Psychoeducation Laboratory
Dominica Tworek: (...) In my social bubble, most people face fear of being average. This concern affects mainly 20- or 30-year-olds. Only friends in their 40 ’ s, already established on different levels, feel differently.
Cveta Dimitrova: This is simply a very common experience, due to the fact that we are all – more or little – immersed in the same social context. We are taking part in a immense race, and global trends are contributing to the expanding request to stand out. If you feel that this is simply a question of survival, it is hard to accept mediocrity.
The desire to stand out is an effort to cope with a very painful feeling that we do not count. It's an insanely dangerous mechanism. due to the fact that as long as we can spin in this reel – that is, from fear of mediocrity, we can mobilize to do things that are extraordinary – we can feel average satisfaction. average due to the fact that this feeling is very fleeting. But erstwhile we collide with different limitations, we begin to experience large frustration and anger. These feelings are most frequently directed against each other, which creates a structure of strong interior oppression. That if I don't avoid being ordinary, that means I'm completely failing. In short, I'm nothing. This creates a strategy of interior tyranny, in which the category "sufficiently good" disappears from the horizon. All that remains is frustration and discontent that it is not as it should be. And this "should" is very modifying. due to the fact that erstwhile 1 thing is achieved, it almost immediately ceases to be a origin of satisfaction and already seeks another.
DT: This leads to the desire to accomplish perfection?
CD: To any degree yes, even if we are aware that this is an unsurpassed horizon. At the same time, there is simply quite a few illusion to effort to avoid the imperfections and the pain and frustration that this entails. due to the fact that we cannot defend ourselves from the suffering of our own and the limitations that the planet provides. Let us besides not forget the cultural context; it all takes place in a climate of immense competition.
DT: We inactive instill this fear in our contemporary culture. Or possibly the pursuit of being extraordinary is simply a constitutional human trait, so this phenomenon is old as the world.?
CD: Of course it is! We all have any deficits, and it doesn't should be that terrible that we effort to compensate them sometimes. But present we have less references that do not decision over extremes. In fact, present we are not limited to the narrow community in which we live, but to the full world, and underneath is the narrative, that if individual tries very hard, or avoids this mediocrity, it can have everything.
Dominica Tworek in Conversation with Cveta Dimitrova, Weekly No. 6/2023
