Inferiority complex

I think it's fairly easy to spot my inferiority complex.  It's all over this blog and all over my psychology.  It's worth bringing up at this point because I've been dancing round a crucial factor in my fantasy creations, and exploring this factor could be a very useful tool in keeping my fantasies from interfering with my reality.

My inferiority complex probably comes from a range of different places, and serves mostly to frustrate me and those around me.  It's a big thing in my life, and it's part and parcel of my addictive behaviours and the cycles and spirals that I get myself into.  Let's have a look, shall we?


My mother is an incredible woman, my father is an alcoholic, I have a big sister, I went to Grammar School and I can see how traditional modes of masculinity, into which I am quite a poor fit, perpetuate privileged dickery and generally retard the human race.

Most of that is self-explanatory, with the exception of the Grammar School bit.  Furiosa, which is the name I have given to my Imperator and wife on this blog, has noticed a curious pattern with most people she knows that went to Grammar School.  The combination of privilege and high expectations can often give rise to a sense of mania, as if not achieving one's full potential is an insult to the opportunities that you were given.  It was never actually said, but the culture of the school, and the culture of my mother who worked her socks off to get me into it, was essentially straight As and Oxbridge or GTFO.  The result is people like me, who had so much potential ascribed to them based on one 11+ exam that it became almost impossible to live up to.  It's also a function of the truly messed-up education system in this country, about which I can expound at great length.  Count yourself lucky that it falls outside the scope of this blog.

Most of my inferiority complex relates to my experiences at Grammar School, or, at the very least, can be explained in relation to them.  Let's have a look at how my complex manifests itself in my daily life.

Gee, thanks for that...

I avoid work, presumably because I'm a perfectionist and I don't want to make any mistakes.  The result is missed deadlines and rush-jobs that only serve to confirm that I'm not fulfilling  my potential.  This is totally insane in its circularity, of course, but the fear of making mistakes, which is something that I feel pretty much all the time, is enough to keep me in a perpetual state of mild panic.  The only group of people that I feel comfortable being around is people whose English is a lot worse than mine, because I know that my expertise is the reason that they are there and ready to listen to me.  In almost all other areas of life, I suffer from Impostor Syndrome, the idea that I'm not actually good enough to be anywhere that I am or do anything that I do.

This lack of self-worth is also incredibly resilient.  It's confirmation bias on an epic scale.  I get a bad outcome and I take it completely to heart, adding it to The List of Reasons I'm a No-Good Shit.  I get a good outcome and I immediately rationalise it away.  I was lucky, I had help, I faked it all and got away with it.  Nothing good ever sticks, while everything bad sticks forever.  Looking at it objectively, in reality, I can imagine that I might actually be better than average, possibly a lot better than average in some cases, but in my mind, the way I feel about myself is a completely different story.

This obvious infuriates Furiosa, and the I'm A Terrible Person Game is one that she stopped playing several years ago.  The only way to win that game is not to play.  However, I'm also starting to get myself out of this sort of thinking with a little trick that I'll demonstrate below.  It's a good trick and it seems to be working, although it's still pretty precarious.  The No-Good Shit-hole is very familiar and comforting territory for me to wallow in when the mood takes me, and this post is being written in a reasonably time-rich, stress-free situation for me and my family.  I can see the start of the academic year approaching, and I know what tends to happen.

Bias confirmed...

It doesn't help that I've not only based my sexual fantasies on inferiority and submission, but also that I have become addicted to using the fantasies to escape reality, which is the one place I could actually find something to challenge my sense of inferiority.  It's another aspect of my epic confirmation bias, in that I seek refuge in places where my inferiority is acknowledged and accepted, where it can be turned to other people's advantage, where it's actually a useful and productive trait, although the benefits almost always go to my superiors.  In my fantasy worlds, I make sense.

Then behaviours, then addiction, then shame, then inferiority, then escapism, then fantasy, then behaviours, then addiction, then shame, then inferiority and we all go round again, down the spiral to the No-Good Shit-hole that makes me feel so unutterably bad about myself that it only serves to futher reinforce my belief that I truly belong there.  It all makes perfect sense, and I am justified and vindicated, absolving myself from any responsibility for high achievement because the sole cause of any success I might have is the utterly unwarranted privilege that has promised tantalising glimpses of my so-called full potential to everyone I have ever failed.

Are you getting a sense now of how problematic my fantasy sex addiction has become?  Perhaps just maybe?

So, to recap, back in the real world, I feel like an impostor pretty much everywhere I go, and that if people only realised how worthless and incompetent I am underneath the privilege which allows me to pass as a successful man, then I would be cast down into the gutter where I rightfully belong.  I can see the many flaws in this line of thinking, and I know that most of it is completely untrue, but it's not about what I know, it's about what I feel.  Looking around at other people, despite knowing that I'm only seeing a distorted self-presentation of their performed social normativity, I get the overwhelming feeling that they are better than me.  I'll repeat that again, as this is the crucial factor that I mentioned about, and this is what will come to be the main theme of this blog:

Other people are better than me.

If I could actually play out my fantasies, literally throwing myself at the feet of people I meet and devoting my worthless existence to pleasing them, fulfilling their desires and giving them the life they richly deserve, then perhaps I would find the same comfort that I do when I do all these things in my head.  And thus the fantasy is fuelled, my inferiority complex is confirmed and indulged, and off I go in this handcart...

Here's my trick, though, the one thing that I've found that actually works to counteract my inferiority complex:  I think Furiosa is better than me, but she married me, and she did it on purpose.

She did it on purpose

There must be something in me worth marrying, worth staying with and worth breeding with, and even if I'm completely blind to it myself, she saw it and wanted it, still sees it and still wants it.  If I can defer to her judgement and authority in my sexual fantasies, I can damn well defer to her in real life, when it actually matters.

Typical submissive.

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