Toxic people can't stand it when others self-praise or express self-love

[Bipedal Primate]

[Together-Whenever-Wherever]

Cool video lady. Seemed very professionally done. Also you've got a very nice body, just saying. 

 

I'm recognizing more and more this narcissistic tendency inside myself. When someone important to my ego is going above and beyond what I think is possible in my own life, I become jealous and fearful that I will lose them to "the great cause" that I imagine them pursuing. Meditation helps in these moments. I take a step back and remind the fear that we are applying sweeping generalizations to in-the-moment stuff.

 

eg If a friend of mine is starting a YouTube philosophy channel, part of me hopes he fails because I don't want him to be so successful that he forgets about me. The general conclusion in this case is "People important to me abandon me when they make successful changes in their life".

 

Then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy wherein my fear and responses push the person further away, until they do in fact stop talking to me.

[Spenc]

I remember a podcast where Stef talked about people who micromanage and are workaholics and such, in reference to someone who was a procrastinator but whose parent(s) was a workaholic.  Stef made a point that workaholics and micromanagers are the worst procrastinators, because they concern themselves with minutiae instead of dealing with the more important things (e.g. spending 60 hours a week at work and very little time with their kids)

 

Anyways, in the same sense, i think this same type of theory applies to people who are concerned with the growth of others around them.  Like the father who is too busy to parent his children because he needs to sweep the floors of his shop because the employees just don't get it quite right.  This father thinks of himself as "too important" in all the other areas, so that he can distract himself from the truly difficult areas of his life where he truly is required.

 

The critical person thinks of themselves as important to the other people around him or her.  This person has his or her own aspirations and instead finds the minutiae of what other people are doing in his periphery to be so immediate and important to his attention.  When some of these people start to shine and show themselves to be capable and independent from the critical person, he becomes jealous and fearful as his charade starts to fall apart around in cognitive dissonance