Is it even true?

I was reminded at my dinner with Bobbie tonight of something that's been rolling around in my head for awhile. A few months ago we had a customer service training and they talked about peoples preconceptions about other people. We talked not only about customers preconceptions about service employees, but co-workers etc. After talking for awhile the woman said something along the lines of:

The question we never seem to stop and ask ourselves when people have these notions and interact with us in a certain way because of them, that question is, Is it even true?

Is it true this idea I have of how people see me? How much time have I wasted behaving as if those notions are true? How different would/could things be if I were to just begin to operate out of the assumption that my complete and total identity and worth comes out of the woman that God has created me to be? Would I be more confident? Would I be less boisterous and embarrassing to people, and if I were still those things, would I care?
As I'm slowly excavating these things from the depths of my damaged and broken heart I see these ideas that I have about myself and I don't really understand where they came from. I don't understand how these things from decades past are still clinging to my heart like burrs on a jacket. Picking at them, trying to remove them is painful. My fingers are being pricked and there is more then a fair share of bloodshed.
But it's becoming clear to me now that this path is a necessary one. The revisiting of these wounds is necessary in order for the wounds to be cleaned and cauterized and then sealed shut for good.

I was telling Bobbie a sampling of stories that have helped to form and cement the notions I believe that other people have of me. As I was talking, I realized they were changing, evolving into something that helped me to understand the truth, no longer to shield it.
It's not over, but I really can see improvement.
So many conversations that I've had with a few people about this have helped. Encouragement. Not necessarily in regards to this process, but just encouragement and conversations that reinforce the notion that I'm not a complete and total failure and waste of space, people seeing me and counting me as worthy.
All of these things are helping me to believe those things about myself. Little by little, inching forward, leaping back, leaping forward inching back I move.