both standing next to the eggs, which are always positioned underneath a giant sign that says ‘Eggs’ and features a large arrow pointing downwards at the eggs. But this isn’t always the case.
Perhaps the thing you asked for was actually in a really stupid place. Perhaps that’s what the assistant’s sigh was all about.
Maybe they’re frustrated by their idiot manager who insisted upon putting the thing in the stupid place, and they’re fed up of having customers constantly have to ask them where that thing is kept because it’s so damn hard to find?
Or maybe it is in an obvious place and normally they wouldn’t mind that you’d asked, because, hey, everybody does it sometimes.
Except that they haven’t slept much because their toddler is really embracing the terrible twos philosophy, and also they happen to live next to an insomniac opera singer who thinks 3am is the best time to practice Nessun Dorma.
Oh, and their partner just ran off with someone who genuinely thinks it’s hilarious when brands use ‘eggcellent’ in their Easter marketing as though this hasn’t been done since probably literally a few seconds after the Romans hung Jesus up like a really miserable painting.
You’re probably OK
I’ll let you in on a little secret: all that is a bit OTT. But the point is that everyone else has lives too. There are infinite reasons why someone you talk to may be in a bad mood, may snap at you, may ignore your text message, may laugh just as you take your shirt off at the beach, may tut when you tell your kids off in public, or try to shoot you with a harpoon at your wedding.
Only a fraction of those reasons actually has anything to do with you.
Statistically speaking, it’s really likely it’s not you, it’s them. Unless they’re breaking up with you, in which case let’s call it a draw. Because even though saying ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ is a cliché, it has to be at least partly true, because they’re the one who started breaking up with you.
After all, you didn’t take them out to a restaurant and then tell them you’re breaking up with yourself, did you?
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Header photo by Polina Zimmerman
