Have you ever asked yourself the question featured in the title? – “What’s wrong with me?”

For starters, how do you know that anything is wrong with you?

Do you feel like something is off or did someone shout out your flaws to you one day?

Maybe you’re plagued with guilt, a sense of inadequacy, or even a negative self-image. Perhaps you feel that you’re just not leveling up to who you want to be or who you feel you’re expected to be.

In fact, this fragile and yet unanswered question might be driving you up the wall.

So, let me offer a reprieve as we explore this notorious “What’s wrong with me?” inquiry.

How Your Identity Became Set in Stone

Here’s the problem setup: you behave in a certain way and you have a negative self-image because of it.

There are attitudes, thoughts, and feelings you’ve adopted throughout life. Mostly because they feel familiar to you. It’s not that they’re your absolute favorite or admirable qualities. This is just the way you naturally are and you’ve embraced them as your identity, right?

For instance, you might like to wait until the last minute to submit a project for a deadline. It’s not that you look up to other procrastinating people. It’s that this strategy has worked for you in the past. So, it’s likely that you’ve resorted to believe this must be an innate quality you possess.

It could be that you live out of your dryer instead of folding and putting away laundry. Or, maybe you like to hold on to material things and flirt with the fundamentals of a hoarder’s life a little too much. These are all just everyday examples, but it’s not uncommon for these small things to amount to a huge and disappointing negative self-image that you feel is set in stone.

Why You Asked the Question in the First Place 

Like mentioned before, the problem setup is that you behave in a certain way and you have a negative self-image because of it.

Notice that the problem wasn’t only your behavior. The problem also included the negative self-image you’ve grown to embrace about your behavior. It’s that you dislike the way you are but feel like you can’t change your own identity.

And further still, it’s possible that you despise the fact that you procrastinate, for example. You might even get down on yourself every single time you do it. It wouldn’t be farfetched for you to call yourself “lazy” or even a “failure” because of the things you see as character flaws. Eventually, you might even poke fun at these qualities as you begrudgingly claim them as your own unchangeable identity.

Maybe living out of the dryer is easy to do, but you cringe every time you reach in the dryer door to sort through the clean tee shirts. Stumbling over all the things that you’ve acquired irritates you to no end, but those things all still just sit there. It’s like you’re stuck in a mold or in way of being you. And it’s unsatisfying.

What’s Really Wrong With You

All this deep-rooted dissatisfaction prompts you to ask the title question: “What’s wrong with me?”

The fight between the white dog and the black dog has you unnerved, to say the least. You just can’t seem to make the “right” dog win inside your head.

That is really what’s wrong with you.

You hold the leash of two different dogs fighting to control the territory of your mind. The fight is what’s wrong with you. It’s not your behavior. It’s not how you feel. But it’s that you don’t know how you feel. More importantly, you don’t truly know you.

You’ve behaved in this way or that way so many times that it’s become a habit. Little by little, a habit transformed into an identity and then into a negative self-image. And, here you are.

But that doesn’t mean this is who you truly are!

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If you’re struggling with the “black dog/white dog” fight, please reach out to me. Together we can strategize a plan to get to the core of who you truly are so that you can live a happy and satisfying life.