I would rather be self-employed and make $50,000 a year than to work for someone whose approval I need and make $250,000 a year. My father’s childhood programming comes back to bite me any time I experience even the mildest disapproval from an authority figure to whom I’m obligated. My snap reaction is always to want to lash out at the person whose disapproval of something stings, but when I can be dispassionate about it, I realize that the problem is in me. I simply can’t handle tiny instances of disapproval, because my old programming says I am a complete failure who deserves punishment if I don’t make an authority figure completely happy with me at all times. It’s exhausting and depressing. Be careful about how you teach your children, because your efforts to get perfect compliance might do long-term damage that you’ll never see.
Briefly: Changing my eating habits fixed my high blood pressure
Briefly: Interview with Danny Elfman about music for ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’
Briefly: Suicide reminds me that we don’t always know other people’s issuesFear of possible violence keeps some people trapped by misery
For years, I’ve known she wanted out of her terrible marriage.
She never should have married him. I don’t think she ever loved him. Not really. But he wanted her very badly. He pursued her hard. After a series of less-than-stellar relationships, it made her feel happy to be wanted so much. And he checked all the boxes on her “must have” list. So she accepted his proposal and they got married.
Even before the wedding, she saw red flags, but she didn’t want to back out. She kept making excuses for him. She was a strong woman, so she thought she could control the situation.
But as soon as they got married, she found out that he had been putting on an act about what he was. The red flags she had occasionally seen turned out to be routine behavior. Verbal abuse was constant. Belittling was an everyday thing. She soon realized she had married a malignant narcissist. She didn’t know anything about narcissism until then, but as she started reading about it — at my urging — she recognized her husband in every possible way.
She finally admitted something to me tonight. The only reason she hasn’t left him so far is that she fears he wouldn’t let her out alive.
We’re neither friends nor enemies, just strangers who share the past
‘This path leads to somewhere I think I can finally say, I’m home’
Society needs storytellers to help make sense of a changing worldWho are you trying to impress? Answer may explain who you are
This seems to be reunion season. College and high school classes all over the place are getting together to reminisce about old times and to nervously eye each other — with many thinking, “I don’t look that bad yet, do I?”
I know at least half a dozen people who’ve been to reunions in the last month. For some, it’s just fun, but for others it’s a time of sober reflection. When I talked with one friend today, he told me his reaction to seeing his classmates from not that long ago.
“Being there has me thinking about some things,” he said. “I looked around that night and realized these were the people who I grew up wanting to impress — and when I look at them now, I can’t figure out why I ever cared what they thought of me.”
When you were a small child, you wanted to impress your parents, maybe your siblings, maybe extended family and family friends. As you got older, the circle of people you wanted to impress changed. You wanted to impress your peers. Then you wanted to impress romantic interests. Your audience kept changing.
But at every point in your life, your choice about who to impress has said very loudly who you are.