Why do some people make you feel inadequate??

What is there to know about New Zealand?

The author was a vegan for twenty years.

janer, next time your sister lectures you on veganism, tell her vegansim is morally, politically and nutritionally wrong and tell her to read Lierre Keith's book, "The Vegetarian Myth". It contains good arguments on all those aspects. She might not be convinced but she might shut up. Worth a try

[Anya] your post makes feel inadequate. How wonderful to be so at peace with yourself.

I agree, you are fine as you are.

Nobody makes me feel inadequate. I'm a long way from perfect, I have lots of faults, I've made mistakes and will continue to do so, doubtless.

I don't give a tinker's fart if people are better recyclers, more house proud, a better nana, are fatter, thinner, richer, poorer, more religious, better looking, happier, sadder, angrier, better dressed, etc.

Why should I compare myself - that way lies madness. I'm only important to a few people in this universe and they accept me as I am. I think. And if they don't then that's their problem, not mine.

Stop comparing yourself to others KatyK you seem ok to me

People fascinate me. I wouldn't feel inferior, I would try to work out why they feel they have to behave as they do, or rather, why they feel morally superior (if indeed they do). People who try to convert others to their way of thinking usually do feel morally superior, and if they go about it the wrong way they get other people's backs up.

From the way you write, it sounds as if you have been made to feel slightly guilty, which would suggest that either they have made you feel awkward because they have tried to make you change you ways, or you feel awkward because you feel you ought to change your ways!

One of my sisters is very good at this. She starts preaching at me from the moment she turns up. I should be a 100% natural fibre-wearing, spiritualist vegan apparently. I used to feel guilty, now I merely feel murderous.

In my last couple of years at work before I retired at 60, I worked with a woman who was two years younger than me. She made me feel inadequate in every way. She was slim and attractive with thick glossy hair which she would have in different styles, all of which looked as though she had just emerged from the hairdressers (at a time when my hair had practically gone). She had two grown up children (one of each of course) who had never given her a moment of trouble and a husband who adored her. I visited her house a couple of times and everything in it was just perfect, freshly painted woodwork, gleaming windows, shining wooden floors. When my DD got married I agonised for months over my outfit and when I saw the photographs I hated how I looked. This particular lady said one day 'my son is getting married' - she had an outfit within a week and she looked fabulous on the day. If we were going on a works 'do' I would really make an effort and think 'well you don't look so bad' then she would walk into the office and I would feel as though someone had stuck a pin in me and I was deflated. She was always telling me how 'so and so fancied her' or 'so and so thought her son was her husband' etc. I really let it get to me but now realise it was my own inadequacy, my problem, not hers. Strangely we are now quite good friends.

You are not inferior or inadequate. You are different . End of.

Quite!
I don't get the conflating of feelings of inadequacy with moral superiority.

I would feel inadequate if I thought I had failed someone in some way - for example, if a friend or DC was having a bad time and in retrospect I could see that I could have done more to support them than I actually had.

Someone else assuming an unjustified position of moral superiority wouldn't make me feel any different about my own moral standards.

petra has put it much more succinctly!

One doesn't feel superior either.

I wouldn't call feeling that I don't do something as well as someone else does it, as soon mentions, feeling inadequate. That's just not being the same as, or not having the same achievements as, which is fine.

And I wouldn't feel inadequate because of a sneering remark about my not knowing New Zealand. That's just insensitive snobbery. Who wants to be like that?

Feeling self-confident is about knowing that although you may not have achieved all that in your dreams you might have wanted to achieve, or not having achieved as much as someone else in whatever field, knowing all that and still feeling confident is about knowing that you have been conscientious about what you have done and that, if some people don't think, or even just seem to think, that what you have achieved or what you do isn't all that great, having a mental response of "well! bully for them!" Feeling confident is about being able to scorn other people's scornfulness as not worthy of getting upset about.

Feeling inferior to someone is an alien concept for me.

Luckygirl I have a friend who did a counselling course and talks in that very sympathetic way and before I know where I am I'm pouring out my sorrows all the while telling myself to shut up! Teetime if you play golf the world is just one large golf course to some golfers. My DH tries to get his fellow golfers to look at the wild life on the course,hares,various fungi, moorhen chicks ,but they have only one goal to get the handicap down.

You need to learn to love yourself. Then you can forgive your shortcomings.
This is not the same as feeling sorry for yourself.

I do the best I can and try to treat others as I would like them to treat me. If others don't like me or think I am inferior then that's their problem.

How can anyone claim to know what others think ? Can the problem not be your choice of those shoes , the people you claim make you feel inadequate are just living their lives in a way they choose . You go to the hair salon I have't been near one for years, can't be bothered and waste of money for me, makes you feel better about yourself , I don't need to go, you do, neither of us is inadequate we just have different priorities and make different choices .

Two people have this effect, but only in a small way.

One is a friend who lives alone and does not have a TV - for some reason I always feel slightly inferior when she drops in if I have the TV on during the day for one of the GC. We seldom do this, but always, it seems, when she comes round! Why I feel this way, I have absolutely no idea!

Another is a vicar - I knew her long before she got "vicared" and she had the same irritating habit then, although it has now got worse. She and her hubby were card-carrying Labour supporters and she had this rather supercilious self-righteous air about her. This is now so much worse, as she speaks in this endlessly sympathetic tone, as if it is her job to dispense comfort and advice - grrr! It gets right up my wick. You can make the most innocent emotion-free remark and she wades in with her sympathetic voice. The fact that it irritates me so probably says more about me than it does about her!! Many people think she is just wonderful - except, interestingly, my DDs - I never said how much she annoyed me, but they all spontaneously said how she gets up their wick!

Who has a perfect life?

And even if they do, none of us know what is around the corner.

It is a matter of whether the person is intentionally trying to make others feel inadequate.

And whether we feel inadequate.

It is actually two seperate issues.

I feel inadequate by my friends' cooking. It is faultless in my eyes. Whereas mine certainly isnt.
They dont mean to make me feel inferior but I do!
But it is only one aspect about them.

None of the things mentioned in the op make me feel inadequate, but when I listen to people on the radio speaking English fluently as a foreign language, and when I used to buy Woman and Home and read about women who made amazing second careers for themselves ,THEN I feel inadequate.

It doesn't take much to make me feel inadequate. I'm not worried about the women you hear about who run a gourmet kitchen in their house, have started a multi million pound business from the kitchen table and scale Annapurna in the last stage of labour because they are clearly bonkers. I do however just have this lack of confidence that goes way back into childhood. I grew up in poverty in the East End of London and my parents never managed more than a hand to mouth existence most of which my mother felt was my fault (my very being deprived her of a better life somehow and my continued presence was an embarrassment). At work I was surrounded by people who had gone to university and I hadn't so I felt inferior so I fixed that through years of higher education at the same time as a full time responsible job - didn't make me feel any better. Now in retirement I am surrounded by people with LOTS of money because stupidly I took up golf- they make me feel inferior. One yesterday said to me - don't you know New Zealand then? !!
I do try to remember Eleanor Roosevelt's words but it doesn't work.

I think it would be great to have total confidence like absent and bags seem to exhibit but some people do know which buttons to press whether intentionally or not.

My exSiL has supreme confidence. My Mum is totally the opposite but the end result is the same as far as I'm concerned.

I don't have a problem with people doing all those things mentioned in the OP, the ones I do have a problem with are those who constantly try to tell me that I should be the same! I recycle most things but occasionally put something in the wrong bin because it is easier, I do have a budget but sometimes treat myself to something "unnecessary", drink real coffee and love gadgets. That doesn't make me evil and a planet destroyer!! I had a friend who berated me because I chose to ditch my old TV and buy a new slimline one. Note I said HAD a friend.

I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who said no-one can make you feel inferior without your permission!

If I am being serious for a moment, I think it is true that most people harbour some doubts of personal inadequacy and we are not all like the wonderful woman in the picture. Age may have blessed us with experience and wisdom but only the arrogant supremely self confident would deny ever feeling doubt, nervousness, worry in the face of life's challenges.
Great actors often admit to crippling stage fright - that is what makes them great,. We know enough at our stage in life to know that we do not know it all and those who claim to are deluding themselves, the trick, if there is one, is to bear that in mind when faced with self-preening "moral superiority".

I should know, I am always right