The text explores the phenomenon of individuals lacking a sense of self, often stemming from childhood experiences where their uniqueness was disregarded by self-absorbed caregivers, leading to a life of compliance and suppressed identity.
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One of the odder features of this life
is that without there being too many
significant outward signs of the
problem, many people are to be found
wandering the earth, lacking any sense
of self. By this we mean that they are
radically unsure of who they might be,
what they might want, and who they
should trust. These unfortunates have no
settled core. In the background, they're
always quietly asking themselves, not
what do I like, but what am I supposed
to like? Not what do I approve of, but
what is it good to approve of? Not what
do I find funny, but when should I
laugh? When we watch them carefully, we
may notice rapid, almost arbitrary
shifts in their views. They love this
artists or jacket or political opinion,
but in fact, no, they prefer another one
and then another. They're implicitly
constantly calling out to a world which
puzzles and terrifies them. Who should I
be? What is it right to think? These
poor souls tend to be the products of
very particular sorts of childhood. When
little, they will have faced
environments in which their uniqueness
was never a matter of concern to their
self-absorbed caregivers. mother or
father were never able to push their
needs aside for a time to drop to their
level and ask who is this extraordinary
new member of the human race whom I've
helped to create what are their
particular inclinations and loves and
hates what do they have to tell me they
were far too perturbed and fragile for
such self-obnigation
they couldn't attune to the child and so
the child could not in turn attune to
themselves for we can only find out what
we think if in the early days someone
was sufficiently patient to facilitate
our own process of self-discovery. If
someone didn't shout over us and say,
"Don't be ridiculous when we ventured
forth an opinion or didn't use all the
resources of adulthood to insist that
their way was the only way." The
selfless child will have had to cope
with an egotist who simply coerced them
to follow an already predetermined
agenda. These are the books you need to
think are amazing. The only way to be a
good boy or girl is to win at this kind
of sport or that school subject and
later to be a banker or a vet and so on.
All without in any way bothering to
check in on how this might have felt to
the small person biologically programmed
to adore and rever them. From this was
drawn a moral. Survival depends on
compliance. The price of existing is the
sacrifice of one's real identity.
Selfless people can be deeply charming.
Their manner can be exquisitly polite
and maleifuous. They're built to work
out what we like and to reflect it back
to us. They aren't merely pretending to
go along with what we think for a few
minutes. They genuinely seek out our
world view and lose themselves in it.
But these people also pose grave
dangers. For no one foregoes their sense
of self without storing up a significant
degree of rage and dissatisfaction. Yet
this can never emerge cleanly because
the candid expression of their needs was
never something that these selfless
people were allowed to practice. The
first we're liable to learn about a
problem they have with us is when it's
become unmanageable.
We can be most at risk if we fall in
love with these elusive, beguiling,
shape-shifting people. At first, it's
our tastes they want to understand. It's
the books and places and foods we like
that seem especially interesting to
them. We can allow ourselves a dangerous
moment of self-indulgence. We're made to
feel marvelous and aren't suspicious
enough to wonder why until at some point
the wind changes. Our beloved without a
self starts a new job, develops
different friends, and starts to hang
out with a crowd they take to be
superior. What replaces their approval
of us isn't just gentle disinterest. It
will probably be disdain. We become as
repulsive to them as we were once
extraordinary. They may say, "You don't
really know me." Or, "You expect me to
be perfect." They feel trapped by the
very borrowed identity they once sought
out so avidly from us. There is
considerable anger in their system
because they know that someone has
quashed their true self. They simply
forget that it wasn't us. They know
implicitly that they've been prevented
from becoming who they are and hold us
responsible for stifling them. They may
say with an early adolescent level of
scorn, "You're controlling me." When
what they really mean is, "I don't know
who I am. I've surrendered control to
you and now can't work out what to
think." or more profoundly, I can't
determine the line between being loved
and being controlled because a parent
who was meant to do the former was more
interested in the latter. We can find
ourselves dropped like a stone. And yet,
ironically, we may have been very right
for them. They just didn't know enough
about who they were to trust their
original instincts.
The best we can do for people who have
been denied a self is to signal that we
aren't, as their parents once were, only
there to force yet another set of views
on them. We won't demand that they echo
us. We want to be curious about someone
they've never yet been allowed to
discover. We're keen to do a very eerie
and unparalleled thing. Get to know them properly.
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