Before the summer of 2005, I made ‘everything’ about me – that’s anything that went wrong that I could find even the most minuscule of reasons to take the credit for. Something great happening? Even if I acknowledged that I had a part in it, I’d be waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Absorbing the blame for stuff and wondering what the hell was wrong with me fuelled 28 years of believing that I’m not good enough. While being a Florence wasn’t my M.O, at the heart of most of my relationships was a need for the other person and ‘things’ to change, or even changing myself. I must have thought I had capabilities that veered between being a Transformer, Inspector Gadget, and a Messiah with healing ways.
I’m clearly not alone because millions of people seem to claim the credit for other people’s behaviour with the ease of breathing.
If you have low or even zilch self-esteem, despite not loving and liking yourself enough, you have ‘inverted’ ego issues. Just like getting an ego stroke, collecting attention, serving your own agenda at the expense of others, and at the extreme end of things, being a narcissist are ego issues, so is low self-esteem.
If you spend your life being a blame absorber, feeling ashamed over crappy things that other people have done, wondering “Why me? Why wasn’t I good enough for a jackass or even an abuser? What was wrong with me that I was turned down in 1983?” and other such things that basically say “I know there is something wrong with me why all of this stuff is happening”, you’re on the flipside of the ego issue – you make everything about you to persist in an identity that says “I’m not good enough.”
‘Everything’ is made into a confirmation of the fact that you’re not a worthwhile valuable person.
‘Everything’ points in the direction that you weren’t and aren’t being and doing enough.
You see a dark side in ‘everything’ – you just can’t believe it hasn’t got something to do with something being wrong with you.
You take full responsibility for the failure of the relationship while also taking full responsibility for trying to make the relationship a success.
You take responsibility for other people’s actions while blowing smoke up their arses on a pedestal.
It doesn’t matter who and what a person does; because you’re in the picture, you wonder what you could have said, did, and been for it all to be different.
When it’s an exes birthday or a major event happens, you ruminate about getting in touch with them because you’re worried about how you look and what they will think of you if you do or don’t.
You worry about being the Good Girl/Guy so much that you do stuff that completely erodes your own boundaries and become a doormat.
But do you know what focusing on others, absorbing all of their actions and making everything about you does? It completely avoids accountability and responsibility. By you taking responsibility for their actions, you unwittingly imply that others act because of others, hence anything that you’re being and doing that detracts from you in the process, isn’t because of you but because of them and the situation.
Not everything is about you.
While you may not like or love yourself, you’re letting your own ego not only rule and blind you, but completely obscure your interactions and the other person.
Do you know what’s about you? YOU. Your actions, or lacktherof.
Do you know what’s about them? THEM. Their actions or lackthereof.
You can go up, down, and round about it but their actions have never been about you. Their actions are about them. You can only enable existing behaviour and character by offering yourself up as a doormat and staying instead of walking.
When you have inverted ego issues, you persist not only in trying to be the exception to the rule but also in pursuing love against the odds. For you, love has to come from an unlikely source for it to feel like it’s love and that you’re worthy.
That’s like saying: Only someone that’s had to change from what I recognise as inappropriate or downright dangerous is capable of loving someone like me.
It’s like you’ve gone to the Pity Shelter and said “You in all your broken down dysfunctional glory that I recognise as being someone lacking in character, are gonna love me. No person that likes and loves themselves is gonna want someone like you. You could try but it wouldn’t last. Now while we’re not the same, I’m a decent person that doesn’t like and love myself a lot – we could strike a deal and if you change, and love and validate me, which will help me realise my potential, I’ll make you into a good person.”
That’s why I don’t believe in trying to force people to change and knowingly taking up with people that have code amber and red behaviours and feeling like it’s your right to impose your values because ‘no person should want to be this way’.
It’s not about you. The only person that has to be and do anything because of you is you. In fact the only person that is being and doing anything because of you is you.
Anything that anyone else is doing is because of their own personal agenda. Unless you have a mutually fulfilling copiloted relationship, which in itself means including stuff like commitment and responsibility, until then, you’re both doing your own thing for your own agenda. Even in that relationship, by having shared values, you put two personal agendas together that share common ties, commitment and direction and co-pilot the relationship. You’re still independent, valuable entities.
It may surprise some of you to know that everybody’s boundaries get crossed – great self-esteem, low self-esteem, we all experience it, it’s just that how you feel about you governs how you’ll deal with it.
It doesn’t matter what you say or do, if someone is unavailable, they and only they can change it. If they hang around dipping in and out of your life, getting an ego stroke, shag etc, after they’ve said that they couldn’t give you what you want, they’re lack of commitment isn’t down to you. What is down to you is the fact that they can still do it with you.
It’s not about you. To continue to make it about you is like having an incredibly strange codependent relationship with the universe while having delusions of blame-absorbing-grandeur. Your personal results from your actions are the mirror that you need to hold up to yourself.
If you’ve ever blown a gasket and told someone all about themselves and how their actions impact on you and been greeted with a blank face, it’s because they’re likely thinking:
“Er HELLO! I’m being who I am because I’m about ME. I didn’t do this stuff because I think you’re not good enough. I did this because I can, it’s who I am and I would’ve done it ANYWAY”.
I remember being told that my parents aren’t infallible and not everything they were and did was about me – they had their own problems going on. My kinesiologist was looking at me like I was on crack for carrying that burden and suddenly I saw it through someone else’s eyes. I walked out of that room thinking “Jaysus Natalie! Get over yourself! Not everything is about you!” and I looked at my whole life differently from that moment onwards.
Yours could be too if you put the overactive ego on the backburner and get some balance. Own your stuff – leave everyone else to own theirs.
Your thoughts?
Check out my ebooks the No Contact Rule and Mr Unavailable & The Fallback Girl and more in my bookshop.
About the Author:
Natalie Lue is the founder and writer of Baggage Reclaim and author of the books Mr Unavailable and the Fallback Girl, The Dreamer and the Fantasy Relationship and more. Learn more about her here and you can also follow her on Facebook and Twitter - @baggagereclaim .
Natalie (NML) – who has written 1083 posts on Baggage Reclaim by Natalie Lue.
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One of my secret worries used to be: What if I meet a man who says he only wants a GF/wife who is on good terms with her family?
What if he breaks up with me and marries another woman with nice parents because I’m NC with my horrible, abusive parents and grandparents? Wouldn’t this be another “punishment” for my childhood? Wouldn’t this confirm my belief that I’m doomed?
Crap. I know my family is bad and I’m not. If a guy believes otherwise (or all he cares about is having a “perfect” looking family including his parents in law), this would be about him and not about me. Flush.
elly
I don’t think most men make those judgements. Bless em for that.
Elly! I hear you with those “secret worries”! Can you believe we spend time worrying about what some person who isn’t even there will someday think? I caught myself just yesterday imagining being in a new relationship and immediately started feeling bad about my lifestyle and my bum!
There wasn’t anyone within 200m of me and I was worrying about what some imaginary man thought!
I’ve done this so often it’s a very deep habit. (Is this one of those “bad love habits”? I dunno but it can’t be healthy.) I think it began as a kind of “prepare-for-the-worst” mentality, a kind of visualizing how I’ll handle a situation. But I have totally gotten into a habit of imagining the worst.
Imagining someone’s reaction to my family is on the list. Like you, I have worried about whether I need to defend them from criticism or distance myself from them. I have only recently caught myself: I can prepare, but now I imagine the scenario and ask – what do I want to be able to say? what is my choice around this issue? And if I must imagine, then I imagine someone saying, however you choose to engage your family is fine – we all have our family stuff, or I imagine me walking if a person doesn’t like the full picture of me.
I have begun countering this fantasizing with staying in reality and looking at real men every day and asking myself: do you want that one, Magnolia? Most of the time there is no interest at all in the real person right in front of me. If there is a frisson of attraction, then the answer must be: how should I know if I want them? I haven’t even met them!
In fact, realizing how much negativity I associate with relationships (worrying about what someone else will think about my body, my family, my issues, my choices, etc) has made me feel lately that I don’t much want a relationship!
I look at a guy and I notice the first feeling is: he probably wouldn’t like me. Shame, anger, memories: it all happens in that little flash of seeing someone I think is somehow beyond my reach.
Now I’m like: huh! If that’s the feeling the thought of a relationship (or MY thought about a relationship) gives me, I’m going to stop thinking about them for a while! Maybe forever! If I’m meant to give that much mental energy to relationships that *might* be a certain way, the thoughts can come back when they are more positive and confident!
Okay, having a small speed bump in my road. How many days do you wait before you flush, for a guy to call you back. The new guy I have had about 4 or 5 dates with went out of town and hasn’t called since he’s been back….only a few days but we were talking every couple of days before he left. Am I starting to make this about myself? Maybe it has nothing to do with me, but I get told that if a guy is into you, he will call and not wait to long. My gut is getting that feeling again and I don’t like it. We have called back and forth equally but the ball is in his court this time and I won’t push myself on him. I find myself analyzing our last conversation and wondering if I missed something , said something or just did something to put him off. Ahhhh…..making this about me. How long do you wait before you flush a guy who was seemingly very nice and polite. He doesn’t have a cell phone,so he doesn’t have a phone in his pocket all day. I haven’t slept with him yet, or even close. I catch myself wondering what I may have done wrong and jumping to conclusions. I am trying to reality check myself. I’m not freaking out or anything but am spending a little too much brain power on this.
Hi jennynic,
Sounds like the question is more, what do YOU, jennynic, do in a situation like this? We all handle ourselves differently and are comfortable or uncomfortable with various behaviours. What’s the way that takes you most fully into consideration?
Hi Mag, I decided it was foolish of me to sit in fear and wait for him to call, so I just picked up the phone and called him. Although we made plans for Friday, I did sense a shift in him and feel my gut was correct. Funny thing though, just acting on my fear and anxiety took away the power of the negative thoughts. He was a little luke warm on the phone and it made me lose interest. I will meet up with him on Friday if he follows through and see how it goes but am ready to flush if I feel he is luke warm. I am not up for games and inconsistency this time around.
@EllyB I’ve just read your last 2 comments, I was totally impressed by your eloquence and insight. You sound so brave like you can conquer any difficulty, you may have already developed skills which enable you to recognise and avoid potential trouble. You sound ace!
I seem to learn alot then forget most of it, but had a shake up recently (through an EU, nice but complicated & difficult,) so i’m learning to work on myself in the right way.
Considering that my current job involves me working online sometimes I am a wee bit ashamed to say I did not realize there was a “character” limit to the postings, my apologies to all. If I may continue from the prior post…
I was an English major, so “words” are very important to me, but again, as Natalie pointed out, “If the words and actions do no match up, then the words themselves mean nothing” and this is so very true! But yes, after my “Mr Big” did the dishes, he asked me to be sure and bring the sunscreen, since he apparently thought after breaking up with me we would still continue our “plans” for the day…and it was this request for the (now) damned sunscreen that rankled me later…he KNEW what he was going to say and he KNEW it would hurt me and yet, he was still thinking of himself! ARGH! How “emotionally cold” is that?!
The entire month of July was an emotional and mental fog for me (I don’t even feel as if I have had a “summer” at all). But once I managed to dislodge my heart from my throat, I did three things: I blocked his email address, I changed my cell phone number, and perhaps the most difficult, I stood in line, trembling at the post office so I could mail back his “housewarming” gifts to me. It was one of the most wrenching things I ever had to do, but in doing so, I felt a great weight had been lifted.
He was so very good at making me feel the center of his universe and it is very difficult to have no contact at all, even now. I still struggle with feelings of inadequacy, “Was I not good enough, pretty enough, smart enough” even though I know in my heart this is not true. I sometimes still have flash backs and feel as if I am experiencing post traumatic stress.
I wanted to say this to all the wonderful women who have posted here: we gave our hearts, in good faith and honesty, we trusted and in return we have been hurt terribly and treated as no one ever deserves to be treated. But we did this out of a belief and a hope in love and we must remember that not all men are like this. I don’t want to become bitter and cynical and that in itself is a struggle too, but I will NOT let that happen to me.
And neither should any of us. The heart is very fragile, yes, but it is also a muscle. It is resilient. And so are we. I would like to give each and every one of you the biggest hug!
Hi Lessie,
Welcome and thanks for telling your story. Sounds like you handled the break up really well, distancing yourself and cutting contact.
When my exAC and I broke up, he called the next day wanting to go for a walk as if nothing had happened! It was that move – like your exMMs sunscreen move – that made me realize just how casually, how negligently he had considered me during our relationship. It smarts.
But glad you’re here. Sounds as though you’re doing really well.
Hello to Michelle L,
Thank you so much for your words here to me.
One of the many “a ha” moments I have had myself is in realizing how I had allowed myself to EVER be placed in a situation where I was “waiting” for someone to “choose” between me and another person! How could I have done this? WHY did I do this? But, alas, I did, and one of the many things I struggle with still is being able to understand and forgive myself for my own part in this horrid drama that has so greatly impacted me.
And…I would like to be more “evolved” but I can’t help it: I want him to be miserable and unhappy. I can’t stand the thought that he had his “fun” with me and then returned to his life, as if nothing had ever happened and I was merely a blip on his radar screen. Yes, it is quite sickening to me.
After the break up, I felt as though I had been discarded, like trash. That I had outlived my usefulness to him, and no longer served a purpose. One of the absolute worst things he said to me, the following day, after our physical intimacy was “I felt uncomfortable because I couldn’t say ‘I love you’ and I should have been able to say that. There are so many things that are right about you, and I should feel that way, but I just don’t”…
And THIS comment was after months and months of him proclaiming his great and grand love for me, repeatedly, so much so that I myself began to feel a bit smothered by his intense attentions. As Natalie wrote prior, so many of us internalize all these nasty comments and turn it all against ourselves, when in fact, the real truth is that it was not about us at all.
And, it probably never was. This is perhaps my greatest epiphany yet. I wish you the very best, I am glad to be sharing these “a ha” moments with you and the other ladies here, take good care
Hi Magnolia,
Thank you so much
I do feel as if I am getting stronger but honestly, each and every day is a brutal emotional struggle for me. I try and stay busy, which helps, and I have talked and talked and talked about this with two of my dear friends which has helped a lot to and yet…just when I am starting to feel as though I will recover, I have a days when I am in tears, and dissolve into a massive puddle of insecurities, doubt, and intense self loathing.
In sending back his “housewarming” gifts to me, I wanted him to feel repudiated in the same way that he had made me feel repudiated: ie., “You do not matter”…I thought long and hard about doing this but then I realized, “Why would I want any reminders of him in my environment”…and that’s another thing as well: I feel as if he almost “invaded” my physical space, my new home, which, at one time he had said, “I can’t wait to see you resplendent in your new home darling”…
And now, yuck, all I can think is, “No, you saw me CRYING in my new home and YOU were the cause of that”…I think it was very important to him that he be seen as “the good guy”…gifts, champagne, flowers, etc…and it is my hope by returning his gifts that he realize this is not true.
I hope you are doing better too, there is strength in numbers they say
Take care!
Hi Lessie,
Don’t know if you’ve already gone through with the returning but do take care to ask yourself if it’s just another way of sending a message. You wrote: “it is my hope by returning his gifts that he realizes this is not true,” which suggests you do still have something you wish to communicate to him, ie. that he is a dinkus, which he is. Thing is, you will likely only communicate this: “You are still on my mind” and “the thought of you still has an effect on me; I am a mess over you.”
Better if you want those things out of your sight to sell them on eBay! Make a profit. Or if you just want them gone, give them to the Goodwill or Salvation Army.
Hello Magnolia,
Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts with me about this.
Yes, I did return his “housewarming gifts” to me…all the way to Bermuda where he is currently living and working. It cost me quite a bit of money to do so, but, at the time (and still now, even, I think) it was worth it to me because, the way I was feeling yes, I did want to hurt him, because he had hurt me.
It’s juvenile, I know, but when you’re in that moment, it is difficult to think rationally and logically, as you can only really do when you have both time and perspective to put it all straight.
None of this is easy, at all, especially admitting to myself that I allowed all of this to happen, and that I was equally complicit.
Sigh. Each day is a struggle. I hope you are doing well in your own situation. It’s so nice to know that others care.
When it’s an exes birthday or a major event happens, you ruminate about getting in touch with them because you’re worried about how you look and what they will think of you if you do or don’t.
I have caught myself out making his b’day all about me and stressing over what he is going to be thinking when I don’t get in touch.
How ridiculous I am being his b’day is about him and he has showed me over four years he doesn’t want me involved in his b’day and before those 4 years well he got on with his day without me.
I also shouldn’t care about what he is thinking about me anyway.
Thank you for what you wrote I will be reading it and repeating it constantly his b’day is not about me until the day has passed. I wrote a completely different post beofore re reading the post again and seeing the sense in it for this situation.
I was so hurt my guy was a always going hot and cold with me until I finally learned the truth from his old friends and family. The man I fell for devoted himself to his ex-wives. Truly he did, at one time he protested the court system making national news in the 80s trying to get visitation by walking 300 miles the week of fathers day to see his then 2 year old daughter. His second wife left him for the bottle. He can’t commit not because he is an “ass clown” but because he had been crushed. Not in the same way as we allow ourselves too but crushed just the same. I think I had a part in my getting hurt because I had expectations and was not willing to accept that he was so broken in this area. I have a responsibility to chill next time and take is extremely slow and not have sex with any man unless I really know him. I love this man with all my heart and always will. But I moved on because I deserve a full and loving relationship regardless of his past baggage. I do respect him and love him, and I am healed of any ill feelings towards him, because I understand now. The below paragraph summed it up for me and was written by a man.
The majority of divorces in the U.S are usually one-sided and it is the WOMAN who usually wants the divorce. Don’t think any independent guy wants to risk losing his kids, house, cars, love, emotions to such a petty human emotion we call love. (Although 90% of the time it is either lust, falling in love with the face you’re not alone or seeking male/female attention.
I love this blog, and I’ve been a weekly reader now for some months, though I haven’t posted. Often, I have a feeling of connection and natalie’s words really get to me, but sometimes an article just doesn’t click, I don’t understand it. I read this article when she first posted it, but just today, just this morning I was talking about some weekly events with my counselor, and she said “you know, you say things are your fault a lot
That must be a heavy burden to carry around, thinking its your job to make sure everyone is ok, and if anything is wrong its your fault…” and then it clicked. #1, it isn’t all my fault, and #2, why am I putting this burden on myself? I’m hoping this “release” of weight feeling will stick with me, and I can start to set aside taking responsibility for others’ actions, and raise my self esteem. I remembered this article and reread it, this is exactly what i’m working on. Thanks for the great words, natalie!