When you feel like a fake (even with your friends)

This issue, one from the archives as I focus on writing The Book.

The chapter I'm currently working on is all about how to navigate the 'people + big feelings' equation.

For sensitive cats, social connections can be hard work at the best of times. When you're having a particularly rough time, it becomes even harder to take the small, brave everyday steps required to continue connecting with others.

It's one of those terrible feelings catch-22s, right? Just when you most need other people, that's when social connections are at their most fraught.

Perfect.

So the big question becomes: how do you continue to put yourself out there and connect with other people, even when you're convinced you're the worst person that ever lived?

Here's a piece from a couple years back where I explore that very question...

The gap

A while back I wrote about “the gap” we often experience, between our messy inner life (you’re the worst!) and the reality others see (you’re probably not the worst, on a good day maybe!)

If you’re reading this, you’ve probably spent some quality time in this gap.

Ever spend hours worrying about something you know isn’t really that big a deal?

Convinced your life is ruined, but can’t actually explain why to any of your friends or family?

Feel completely blown apart, but no one has noticed?

Then you, my friend, are in the gap...

This gap can be a lonely place, because it's hard to explain to those around you what's really happening in that head of yours.

So what do you do when your inner life doesn't match the outside world? What do you do when your whole personality feels like an elaborate game of pretend?

Why we hide our messy inside stuff

If our messy inner life doesn't seem to match the outside world, our first instinct is usually to hide it. To pretend. Why is that?

Because that gap between our inside experience and the outside world, it's often a great source of shame.

Intellectually you know you’re probably not the worst person who’s ever lived. But some days you nonetheless feel like you are. This gap between reality and your gut-held experience becomes yet another sign that you aren’t doing life right.

Like most of these vicious cycle-y, big feelings traps, you can't win. Even if all your life choices have been good ones, the fact that you second-guess those choices on a daily basis shows that you are, nevertheless, the worst.

Yay!

Even when you’re getting on with life, you feel inauthentic

To make things trickier, our attempts to just get on with life can sometimes feel like an added layer of deception.

You’ve got to go to work, or to a friend’s party, so you pretend you’re feeling okay. This gets you out the door, but it can also leave you feeling inauthentic, and painfully aware of how thoroughly the world does not understand what you’re going through.

So much of being a sensitive cat is learning how to pretend. Learning not to answer the question ‘how are you?’ with anything remotely resembling the truth. Learning to hide what you’re feeling (at least until you’ve figured out what the hell this latest big feeling might be).

Pretending can be very useful. But it often leaves you feeling more alone.

Again, that painful irony: the more capable you are at just getting on with things, the more you feel like you don’t really belong.

Protection vs connection

I’ve written before about small ways to close this gap between your messy inside experience and the outside world.

When we’re feeling really cut off from the rest of the world, we’re in what I call “protection mode”.

In protection mode, our primary goal is to protect our place in the tribe. We are aware that something is ‘wrong’, that we are somehow fundamentally different to those around us. This is scary because being different may mean losing our social standing, or being ousted from the tribe altogether.

In this mode, all our social interactions are about concealing that difference. Either we go out into the world with our best ‘normal-person-game-face’ on. Or we pull back, not because we necessarily want to be alone, but because we don’t want to be seen.

Dropping the pretense (sometimes an option)

Sometimes you can close that gap between your inner life and the outside world, but it's tricky. It requires you to pretend a little less, and take risks.

Risks like...

Looking people in the eye when you talk to them (but if I can see them, THEY CAN SEE ME?!!)

Sending someone you know a random message of niceness (but what if they secretly hate me and it actually *ruins* their day? Didn't think of that did you?)

These small acts are about connection, not protection. The riskier they feel, the more powerfully they can shift your inner soundtrack from I’m the worst to Maybe I’m not the worst *ever*?

But what about those times when even these small acts feel out of reach? Or what if you’ve tried taking risks, but for whatever reason those risks have backfired?

When dropping the pretense isn’t an option

Sometimes the people closest to us simply can’t understand how we’re feeling.

Maybe your friend group is composed entirely of those rare birds with only small, domesticated feelings?

Maybe you don’t have a friend group right now? What then?

In these eye-of-the-shame-storm moments, it’s not about dropping the pretense. It’s about finding more nourishing ways to make sense of the fact you sometimes need to pretend. It's about finding a better story than 'you're just a loser'.

Here’s one I hit upon this week, that helped.

The healing properties of coffee

I’m in Sydney this week, on a sort of working holiday after we ran our first ever Sydney Big Feels Club meet up (it was awesome - tender and strange in just the right ways. Thanks to everyone who came!)

This means I’m out of my usual routines, so there’s more juice than usual to my brain's favourite catchy pop hit:

🎶You don’t really belong here (baby) 🎶

Choosing where to get my morning coffee is a daily exercise in confronting this feeling of unbelonging.

Can I just walk into this cafe? They look open, but what if they’re not? What if this is some kind of weird, invite-only cafe? What if it's a trap designed specifically to expose the fact I still don't know what a 'skinny cap' is?

But here’s what I’ve been noticing. Instead of simply challenging these outlandish fears, I’ve been doing something simpler.

Believing them.

Okay, clearly I *am* the worst person in the world. And clearly the barista can see that. But wait on... she’s serving me anyway?

A meaningful pretense

With each stranger I encounter, I’ve been imagining we’re in this strange little play. Yes, they can see I’m a worthless human being, but weirdly, they’re acting as if I’m not.

They’re bringing me coffee, as if I’m worth serving.

They’re making space for me to pass them on the street, as if I deserve to take up space in the world.

In the past I’ve seen such interactions as just another sign that people can’t see what I’m really going through. That I am a pretend human.

For some reason, this week has been different.

If everyone's in on it, maybe that pretense isn't a bad thing?

There’s something oddly touching about the way these total strangers are willing to play along with the idea that I am a worthy human (even though it must be so clearly not the case). And these small acts of pretense feel meaningful - like a kind of acceptance. Like a kind of being seen, without having to risk showing anyone what’s really going on.

When you’re feeling strange, sometimes you need strangers

It’s easy to feel really up against it when you’re in that shamey, worthless-feeling place. The feeling tells you ‘it’s you against the world cowboy!’

Any tiny cracks in that story are so vital, to help move out of that lonely place.

Sometimes the close people in your life are the last place you can go for this. Those long-standing relationship dynamics are too deep-set to challenge, when you’re already feeling awful.

So enlist the unwitting help of strangers. Let them serve you coffee, even when you don’t deserve it. Let that small act of pretending be not just another sign of how thoroughly the world doesn’t see you. Let it instead be a tender act of recognition - without all the fanfare of having to reach out or risk telling someone how blown apart you feel.

Let it just be a kind act amongst strangers, to help you feel less strange.