Ask HN: I feel so shallow and dumb when I see what other smart people are doing
You mention you have borderline. If you’re interested in exploring that more it might be helpful. The feelings you’re describing are familiar to a lot of people, but particularly troublesome for those with personality disorders. If I’m right — you might feel a lot of the other advice seems to ‘miss the point’ or you know it’s true but it doesn’t help.<p>Personality can be thought of as the immune system for the mind. It helps us achieve stability despite all the chaos around us. They do this by giving us ways of coping and responding to challenging emotional situations (eg the success of others) that will preserve our emotional safety. This is why personality is so hard to change and usually changes only on big life events where people are faced with things their ‘personality machinery’ was unequipped to face.<p>However there are different ways we &amp; our personalities can defend us from these threats, and some have some nasty side effects. Faced with the success of others where we have failed, we can imagine a few responses:<p>1. Admiration and respect. What a marvellous achievement. It goes to show what you can do if you put your mind to it — I am going to make time for my project now, this has really motivated me.<p>2. Revaluing. What an amazing project, this is really cool. Sometimes I wonder about making things like this too, but what with the kids it’s hard to make time. But I wouldn’t give up my kids for the world, best thing I ever did.<p>3. Idealisation. These people are really something else. It’s truly amazing, they must be a different kind of person altogether. I’d love to work with someone like that — where do they work again?<p>4. Dismissal. It’s not really that hard. I could easily do that, but I’ve got much more important things to do. Imagine having the time to waste on something like that!<p>5. Despair. Everyone is doing such amazing things and I’m just sitting here. I’m such a failure. I’ll never do anything like that because I never even try.<p>Each response does the job of responding to the threat in a way that preserves the self. However they have quite different side effects. Most of them make the person feel good. Some of them inspire the person to be better. Some of them affirm a previous decision. The last one is a very upsetting one for the person but it isn’t that much different to #4 in its results.<p>However, they each to a good job in different situations. Let’s say you are a child bullied by highly capable older siblings — any attempt towards growth will yield more bullying, and idealisation is even more dangerous. It can be safest, from the child’s perspective, to identify with the bully’s understanding of you and try to avoid bringing any further harm to yourself. All of the other responses, in that situation, could really hurt. So #5 isn’t ‘wrong’, it’s just not helpful in all circumstances. Later when that child grows up they might be so stuck in their response that it affects their whole attitude on life, even though it was really only useful for that small few years of childhood.<p>Not everything is based on childhood experiences, there are other reasons, but maybe you get the idea that personality disorders are collections of these responses that harm or limit us, and that are hard to change.<p>You’ll also notice that each of the above responses, as they speak about the other person, also imply a belief about who _they_ are. They position themselves in relation to the other person. #1, #2 and #4 value themselves, #3 and #5 devalue themselves.<p>There’s a guy called Masterson who called these disorders ‘disorders of the self’ and he said that they damaged the following ten capacities of the self:<p>1. The capacity to experience a wide range of feelings deeply<p>2. The capacity to expect appropriate entitlements<p>3. The capacity for self-activation and assertion<p>4. Acknowledgement of self-esteem<p>5. The ability to soothe painful feelings<p>6. The ability to make and stick to commitments<p>7. Creativity<p>8. Intimacy<p>9. The ability to be alone<p>10. Continuity of self<p>If those things are issues for you and seem to connect with this challenge, you might want to consider working on your borderline condition. This work, which (I think) is best done in talking therapy, can help you rebuild the parts of your personality that are hurting you. This takes some time to do.<p>You have a real strength here. You have a desire to do work that makes you proud, and a respect for the achievements of others. This can be a powerful motivator. For me it was helpful to view myself as containing the seeds of growth, in the form of these persistent hopes to do useful work and to relate to others. Even if they kept going wrong and I gave up, it showed me that there was some potential inside me for change.<p>Or, maybe, I’m way off :) If it doesn’t resonate, discard it, but sharing in case it does.