Dear LPG,

I think that I have lived with a bit of an inferiority complex for most of my life.  I remember being at school and feeling that I was much worse than all the other students in my class simply because I was young. 

We all know what it’s like when someone tells a joke and everybody else in the group gets it while you just laugh because you don’t want to feel silly.  I was the girl at school who dreaded having to read in front of the class and kept to myself at lunch time. 

And the sad thing is that, at my great age, I still always seem to be making excuses for myself because I don’t do something as well as others although I have managed to rein it in a little over the years.  I now think that I have learnt to hide the way I feel quite well, but the feeling is still there.   I don’t know how I managed to keep a job really and one thing that I do regret is that I have now reached retirement without having the confidence to do almost anything risky.  I have always been so busy trying to hide my inhibitions and act normal and, now I look back, I think that I have to be one of the few people who quite enjoyed lockdown because I did not have to meet people and pretend, but now it is over I am finding it even harder to get back out there. 

I was saying all this to a person I met recently quite by accident and the oddest thing was that it is something I have never had the confidence to share with anyone before. We met in the park, got talking and though she is a bit younger than me she seemed to understand and identify with a lot of what I said.  She mentioned that I might have a bit of an inferiority complex, something she knew all about because she had been there in the past.

 I felt much better after that conversation and it is nice to have found a new friend to share my daily park exercise with. 

One thing that she said has really stuck in my head, ‘No one is better or worse than you are but everyone is different,’.  That one sentence taught me the importance of not measuring your self-worth against everyone else’s. 

It also got me looking up a few things on the subject and, having found some information, I have asked LPG to share it with any other readers who may be feeling particularly anxious after a year of not needing to address this very real problem.

LO, Forest Hill.

LPG found some links…

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