6 WAYS TO MASSAGE YOUR EGO

A dear friend who is a psychologist once told me that there are 6 dysfunctional ways that humans beings use to massage their egos, and these ways come in pairs.

The fact that they are paired does not mean that if a person uses one of these ways, they necessarily use its pair, but they may.

Some people don’t use all of the 6, but some use all or most.  We all tend to have one or two favorites though.

Here they are.  Which ones ring true to you?

1. Be right / 2. Make others wrong

3. Self-justify / 4. Invalidate others

5. Dominate others/  6.  Avoid Domination.

Number 1 is pretty self-explanatory, and in my experience virtually all of us use this one.  In fact I would say we are addicted to being right.  It is so much a part of our lives we don’t even realize it most of the time.  To us it is like water is to fish.  We swim around in it and don’t even know we are in it.  But this need is destructive of relationships.  It causes fights, feuds, and even wars.   So the price we pay for our need to massage our egos by being right is pretty high.

Number 2 comes with an even higher price in relationships.  I suspect at one time or another you have been around someone who needs to prove to you that you are wrong.  Over and over again.  How much time do you spend with that person?  How much fun is it?

Number 3 is the favorite of people who crave approval.  “Don’t you see why I did what I did?  Don’t you see it was for the best?”  Like that.  I think that as a species we are wired to seek approval at some level. Its what socializes us and allows to live in a society.  We are, to some extent, pack animals, like dogs or wolves.  But some of us take approval needs to an extreme, and for us, self-justification is very important.  But the prices for THIS dysfunctional behavior are high too.  What do you suppose they are?

Number 4, like number 2, is even harder to be around when others do it to us.  Invalidating others is like saying, “Oh don’t worry.  It’s OK.  You will be fine,” when someone tells us about something that bothers them.   Men tend to do this to women a lot.  Women don’t like it.  We ALL want to be heard and understood.  Even if you don’t agree with me, can you at least listen, and understand?  I think we all want that.  People who invalidate us give us the impression we are not being heard.

Number 5, dominating others, is also self-explanatory.  And it is VERY disruptive of healthy adult relationships.  The prices we pay for using THIS method to make us feel good about ourselves are enormous.

Number 6 is a little tricky.  Very few people really want to be dominated, so avoiding it would seem normal.  I am talking about something beyond normal.  I am talking about the person who will say no, just because you ask them, even if they want to say yes.  Even if yes is in their best interest.  An example.  I once coached a young woman in an awareness training who had been trying to turn her life around, in terms of her health, and she had made great strides.  She had given up a lot of dangerous and unhealthy behaviors.  The only one left was smoking.  She wanted to stop, but just couldn’t bring herself to take the necessary steps.  As I worked with her it became apparent that her parents had been pressuring her to stop.  She wanted to stop, but more than that, she wanted to defy her parents.  So simply because someone else wanted her to do something, she refused.  Even though SHE wanted the same thing.  THIS is avoiding domination.  Or as a friend of mine says, “I’ll show you, I’ll screw me.”

So, all of these methods of ego inflation are either self-destructive, or destructive of relationships, or destructive of both.

I have realized that my favorites have changed over the years.  Historically, I was big into numbers 1 and 3.  More recently, numbers 1 and 6 have been more pronounced.

NONE of them are worth the prices I pay for engaging in these behaviors.

Which ones do you use?  What prices are you paying?  How much longer are you going to continue? 

What would happen if you gave all of them up, and just decided to declare that you were just fine, and didn’t need to be above anyone else to prove it?