I'm fascinated by the theoretical side of competitive battling. I like to ponder over team composition, team synergy, strategy, etc forever and ever. It's frustrating, but at the same time fun.
However I have no motivation to play, whatsoever. Even when I manage to build a team, I usually just go "I can test this later" and never actually do it.
Your weakness is that you don't know how to play against good players. Play more on the actual ladders and you'll get better.
The ladder has given me more problems than anything. It's matched me against multiple top players, including a #1 ranked player. Going against players so far ahead in skill hurts more than it helps when all I'm trying to do is learn.
I'm not improving by playing the low ladder either, as soon as I get past the unorthodox teams and get my chance against a real team, I'm pushed back down. It almost feels like a rigged system.
In fact, when I decided to give competitive a try for the first time, one of my first matches was against a #1 player using a stall team. It was dragged into nearly 100 turns and nothing beneficial comes from that.
I find systems that allow random match making to be better, and I've had great success on those. However I still like Showdown a lot, because I can experiment with anything and everything.