Self-doubt has always been an issue in my life, and I expect it is in many of you. From an early age I just didn’t think I was capable of doing anything worthwhile. I know now, that was a problem because of my much later discovery of my Autism. I basically saw the world as a different place than most around me. Eye contact, or the lack of it, bothered me from the get go. Not developing in the social realm made me appear shy and withdrawn, when I really wanted to be part of the gang, and simply didn’t know why I couldn’t make the happen. Since my mother abandoned hr family when I was young, I was never exposed to any one of the opposite sex. All of these things created a huge amounts of self-doubt, especially when it came time to date.
My father was the epitome of low self esteem and self-doubt, so I naturally followed in his footsteps. He drifted throughout his life in one low paying job after another. He had some pretty special skills, but never let any of them come to the surface. I, on the other hand, dreamed of doing great things, even if I didn’t know how to accomplish them. Going to college was one of them. I simply didn’t see where the money to do that would come from.
It wouldn’t be until my college years that the veil of self-doubt started to be ripped from me. When I realized that I could easily excel at some things that others struggled to accomplish, and found that my IQ was 135, which is in the top 3%, did the self-doubt begin to vanish.
Fast forward twenty years, in the last ten years of my corporate life, I finally found my life calling, but even then, the Autism stuff kept it pretty much in the background. I just wonder what my life would have been without all the challenges I have faced. The saying “Adversity Builds Character” and I’m sure that helped, but maybe if I had less “character” things would have been better.
I struggle even today with my Autism traits, and as a deaf person living alone in the hearing world is still challenging. I dreamed of “fitting in” socially here at my RetCom but after a year of not making that happen, finally admitted that was a lost cause. That admission has made my life a little more settled now. I am happy living life on my terms here in my 800 sq ft apartment with all the hobbies and such that I so treasure.
RJ's Corner 
In no way is my comment meant to minimize your life experiences or even suggest an equivalency, but I suffered from an aggressive case of imposter syndrome during my 25+ year consulting career.
I was always waiting for someone to “discover” I had no idea what I was talking about. Self-doubt was a constant companion. To some degree I think it is a normal human condition and maybe helps keep our ego in check.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t real costs to our sense of self if we can’t figure out how to manage it.
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I like the idea that self-doubt helps keep our ego in check. That is likely true for most of us, but there are some whose ego is in the stratosphere. But they say that those kind of people have enormous amounts of self doubt, but they hide it under so much garbage that the stink keeps the question from being asked.
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