When did it happen?

I’m going to avoid headlines in this post because I don’t want anyone looking over your shoulder to see what you’re reading. Now. If you’re somewhere public or in the view of other people as you see this post, go somewhere else to read it. Somewhere where nobody can see you. This may get rough. If you can’t right now, save a bookmark or hide this in another tab and read it later.

Ready?

Has anybody ever accused you of being a narcissist or having a narcissistic personality disorder? Do you feel like you are, deep down, a bit of a shitty person? Or that you have to fake things a lot? Or that you have to try super hard compared to others to reach the same level of respect? That’s OK, we can start fixing it right now.

It takes just a little look into your past, something that might have given you the biggest embarrassment of your life, something that happened before you turned 17 or 18, probably. It may also, controversially, be an opportunity that you didn’t really earn. So you might have gotten “sucked” into group of friends who were too advanced for you and you needed to work hard to keep up. One or the other.

Let’s start with the possible trauma.

This should be something that shakes your idea of reality to the core. You thought you were doing great, everything was fine, and all signs pointed to you being awesome (or, indeed, a loser). Then, something happened that changed your idea of what was real around you.

A real-life example. A mother tells her 6-year-old daughter to babysit her younger siblings when mom and dad are both suddenly called away and can’t avoid it. They promise to be back really fast. She packs all of the kids into a trolley and starts pushing them on like in a pram, singing and telling stories to them to keep an eye on them all and to keep them calm. She’s doing a marvellous job for a six-year-old. For anyone, really. She should be expecting praise and adoration from Mom when she returns.

Unfortunately, the mom is feeling so guilty about leaving them and so afraid, that when she finally returns home, and can’t instantly see the children, she frantically looks for the kids, she has enough time to check the well fearing they’ve all drowned, only to see them come around the corner laughing and singing songs. Her worry comes out as a burst of anger, and she slaps the 6-year-old on the ear so hard it rings. The child’s whole worldview is turned upside down: she thought she was doing a great job (and was!), but instead of praise and accolades, she got boxed on the ear.

She never recovers but has to always pretend to be certain she’s on top of things and is always terrified of having missed something.

So basically, your CORRECT worldview was interrupted by an authority figure and twisted into an incorrect world view: You don’t know what you’re doing.

Another example:

In your youthful stupidity, you do something that really brings home how you were responsible but didn’t see it that way: You did something that hurt another person badly. You did something that any empathic person wouldn’t be able to live with without some serious therapy or at least a punishment that fits the crime… But you got none; people forgave you and brushed it away as if it never happened. Now, you live with a secret, perhaps an expunged record of a crime committed as a minor. Your crime still weighs on you because you never got a chance to make it right. Hidden away, you have to pretend like you’re a normal person with a big dark secret, stuck in that time, unable to grow up. Maybe you’re subconsciously begging for a punishment from someone by trying to pick a fight with anyone who might give you the beating you think you deserve.

So your correct world view was that you needed to be punished, yelled at, and maybe beaten for what you did, but instead, maybe you got hugs and consolations, people rallying behind you to hide your crime. In some ways, they told you what you did was so shameful it can never come out. So shameful that it even reflects badly on those who raised you. That you should never speak of it. It will always be your deep, dark secret to be hidden away…

And yet another:

You got sucked into circles of talented people or super smart people, perhaps beautiful people, and you know you don’t really belong, but you also feel like maybe they think more of you than you think of yourself. Your sense of reality is warped, as you feel like you need to live up to these people, but you just don’t know how? Would you feel embarrassed if they realized how insecure you are compared to them?

So your correct world view was that you were a bit of a loser. Then, “winners” took you in and expected you to win with them. Now, you’re not sure if you had poor self-esteem to start with or whether they see something in you that you didn’t. Maybe you’d feel better if you knew they didn’t do it because they thought you were their equal, but rather… Their pet of sorts? (I’ll explain more later.)

And further:

You thought people liked you, and they probably did. Probably a lot of people liked you, namely people of the opposite gender or your preferred gender. But some mean girls or cruel boys decided to take you down a peg and level the playing field by pointing out that you’re just a povo or your mom is a whore or whatever and that makes you as good as a 0, right? And somehow, they got to you. And now, as an adult, you still feel the sting of kinda agreeing with them on some of it. (Should you?)

Maybe one more?

They preach “body positivity” to you day in, day out. You know people avoid romance or sex with you because of the way you look, but everyone around you denies it. You wonder whether it is you or them who are delusional, but you start to fear it’s you; you have a bad self-esteem and a negative outlook in life, and what everybody is saying (trying to be nice) is actually true. Your position maybe the hardest because people actually believe that telling you white lies here is helping you… And they will keep lying to you for as long as you let them, because it makes it easier for them to keep saying to themselves that they’re nice people.

With all of these examples, the key is the difference between how you saw reality at the time and how others proved to you they saw it differently to you. Somehow, you should be able to decide what is true and what is not with that trauma with you.

The Secret.

Your biggest problem is the secret you keep.

You should take that secret to someone you trust, a professional therapist even, and ask them to confirm your idea of reality. HOW STUPID were you thinking A is true when B was presented to you as a fact. When you gain a little confidence that your sense of reality could possibly have been true the whole time, you can start asking more people if they agree your original idea of reality was actually closer to the truth than the alternate presented to you, and also, they could help you understand WHY the alternative truth was given to you.

For instance, the mother’s reaction wasn’t straight up anger or disappointment in her 6-year-old but just a release of worry done in the worst way possible. Mothers aren’t perfect, are they?

When a youth commits a crime, being a stupid teenager, adults tend to be forgiving of it even if they are angry and disappointed. They don’t mean you must hide your ugly secret forever; they mean you are allowed not to take it as a self-defining trait for the rest of your life and can decide when to bring it up and with whom.

When gifted people make friends with the not so, they don’t necessarily do it because they think you’re their equal, but because they think they’re being nice if they do… And perhaps you’ve got other traits they admired, rather than those you think they did? Maybe THEY never expected you to live up to the expectations you thought they would?

And, finally, the mean girls… Boys… You know what is the biggest go-to move is when someone talented, beautiful, and admired is making their way up the ladder at school? You destroy their self-confidence using any weapon available to you. They didn’t think you were less than them, they feared you were more… Maybe reacting from their own earlier trauma of the same nature…

Whatever your secret, ask someone for their objective opinion (personal trainer?). Were you the asshole? Who was it that was in the wrong? Maybe ask some anonymous people on Reddit who have no need to be nice to you. Tell them exactly how you feel, and let them help you toward a more realistic view of yourself.

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