David McElroy

I consciously realized last night that I use manufactured praise to save myself from my fear of being bad and inadequate. If I can manipulate people into praising me, that gives me temporary relief from my fear of not being good enough.

That’s a pretty brutal realization. I think I already knew it, but I hadn’t quite put it into words like that. Not consciously. But as soon as I did, I recognized the pattern that I learned from my father.

A narcissist desperately seeks what is called “narcissistic supply” — and my father taught me to do something that was pretty much identical to what he did.

This is the next in a series of videos dealing with issues that come up for me to think about as I write a book about my childhood experience of growing up with a narcissistic father. You can visit that YouTube channel to subscribe to future videos. (Liking and subscribing help me quite a bit in reaching others with the videos.) Or you can watch the most recent video below.

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It’s been years since I figured out that my father was a narcissist. It’s been years since I started understanding the effects he had on me — how he warped my mind and damaged me at my core. And every time I start thinking that I’ve already dealt with the lingering legacy of his dysfunctional programming, I see something in myself that reminds me that he’s still inside me — in ways that might never change — and that I have to constantly watch for bits and pieces of his dysfunction to come out in me.

I was driving home from work this evening when it happened again. I started thinking about doing something that was nominally a good thing to do — but then I realized what my motivation was. I realized that I was once again trying to prove to myself that I was a good person. The old programming had kicked in once more.

This is the next in a series of videos dealing with issues that come up for me to think about as I write a book about my childhood experience of growing up with a narcissistic father. You can visit that YouTube channel to subscribe to future videos. (Liking and subscribing help me quite a bit in helping others to see the videos.) Or you can watch the most recent video below.

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When I checked Facebook Thursday morning, a huge, ugly warning had taken over the screen on the app. Thinking it could be glitch, I tried it on a web browser on my MacBook, but I got the same bizarre warning.

Facebook had blocked me from using my personal account — posting, commenting or taking any other actions — for the next three days. Why? The shocking explanation was that I had allegedly been posting content related to “child sexual exploitation.”

I was shocked and angry at such an ugly accusation.

The warning said that the content had been removed, but it would not tell me what the offending content might have been. I could ask for a review of the decision, but it said the review would take something like four or five days. When I pressed the appeal anyway, I found that it was useless, because it wanted me to explain why my offending post didn’t violate Facebook’s rules — even though it wouldn’t tell me what the offending post was.

My Facebook profile is public, so anybody can see what I post. Most of what I post consists of cat and dog photos. I make observations about things I see in the world. I post a few ridiculous jokes. But I’ve never posted anything even vaguely sexual, much less anything related to “child sexual exploitation.”

But because of an automated moderation system that apparently has the intelligence of a rather idiotic earthworm, I finally experienced what friends of mine have experienced before. I’m in “Facebook jail.”

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