Screw Self-Doubt

I am a subtle person. I’m not flashy, not perky. I’m soft-spoken and prefer listening to talking. I despise small talk and quickly run out of things to talk about in social settings. How much of this is because I am rattled with self-doubt? I can also be a walking contradiction; for example, I live in the PNW where coffee and seafood are a couple of main staples of life, yet I don’t like seafood, and only on rare occasions drink coffee. Where is the line between a person’s personality and the self-doubting lies that plague our everyday choices?

I am here to make a statement on doubt. I am not a straight arrow; my arrow weaves in and out, turning left, right, up, down, and around the current societal topics of popular interest. All of my blogs are about sharing a part of myself; this is why I share my writer’s diary. Once upon a time, I was victimized, so much so that the experience set me on a self-destructive path of low self-esteem, my future choices and reactions ruled by self-doubt. Being vulnerable in front of people terrifies me to my core, so even writing this statement is difficult.

This blog post is not designed to tell you how to get rid of self-doubt or how to know when you are suffering from it. Chances are, if you are alive, you have self-doubt, so there’s no need to wonder. And you don’t “get rid” of self-doubt, you learn how to live with it and to not let it dictate your daily choices. Therefore, this blog post is not about that; it is purely about my experience with it and I hope that by sharing my own trials and tribulations with the process, my story will resonate with someone, and then the healing process can begin. Recognizing this thing called doubt that we all have in common, is paramount to moving forward.

That in mind, I’m going to make a bold statement: women and female-bodied persons are raised to doubt, men and male-bodied persons are not. Gay men are sexually aggressive while women (gay or straight), will look but not approach. I’m not going to attempt to talk about the differences between binary and non-binary in this post; I mean only to include my own personal experience as a cis-gendered woman. I am also broadly generalizing, for point-making’s sake, but the standard of how boys are raised versus girls seems to prove true more often than not. It also goes a long way to show the differences between men and women, regardless of sexual orientation.

For example, last week, for Halloween, I drew a realistic beard on my face, planning to go out to Lesbian Karaoke. Before I went out, I thought it’d be a good idea to write a piece about the self-doubt I was experiencing about wearing the beard to karaoke.

The regular broken record had begun playing in my mind: Should I? Shouldn’t I? Should I? Shouldn’t I? I wound up running out of time, and so I ignored the broken record to the best of my ability, “painted” the beard on my face, and went out to karaoke. If you’ve seen my Facebook post, then you know what happened. For those who did not see it, in a nutshell, I was treated like a star. I got stared at by every gay man in the joint, until I sang and they realized I’m a woman; I got hit on relentlessly, and had people walking up to engage me in conversation. I’m a regular at this bar, and I have never been treated like this; for the first time, I was visible. It was a profound experience for me because of how invisible and forgettable I have felt for most of my life. It was a profound experience because I have never been visible in this bar, yet paint a beard on my face, pass as a man, and suddenly they couldn’t hit on me fast enough: even the gay women. I came home that night and HAD to write about it before I could sleep, proving to myself, for the millionth time, that I am a writer above all else.

How much of feeling invisible is locked arm in arm with self-doubt? Can I overcome my powers of invisibility by ignoring the self-doubt? As an over-thinker, doubt creeps in to make me wonder if I’ve said something wrong if a person takes “too long” to answer. Doubt makes me think I can't do something I've already done dozens of times. Doubt causes me to not talk to women I find attractive, thinking they won’t find me interesting. Or I wait too long to talk to them, and they leave or move on before I can make a move. I want to experiment with different clothes styles, but doubt makes me think that people will not accept me, and so I continue dressing the same way I always have, too scared to try something new. Ultimately, doubt keeps me from being who I really am.

For some contrast, let me share my experience from several years ago when I went as a man for Halloween. I painted my face, put on a suit and hat, and went out. I passed back then too, even making one acquaintance think I was his evil ex-boyfriend, until I spoke and my feminine voice dashed the illusion. I got cruised by gay men and straight women, but not to the level of aggressiveness that I did this most recent time. No one approached me or hit on me, or even challenged me in the women’s rest room.

The only difference between that time and this time is slightly better makeup and a dash of confidence that did not exist for me back then. Did I mention that I’ve been working on saying no, taking back my power, no longer freely giving it away to anyone who asks? I’ve been working on that and I have noticed differences in my own happiness. I feel like I’m taking care of myself. I feel strong. I feel. . . dare I say it. . .happy!

So, is it possible that when I went to karaoke as a man last week, that this little bit of confidence I have built as a woman was enough to propel me when dressed as a man to someone that everyone wanted to talk to? My conclusion, you don’t need a lot of confidence to be taken serious when you are a man or male-bodied person. Women and female-bodied persons need to be damn near invincible, grow bullet proof skin, and never give in if we want to be taken serious. Is it any wonder we are so accustomed to self-doubt that we don’t even recognize the self-hating, destructive thought patterns?

I hope I have not depressed anyone too much, because I understand what a difficult subject this is. For too long, I have blamed others for my own short-comings, but no one forced me to listen to the doubt that has played constantly in my mind. That’s all on me. That said, I do not believe the subject of doubt is a comfortable conversation for anyone. Personally, I refuse to submit to these negative thoughts any longer, and so I look deeper within myself to see what is going on with me. Sometimes this actually helps.

I will leave off here with a question for you: how has self-doubt affected your life, and what’s another way to experience those self-doubting moments?