What if you consider yourself better than others?
ALL WE HAVE GROWN THE MASS OF QUESTIONS TO THE SELF AND THE WORLD, with whom there seems to be no time or not to go to a psychologist. But convincing answers are not born when you talk to yourself, or to your friends, or to your parents. Therefore, we asked the professional psychotherapist Olga Miloradova to answer pressing questions once a week. By the way, if you have them, send to [email protected].
What if you consider yourself better than others?
As a rule, we can sensibly assess that someone surpasses us in a certain area - whether it be a movie star, a successful writer, a snowboard pro-rider, or a genius biochemist. But at the same time, admit, somewhere deep down, many of us consider ourselves to be special, smarter and better than the majority of those around us - just the moment of our triumph has not yet come or the society is too blind. Maybe you have not yet "found yourself", but at the same time you are sure: the day will come and you will wipe the nose of everyone who has not noticed your greatness before. Even if you are not glorified as a professional, the best guy in the village will fall in love with you. On the one hand, the pursuit of success is an excellent motivator. On the other hand, is such a desire to be the best for our life, career and psyche?
OLGA MILORADOVA psychotherapist
Surely there is the same area where you are able to flash. Perhaps your confidence in your exclusivity is already supported by some real achievements. But there are a lot of successful people in one way or another, why do you think that you are better than others?
There may be several explanations for this, and I will begin with the simplest, but in some sense the most unpleasant — the so-called Dunning-Kruger effect. This effect, or rather cognitive distortion, lies in the fact that people with a low level of qualification make erroneous conclusions, make unsuccessful decisions and at the same time are unable to realize their mistakes precisely because of the low level of their qualifications.
At the same time, they are absolutely confident in their own competence, and it is from them that you will most likely hear that a fault in the system is to blame (the weather, stupid boss - it’s necessary to underline), but they have never done it themselves. Accordingly, if you tend to blame your failures on working for anyone, it may be worth considering how well you understand what you do?
More competent people tend to underestimate their abilities and suffer self-doubt
Most paradoxically, more competent people tend to underestimate their abilities and suffer self-doubt. But in this situation there is good news: after training incompetent people still have the ability to realize how wrong they were, but what’s still sad is not necessarily that with the growth of their self-awareness their abilities will really improve. But, perhaps, it is at least a good chance to understand what exactly your soul does not lie with and, without exposing yourself to further shame, to do something else.
Another reason may be more global and, in fact, is the problem of the generation of millennials, or players - those born between the 80s and 2000s. This is already a problem raised by parents in the games. In their time, they, parents, had enough motivation for a three-room apartment, work for father and mother and, of course, successful children. Only the success of those very children should have been completely different: children should not just find work, but find creative work, children were assured that they were not like everything else, that they were better, deeper, more multi-layered and multi-faceted, and they ... believed.
Often, all this depth and versatility was not the infinite belief of parents that their child is already beautiful, but rather an ultimatum and demand - be so, otherwise we will not accept you. Sure, not everyone, but someone had it so. Thanks to this rejection story, many people later developed a narcissistic injury, because any child is so afraid of being rejected by their parents. As a result, we have a generation, among other things, daffodils.
The man of the narcissistic warehouse does not respect his inner world and does not really know how to be alone with himself
Despite the current notion that daffodils love themselves very much and that is why they rise above all and consider themselves to be superior to everyone, this is not quite so. Narcissistic personalities are very vulnerable, they are afraid of too close contacts, so they often take everything in advance: I will reject you until you reject me. And yes, they are really trying to be the best, because they do not believe that someone will accept them without a list of merits. And for themselves they are looking for the best of the best, because in principle they are inclined to idealize and build on a pedestal, as they believe that only the best are able to evaluate them.
However, just as they idealize easily, they depreciate as easily - not only those around them, but also themselves. The man of the narcissistic warehouse does not respect his inner world, does not really know how to be alone with himself, does not want to share his feelings. It is he who is seriously engaged in striving to be better than others, clutches at everything and achieves, reaches, reaches, but cannot escape from inner emptiness.
A narcissus can be helped by someone who accepts him as is, endures all his mood swings, attacks and depreciation without escaping. Anyone who can gradually prove that he accepts him as he is, without any achievements, he who will help him regain his inner world without reacting too much to his flattery, so that it would not hurt so much. And it is actually quite difficult, so besides a friend, a brother, a beloved (s), do not forget about the therapist just in case.