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On your list of periodic detox must go your feeling of entitlement and your comparison with others.
ENTITLEMENT
After years of working with clients from all walks of life, whether formally diagnosed with depression and personality disorders or couples on the verge of divorce, one constant pattern emerged. Most of their pain ‘caused by others’ was in fact self-inflicted. They were carrying from one therapist to another, from a failed counselling attempt to the next a chronic disappointment with the way others treated them. A deep moral injury caused by others’ acts of commission or omission that threatened the core of their identity and self-appraisal which led them to second guess themselves, to feel unloved, unworthy, and rejected.
When looking closely at the context, there was no intentionality behind the acts or omissions of the others causing my clients that deep feeling of shame, betrayal, and rejection. When working with the other to get their side of the story, I discovered that they too were disappointed with the way their partner, parent, sibling, colleague treated them, albeit not to the same degree to make them depressed. Those who have been in counselling and therapy before were the hardest cases to untangle because it became difficult to distinguish between their beliefs and views about the situation and those of their previous therapists who sided with their client. Since from that dynamic one party feels more injured than the other, they are the one seeking therapy, the other rarely being invited to tell their piece, or if invited, they rarely accept to participate in the therapeutic process because ‘whatever is going on has either nothing to do with them or, even if dissatisfied with the situation, is not causing them the same distress to warrant therapy.’ Luckily for my clients, I never accept to work with one party alone. At least not when the other could be persuaded to participate and when that is possible. Some people come with that moral injury after many years of therapy, after they’ve broken up with their partners or family members, or after the other has died or moved on. So is not always possible to bring both parties to the table, but when it is, I always involve all family members responsible for that dynamic.
Listening to both parties, together and separately, a common theme emerged. They deeply cared for the other, they wanted to make their relationship work, they even tried to accommodate the other’s requests and expectations by changing their behaviour as much as they could. Up to a point. It was that point that held the key to them living happily together or happily apart.
That point was the other’s threshold line beyond which no compromise was possible without them losing their identity.
In a marriage where the wife’s moral injury came from her husband’s neglect of his spousal and parental responsibilities in profit to his work and business, the husband made the compromise of sacrificing a proportion of that time in profit to his wife and kids. He rearranged his work commitments to the degree that was possible around his family life. He carved three evenings per week when he came home early, cooked dinner, and helped his wife put their three kids to bed. He did the homework with the older two and read bedtime stories to the younger. He made a weekly ritual of buying flowers to his wife to which he attached acknowledging messages. The wife, while happy with the changes, was not convinced. “He can’t get off the hook so easily with some flowers and a few dinners. I need to see consistency.” While her main complaint was that her husband didn’t spend quality time with her and the kids and doesn’t help her around the house, although they had a full-time nanny and a domestic, once he complied with her requirements, she found another reason to hold on to her dissatisfaction: It was too easy. He didn’t seem to suffer the same burden she felt when she did all these things. The homework was a breeze, putting the kids to bed was not the same struggle she experienced, his dinners were better, and him buying her flowers instead of flattering her made her feel awkward, guilty. He was too good to be true. She held her happiness and satisfaction with her husband’s improvements hostage to the proof of time. Will they last? Will he be consistent in his change, or will he relapse? On his side, the husband was and excellent executor, an achiever. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll get it done.” He ran a multimillion group of companies, looked after his employees like after family – more than after his family in his wife’s view, was an excellent father and friend, a considerate son who looked after his parents, buying them a house and paying for their expenses… He looked on top like Adonis, exercising and looking after his body religiously, enjoying outdoors sports and travel, a passion he shared with his wife since they’ve met at university. Intimately, he desired his wife more than she was interested and was, as she admitted, a selfless, attentive lover. He seemed to do everything right, yet, as he said, none of his spontaneous affective gestures were reciprocated, and none of his efforts were appreciated. Nothing he did mattered. In fact, as time went by, he realised that it was this indifference from his wife that pushed him to find refuge in work. I explained that once we become mothers we change, and our affections and attention are biologically programmed towards our children more than towards our partner. He needed to shoulder half of her weight at mental and emotional level, not only in time and chores, and give her periodic time alone for her to have the opportunity to feel like a woman again and not only like a mother. He was on board. He offered to take over the weekends with the kids, to take them to their extracurricular activities to give his wife her ‘me time.’ She seemed to love the idea, only to discover that she got bored and didn’t want to be away from him or the kids. She wanted some quality time alone, but with them around the house. So he woke up earlier during the weekends, made breakfast for the kids, kept them quiet to let mummy have a sleep in, and served her coffee and breakfast in bed. And yet, while on the surface she was happy and kept calling herself “lucky” to have an idyllic life, a beautiful house, a loving husband, beautiful, healthy kids, financial wealth, a full-time nanny and cleaner taking away the heavy lifting, parents and a sister who loved and supported her, and a medical degree, her unhappiness and torments were growing.
The more attentive her husband was, the more he complied with her requests for change, the more dissatisfied she grew. It turned out that time was not the issue. Two months passed since he implemented his changes, he was in the process of recruiting a PA to free him even more time to spend with his family, and yet, she wanted more. Or rather, she wanted something different. Better still, she wanted him different. After a lot of back and forth, I asked her to play a game with me. If I were the golden fish able to grant her deepest wish, what would that be? How would she have her husband be for her to feel happy and satisfied? Provided she loved him and still wanted to be married to him. And there, the magic happened. She realised that it was never a question of her not loving him or him not loving her. She never even contemplated the possibility that he may one day leave her if she carried on ignoring his affections and efforts. In her mind he was hers forever, irrespective of how she behaved. They made a vow, just like her parents, and even if they were unhappy most of the time, marriage was for life. She was re-enacting her mother’s behaviour despite being the first to criticise it. She was closer to her father and could not understand how he put up with her mother’s abuse and neglect. As she was talking about them, she stopped mid-sentence: “God! I’m becoming my mother, don’t I?” As we carried on with the wish granting game, she realised that she wanted her husband to be with her most of the time but without being intimate or even affectionate with her, doing nothing other than being by her side while she read a book, watched a film, a reality show or documentary… ‘And then? What next?’ asked the golden fish. As she described her ideal world, I pointed out that nowhere in that film her husband’s wishes, needs, fears, dreams, and aspirations had any part to play. For her to be happy, she needed him to anticipate and fulfil her wishes without her having to ask, whether that made him happy or not, whether they were in his nature, and especially whether she reciprocated or not. “Oh my God! That’s awful! I’m awful! That’s so selfish! But if I’m totally honest, this is what I expected. Since I was the one complaining the most and the one taking antidepressants because of this situation, I assumed that I was the grieved party in our marriage and him the cause.” I asked her to swap roles and play her husband’s role. She was shocked. Shocked that she never realised how entitled she’s been to everything she received in life. “I guess this is where I’m so lucky comes from,” she said flabbergasted. ‘What if we play this game in real life? What if we do the same wish granting with him and find what his wishes are, and you then fulfil them one by one, 24/7?’ She burst into a half-amused, half-concerned laughter. “No way! I know very well what he wants and is not what I will ever be able or happy to satisfy.” She referred to his sexual needs and stamina. ‘But can you at least see his frustration?’ “Oh, yes, but he can’t expect me to be on the same level. Don’t get me wrong, I love sex and we are good together, but once a week is more than enough.” ‘For you, maybe. Clearly not for him. Can you see how the needs, wants and desires of one may play a role in the other’s life?’ We carried on swapping places in all areas of her life. By the end of it, she finally realised that while he had his lacks and quirks, he never was the source of her unhappiness. She was. More specifically, her feeling of entitlement of him being the version of man she had in her mind without realising: her father. Submissive, happy to oblige and never expect anything in return. In her mother’s model of a happy marriage, the woman was the centre of the universe. The kids and husband had a duty to behave in a way that made her happy. At least in a way that didn’t make her unhappy. What those behaviours were and what would make her unhappy were all unknowns open to reappraisal. And to ensure that they didn’t get too complacent, she adopted a never satisfied attitude which became second nature, pushing her daughters away and giving her husband a bowel cancer that in the end killed him. Marriage, (all relationships, really), was for her a unilateral life contract made of rights for the wife and obligations for the husband, with clear clauses regarding the rights and ever-growing undisclosed clauses when it came to the obligations. That’s why she never questioned her behaviour. She did her part: she married her husband and gave birth to their kids. From then on was an uphill struggle for the husband to satisfy his wife and for the kids to make mummy happy. But since her husband was not like her father, and instead of withering away, he turned that pent-up energy into a profitable business and good time away with friends, ‘he was letting her down’. He was re-writing the script. He was changing the rules, and that was the source of her unhappiness. She could not have it her way without him having it his way too. She could not have her cake and eat it.
Growing up in this one-sided relationship model, especially if that comes from the mother, causes all the personality disorders and their dysfunctional attachment styles. A mother expecting her children and husband to take her role of nurturer, violates the natural order of caretaker-caretaken, creating a multigenerational chain of disorganised attachment styles. In so doing she acts like the infant, forcing her children and husband to take the roles of parents. Since the infant doesn’t have to do anything to be loved and cared for, she expects that everyone around her is there to satisfy her needs and wants. Those are in fact the needs and wants of the infant that she was, at her turn neglected by her mother, re-enacting the situation so that her infant self finally gets taken care of. Her children will become a surrogate parent, growing up with their nurturing needs unmet, which they will try to meet later in life through the same one-sided relationship model as their mother. The other person in that relationship will see a selfish, self-centred narcissist, which on the face of it they are. An informed onlooker, however, will see an emotional starved infant getting their energetic food of love and attention the only way they’ve learned from their mother. This affective deficiency in infancy and childhood is very hard to detect, especially if the mother was not overtly abusive or neglectful and compensated in material ways, such as offering a good education, private schools, private tuition, travel abroad, expensive clothes, holidays, and so on. It so was the case of my client. Although both herself and her sister left home as soon as they could, she felt guilty for even questioning her childhood because her mother was after all a good mother who dressed them well, paid for her travel abroad and good education, and was thanks to her exigence and expectations that she got her medical degree from Cambridge. On top she was a very good grandmother. Just the idea of questioning her mother’s parenting style made her very uncomfortable. And while blaming the parents for their child’s unhappiness is not my approach, I had to help her see her mother’s patterns if she was to heal hers.
Her marriage and relationships could only work if she filled her own cup. Once she performed her role of caretaker and nurturer, of giver rather than taker. Once she realised that all other relationships are bilateral contracts made of equal rights and obligations. Whatever we hold the other responsible for, we must first offer. It was up to her to break the pattern and be for her family what her mother never was for her. Her husband could never satisfy her no matter how hard he tried because she was adopting the same hard to please attitude of her mother to secure an endless supply of care and attention without having to do anything to get it other than being miserable and dissatisfied. In a twisted way, her happiness and “luck” relied on her being constantly unhappy and ungrateful, on being very demanding and very assertive in her demands. Above all, on feeling entitled to have them met by the other, even if that came at their own cost.
Her moral injury was self-inflicted. All her entitled expectations with which her husband failed or refused to comply, felt like a mortal wound to her fragile ego which relied on a constant supply of attention from others to feel whole, loved, and cared for. In this case, the only remedy is generous love. Tending to our own wounds, understanding this pattern for what it is without laying the blame at the feet of the mother hiding behind victimhood. Becoming responsible for someone as we wished our mother were for us. Offering someone that level of love and care we wished we’d received as an infant. It is through that wholehearted unconditional offering that we meet the past unmet needs and heal our infant self, not through stupid ‘healing the inner child’ techniques. There is no inner child. All there is, is the fantom of the starved infant, a ghost, an illusion of the mother. Historically, the infant may have even been real. Forced marriage of young girls that were still a child made them mothers before they finished being a child. But in today’s modern world, and in my clients’ cases, that was not the issue.
That inherited ghost of neglected infant had to be taken care in the present, not the past. Whether the person is a man or a woman, only they could fill their affective deficit by loving and caring for others to such point that their hearts’ overflow and generosity will naturally fill that void.
Unhappiness and suffering come from ingratitude.
“Ingratitude is a burning wind that dries up the source of love, the dew of mercy, the streams of grace.” Bernard of Clairvaux
Ingratitude comes from a sense of entitlement to have it our way and to feel hurt if we don’t. Through that selfish one-sided stance, we invalidate the other’s needs, and sooner or later they’ll reciprocate. They will eventually withhold their attentions. They will eventually hold the mirror in front of us. They will eventually start feeling entitled to the same thing. Then, it becomes a tag or wars, a battle of wills until either the needy part takes care of their needs, or until they suck the other and the relationship dry, when separation becomes a survival necessity for the other.
The cure to all suffering is generous love. Loving is more important than being loved. When we love unconditionally, we automatically feel loved too, only that that love is self-generated instead of procured from others. The more loving and generous we are, the more loved we feel. Is how it is. In fact, the only true love is the love we give unconditionally, like the love of the mother for her child. That fantom pain from our childhood’s unmet needs comes as a healing reminder of what we need for a good, balanced life. By reminding us where our parents got it wrong, it informs us how to get it right.
COMPARISON
We suffer from inferiority complexes and get sucked in undignifying behaviours (gossip, sapping, bullying, ingratitude) because we are afflicted with this social disease of comparing the incomparable. We spend our short lives imitating others, trying to be like the others and have what others have. We compare our childhood with others’, our parents with theirs, our spouses with their spouses. The grass is always greener…
Since the beginning this world was built on this inferiority complex affliction and megalomanic comparison with the incomparable.
The pharaohs and kings wanted to be like the gods. The aristocrats wanted to be like the royals. The bourgeoise wanted to be like the aristocrats. The nouveaux riches – from the industrialists to our tech billionaires, social media celebrities and YouTube gurus want to be like their envied predecessors. Our entire economy and world politics stimulate your inferiority complex and capitalise on your comparison with the incomparable.
Before the advent of social media, those competing for your deference and idolatry had to go to some trouble to invade your territory and pillage your resources. Now that territory is in your pocket and the resources to be mined are your attention span and cultivated insecurities. Through their weekly YouTube opinions captivating your attention and their world podium tours from where they reign over their ‘lessers’, the new imperialists feed from your craftly mined admiration and envy like vultures from a carcase. Instead of flesh, their food is financial and energetic. The selfies have replaced the icons. YouTube and the internet have become their shrines. Today, we have made it full circle in this imitation game and arrived back where we’ve started: The internet celebrities and tech billionaires became our modern days’ pharaohs, messiahs, royalties, aristocracy, bourgeoisie, and nouveaux riches. All competing for this new El Dorado virtual territory giving them unrestricted access to your mind and personal data, to your praise and adulation, to more followers and subscribers to their ‘noble world salvation cause’ – and to your pocket to make it happen.
New religions and kingdoms dethroned the old with the arrival of a starving narcissist hungering for world domination. Communities were corrupted into tribalism, tribalism into imperialism, imperialism into industrialism, and industrialism into virtualism. Allegiances were worn through banners; now through subscriptions and Patreon donations. Warmongering – the secret weapon of all despots – was done through silver coin Judas and bloodsheds amongst brethren. Today is done through inflammatory social media posts spreading like wildfire through this virtual territory, rallying adepts and radicalising beliefs. Through the stealth takeover of this new world religion friends become enemies, colleagues become competitors, and anyone with less than 1 million followers is the new peasant of the virtual world.
So heavily manipulated, we are misled to believe in the perfection of others and to be ashamed of our lacks. Mislead to think that only we suffer and that our struggles are our own. But they are everyone’s struggles. All you are going through everyone has gone through, is going through, or will go through until each experience has been tried out. If you look in your past, all you best lessons were learnt from pain, not from pleasure. No one became enlightened from an easy life.
If you want to be free of others’ expectations and entitlement, you must free them of yours. Give what you expect to receive. Like you, others have their wounds, needs, fears, hopes, and desires. If you want them to acknowledge and respect yours, you must acknowledge and respect theirs. If we adopted this healthy attitude to life and relationships, we would get along just fine.
Comparison and entitlement to others being the way we want them to be for us to be happy can only lead to a life of resentment and disappointment. Because we work against human nature, not with it.
From now on, live by the old adagio ‘live and let live’. Stop comparing your life with that of others, your body, children, interests, partner, parents with those of others, and stop feeling entitled to them fulfilling your desires and needs at the cost of their own. Fill your own cup and from its overflow pour into other’s. But you are no longer entitled to act like a vampire, an emotional beggar, or an emotional brat.
Excerpt from the upcoming book The CWS® Way For Healing Our Modern Afflictions – The Manual For Treating Depression & Other Mental Health Conditions in 12 Weeks.
Gratiela Rosu © 2023 – Founder of The CWS Method® for human development and preventive health
