(or Why We Need to ‘Get Over Ourselves’)

We all have emotions and insecurities; things we want to keep hidden and things we need to explore; things that will hurt us forever and things that we learn, with time, to embrace. Thus far, we are all the same, but it’s how we deal with our emotions that defines us. But before I go on, I’ll try to explain the title I’ve given to this post.

A while ago, Derren Brown, on his television show, met around ten complete strangers and then wrote an in-depth analysis of their innermost feelings, for each one of them.

When interviewed later, all the participants were amazed at how accurate and incisive their personal assessments had been; that he had managed to perceive, magically, what no one else could ever have known about them. It transpired that every ‘assessment’ was identical! They went along the lines of:

‘I’m confident on the outside but inside…’
‘ I usually feel like I don’t really belong’
‘I’m always the outsider’
‘I have baggage from my childhood’
‘ I always feel I’m looking for something else’
‘ I often feel a failure’
‘My self-image isn’t great’
‘Others seem content, I’m not,’ etc.

This is a good way to remind ourselves that there are certain common themes of need and vulnerability in all of us and that ‘deep-down inside’ we are remarkably similar.

Another blogger on this site in a fairly recent blog also captured this perfectly in a post entitled “You”. Perhaps you reader(s) could look it up. The majority of people would recognise themselves to a greater or lesser extent in that particular post. The majority of comments left by others say exactly that, with awe, as if they did not know that this was the basis of the human condition.

Most of us understand that feelings such as these are part and parcel of the human condition and emotional development helps us to deal with them and put them into some kind of perspective. Those who understand this, know they must bloody well get on with it….…..thereby becoming the ones destined to support those who don’t understand……and who don’t seem able to get on with it.

People who don’t understand that we all have our emotional ‘hang-ups’ end up taking their emotions too seriously. They give them disproportionate importance – they never learn to ‘get over themselves.’

They think that they are “special”; that they are more emotionally evolved than others; that their feelings are stronger and more worthy of consideration; that life is more “painful” for them and that those who try to bring some balance to them are “controlling” and “uncaring”. They use their emotions to absolve themselves of the control, perspective and selflessness that others achieve with emotional maturity.

Relationships, of all kinds, are difficult to sustain for these people. They contribute little to the healthy balance of relationships, wanting to be equal but needing the constant emotional support of their partners to be so. Relationship difficulties are blamed on aspects of themselves that they see as admirable - their complexity, independent spirit or challenging intellect, for example – so they see no need for themselves to change.

Ironically, they ruin perfectly loving relationships because they cannot be convinced that they are loved enough. It’s almost as if they resent the strength of those who love and support them because their fragile egos feel subjugated and somehow diminished. They look at healthy, loving couples and ask why such a man could love such a fat/ugly/old woman – and they will never know the answer.

Looking for someone else to address these issues makes us high-maintenance, resentful and full of misplaced blame. It also keeps us forever seeking “something else”, while the problem travels with us wherever we go.

Eventually, they find that the only people who have time for them are those who employ the same kind of self-obsessed clichés and live the same kind of flawed reality. They can’t sustain relationships with those who are confident, balanced, ‘successful’ …or recognise why the people to whom they relate most closely, are troubled and alone.

Because they are always sub-consciously seeking emotional support, they lay bare their private emotions to anyone who shows interest. Every new contact becomes a new best friend or a new best lover. When each relationship ends, they view it as betrayal not failure, thus becoming the victim. They need to be adored while offering jealousy and self-obsession in return; no lover will ever make them feel secure enough and no friend will ever be blindly supportive of them enough.

They consider that they demand more of life than those who function uncomplainingly in the real world – those who aren’t praised for fulfilling their responsibilities; who are judged on just who they are, not how they look; who know when others need to come first even though they have their own personal disappointments to deal with; who are not the centre of anyone’s universe but are happy to make others the centre of theirs.

The all-too-obvious irony is that emotional obsessives will never reach emotional maturity because they are simply too wrapped up in themselves.

(This post has been brewing and festering for a while. My thanks to a dear friend for their great input and help in getting it to an end result).