Query to fellow postacademics
That little inner voice that whispers "You’ll never be smart enough, well-read enough, or knowledgeable enough to succeed at anything," that voice that I got to know extremely well as a graduate student — does that ever completely go away once you’ve left the academic track? Or does it just keep coming back to make matters worse when your energy is low and you’re feeling drearier and more neurotic than usual?
(I don’t hear it all the time, but today was one of those days. Sigh.)
Sadly, not for me yet.
And I’m sorry you’ve been having one of those days.
For me, the voice says, “you’ll never work hard enough, you’re essentially a dilettante, you’ll never realize your potential.” And I’ve been hearing it too, of late.
That voice doesn’t go away even if you stay in the academic track. Maybe aging helps, although that offers little solace when you consider the downsides that go with it. I like to think more broadly about “success” and take great pleasure in what I read well.
That voice is a persistent bugger. I’m a dozen years out and in a different career and I still hear it from time to time. It likes to play pile-on; it waits till I’m glum about something unrelated and then it adds its glum, humourless load.
The thing I’ve learned is that the nay-saying voice is the twin of the voice that’ll say things like “you can’t go out looking like that–no one wears socks with sneakers” or “you can’t do that, you’ve never done it before.” And since these voices are mired in the depths of my very awkward adolescence, I’ve learned to respond by saying, “well, even so, I’m going to do it anyway”.
Sympathies.
My voice is much like Dr. B’s — a scolding lament that I’m a pathetic lazyass and thus doomed to a life of mediocrity at best.
Nuts. I was hoping there’d be a good way to shut it up. Something along the lines of visualizing shooting it in the head.
(However, I can now report that repeated listening to the title track of Pink Martini’s Hang On, Little Tomato does seem to help in trying times. Someone should look into the therapeutic value of theme songs!)
That inner voice usually doesn’t whipser, it screams.
Uh — no.
sorry.
Oh, God, do I hate that voice. It ranks right up there with, “People find you dull and annoying, and are only talking to you to be polite.”
Oh, God, do I hate that voice. It ranks right up there with, “People find you dull and annoying, and are only talking to you to be polite.”
Yoga/meditation does sometimes help, but it’s more in the form of teaching you to recognize when the voice is speaking and to distance yourself from it, than making it go away. Kinda like learning not to slump at the computer…