Q: I'm definitely a Jumper and knowing what's happening helps so thank you. I'm in my early 30s but feel like the kid in your book in terms of disappointing people. Everyone thinks I'm crazy! How can

I keep going I feel like a total shithead? 

A: You’re not being torn apart by other people’s disappointment. You’re being torn apart by your own refusal to stop seeking permission.

The real question behind your question is: “How do I keep dismantling the false self when the false self says I’m failing?”

You’re asking how to stop feeling like a “shithead” without abandoning the collapse of the identity that needs people to think you’re sane, good, reliable, pleasing. That’s the stuck point here. You’re suffering because the child-self, the survival-self, is screaming for its old food: approval, coherence, belonging, praise, being the “good one.”

Your question exposes that you’re still measuring yourself by other people’s reactions, still taking the ego’s withdrawal symptoms personally. You assume “feeling like shit” means something is wrong, instead of something is falling apart exactly on schedule.

There are clear hallmarks of Phase Two: Disruption here. Feeling alienated (“everyone thinks I’m crazy”). The collapse of the old roles (the “good guy,” the pleaser). The ego thrashing, interpreting dissolution as personal failure. An emotional free-fall mistakenly read as regression.

The false self doesn’t die quietly, it dies screaming things like, ‘You’re crazy!’ ‘You’re wrong!’ ‘Everyone will hate you!’ ‘STOP.’

You’re not failing. You’re not a shithead. You’re losing the identity that required you not to be one.

Right now your task isn’t to feel better. It isn’t to repair the image others have of you, or gather reassurance.

Your task is to see who it is that feels like a shithead. Who is that character? Who invented that metric?Who is panicking about disappointing people?

Is that “you,” or is that the dissolving child-self trying to drag you back into the dream?  Who is it that needs to not feel like a shithead?

A forward-moving question would be something like: “If I stop trying to protect the version of me others once relied on, what actually remains?”