Freedom From Self-Sabotage Read online

  Their main defense involves the magic gesture, and one of its intents is to cover up an individual’s secret indulgence in feeling deprived, rejected, or neglected. The magic gesture is intended to “prove” the person really wants to get love and validation by making the claim, “I treat these others in this nice way because that is how I want to be treated myself.” This individual conducts himself or herself on the basis of this false claim, thus covering up an emotional attachment to feeling refused or neglected. Consciously he or she wants positive experiences of prosperity and love, but unconsciously is under an inner mandate to live out the expectation of not getting them.

  A self-centered intent of codependents or emotional caterers is to feel superior to the one being helped. That satisfaction in feeling superior derives from an emotional conviction of being inferior, which often produces a phony, compulsive goodness. Because of this underlying attachment to feeling inferior, caterers identify with those who are floundering in low self-esteem. Because they are so desperate to feel a sense of value, they rescue others as a means to embellish their own self-worth (“Look at how important I am to that person”). But caterers deny the other person his or her need to become self-responsible. They “enable” the other person to get by without facing his or her own dysfunction. Until codependents get to the roots of their compulsion to validate themselves through others, they cannot help themselves or anyone else become mature and independent.

  It may be that the United States has a codependent relationship with certain countries, notably Israel. It appears, also, that the United States, when favoring military options over diplomacy, has contributed to negative, dysfunctional relationships with other countries. This dysfunction is produced when our unresolved aggression is projected on to others. Through our inner fears, we can transfer on to other countries the feeling that they have aggressive designs on us and that militarism is required for safety’s sake. To avoid self-sabotage, foreign policy can be assessed with such ideas in mind.

  Shallow self-centeredness contributes to another defense, what is called cause-and-effect thinking. Under the influence of this cognitive processing, we believe we are at the mercy of how we are acted upon by people, circumstances, and events. The typical refrain is, “He or she caused me to feel this way.” Although we’re tempted to believe otherwise, we’re usually not innocent victims being acted upon by others. A person might believe, for example, that his anger is justified by his friend’s insensitive remark. He wants to believe his friend caused his anger, that his anger is the effect of his friend’s action. But, in most instances, if his anger were analyzed, he would see that it is produced by his own unconscious willingness to feel offended or belittled. We need to see that we interact with others according to our own readiness to indulge in, or “get hit up with,” whatever is unresolved in us. For instance, those who are extremely sensitive to “put-downs” are reacting to their unconscious attachment to self-doubt and self-criticism.

  We are co-creators with the world and each other of our experiences and how we interpret those experiences. When we are protecting self-image, however, we are reluctant to see more deeply into our illusions and denial of our authentic self, and thus we don’t see our collusion in generating and recycling negative experiences. In self-centeredness we believe that bad things are always happening to “poor little me.” Since cause-and-effect thinking serves as a defense against seeing our collusion in generating and recycling negative emotions and reactions, exposing the defense creates opportunity for breaking out of our self-centered mentality. (More on this in Chapter 4).

  Our unconscious mind has produced another ingenuous defense that revolves around self-centeredness. This one is called the claim-to-power defense, and unfortunately it is seldom recognized or exposed in traditional psychotherapy. An individual, for example, would put forward the following defense to cover up an attachment to the feeling of being rejected: “Not true I’m attached to feeling rejected. The problem is I’m the one who rejects others. I’m not interested in being friends with them. I don’t like them, period.” In this defense, the individual is likely to provoke people to dislike him. He is also likely to feel guilty about being insensitive and unkind to others. But, in his mind, he is just beating them to the punch. No matter who strikes first, however, he remains attached to the feeling of rejection, and he will suffer for that attachment with painful emotions, acute self-centeredness, and self-sabotage. His claim-to-power defense enables him to feel he has some power (“I am the one who does the rejecting”), some influence over what he is experiencing, rather than acknowledging his willingness to soak up feelings of being rejected.

  This defense requires also that he plead guilty to some “lesser crime,” such as having a disagreeable personality and being unable to get along with others. In exchange for covering up his attachment to the feeling of rejection, he has to pay a price in guilt, anxiety, and shame for the claim that rejection happens to him because he is unpleasant or malicious. In maintaining this defense, he accepts guilt and shame for allegedly being such an unpleasant person. That impression of himself becomes a cornerstone of his identity and a major contributor to his low self-esteem. This elaboration on his defense produces more self-sabotage because it keeps him trapped in his character flaw as it accentuates self-centeredness. It also, of course, keeps his attachment to rejection hidden away in his unconscious mind.

  Strange though it seems, we prefer to see ourselves as defective rather than to accept our collusion in suffering and self-sabotage. To protect our ego and its claim to power, we choose (unconsciously) to remain in a state of ignorance about the inner dynamics of our self-defeat. Metaphorically, we’re like a passive population that, while suffering under political tyranny, has convinced itself of the hopelessness of achieving reform and freedom.

  One way to become more conscious is to “catch ourselves” dwelling on the kind of impression we imagine we are making on others. Whenever we are preoccupied with how others see us, our self-centeredness is more acute. Ask yourself, “Why does it matter so much to me right now what others are (or may be) thinking about me?” Often the question can be answered with the realization that, “I am unconsciously attached to the feeling of being seen in a negative light” or “I need the feeling of being recognized and appreciated in order to cover up my attachment to having no value and being unimportant.”

  At such a moment, we evaluate others exclusively for what they are thinking of us—good, bad, or neutral—or, more precisely, what we imagine they are thinking of us. And if what we imagine they think is negative, that is precisely how, deep down, we feel about ourselves. We bounce our own glorified self-image or our inner condemnation off of others. Consequently, we experience various reactions in our daily encounters. One is the pleasant conviction that we do look impressive to others. Another is the unpleasant impression, in another situation, that we don’t. We can experience helplessness, irritation, fear, and depression when our idealized self-image is not being affirmed by others. We can become angry at them, and reject them in turn, because we are convinced, often erroneously, that they have devalued or disrespected us.

  Consequently, we don’t see others but rather “half-see” them, meaning that, emotionally, we see them looking back at us with what we believe they are thinking or feeling about us. We are certainly not appreciating them in their own right, which is the very neglect we complain about having experienced with our parents and others. Parents in their self-centeredness often take their children for granted or even feel (unconsciously) that their children are only extensions of themselves. Most parents see an image of what they believe their child is, namely an image that reflects their own feelings toward themselves. They don’t appreciate the actual, unique, body and soul creature who stands before them. A large percentage of the adults I see in therapy are still hurting emotionally from their childhood experience of not having been recognized, appreciated, and validated by their parents. These individuals begin to appr
eciate and accept themselves as they make conscious their attachment to feeling unworthy.

  What does a child feel when a parent looks at him but doesn’t really see him? The child feels some disconnect from the parent and some dissociation from himself or herself. The feeling is not necessarily registered as being painful—numbness often accompanies it. Adults who later access the repressed feeling can experience it painfully, though often therapeutically. It’s a feeling of being empty, alone, and unimportant. It’s feeling of having nothing of value to offer, that one’s existence doesn’t matter.

  When we experience this lack of consciousness coming from our parents, we can become non-existent to ourselves. We might compensate with an inner world of fantasy and imagination, which can certainly provide solace and some pleasure. But we have diminished capacity for self-affirmation. In desperation, we try to establish a self-image that provides some comfort and self-respect.

  It may have felt that our parents were insensitive to our deeper self. Hence, we become insensitive to our own deeper self. We relate to others through this mentality: “I regard you the way I regard myself, and I regard myself the way I feel you regard me.” We overreact emotionally to the perceived insensitivity of others because it reflects our painful insensitivity toward ourselves. Our indignant or angry overreaction is a defense covering up our willingness to indulge in the feeling of being treated with insensitivity. As children, we fixated on the negative implications of what was said or done to us, taking to heart allegations of being defective or wrong, and easily feeling criticized, helpless, and defeated. Now that experience is unresolved in our psyche, and we remain attached to the familiar negative feelings.

  If someone disagrees with our position or chooses a contrary path, we may feel rejected or betrayed, and assume the independent actions of the other person are intended to hurt us. Or we may feel that the other person is right and our position is therefore wrong. Thus we sabotage ourselves in hundreds of ways—including missing out on love, friendship, and other benefits—when our investment in self-image erects a wall around us. Behind this wall, lacking objectivity, we busily generate negative interpretations of our life experiences.

  In the process of inner liberation described in this book, escape from shallow self-centeredness involves the absorption or assimilation of this self-knowledge. At the same time, we observe our entanglements in self-doubt, self-reproach, and self-condemnation. If we address our negative emotional reactions more effectively and understand more profoundly the self-negation that prompts them, our humanity can be refined and we will have the inner connectedness to successfully manage the tumult and turmoil going on in the world.

  Why Our Old Mentality Persists

  Shallow self-centeredness is due partially to the lingering effect of the egocentricity with which we are all born. We come into the world with the psychological elements of aggression (needed to survive), libido, (the pleasure principle—a capacity to make experience pleasurable in order to make life worth living), and infantile “oneness” (the sense that we are at the center of all life).

  Infants experience only their own body and sensations. The sense is, “I exist, and I am existence.” This might be a desirable impression for adults to experience while meditating, for the sense of oneness is tempered by the ability to acknowledge the separate existence of others. But the infant’s version of the experience is acutely self-centered. In the infant’s mind, mommy and daddy, even objects, are just extensions of himself. The baby believes that he or she is the center of existence, that nothing exists apart from him or her, and that everything that happens is what baby has wished for. If mommy puts a rattle in baby’s hand, in baby’s mind that happened because baby wanted it to happen. If mommy isn’t present to provide instant gratification, baby believes that too is what baby has wished for, unpleasant though it may be.

  The following list illustrates the degree to which irrational and self-centered perspectives of an infantile nature are maintained in the outlook of adults. We don’t exhibit these various modes of childishness because we are inadequate or defective. Rather, they indicate the level of our consciousness or the degree of our human development.

  1) Immediate gratification with no effort. A baby can’t wait patiently for the prospect of good things happening in the future. An infant has no capacity to reflect on past or future. Like an animal, baby lives solely in the now. The infant never appreciates what he or she gets because baby feels it is all “self-given,” that baby causes it to happen.

  Adults, too, love to fly now and pay later. That is one reason there is so much debt. We want immediate results, fast foods, magic pills, and instant solutions. People aren’t willing to strive for years with required dedication toward achievement and mastery; that feels too much like deprival in the present. Even the economy, many observers say, rests on infantile impatience, on next quarter’s earnings reports, rather than on a foundation of long-term planning, development, and patience.

  2) Being at the center. A crying baby has no conception of annoying others. Among the millions of people who don’t appreciate how their actions affect others are bad drivers, careless workers, insensitive bosses, and indiscriminate polluters. They aren’t interested in being accountable for their actions. They don’t have a feeling for the consequences of what they do because they are so preoccupied with their own narrow self-interest. How they feel or what they get out of a situation is all that matters. Such self-absorption can be so profound that the effect on others is not only discounted but it is not even imagined. As an extreme example, some criminals are only able to show remorse when, through rehabilitation programs, they come for the first time into an emotional awareness of the terrible consequences of their crimes.

  3) Having the power. Children believe they cause things to happen. When a husband and wife divorce, their child believes he or she has done something to bring it about. If mommy is depressed, her child believes he is responsible and that, magically, he should be able to fix her. (This can throw him into a profound sense of helplessness as he struggles with his misguided sense of responsibility.) A man believes, “If only they’d make me the boss, they’d see how good a job I’d do. They’d see how smart I am.”

  Some politicians are convinced that if elected, they will transform the government or the state. Invigorated through their self-image, they acquire followers who support them and later watch them flounder in the whirlpools of reality. Some adults believe their actions cause bad things to happen: “The earthquake happened because we sinned.” Or they take total responsibility for the actions of others: “If I’d spoken up, the fight wouldn’t have happened,” or “She wouldn’t have left me if I’d been nicer.”

  4) Magical thinking. In their egocentricity, children believe that they have a special relationship with the universe, that the sun comes out to make them happy, that the moon follows them on walks, and that it rains because they have been bad.

  Many adults put their faith in good-luck charms and other forms of magical thinking. They might believe, “If I lose my job, that’s a sign to move.” They like to believe they can make their problems or weight go away with a pill. Often adults believe that things should be a certain way and they are offended that reality doesn’t correspond to their wishes. A radio personality wrote a book titled, The Way It Ought to Be, in which he appears to be offended that things weren’t the way he thinks they should be. Abraham Maslow, who explored the concept of self-actualization, wrote that, “To be strong, a person must acquire . . . the ability to perceive physical reality as essentially indifferent to human wishes.[ix]

  5) Win-lose. Children see the world as white and black, good and bad, win and lose. “If she gets, I lose. If Tommy’s bad, I’m good. If I submit, mommy wins. If Sally doesn’t say yes, she’s not my friend.” Children believe there is only one way to see things. They believe they see things the only right way. Or they may believe that mommy or daddy sees things the right way and they don’t. Adults say, �
�Americans are the best,” or “If my team loses, I’ll feel rotten.” Or they think, “She’s so beautiful and I’m ugly.” The feeling is, “Someone else’s success means my failure.”

  Democrats can feel they lose something essential to their well-being when Republicans win, and vice-versa. Some of us are emotionally fixated on being right. If we are right, then we are not wrong and thus we are not losers. Since our sense of value is based on being right rather than wrong, there is no room for middle ground or open-mindedness. It is hard to accept that both can be right, both can be good, when we are stuck in the childish way of seeing that it is either good or bad, right or wrong. Adults are quick to judge and disapprove of others for doing things “the wrong way.” And if you do things the wrong way, you’re bad. We can be convinced that our way is the right way and that others are misguided. It is difficult for many adults to give the views of others as much weight as their own beliefs.

  6) The only one who feels this way. Children can believe their experiences are unique, and that they are the only ones who feel a certain way. If a child is feeling rejected, the child can feel that he or she is the only one in the world who is suffering in this way. Often we feel misunderstood and alone. As adults, we are often surprised to discover others feel the way we do. This is noticeable in psychotherapy groups where participants, especially those new to the process of revealing their deepest feelings, often say, “It’s so comforting to know I’m not the only one who feels this way.”