I have a deep need for people to praise me. And I desperately need folks to adore my work — even though this praise and adoration make me feel embarrassed at the same time.
Why?
Because no matter who I become and no matter what excellent work I might do, I am terrified that people will suddenly realize I’m a fraud.
I’ve suffered this secret fear since I was a child. For many years, I thought I was the only one who felt this way. When I was a kid, people praised me for being “so intelligent.” They used superlatives such as “genius” and “once-in-a-lifetime talent,” but I knew better.
On the inside, I was just me. I didn’t feel smart. I didn’t feel talented. I just felt like someone struggling to make it through a confusing childhood. I assumed I was “normal” and I was simply surrounded by idiots. I was certain someone would come along any day and expose the obvious fact that I’d been wrongly praised for years.
I expected that day to come — and I knew it would crush me when it did.
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing world
My bad teen poetry suggests I’ve always hungered for missing love
Widow: ‘Things that mattered yesterday do not matter today’
There’s hatred, evil and injustice, but this is the ‘real’ America, too
Meeting with dead man left me pondering choices of life, death
Gay marriage debate turns into fight for validation of private beliefs
If I look closely at my old self, there’s a lot which is now dead
Why do we accept ‘one size fits all’ rules that force us to fight each other?