Анна Шиман
Draft translation. This text was translated automatically and has not been proofread yet — if something reads oddly, it does.
On responsibility.
Or rather, on the lack of it.
“Good people” (those who are not allowed to be bad) often fall victim to their own “goodness”.
They cannot say “no”, do not take the time they need to make decisions, agree at once with everyone and to everything, and then drag around an enormous burden of obligations. Which sooner or later they will have to drop or fulfil at any cost.
“Good people” do not respect or love themselves. Let alone the people around them.
“Good people” are mostly full of all kinds of toxic and destructive feelings: revenge, hatred, pain, resentment, envy and so on.
Yet these feelings are so heavy that they have to be cut off from oneself in every possible way, repressed and deposited in the people around.
In one’s mother or father, for example. Who are idealised to such a degree that they begin to take on a “divine” (archetypal) nature. Often, already as an adult, a person goes on being guided in life by their childhood, infantile strategies. And then the people around turn into objects assigned the task of performing various functions.
“Good people” very often use others while living in the illusion that this is love or a normal relationship. And the most interesting part is that they are often afraid of being used. They see themselves the same way, too. As “functions” that must be useful in order to earn approval, love, acceptance or care. Here is the paradox: the fear of being used on the one hand, and the impossibility of not being used on the other. Impossible, because such people live by the principle that “love must be earned”, since deep down they believe they are not worthy of receiving it from others unconditionally.
The whole world takes on black-and-white colours, and it is through these extremes that the “good person” judges their reality.
They are good, more often than not, not because they chose to be, and not because you can be sincere and honest with them and openly state your needs.
No. None of that is allowed with a “good” person.
Because their main dream, their meaning in life, is NEVER to be like the “awful dad” (despot, tyrant, weakling and so on) or like the “bad mum” (stepmother, egoist, weakling, faultfinder, rival and so on).
And so such a “good person” is doomed.
And whoever is next to them is doomed too.
Doomed to serve their self-esteem (because it is often very low), to serve their resentment, to endlessly contain their anger, rage, envy and hatred.
Doomed to the role of the one who loves unconditionally (and therefore of someone unreal, who cannot be themselves in this relationship). Doomed, because the moment you show yourself even a little, state your needs, say no or behave off script, you will at once find yourself buried alive under the second pole. On the “good person’s” “black” list.
Under the pole of our “good person’s” “righteous anger”. And their resentment too, and the passive aggression that forces you to increase the distance, sometimes to the point of a break-up.
After all, they believed so strongly that you would manage to keep up their illusion of grandiosity and goodness.
Deep down, “good people” almost always believe they are nothing of the kind, unworthy. They are deeply ashamed of it, and next to them you risk very soon turning into a dump for toxic waste (unless you are a professional psychologist), serving their neuroses and adapting to their habits and passive-aggressive forms of self-expression.
With their high tension, toxic people will regulate your relationship, using you as a kind of “crutch”. And secretly, voluptuously, they dream of taking possession of you and finally asserting themselves. Of taking revenge and doing to you everything they do to themselves in their inner world. Or what their parents did to them in childhood. Of depriving you of strength, success and pleasure and becoming your rightful master.
Just as someone once, in exactly the same way, deprived them of the right to life, freedom and the expression of their own will.
Often “good people” are themselves slaves to their inner tyrants, critics and despots.
The hardest thing in psychological work with “good people” is their tendency to see the world through the lens of domination and submission. They always have to be “on top”, because a strong person nearby threatens to throw them down onto the second pole, which is, of course, very unpleasant. And if there really is a strong person nearby, the “good person” offers themselves as a function, sometimes dissolving completely and giving away all their strength. Falling into the state of a helpless “victim”.
Which certainly brings such a person its own benefits.
We talk about this in detail on the “Practical Psychology” foundation course.
“Good people” would do well to learn to grow up psychologically, to take responsibility, to learn to negotiate.
However, when going deeper, passing through the layers of the negative pole, there is always a risk that the “good person” will not bear the tension and will choose to go on serving their early traumas. Which means they will simply leave. A relationship, a contact, a partnership, promising projects. A life that might threaten them with prosperity and success.
“Good people” need love so much that they fear any hint of it. After all, it could lead to the loss of their current meaning in life.
Responsibility is a concept we explored in detail in the “My Life, My Rules” programme.
Responsibility is the very first thing needed for the process of growing up and leaving survival strategies behind.
Responsibility is the readiness to overcome difficulties and to look for ways to reach the goal you have set on the path you have chosen.
Responsibility to yourself, for yourself, for your life — outer and inner.
As a rule, responsibility for themselves is out of reach for “good people”, who see the world through a black-and-white screen of extremes.
And the most important thing here is to learn to turn yourself and your efforts first of all towards your own life, your own feelings, choices and actions.
And what does responsibility mean to you?
I invite you to our events and programmes, where we can explore the inner world of a human being together.
Anna Oleksandrivna Shyman, teacher at the centre.
