The Selective Blindness of Self-esteem

This rant is long enough to deserve a soundtrack, so we’ll be featuring occasional musical interludes as we descend.

I have so much to share with you this week, my children, and somehow I also feel I have infinite time to do it.  I seem to have reached some kind of threshold here; something clicked.  I’d like to know if other people who conceptualize the universe in a similar way to mine can also benefit from this bit of a mind flip, so please, be free with the counter-anecdata!  This is all so very subjective - but that’s the trouble with mental health, isn’t it?  You’re trapped in your own head, in your own life, and every single bit of advice and diagnosis you ever get will feel just that little bit aslant from exactly how it was for you.

    I don’t think that means that we can’t ever benefit from outside voices, though.  I just think you need to assemble your internal pantheon from a wide range of sources.  Let me be more clear.

    I’m a word person - y’might have noticed - and so the way that I frame things in words, even just in my own head, is very important.  I think this is true for a lot of people.  Initially I thought that this was a side effect of growing up playing too many online roleplaying games.  You see, if you’re playing a character with other people, that character doesn’t really have a life outside of those people, because you don’t just… write up dialogue and actions while you’re alone in a room.  The subtle feeling is that any experiences your character may have that aren’t shared with other people… just don’t happen.  They’re vague story points, sure, you assume your character goes to the bathroom and gets some sleep, but for the most part we don’t need to go into great detail, and you don’t truly process those events or experience the emotions. Nothing actually occurs unless you discuss it with someone else.

    This works for a character.  It’s not a way a person can live.

    I locked away years of my life.  Not out of memory - my memory is painfully excellent in most cases, and where it fails isn’t in forgetting things but in inventing memories out of whole cloth.  (Yes, that’s frustrating and makes it hard to trust myself.  We’ll talk about that a lot more at some point in the future.)  What I mean is that I experienced those years on paper.  I can barely remember a time when I felt as if I was truly living my own life - flashes of it when I was a small child.  I started dissociating under stress when I was around six years old; obviously it’s difficult to pin such a thing down exactly. 

I think most texts don’t describe dissociation in a way that resonates to someone who’s experiencing it, leading a lot of people to conclude it’s just how life is, and that’s another thing I’d like to go into another time.  Like I said, I feel like I have everything in the world to tell you this week.  I feel like I’ve been waiting for permission to tell you all my life.  I told you when I started this blog that I wasn’t waiting anymore, and looking back, I suspect it’s more accurate to say that my waiting had certainly come to a middle.  Now… now I’m done waiting.  Now I’m going to tell you everything, without waiting for you to ask.  Because sometimes you don’t know you’re hungry until someone shows you food.  In this metaphor, welcome to my cooking show.

Trauma: the Mother of All Diagnoses

    So I could tell you my life story in detail, including the emotional gunpowder and psychological payload of each moment, and all of it would be narrative to me, a story about someone I know very well.  It felt that way at the time too.  I’ve had this double vision almost as long as I can remember.  I’m watching the feeds of two cameras, one right behind the eyes of this flesh machine that I can control through the - deeply faulty, broken, and also sticky with spilled soda - control banks in front of me.  The other camera stands outside that flesh machine, watching it from many angles, and the director hates the person onscreen.  You see that movie Inside Out?  It was actually phenomenal.  I don’t feel it was one-to-one accurate to my experience as a child or a mentally ill person, but it was an excellent illustration of some ways our brains work, especially when they’re not working well.

    I’ve come to understand that the exciting grab-bag of diagnoses I collected in my 20s was a combination of inconsistent low-income mental health care and a poor general understanding of CPTSD.  While it’s recognized by the World Health Organization, it’s not in the DSM-5, so we’re still at the “telling people it might not be all their fault that they’re broken and watching them weep with relief” stage with this one.  Instead, I got labeled with depression, anxiety, agoraphobia, ADHD, OCD, and finally depersonalization disorder before meeting a trauma therapist.  CBT made me self-harm.  My specific neuroses - or brainweasels, thank you, Captain - are different from yours, but Cognitive Behavioral Therapy tends to aggravate symptoms for a lot of trauma survivors, and then you’re left feeling like you’re too broken for therapy. Eugh.  What’s even the point, then, right?  Is that living?

    That’s how I felt last week.

    Now, I’m going to describe a specific breakthrough I’ve had.  It’s been very speedy in its execution, but I don’t want you to get the impression that this is the sum total of the experience.  This is only the good stuff, the payoff, the orgasm.  I’m gonna tell you about that part first, so you’ll know that the rest of it is worth it, but this - like an orgasm, take notes - is merely a stage in a much longer, more complicated process.  I’ve every confidence that I’ll fall into the Well again at some point in the future.  That’s all right.  What I have now that I didn’t have last week is the confidence that I can get out again, as many times as I have to.  I hope I can show you the path I took, in case our footsteps rhyme.

    One of the reasons a person might have brainweasels like mine is if you were raised by a narcissist.  This is orders of magnitude more likely if you happen to be assigned female, for a number of reasons - our society is inherently narcissistic, more on that later, and its messaging for young girls is identical to that of a narcissistic parent: “You must care for others’ emotions, attend to their needs, and have no needs of your own, while remaining lovely, accomplished, and silent, in all things an ornament to your family/school/firm/community/country.”

    As a result of this, a lot of us were never taught to value ourselves.  That wasn’t our purpose - we were made to be an adjunct to our parent, so all things’ value is judged on the basis of their value to our parent, including ourself.  What I couldn’t figure out was, how do you learn to value yourself when you’re given no examples?  How do you learn not to run from success when you don’t know what success looks like?  When you’re taught that “love” means “endless punishment for your fundamental inadequacy,” a somewhat Biblical definition now that I think of it… how do you learn to love yourself without punishing yourself?

    The thing I want you to realize - the thing I needed to realize - was that I had a lot of examples of what love, success, self-worth looked like.  I just couldn’t see them, because I was looking so hard at the examples - always easier to find, always more numerous - of the messages I’d learned and my brainweasels wanted to reinforce.

    Let’s illustrate it visually.

    Please pardon my imposition on your eyes; I think the anaglyph treatment helps the visualization some.  If you have 3D glasses, now is the time in the show where you should put them on!  If you don’t, the point should still manifest, like a Magic Eye picture, with a little squinting.

    So here we have a bunch of words that might be applied to you. In cyan, we see negatives, and in red, positives.  By closing one eye or the other, you can wash out sight of each set in turn.  What I want you to understand is that even if your daily life doesn’t scintillate with waves of red and cyan (and if it does, please send me some of what you’re smoking), you still perceive the world this way.  You still filter your experiences based on perceived value, and relate them to one another according to how you’ve reacted to similar experiences in the past.  

When you have a new experience and it slots into one of your categories, red or cyan, “good” or “bad”, it feels satisfying at a lizard level, because your brain is welcoming information it already has a place for.  Have you ever missed a bus and then said, “That figures”?  Ever made a mistake and said, “I should have known”?  Ever run into a problem and said, “Of course” or “well, fuck my life”?  You feel a tiny mote of satisfaction in among the frustration and misery, that if things went wrong, at least you knew it, because it was part of a larger pattern… if everything goes to shit, at least you can say, “Well, that’s just how things happen to me.  That’s just what my life is like.  That’s just how people are.  That’s just what society is today.”  

You decided which filter you were going to use before you even looked.

A narcissist thinks the opposite, but is just as blind to the other column: “Well, of course I won, I’m a winner.  That’s just who I am.  I’ve never lost in my life.”  Does that sound familiar?  Do you ever wonder how… certain people… can remain convinced that they’re flawless despite mountains of blatant evidence?  For the same reason, you see all events as reaffirming your fundamental inadequacy - because you decided which filter you were going to use before you even looked.  You don’t even notice anything that contradicts your worldview.  That’s not a criticism, mind - it’s how everyone’s brain works.

I’m gonna bet that if you’re anything like me - and if you’re still reading, you are - some of those words in the picture above were hard for you to hold in your head.  You kind of skimmed over them.  You saw what they were, you could copy them down if I asked you to, of course, but… you didn’t like looking at them, and when I ask you to do it again, you’re going to think it’s stupid and try to avoid it.  That’s okay.  You’re the best judge of what’s good for you.  Avoid it as long as you want to, I’m not going anywhere.  I’ll be here when you’re ready.

I’m gonna bet, though, that it wasn’t the negative words that made your eyes bounce off.  The positive ones were much, much harder to imagine someone using to describe you, or imagine using on yourself.  When those ideas come in, your brain nods and mm-hmms and looks away.  At best, you barely see them.  Close one eye.  The red words are gone.

There are two reasons why.

The shit people talk

The first reason is external.  We were taught not to apply words like this to ourselves; it’s boastful, arrogant - some of the words on the cyan list, actually.  But when you live with a narcissist, that general policy of modesty becomes very specific.  The list of words you may use to describe yourself will be issued to you.  It will be largely negative, and you must be able to hear and recite it, in portions and in full, without undue emotion.  Should new words enter your lexicon, you must not attempt to apply them to yourself - they will be reviewed, and the words others deem appropriate to describe you will be added to the list, on a trial basis, so long as you don’t abuse them.

I bet you could make your own list of negatives like the one in cyan above.  It’s largely autobiographical; I added a few items from my friends’ lives as well, but not a one hasn’t been applied to me at some point.  You could write page after page of the shit people talk about you.  And it wouldn’t hurt, not really, not in a way you can feel.  You might laugh.

You can illustrate this, in our above metaphor about red and cyan and closing one eye, as someone punching you in the fucking eye for years on end, while requiring you to read a list of your faults with the eye that’s not being punched.  You laugh in self-defense, and the part of you that could see the red words, that connected them to who you are, that could believe they mattered… got smaller and smaller.

And now, at this point, the red list isn’t so hard to put together without feeling it; just rattle off every motivational poster you’ve ever seen.  You can remember people applying those words to you, sometimes.  They don’t have any emotional weight whether they’re true or not.  You might be some of those things.  Probably.

But none of this makes you feel good, because even if you do say those things about yourself, they don’t feel particularly impactful.  They’re too subjective - anyone could come along and take away your “helpful” status at any moment, just by needing help you can’t provide.  Anyone could tell you that you aren’t pretty, aren’t charming, aren’t the best, and how exactly would you argue?

That’s the second reason.  They really aren’t very good words.

Our standards of value

Let me try something else.

    I’ve only replaced the red words, here.  Do you notice anything about these new words?  They’re still “good” words, still positive ideas… but they aren’t in any way based on subjective value.  Compare the two red lists side-by-side.

Worthy
Capable
Tenacious
Honest
Brave
Sincere
Passionate
Understanding
Steadfast
Resilient
Hopeful
Proactive
Kind
Open
Compassionate
Careful
Loving
Enough

Talented
Smart
Strong
Pretty
Nice
Special
Unique
Low-maintenance
Helpful
Charming
Achiever
Success
Best
Accomplished
Mature
Selfless
Chivalrous

   In the first column, we have measurements based on external standards of value, things you can only determine if you are by asking someone else.  Smart - what does that mean?  Smart at what, in what context, with what education?  Special?  Kids have been scoffing at that one for decades.  Everybody’s special, but apparently that doesn’t mean everybody gets treated well, so to hell with special.  Charming?  Right up there with “likeable” for a politician - someone else trying to establish Their Social Comfort as your standard for value.  Mature?  Meaning where, exactly, on what scale?  Do all people mature the same way, at the same rate?  Can all “mature” people be said to be better people?  Do we start out life deficient, then, and become more worthy as we download the features our elders already have?

    Take a look at that second list.  There’s not a thing on it that you can’t be all by yourself, alone in a room.  Not a thing on it that can be taken away by an external force.  Not a thing on it that was a gift or even something you earned but rather something you are, because you chose to be.  These are features of you, functions of the flesh machine that you programmed in by living, by choosing, by learning, by fucking up.  These qualities don’t obviate or erase your mistakes - they include them.

    You’ve made horrible mistakes in moments of passion… but being passionate isn’t itself wrong.  You’ve been a dick sometimes when you’re honest… but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be honest.  You’ve been too loving, loved foolishly, loved hopelessly… but that doesn’t make your love worthless.  You took your diamond to the pawn shop… but that don’t make it junk.

    I don’t know if that second red list is any easier for you to read.  It’s not for me, in fact it’s harder, but that’s because it’s harder for me to skim over.  Some of them are things I can admit to being.  Some of them are things I’d like to be.  None of them requires any form of external validation to accomplish - they can only be enhanced by the presence of others, not ignited.  You might be more tenacious with your team by your side, but they didn’t make you that way, you had to be tenacious to join.  You might think you’re being honest with your loved ones, but you’re probably not, if you’re not being honest with yourself.  And here’s where a lot of motivational bullshit fails, because this “being honest with yourself”?  It’s not the same thing as simply “being tough on yourself.”

    I fail to really understand all the posters in gyms exhorting people to “kick their own ass.”  I don’t know anyone who needs help remembering to kick their own ass.  I know a lot of people who don’t know how to stop.  And as much as I grew up, like you probably did, hearing, “I’m doing this for your own good, it builds character, you’ll thank me when you’re older…”  You know what?  The only time I ever hear a person extol the virtues of that kind of parenting these days is on Fox News.  I’ve never seen it work, in the sense of producing a happy, healthy person who goes on to achieve their dreams in life. 

It definitely does work in a capitalist sense, producing a person who responds to increasing inequality by bowing their neck to the yoke and spitting on those who resent it, calling them weak, irresponsible, lazy.  Your success is measured only in how well you swim in this ocean of piss.  How dare you complain about being pissed on!  Look at those people at the bottom, aren’t you above them?  You’ll get up here with us one day, and when you do, you’ll want to be able to pee freely.  Remember when I said our society is inherently narcissistic?  This is part of it.

The world you wanted

    Tough love doesn’t fucking work.  It doesn’t.  At best, the person you’re loving “toughly” carves themselves into a rough facsimile of what you wanted, which they maintain until you leave.  Or sometimes forever.  Some people live very successful lives this way.  They usually don’t get back the pieces they carved off themselves in an effort to please you, though.  If that’s enough for you - if monetary success in this grinding feudal machine is worth consciously, intentionally destroying two-thirds of a child’s identity - then I guess you must be pleased.  You have the world you wanted.

    Being honest with yourself actually means being able to see all of it - the cyan and the red - and then trying to look for all the other colors you’re missing on top of those.  It’s not more “mature” or more “rational” to search the world only for evidence that confirms what you already believe about yourself.  Your brainweasels and our narcissistic world want you to believe that you are worth only the paper you carry, and so they will take every single bit of input you receive and try to use it to convince you the world is terrifying and vengeful.  Oh look, another similarity to our government. 

Just like my abusive family, the data they’re using is real, but it’s often incomplete, and the conclusions they’re drawing from it are reactionary and fear-based.  You get turned down for a job and the voice in your head says, “Well, that makes sense, guess they could tell what a worthless piece of shit I really am.  Can’t blame them, really.”  At some level it feels comforting.  That voice is familiar.  It knows you.  It’s always been with you.

    But it hasn’t.  I know that.  I can see it, for the first time in my life - it’s as if the camera pulled back to show someone who was always just out of frame.  The thing is, those words in the first image, the judgments of value whether positive or negative… those words didn’t come from me.  I didn’t invent them and I didn’t teach them to myself.  And I remember moments - these pure, arresting moments - when it wasn’t about value, it wasn’t about measurement against anyone or anything else at all.  It wasn’t a competition.  It was just me, doing a thing, sometimes with a person.  It was enough to be there, to do the thing.  We were enough for each other and the task.  That was all that mattered.

Learn to see it

I was someone then. So were you. As much as I’m harping on the responsibility of the parents for these brainweasels, that doesn’t mean they’re responsible for the entirety of who I am. As much as it feels that way, my mother didn’t handpick my virtues from a list of her own. I know that, because there are worthy qualities about me that she doesn’t have at all. I didn’t just stumble into those qualities in the wild and accept them at once, as we’ve seen with the above red/cyan illustration - I must have been open to changing, open to ideas beyond those I was given by my family. Before AND after they did their work on me, I was someone, and I knew that how I was being treated, how I was being measured and evaluated, was wrong.

You know it too. You know that you are someone. You know that some of your good qualities were the result of choices, not gifts. You know that you can make more choices like those, which means you know that you can change. You have everything you need. You just need to learn to see it.