Your personality seems similar to the one I had at 15. Here's what I wish I had told myself.
All of your problems stem from your internal ape perceiving itself to be at the bottom of the social hierarchy. For example, right after sharing that you made $21K in a programming contest at age 15, you immediately downplay your accomplishment.
You are part of the "careful, pessimistic thinker" class of nerd--the kind of nerd who could write space shuttle software for NASA. Most people are overconfident in their beliefs and overrate themselves, but not you. (It's a pretty good sign that my diagnosis is accurate if you find yourself instinctively denying its truth. Overconfident people rarely think they might be overconfident.)
Being a careful, pessimistic thinker has pros and cons. Your model of the world will be better than average, and you'll have a good idea of where its holes are. On the other hand, your psychological health will be below average since you instinctively scrutinize everything looking for flaws--including yourself.
There's a lot to say about how to fix this problem. Fortunately, I've managed to fix it in myself, and I now have really good psychological health (procrastinating very rarely) while still being able to scrutinize everything I do and figure out how I can do it better. (In fact, my scrutinizing instinct was actually pretty useful for improving my psychological health once I learned to apply it properly.)
I read a good quote by a psychologist the other day: "Several times a day, notice that you're basically alright." http://dirtsimple.org/ is probably a good blog to read. It's by the same guy who wrote Python's easy_install, who had this problem and largely solved it. I'd also love to give anyone who thinks they have this problem advice and coaching--feel free to contact me at [my username] at gmail dot com. (I'd probably blog about this if I knew I had one loyal reader, so exchanging email with other folks who have this problem would be great.)
All of your problems stem from your internal ape perceiving itself to be at the bottom of the social hierarchy. For example, right after sharing that you made $21K in a programming contest at age 15, you immediately downplay your accomplishment.
You are part of the "careful, pessimistic thinker" class of nerd--the kind of nerd who could write space shuttle software for NASA. Most people are overconfident in their beliefs and overrate themselves, but not you. (It's a pretty good sign that my diagnosis is accurate if you find yourself instinctively denying its truth. Overconfident people rarely think they might be overconfident.)
Being a careful, pessimistic thinker has pros and cons. Your model of the world will be better than average, and you'll have a good idea of where its holes are. On the other hand, your psychological health will be below average since you instinctively scrutinize everything looking for flaws--including yourself.
There's a lot to say about how to fix this problem. Fortunately, I've managed to fix it in myself, and I now have really good psychological health (procrastinating very rarely) while still being able to scrutinize everything I do and figure out how I can do it better. (In fact, my scrutinizing instinct was actually pretty useful for improving my psychological health once I learned to apply it properly.)
I read a good quote by a psychologist the other day: "Several times a day, notice that you're basically alright." http://dirtsimple.org/ is probably a good blog to read. It's by the same guy who wrote Python's easy_install, who had this problem and largely solved it. I'd also love to give anyone who thinks they have this problem advice and coaching--feel free to contact me at [my username] at gmail dot com. (I'd probably blog about this if I knew I had one loyal reader, so exchanging email with other folks who have this problem would be great.)