You've internalized the belief that you're less-than

This is one of the deepest injuries a ranking world inflicts, and I will speak to it with the seriousness it deserves. The belief was put in you; it did not grow there — absorbed from a world that ranked you low, repeated until it felt like your own conclusion, for beliefs about our inferiority are taught by those who benefit from our believing them, not discovered; it came from outside, however inside it now feels. You have been doing the oppressor's work from the inside — carrying on the diminishment others began, policing your own smallness, the final and most efficient form of oppression, which you can refuse: stop doing to yourself what was done to you. And gather the evidence against the belief, deliberately — the record it suppresses, what you have done and overcome and been capable of, held against the lie until the truth of what you are outweighs it. Lay down the work of your own belittling. Where did this belief take root?