Day 01 : Something you hate about yourself.
As a chronic self-loather, I can find at least a hundred different things to hate about myself in the next minute. Okay, go!
I’m short.
I’m overweight.
I’m awkward.
I’m a self-loather.
I’m sometimes passive-aggressive.
I’m a dirty liar to myself.
I’m sitting here making this list to prove myself.
I’m not sure I can come up with enough ways to loathe myself.
Seriously? That was it?! Add another to the list. I can’t think on my feet.
Notice something above? All of the items started with I’m. I. Me. That’s the biggest problem of them all.
It’s all about ME.
- It really is.
See? I even included a real life picture of myself, (skillfully edited for privacy), to prove my point. That’s the first thing I did when coming up with a graphic for this post. I whipped out my camera and took about 10 photos until one came out the way I wanted.
Perhaps, I’m being overly sensitive to the notion that I am self-involved. It is the furthest thing from what I want to be. However, I cannot seem to think of a subject without being, well, subjective. All of my knowledge. All of my emotions. My opinions being based on a combination of those in my experience.
Those are all of the ideas and thoughts that are translated from consciousness to some form of communication. It is a very egocentric way of being, and it is absolutely distasteful. There is a certain disdain toward the concept, and a loathing for embodying the trait. No person wants to consider themselves as being self-absorbed. Most of us aim to be altruistic. However, there is an uncertainty that concept exists in the purest form. Is it possible for a human being to be completely altruistic?
See what I did in that last paragraph? I removed any self-centric words. I used to make a practice of it. In college, unless it was specifically an opinion piece, we were encouraged to removed any subjective words. It made my writing sound ten times better, and removed bias while displacing blame.
I originally made a practice of it here, unless I was giving a first person narrative. That’s what Pendulum started with: a narrative.
But, I’ve been writing so much on the subject of me, my experience with bipolar disorder, and my life over the last six months that I’m not sure where to draw the line anymore.
Back to the subject egocentricity versus altruism. Perfect altruism is a work in progress. The process of attaining perfect altruism is more important than the infeasible objective of embodying it. That is my own self-discipline. Others first, unless I am really running on empty. Because, I cannot expect others to return my kindness and help me see to my own needs. Tending to myself is what I think of self-sufficiency, rather than complete selfishness.
That’s where the lines go down in the sand. They shift with the tides. I have to carefully determine what is a need and what is a want. The things I need may eventually become wants, and vice versa. I may need leisure time at one point, because I am overburdened. At another, it may be a recreational want, because I am interested in those things more than I am in activities that revolve around my responsibilities.
More than that is the question of self-esteem, assertion, overbearing, narcissist. Where does the line go down? Back to self-loathing, I know I have plenty of that. Only recently have I come into some self-esteem through firm demonstration of my positive characteristics and talents. When and where does one love themselves too much?
- Self-esteem gone wrong.
I have always had strong feelings about this subject. A person crosses the line between confidence into arrogance when they become delusional about their own shortcomings.
So, why, again, do I feel as if it’s all about me?
My thoughts have been unusually introverted and my expression reflects that. I talk about me. I write about me. I think about me.
There is a careful balance between egocentricity and altruism. I am in the midst of that juggling act as my personality takes on certain shifts. Throughout my treatment for bipolar disorder, I have noticed the plates shifting, changing the landscape of my own self. Sometimes, it is difficult for me to differentiate between what is illness and what is personality. For both the good, and the bad.
Related articles
- He ain’t heavy, he’s Bipolar (acanvasoftheminds.wordpress.com)
- Bipolar Disorder and Receiving Social Security Disability (socialsecurityhome.com)
- Your Brain on Altruism. (veganmyway.tumblr.com)
- Study: The More Altruistic You Are, The Bigger Will Be This Part of Your Brain (bigthink.com)
- Individual differences in altruism explained by brain region involved in empathy (medicalxpress.com)
- Brain Region Predicts Degree Of Altruism (futurepundit.com)
Sunny With a Chance Of Armageddon 
It is your blog, you are supposed to write about you. With so much self-loathing, I don’t think you could be said to love yourself too much. Maybe self-loathing breeds narcissism? I think you are being too hard on yourself. Would you treat someone else the way you treat yourself? Probably not. Try (it’s hard, I know) to be a bit nicer to yourself. You might find the self-loathing eases up in the process. 🙂
Oh yeah, self-loathing is an essential part of narcissism. That’s the whole reason why there is a disorder for it. No offense to the folks out there with narcissist personality disorder. The inflated self-esteem is a result of constant feelings of inadequacy.
While I wouldn’t consider myself to be a narcissist in the least, I realize that everyone has a drop of that in themselves. I was actually reading an article on psychcentral.com about the rise of social media correlating with the rise of NPD. Of course! I mean, here we go, a giant platform open to the entire audience of the world to read our every thought. And in that giant population, as long as there are more people in that social media outlet than in our real life that validate our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, then we’re obviously going to get an inflated self-importance.
Think of the trending FB and WP addictions we’re reading about all of the time.
So, as a blogger, I realize that there is some kind of truth in my egotism versus altruism. Do I honestly think that I’m one or the other? It’s not that black and white and carved in stone. Am I more one than the other? No, I don’t think so. In the end, I think it balances out.
However, when it comes to social media outlets, there is a whole bag of egocentricity and narcissism. I don’t think I’m the best, not by a long shot. Deep down, neither does any narcissist. The difference is that I don’t take comments as criticism, and I don’t have a strong reaction when someone doesn’t agree with my opinion, or makes an opposing opinion.
I write about what I know. I write about me, and how I experience bipolar disorder. And that’s really what the blog is all about, right?
Pingback: 30 Days of Truth | Sunny With a Chance Of Armageddon
i get what you mean about things being all about you. people want me to take care of myself and keep myself stable but then i feel like i’m being selfish because it’s all about me and what makes me happy and calm and centered. i’ve always had a strangely high self esteem though, my family politely refers to it as my “inflated sense of self”.
You bring up an excellent point. That’s kind of where this post lies, sitting on that invisible line between putting oneself first, because no one else will, and true altruism of putting others before oneself.
For me, it is a little different. When I end up with mania, the delusions of grandeur are always competing with the self-depreciating, intrusive thoughts. On a large scale, saying my medication is almost completely ineffective, it’s a real war in there. “I’m the master of the world.” “Yeah right you’re the master of the world, you’re not even the master of your house.”
On a smaller scale, say mild intrusive thoughts versus hypomania, it’s more like, “I’m really great at….” and then, “That’s really an unreasonable thought. You know what you’re good at and what you aren’t. And sometimes, it’s not the things you should be good at anyway.”
And it’s always been like that. On a “typical” day, I have more intrusive, self-depreciating thoughts than anything else. I have to dig deep and get perspective. Especially when I screw up with something and I am sure that other people are going to get on me about it. The last time that happened, Friday, I just broke down and started profusely apologizing. It was kind of my fault, even if I wasn’t the one who did it.
The root is bad self-esteem and history of abuse. People have always gotten on me about the things that I don’t do well. I haven’t had a lot of recognition for things I do well unless it’s on a ridiculous scale. I mean, something that you would have to notice from the moon, you know? I’m getting better about it, though.
Back to what I was saying. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself a narcissist, nor would I say that I’m self-centered. But, I do think that I am too self-involved, meaning kind of too inside myself, preoccupied with my own thoughts and feelings. You know?
Pingback: More Than Ten Years : 30 Days of Truth | Sunny With a Chance Of Armageddon