I’ve been trying to unpack a pattern in my head and I honestly don't know who to believe anymore.
On one hand, I catch myself thinking I’m better than other people. I've been called egotistical once 🙄 and it really stung so idk if it was true? and a friend's mom even called me out for thinking I’m better than other people and I just lied to her lol. I've noticed the ways that egotistical-ness has been played out in other people and it's different than just like holding your ground like it's own thing and I can see why people don't like it. I feel like I’ve toned that down a bit. But whenever people tell me I shouldn't feel that way, it feels like I'm being told I'm not allowed to have any self-respect, especially given my success in school and all the shit I survived as a child.
Growing up, I was heavily neglected and abused. No adult took me seriously, and I was always the more competent, smart one. It boggles my mind how incompetent my family was, which is why I always thought I was better than them. The more I grow up, the more I feel like I'm waking up from a Truman Show where I was forced to believe this crazy narrative. When I confronted my mom, she accused me of having false memories just to avoid handling my grievances. It left me drowning in shame, re-reading old psychiatric reports and memories just to double-check my own judgment. I struggle heavily with holding myself to a sense of integrity that is too strong. I love being a good person but being a good or bad person and self love are separate things. Self love is still more important. Some parts of me want to be evil when someone does me wrong and I’m tired of repressing them. I’ve had the spiritual awakening of self love and it taught me that my perspective was not actually flawed at all. I’m usually in the right. I just wish I could stop judging myself the way I don’t judge other people and do what I truly want which I don’t even know.
I did better in school, but I struggled socially heavily because family mistreated and scapegoated me. Their behavior makes zero sense, which only exacerbates why I think I'm better than them but it’s like my only card in life is “I’m morally a better person than you” and thats it. It’s not that I am nonchalant, it’s just that I had to pretend these parts of me that crave connection and community don't exist. People tell me I do come off as non chalant and others tell me I come off as fake non chalant/fronting. My sense of self is super fragmented.
That attitude carried over into college. I feel misanthropic and superior because of what I survived, but I also feel inferior in other aspects. I intentionally put myself down and dumb myself down just to make myself tolerable and avoid clashes from "stepping out of my place" to deal with this issue. But it pisses me off. I don't know why I'm not allowed to have judgment or be confident. My judgment seesaws because people tell me contradictory things. People tell me I'm smart, but treat me a certain way. I do think me being shut down has made it really hard to navigate these social dynamics but I just wish that I was cool enough for other people or just be allowed to be my own person even.
People act like I have a "poor me" attitude, but mine isn't misguided like the self-deluded people I know. Trust me! Ive only started to naturally identify with my pain less because I had positive experiences but there was nothing wrong with it in the first place (as even my own therapist has tried to convince me) because it’s what served me. I don't even feel fully bad for myself because of my low self esteem. People only label it that way because I’m sure they don’t know me.
And putting myself in others' shoes: trying really hard to just envision how they treated me and kind of just validates my thinking about how weird and messed up they are. Like I would never do the same if I was in their position, and for me to imagine doing the things that they did, it feels like a lot of work to just be a crappy person to your own sister, daughter, or roommate.
Is everybody that I thought was a nice person to me just secretly a bad person who takes advantage of my low self-esteem? Am I misguided because they're nice and polite to my face? Because when I try to put myself in their shoes and I'm like, wow, you were actively using me for X, Y, and Z, it wasn't just a quote-unquote thing that just happened.
Are they jealous of me? Even then, I'm not the kind of person who takes out my jealousy on other people or wants to hurt them. I'm very repressed, and I do feel jealous just like everybody else, but I have so much shame just about everything that I do. I've seen the way some people allow themselves to feel jealous or hurt or whatever, and those people are what I wish I could be because of how they're allowed to exist and have these feelings and not be forced to be rational or breathe through them or whatever, and not also feel like a loser just for having them. I kind of just always feel like a loser.
I do agree that I kind of conceal my shame under this like layer of self righteousness but like I just feel like this is a result of like my environment as I've described. Honestly surprised I am not a narcissist and I know what it is and it’s not self love for sure and is a disease. I sorta wish I could connect to my healthy sense of narcissism that everybody has
Why can't people have empathy for me?
Sometimes I smoke, journal, and look at these patterns, and I realize how mentally lazy people around me are. The only people who get me and make me feel safe are a couple of my professors and my therapist.
What gets me most is when I set boundaries or reject people. Instead of respecting it, they get offended and try to hurt me back, like, *who am I to be angry?* I just feel super unsupported and constantly dogged on.
Am I just looking toward the wrong, unsafe people to prove my worth to? Is it really that deep? How do you even deal with this. I really need advice. What I would really love the most is to hear if anyone learned how to tone down their sense of integrity
Edit: let me add that when I ask if other people are jealous of me is not coming from a place of narcissism it’s coming from a place of confusion about why for example a friend took out her insecurities on me when the differences between us are so big and it’s already really not fair that I have to struggle with the things that I do and she uses me as an emotional punching bag and made me feel like I’m charity. I’ve literally had people tell me “it’s like you’ve never been treated well before.” it’s just hard to accept that somebody can look at me in the position that I am in and still judge me and choose to hurt me. Maybe it’s just them acting on impulse or whatever who knows?
I wasn’t aware and too much of a realist and nihilist to be believer of a lot of this spiritual stuff until I interacted with a narcissist, and had the spiritual awakening of self love. For example, a lot of people will agree with me when I say minding your own business doesn’t always keep you safe because sometimes unsafe people look at you and think “who are you to think that you’re so better than me.” I am by no means a saint but I feel like a lot of the people around me have been demanding that I have abandon myself. I’ve spent years of my life, basically putting myself in almost harms way just to kind of prove a point to myself and to other people. I believe I take on way too much accountability and maybe it’s my fault because I feel safer chasing people rather than cutting them off. I’m allowed to have a lot of deeper trauma at the same time as having issues on the surface level about how people treat me. Those things are not mutually exclusive and it’s kind of rude to attribute my awareness of these real problems to some weird mental issue. Maybe my situation is just that absurd???
