Self-esteem

I could tell you that talking about you in terms of bad luck is wrong, that the attitude to have is the opposite: being a winner even when no one takes you into consideration, sell yourself well, sell smoke. But I believe in the truth, in being oneself, which does not mean not seeing one’s flaws and not trying to improve, but rather being aware of one’s weaknesses and strengths. That would be self-esteem, if one had it. You must strive to have it, beyond and despite the social anxiety.

Meanwhile, if you notice, most of us social phobics are intelligent and sensitive. Not that these qualities are the cause of the disease, there are countless other factors, such as genetics, the environment in which we were raised, the fundamental maternal figure, physical defects. But those who are sensitive and endowed with a fine intellect are more likely to be affected by this discomfort than those who are tough and stupid. As for migraines, on the other hand. If you don’t have a head, it can’t hurt you.

Perhaps precisely because in so many things we are better than others, a part of us recognizes it and would like to excel, would like the qualities to emerge. So we feel an infinite performance anxiety, feeling judged and giving enormous weight to this judgment, as if we were every moment under scrutiny. An exam that never ends, an exam to which the whole world subjects us.

First of all, we need to reduce the sense of inadequacy, the one that makes us consider ourselves not up to our tasks. Sit there, patiently and calmly — don’t choose one of the worst days, one when you feel unable to even breathe and want to disappear from the face of the earth, but not even one when some small success has exalted you. Sit there, I repeat, on a neutral day, and write on a piece of paper everything you know how to do and what you cannot do. Of what you can do, then evaluate the degree of ability: medium or high level. Type: I don’t know how to do mental arithmetic (it happens to many of us) but I can analyze a written text, I have no sense of direction but I have a talent for languages, I suck in team games but I can ski etc etc. In this way you will begin to do something that is fundamental: to circumscribe the problem.

Then recognize which of these abilities of yours resists all attacks and which, on the other hand, succumbs to anxiety and under the gaze of the people. For example, I have no problems expressing myself, I have a talent for Italian and languages, words come to me easily but, when I enter the spiral of the social anxiety attack, I don’t even remember the simplest terms; my sight, my brain darkens, my neurons go haywire and, with those who know me little, I look like the ignorant.

If you look around, you see tons of nerve. Incompetent semi-illiterates who write novels, who put “writer” in their curriculum, who stand up to critics, who present books, who open literary salons, who organize meetings and events to which they arrive without even having prepared a lineup of topics or possible answers to the questions. But, on the other hand, just think of our parliamentarians. Interviewed, they do not know what the spread is, what a rating agency is, how much public debt is and they do somersaults with the subjunctives. Try to imagine yourself in the place of that ignorant and overpaid parliamentarian, think of the brass face with which he answers a question he doesn’t know in front of millions of viewers? What would you do in his place? Not to mention those writers and critics who, in front of a camera, pretend to have read and judged a text that later turns out to be even non-existent? It happened at the Turin Book Fair. Wouldn’t you wish a hole opened under your feet to jump into it and disappear forever? Wouldn’t you crucify yourselves all your life with the infamous memory of that moment of immeasurable shame? Yet, after two days, there they are, smiling to receive yet another assignment with a prebend.

I know, you do not understand, the world seems to you upside down, and the blues grows. “El magun”, as Albertone said. But you must be strong and honest with yourself, you must have the courage to recognize the qualities you possess, you must carve out your place in this world of brazen, arrogant, presumptuous, inflated balloons.

Slowly, episode after episode, we will see together how. This will be of use to you, I hope, but most of all to me.