I personally am a fan of talking therapy. If you are thinking something is worth asking a therapist about, it is worth asking a therapist about. But beyond the generalities, thinking you are not good enough is absolutely right in the targets of the kinds of things it can be helpful to discuss with a therapist.

Consider the propositions: 1) everyone is more competent than you at everything and 2) you can carry on a coherent conversation on lesswrong I am pretty sure that these are mutually exclusive propositions. I'm pretty sure just from reading some of your comments that you are more competent than plenty of other people at a reasonable range of intellectual pursuits.

Anything you can talk to a therapist about you can talk to your friends about. Do they think you are less competent than everybody else? They might point out to you in a discussion some fairly obvious evidence for or against this proposition that you are overlooking.

It seems that you have a decent IQ. Additionally you seem to be conscious and can avoid procrastination which is a very, very valuable characteristic.

On the other hand you have issues with self esteem. As far as I understand IQ testing gets used by real psychologists in cases like this.

Taking David Burns CBT book, "The Feeling Good Handbook" and doing the exercises every day for 15 minutes would likely do a lot for you, especially if you can get yourself to do the exercises regularly.

I also support Nancy's suggestion of Feldenkrais.

So it seems like you can solve the problems... but then you are somehow frozen by fear that maybe your solution is not correct. Until someone else confirms that it is correct, and then you are able to continue. Solving the problem is not a problem; giving it to the teacher is.

On the intellectual level, you should update the prior probability that your solutions are correct.

On the emotional level... what exactly is this horrible outcome your imagination shows you if you would give the professor a wrong solution?

It is probably something that feels stupid if you try to explain it. (Maybe you imagine the professor screaming at you loudly, and the whole university laughing at you. It's not realistic, but it may feel so.) But that's exactly the point. On some level, something stupid happens in your mind, because otherwise you wouldn't have this irrational problem. It doesn't make sense, but it's there in your head, influencing your emotions and actions. So the proper way is to describe your silent horrible vision explicitly, as specifically as you can (bring it from the darkness to light), until your own mind finally notices that it really was stupid.

I frequently feel similar and I haven't found a good way to deal with those feelings, but it's implausible that everyone around you is more competent at everything. Some things to take into account:

• Who are you comparing yourself to? Peers? Everyone you meet? Successful people?
• What traits are you comparing? It's unlikely that someone who is, for example, better at math than you are is also superior in every other area.
• Maybe you haven't found your advantage or a way to exploit this.
• Maybe you haven't spend enough time on one thing to get really good at it.

Long shot: Do you think you might have ADHD? (pdf warning) Alternatively, go over the diagnostic criteria

Reading that it sounds like your core issue is around low self confidence.

Taking an IQ test might help to dispell the idea that you are below average. You might be under the LW IQ average IQ of 140 but you are probably well above 100 which is the average in society.

I meant it as having a high positive expected value, not a counter-example.

It's an example of someone speaking out against genocide. The effort ultimately failed, but engaging in political advocacy against mass murder could reasonably be considered efficient altruism?

Accurate beliefs, efficient altruism, and giving historical credit to the good guys. What does it say about us that (I would guess) most well educated westerners know about the "Carthage must be destroyed" quote but not the "Carthage must be saved" one?

Is there a similar advice repository that is one level more meta? I want to be able to invent ridiculous munchkin ideas on my own.

Carthage must be saved.

Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica Corculum

Since you're probably aware that one Roman senator (Cato) ended his speeches with "Carthage must be destroyed," you should also know that another responded with the opposite.