The Empath and Self-Doubt
Doubt is an insecurity and insecurities are powerful.
Even if they only take up 1% of your mental space, that one-percent can eat up the other 99. One of my students referred to it as Janga: that one piece that knocks down everything you’ve worked hard to build up.
Doubt is a side-effect of thinking into the future. Doubt is also the lack of self-trust. Whenever it arises, we are, most likely, thinking of a future self that has yet to exist.
So, inevitably, doubt is also the lack of acceptance of who we are right now.
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I am currently working with that same student on ways to build her confidence. Confidence is something I’ve struggled with since I was a kid, so I thought we could learn together.
When I feel doubtful, I turned to music. When her insecurities arise, she turns to music. So, naturally, I thought why don’t we use music to process what’s really going on?
So today we listened to one of her songs. As I was moving my body to the music, I noticed the tears rolling down her face. I could tell how much she battles herself. I wanted to shake her… because it would be like shaking a younger version of me. So instead, I cried with her and opened up to her about how hard my week has been, mentally.
I always refer to this feeling of doubt as “the wave.” Most days I am surfing, coasting and feeling the force of the water pull me in the right direction. Then, suddenly, a waves knocks me off my groove. I’m winded, I’m in the middle of the ocean, and I’ve lost my board.
And it takes a lot to build back that momentum.
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When my student expressed her frustration from “over-feeling” and over-thinking, I remembered explaining it that way when I was her age. What she was really referring to was being an empath.
Part of being a empath is caring intensely about others and taking on their problems as our own. We are the ultimate problem-solvers.
But another part is forgetting about our own ambitions, caring too much about what others think, and doubting ourselves. The more time and energy we spend on building up someone else’s life, we take away from building up our own. When we prioritize everything and everyone else before ourselves, we forget to save a bit of that empathy for us.
In return, we scare ourselves away from our full potential. We are afraid to succeed in our own lives so we stay busy helping others succeed in their own. It feels like a big monster telling you, “You suck.”
But one of the beauties of being an empath is being open to getting to the root of the problem. That’s how we know that doubt actually has nothing to do with the inability to succeed, and everything to do with just giving ourselves the “Ok” to do it.
Fortunately, our problem is not avoiding feedback, criticism and opposition. Our problem is asking for too much of it, until we deter ourselves away from being, well, awesome.
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Okay, so how do we stop holding ourselves back?
We know there’s no one-size-fits-all answer.
But maybe we start by asking ourselves: what if I listened to myself as well as I listened to others?
Because what’s the opposite of self-doubt? Self-belief.
When we put the this into percentages (99–1) we can see just how silly self-doubt is without invalidating the feeling. We realize that our own humility keeps us from accepting ourselves where we are, so we can see the potential of where we could be.
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After a wave wipes me off my board, I ride the waves that follow. But I also remind myself how much I love the feeling of surfing, so I search for my board again.
Giving myself permission to enjoy the water is hard for me, and it’s hard for other empaths like me. But there’s gonna be a day where I laugh when that wave hits me because it knows, and I know,
I’m a damn good surfer.
