There’s no magic cure for sufferiority. “It’s more about living with it, not solving it,” says Fox Weber. “It’s about accepting the theatre, without believing it. Sufferority can be an attempt to settle the ambivalence about your own worth, but you have to live with the ambivalence.”

The first step, suggests Fox Weber, is admitting to it. “This can be majorly bonding,” she says. “Telling someone else can be immense relief from private torment. Can you think of someone you can talk to about sufferiority who might relate?”

She also recommends not putting all your eggs in one self-worth basket. For example, if your career is your whole life, you’ll likely feel crushed by the slightest failure in the workplace. “Diversify your sources of strength, so you don’t think it’s death or glory based on one encounter or job application,” says Fox Weber. Remind yourself about all the areas where you succeed. “If we can widen the picture we have of ourselves, we can tolerate the fluctuations with more ease.”

Even though it’s sometimes easier to view life through a black-and-white lens, we need to make friends with nuance. Remind yourself that you’re human, just like everyone else. You can be amazing at some things and terrible at others, or maybe even a little bit good, or a little bit rubbish. And that’s all OK.

Much of it comes down to making peace with failure. “The awkward conversation with that big-deal person probably wasn’t as significant as you think, and you likely won’t win that prize you’ve applied for, but that doesn’t mean you’re untalented or unworthy,” says Fox Weber. “Not everything is so make or break as sufferiority would have you believe.”

In Natasha Lunn’s book, Conversations On Love, this quote from writer Sarah Hepola sums up how to find a sense of balance: “For a lot of my life, I’ve had the sense that I wasn’t good enough or that I was better than everyone else – a back and forth between inferiority and superiority. Not getting what I wanted brings me back to a place in the middle, where I see I am no different to anybody else.”

What is ‘sufferiority’ and how do you overcome it?