{"id":32540,"date":"2020-09-13T19:11:14","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T00:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=32540"},"modified":"2025-09-09T02:58:05","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T07:58:05","slug":"deconstructing-my-old-lifes-hard-but-im-learning-to-be-healthier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=32540","title":{"rendered":"Deconstructing my old life\u2019s hard, but I\u2019m learning to be healthier"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent most of my life learning to let go of the things I thought were important.<\/p>\n

My father almost turned me into a narcissist. Just like him. I didn\u2019t know that, of course. He didn\u2019t know that, either. I didn\u2019t understand he was a narcissist, because I didn\u2019t even know what clinical narcissism was. It never would have occurred to me, because my father \u2014 the god-like central figure of my childhood \u2014 was my standard for all that was right and normal.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve spent my adult life on a long journey of recovery. It started while I was still in my late 20s when I vaguely realized something was wrong. That led to the realization that I had come from a very dysfunctional family. But I still had so many layers of dysfunction to take apart \u2014 and I had so much to learn in order to become an emotionally healthy adult.<\/p>\n

Even now, I keep finding more habits to unlearn. I keep realizing that I have beliefs that need to change. But as I take apart the old pieces of ugly dysfunction \u2014 brick by brick \u2014 I slowly replace them with something better.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m slowly becoming an emotionally healthy man.<\/p>\n

I never wanted to admit to myself just how dysfunctional I was when I was younger. Maybe that would have been too scary for my psyche at the time. Maybe I needed to tell myself that I just had a few minor things to fix — simply because it would have been too intimidating to see how much I had to change. It would have been too humiliating to realize that someone so close to “perfect” was so fatally flawed.<\/p>\n

When you’re emotionally unhealthy, you redefine negative things about yourself to make them into positive traits. I did that and I never knew what I was doing.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t grandiose. I was just ambitious and talented.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t thin-skinned and overly sensitive. The people around me were merely rude and didn’t understand me. It was their fault.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t arrogant when I routinely broke other people’s rules, such as the orders of work superiors. Other people were simply controlling and their rules were constricting. Every boss I had was the stupidest person on Earth, so I was right to ignore his orders.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t a perfectionist. I just had really high standards.<\/p>\n

I didn’t have an excessive need for praise and attention. I was simply a star who deserved validation and other people were idiots for not appreciating my greatness.<\/p>\n

I didn’t say those things, of course, not even to myself. But just underneath the surface, that’s the way I felt. I found ways to take every one of my questionable habits and beliefs — and turn them into evidence that the world was wrong and that I was superior.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a long and winding road to understand all of these inner deceptions. I’ve slowly tried to see myself and reality in honest ways. That’s meant accepting that I was more like my father — in dangerous ways — than I could have accepted at the time.<\/p>\n

I’ve had to give up some things that I thought were core parts of who I was. I’ve had to give up grandiose ideas about myself. I had to give up the fantasy that I was going to save the world. I had to give up the notion that everyone was going to love me and praise me. I had to give up my core belief that I was special — that I was secretly better than everybody else.<\/p>\n

I’m slowly replacing all of that ugliness with things that reflect who I really am — for both good and bad. Healing means that I am slowly learning how to be normal.<\/p>\n

I wish I could have grown up with healthy mental habits and healthy inner beliefs about myself. I wish I could have been emotionally healthier when I was trying to build a company. I wish I could have seen the truth about myself and about the world in time to give myself more time to build on what I’ve learned.<\/p>\n

But I didn’t know those things as a child. I didn’t know them when I was 30. I didn’t even know them 10 years ago.\u00a0But I know now.<\/p>\n

All I can do is to live my life in a normal and healthy way — and pray I’m lucky enough to make up for lost time by building the life I wish I had created long ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve spent most of my life learning to let go of the things I thought were important. My father almost turned me into a narcissist. Just like him. I didn\u2019t know that, of course. He didn\u2019t know that, either. I didn\u2019t understand he was a narcissist, because I didn\u2019t even know what clinical narcissism was. Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-32540","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-8sQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32540"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38109,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32540\/revisions\/38109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}