'You could do better': the compliment that hurts

Throughout my childhood, I was told repeatedly that I was intelligent and capable — and that the reason I wasn't achieving more was simply that I wasn't trying hard enough. Or not motivated.

It was meant to be encouraging. It wasn't.

What it actually did was take the one variable that might have offered an alternative explanation — that my brain works differently — completely off the table. If I were smart, and I was not performing the best, the only remaining explanation was effort. And effort is a choice. Which meant it was my fault.

What that message did to me, as a child and later as an adult:

•        It created a permanent internal critic measuring every output against imagined potential

•        It contributed to growing anxiety — the kind that doesn't go away, it just changes shape

•        It made it nearly impossible to ask for help, because the 'problem' was supposedly just a lack of trying

•        It delayed any real exploration of what was actually going on

The cruel irony is that I was trying. The effort just wasn't visible because it was going into managing my brain, not producing the output.

I think about it like running a race with a pebble in my shoe. I finished in the middle of the pack. Nobody said, 'Why didn't you tell us about the pebble?' They just said, 'You could have come first if you'd run faster.'

But first, I'd have to know the pebble was there.

The work of self-discovery, for me, began with a simple and radical reframe: what if it was never about effort?