Saying the word "conceited" people usually mean a person who by hook or by crook tries to look successful, makes his way up the career ladder, always looks successful in front of other people, constantly strives to take a higher position in society and any areas of life. Often, such people may have a pronounced attraction to popularity, fame, recognition. Most of all they want to be talked about, admired, envied. Is it good or bad? Is it possible to go beyond vanity?

What is vanity?

This word includes two components - "vanity" and "glory". What is vanity? It is something empty, unnecessary, useless. In general, it turns out that the literal meaning of the word is empty glory. If we translate this into a more understandable language, then we can say that vanity is the desire for undeserved momentary fame, popularity, recognition. Often, without putting any effort into this, a person longs for deification, demanding praise and admiration from those around him. Naturally, the self-esteem of such people is overestimated. Vanity can be compared to pride. Both are considered a mortal sin in religion.

It is difficult to name such a character trait as virtues, and it is not always easy for vain people in life, because respect and admiration still need to be earned with something. No one will grovel before a person who simply has high self-esteem.

How does it manifest itself?

Vain people are rare braggarts. They love to enthusiastically talk about their achievements to the audience, to see their surprised, respectful faces, to listen to praise and flattery in their address. He will achieve an excellent reputation by any means, even if for this it is necessary to step over the feelings of other people or resort to deceit and hypocrisy. Flatterers and egoists usually gather around them, also thirsting for their own benefit.

It is quite logical to conclude that a vain person can hardly be called happy. And even more so, you should not envy him. No matter what such a person does, no matter how hard he tries to stand out against the background of the environment, he still will not achieve true respect and love. Yes, in a successful scenario, he will get what he wanted - he will be flattered, envied, but on an emotional level he remains unclaimed.

Unsatisfied vanity

Perhaps those who really managed to reach heights can boast that they are quite happy and satisfied with life. But this does not happen in all cases. More often than not, people only crave, but get nothing. From this arises a feeling of infringement, dissatisfaction with fate (but not with oneself).

Such people develop a persistent feeling that they could not appreciate it. And his whole life turns into empty dreams on the topic "if only, if only." If it had turned out differently, if I had been a little more lucky, but I could ... This can go on indefinitely.

As a result, it turns out that there are much more vain people than it seems, it's just that this character trait is disguised as doom and dissatisfaction with one's life.

How to recognize a vain person?

It is very simple to do this, you just need to pay attention to his demeanor in society.

• Such people cannot stand criticism in their address, despite the fact that it is constructive, pronounced not for the purpose of laughing, but with the urge to point out the shortcoming gently and in the correct form.
• But flattery can listen endlessly, spreading with pleasure, like an oil pancake.
• They talk a lot, often appear in crowded places, always striving to take center stage in the company. At the same time, his words very rarely correspond to deeds and they rarely fulfill promises.

How to direct vanity in the right direction?

However, in some cases, this quality cannot be called so negative. Some vain people who have managed to properly use their desires have achieved a lot and even benefited society. If you do not let your promises to success go to waste, then a person may have an incentive to study, inventions, discoveries.

That is, vanity can be used as an incentive to achieve your goals. By correctly using the messages, a person will not get rid of vanity, but can make it justified. Proud of oneself by right is much more pleasant, right?

If you yourself realized that you are conceited and this quality makes life difficult for you, then you can try to contact a psychologist. No one guarantees that he will help you get rid of it, but you will receive a number of tips in which direction to work on yourself in order to finally start getting results, eradicate the negative side of vanity and learn to enjoy your life.

The content of the article:

Vanity is a feeling of fame, recognition and arrogance of a person for no apparent reason. The root of this problem lies in the distortion of self-esteem in order to create a certain image that can somehow help to feel better. In its purest form, vanity means sweet self-deception, arrogance, pride, which does not lead to anything good and only repels other people.

The impact of vanity on life

Vanity is a lie to oneself that revolves around self-esteem and is fueled by self-praise and flattery. Naturally, such a person is not able to correctly assess the level of his capabilities, because vanity increases the number of positive qualities and elevates him to a new pedestal. This normal desire to be recognized and the pursuit of praise often exhausts a person internally. And after this it is very difficult to find an internal balance.

Inadequate self-esteem distorts the perception of a person by others and exposes a braggart. Usually in such cases close people and friends are lost. Pride exalts a person as much as possible over others and makes him higher only in his mind. Outwardly, it looks like he thinks too much of himself and, of course, does not inspire confidence in the rest.

Vanity excludes the possibility of a sober view of life. A person is unable to understand the feelings of others and correctly assess the situation. Problems arise in the family due to misunderstandings. A vain layman will demand too much from others that he himself does not deserve. He expects calling, praise and honor for his deeds, which, in fact, are worth nothing of the kind.

The vanity of a woman turns her husband away from her, who begins to consider his wife too arrogant. She loses her friends by demanding constant praise from them and speaking negatively about them. Such a woman is convinced of her own superiority and does not doubt it at all. Moreover, she persistently tries to achieve recognition from the people around her, while not being too polite to them.

The problem of such a person is in self-esteem, which is not motivated by anything, but is tritely overestimated due to internal conflict and unresolved personal problems. Children eventually stop treating vain mothers the way they demand, and family conflict is growing. Naturally, any relationship deteriorates in the future, because no one will recognize the cult of an undeserved personality.

Vain men very often turn their women into submissive followers of their indiscreet persona. Such a person will choose the most meek and quiet girl who will constantly confirm and support his “pseudo title”. If the family will develop, then only on the basis of the indispensable reverence for the man in the family and respect for his conceited ego. The husband will build any relationship around himself and his person, overshadowing all the merits of his wife and children.

Inflated self-esteem and the constant demand for recognition from loved ones will slowly destroy family relationships, which will immediately lead to a completely expected collapse. The situation with children in the family will be the same as in the case of a woman. Vanity encourages you to put yourself above any interests of other family members. That is why mutual understanding in such families is completely absent.

The main reasons for the development of vanity

Vanity is always the result of an internal conflict, a split in the perception of oneself. A person mixes the real with the desired and believes what he likes best. The split occurs due to a traumatic situation or prolonged exposure to an unfavorable climate, for example, growing up in a dysfunctional family.

Vanity is considered as a variant of distorted compensation by the psyche of missing feelings. But, stuck on the feeling of their acute shortage, a person loses the opportunity to soberly assess the situation. Sometimes this feeling develops due to the long-term maintenance of a false image in an artificial way.

Arrogance can arise from the fact that a person was treated unnecessarily kindly, praising and exaggerating his achievements, although, in fact, there was no reason for this. Unfortunately, both options happen quite often, but depending on different situations, they can take slightly different shades.

Perhaps the reason lies in childhood. Difficult relationships with parents or relatives who allowed themselves to insult the child and belittle his dignity can quite realistically influence the formation of an unhealthy psyche of the child.

Constant belittling causes a feeling of lack of certain emotions that accompany pride, recognition. After all, every person sincerely wants to be recognized or hear praise. Those children who have never heard it turn simple words into value and appropriate it for themselves. It's like a way to make up for the damage done in childhood. A person who has been humiliated creates an aura of pride and recognition around himself, literally demanding honor from others.

Arrogance manifests itself in every situation and acts as a defensive reaction. Sometimes this is a way to prove to yourself that the parents were wrong and the person is really worth something. In any case, the compensatory reaction goes far beyond that primary family conflict, and the layman learns to live with pride, takes it for granted.

Often a person's arrogance develops after a difficult school year. Whatever the adults, children can sometimes be very cruel. School years are accompanied by intensive development of the child's psyche. Bullying by peers, public humiliation can cause serious harm to the still unformed horizons, including self-esteem. Moreover, transitional age with characteristic hormonal surges enhances the effect and can even lead to negative consequences.

These events, in fact, cause a split in personality and some change in one's ego. A compensatory reaction develops in the form of high self-esteem. A person creates an image and reputation for himself, which will not be tarnished, and is very worried about it. He begins to perceive himself as much higher than he really is.

Most often, vanity develops as a result of poor education. No, for this it is not necessary to scold the child or humiliate, it is quite enough to let him behave as he wants. The absence of an established framework of behavior and prohibitions forms a pathological permissiveness.

Over time, such a person begins to get used to the fact that everyone will treat him the same way as his parents, more and more confidently convinced of his own superiority. Self-esteem grows with the child over the years, without denying himself anything, an image of his own unsurpassedness and perfection is formed. High demands on society and arrogant conceit bring up a conceited conceit.

The main signs of vanity in a person

Finding a vain person in communication is quite simple. They usually give themselves away due to their high conceit and look down on the interlocutor. First of all, he talks about his merits and superiority, focuses on his own qualities, slightly embellishing his achievements and qualities.

In a conversation, he tries either to dominate and carry on a conversation, or to cast a condescending or even contemptuous glance over the interlocutor. The thread of the conversation is constantly trying to draw into a familiar topic, to tell about himself. He never asks about others and has little interest in the affairs of the interlocutor.

Of course, all of the above is typical for an extreme degree of vanity, but some similar signs are easy to notice in your acquaintances and friends. Vanity is manifested by the characteristic centralization of conversations. Such a person uses any occasion and topic to tell everyone about a new event in his life, an achievement that is not really very important.

Actualizes insignificant events and tries to become the center of attention, transfers the conversation from others to himself. With all this, internal vanity makes you feel uncomfortable if pride is hurt or someone else is in the center of the conversation.

Vanity sometimes does not allow you to do some simple things that are characteristic of people, for example, to apologize, to ask for something. These are ordinary concepts, but it is very difficult for a conceited person to stoop to them. To do this, you need to lower the pride scale indicator and “go down” to simple requests or apologies. Signs of this condition may include an inability to deal with people with tact, an insistence on one's own way, and a lack of flexibility in life situations.

At work, such people often succeed, but also fly by because of their pride. A person is very proud of his place and values ​​it above all else. Vain bosses love flattery and praise, praising such in time, you can even get a substantial bonus or promotion. But, having heard not too pleasant reviews about yourself, everything changes: the anger of vanity is a rather unpleasant thing, and it is better not to face it.

How to overcome vanity

Vanity, after all, is an internal conflict, and it must be resolved from the inside. Only by finding the root of the problem, you can permanently get rid of this unpleasant quality. Naturally, the ideal solution for this task would be a timely appeal to a specialist - a psychologist or psychotherapist. With the help of several sessions of cognitive behavioral therapy, you can adjust your self-esteem and set the right priorities on the path of life.

For men, the importance of the question of how to deal with vanity is rarely raised. It is quite difficult to hurt their pride and shake it to such a level that they begin to doubt the veracity of their ideas.

But still, some of them, who notice this not too pleasant quality in themselves, want to get rid of it as soon as possible. This means that the first stage of reassessment has already begun and there is minimal criticism of one's own feelings.

Women struggle with vanity much harder than men. They have a stronger sense of self-worth and pride, which is motivated by social attitudes. How to get rid of vanity will be interesting only to the woman to whom it has already caused a lot of problems and makes social adaptation difficult. Only then will she begin to look for means and ways to deal with this condition.

For both sexes, it is important to realize the value of one's own person, to critically assess one's abilities and capabilities, or, in other words, to be honest with oneself. The latter is the most difficult for people who have been deceiving themselves all their lives and showing themselves to be better than they really are.

It is necessary to appreciate and accept the importance of other people, learn to respect their rights and dignity, recognize the best sides and share the opinions of others. You need to understand your role in a large mechanism and accept it, be able to appreciate the importance of others, be able to recognize your mistakes and shortcomings.

There are no ideal people, everyone can find a flaw in himself that characterizes him as a person, and people tend to make mistakes. It must be remembered that admitting one's shortcomings is the greatest courage, which is far from being subject to everyone. To overcome an internal conflict, it is necessary, first of all, to pacify your own pride, taking the first steps towards success.

How to get rid of vanity - look at the video:

The strength of a person is far from being in material goods, achievements or competitions. They will forever remain only memories and pictures from memory. The real value is the people who are there, no matter what, those who will remain when there is nothing left. One must be able to distinguish inner self-respect and strength of mind from vile vanity, which drags envy, pride and loneliness into the abyss.

Date: 2014-04-16

Hello site readers.

In this article, we will consider such a human threshold as vanity. What is vanity? Why are people vain? And is it possible to get rid of vanity? We will talk about these issues in this article. So let's start with the first question.

Vanity what is it?

Vanity is formed from two words: vain and glory. Vanity is the desire of a person to look good in front of others, the desire to show his superiority, to assert himself, and so on. In simple terms, vanity is the pursuit of fame. Vanity is one of the eight sins. Vanity is very close to and. Many people have a strong desire to occupy a very high position in society. Such a desire for everything is innate and inherent in us at the genetic level.

Vanity is like star disease. The desire to stand out is not something terrible. When a person seeks to stand out from the herd, this means that he is endowed with leadership qualities. But this article is not about leadership, but about vanity. In the explanatory dictionary of the great Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl, the term vanity is defined as a property of a person, which is expressed in the greedy search for worldly glory, the desire for honor, praise, the need for recognition by those around him of imaginary virtues, and the tendency to do good deeds for the sake of praise. Many vain people are even willing to listen.

Vanity is good because, thanks to lust and, it pushes a person to development and growth. Yesterday I wrote an article about, in which I also said that it is not bad when something has a strong meaning for a person. Something must move a person, and let it even be vanity. The main thing is that he acts, and does not sit on the couch waiting for a miracle.

A vain person feels constant internal discomfort and dissatisfaction. Vanity is like a drug that kills a person from the inside, poisons his soul and does not allow him to exist in peace. This can be compared to starvation or collapse.

Vanity itself is bad for the person himself. The eternal desire to be in the center of attention often makes a person behave thoughtlessly, thereby moving himself away from his goal. A vain person is ready to humiliate other people, just to prove his greatness and superiority. In the end, he is left alone. No one recognizes him, loves or respects him. Recognition can only be achieved in the opposite way.

How to recognize a vain person? Usually, a vain person seeks praise. As I said above, he is ready to listen to flattery. He will try to do everything to deserve this praise, otherwise he will walk like a shabby man. For example, a husband (wife) in front of other people behaves towards his soulmate in a completely different way than in private, when he (she) can afford rudeness and rudeness.

Another sign is when a person expects approval from his choice. For example, a guy introduced his girlfriend to his relatives, and now he expects praise and approval from them. And if he gets praise, then he is ready to marry, and if not, then he will leave the girl. In this case, we are not talking about love, since it does not exist at all.

But is it possible to get rid of vanity? In fact, you can get rid of everything. There is a similar term for vanity. This is ambition. Ambition is interpreted as the desire for honors, fame and a high position in society. Simply put, it's the drive to do some things better than others, to be number one. This is desire. Is there a difference between vanity and ambition? There is. Vanity is vain power. This is resting on our laurels. Ambition is an honor to love. All successful people are unconditionally ambitious. They enjoy the process. And to get rid of vanity, it must be replaced by ambition. The desire to be number one is not so bad. This is great. A successful ambitious person deserves recognition and respect.

Vanity is an excessive belief in one's own abilities or in one's attractiveness to others. (vanity, wikipedia).

Until the 14th century, the term had no connotations of narcissism, and simply meant futility. The related term vain glory is now often seen as an archaic synonym for vanity, but it originally meant undue boasting. Now the word "glory' is regarded as having an exclusively positive connotation, although the Latin term gloria (from which it is derived) means boastfulness and is often used as a negative criticism.

In Christian theology, vanity makes a person believe that he does not need God. This is a kind of self-idolatry: such a person rejects God because he can rely on himself. It is, in fact, one of the most important sins and gives rise to other sins.

What is vanity: the meaning of this word

Vanity is the definition, which is in vain (empty or devoid of reality). This word is associated with insignificance, arrogance, presumption, pride and is their manifestation. A vain person feels superior to others, whether intellectually or physically.

In this sense, vanity hides feelings of inferiority and a desire to be accepted by others. By expressing his merits, a vain person tries to prove that he is better than others and expects the applause and admiration of others.

A good way to understand what it is is the myth of Narcissus. The most popular version of the story is that Narcissus was a young man in love with himself. One day, looking at the reflection of his beautiful face in the lake, he remained absorbed and fascinated, unable to distance himself from the image. After all, Narcissus died(he committed suicide, drowned himself, or was unable to leave a reflection of his image, depending on the version), and a beautiful flower grew in his place.

In religion and philosophy

In many religions, vanity in its modern sense is considered a form of idolatry, in which a person trusts in the greatness of God for the sake of his own image and thereby becomes separated and, perhaps, over time, torn off from the divine grace of God. In Christian teachings, vanity is considered an example of one of the seven deadly sins.

"Everything is vanity", a quote from the Latin translation of the Book of Ecclesiastes. This expression is also translated as “all is vanity of vanities”, which speaks of the ultimate futility of the efforts of mankind in this world.

Vanity is the queen of all sins (Gregory the Great), and it is a special sin against God. In spiritual realities, he concretizes, mainly in the rejection of the Truth of the Faith or the Laws of God, which are interpreted and disseminated through the Church.

In the sin of vanity, a person actually denies the operation of the Holy Spirit both in the truths of the Faith and in the moral doctrine. With the sin of vanity, man glorifies himself.

Vanity (or behavior) can refer to goods such as:

• appearance;
• wealth;
• culture;
• intellectual potential, etc.

Or to spiritual benefits (religious life, charisma).

The temptation of vanity, without the consent of the mind, is not a sin, since the offer, perhaps made by Satan, can be very strong.

This can become if all of one's existence is intended for the glory of one's own personality.

The sin of vanity can play an important role in more serious sins, as in the case of the physical aspect with which one can seduce others into lust (see Salome).

1) Vanity designed to glorify God is not a sin:

Matthew (V, 16): "Thus your light shines before men, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."

2) Vanity to convert a neighbor is not a sin:

If someone wants to please people in order to lead them to faith, this is virtuous and commendable.

Symbolism

In Western art vanity was often symbolized by a peacock, and in biblical terms - the harlot of Babylon. During the Renaissance, it invariably represented a naked woman, sometimes sitting or lying on a sofa. A woman combs her hair with a comb and a mirror. The mirror is sometimes held by a demon. Vanity symbols include jewels, gold coins, a purse, and often a figure of death.

In his table of the seven deadly sins, artist Hieronymus Bosch depicts a woman admiring herself in a mirror held by the devil. Behind her is an open jewelry box.

In the movie The Devil's Advocate, Satan (Al Pacino) claims that "vanity is his favorite sin."

Such works of art serve to alert viewers to the ephemeral nature of youthful beauty, as well as the brevity of human life and the inevitability of death.

In psychology

The term narcissism instead of vanity appeared towards the end of the nineteenth century with the birth of the first psychoanalytic studies. Today, narcissism and vanity are mistakenly used interchangeably.

When it's called narcissism, vanity takes on a delicately pathological connotation, but the present tense word narcissism indicates a real personality disorder.

in human behavior

Vanity in human behavior seen as useless and childish self-satisfaction; lack of moral values; superficiality, lack of seriousness.

Latin analog dictionary explains the meaning of this word as:

• immodesty;
• yoke;
• arrogance;
• narcissism;
• egocentrism.

From this word stem actions such as: make yourself beautiful, be important, show off.

In his dictionary of synonyms, the philosopher Niccolo Tommaseo places the term "vanity" (in the context of human behavior) in the semantic area of ​​pride, along with disgust, contempt. This is a vain opinion of merit, combined with a desire to turn one's merit into vain things.

As a rule, vanity is defined as an excessive desire to realize one's own ideal image (perfect, from the point of view of the subject).

The concept of vanity is expressed in Greek mythology, in a synthetic and precise way, through the figure of Narcissus, a young man in love with an image of himself.

There are two ways to deal with this sinful behavior.. One way is to turn to peace, light and bliss through prayer and meditation. When peace, light and bliss descend, pride and ego disappear. This is a spiritual approach. True, it requires some preparation.

There is also a practical approach that is quite effective at the ordinary human level. Suppose you are a good singer and you are very proud of your voice. Ask yourself if you really are the best singer in the world. Your immediate answer will be no, there are many people who sing much better than you.

If you have studied and become a great scientist, you may feel that you have every reason to be proud. But if you are sincere and ask yourself if you are the greatest scientist on earth, your immediate sincere answer will be no. There are people who are far superior to you in knowledge and wisdom.

How can you swell with pride when you know that there is someone who is superior to you in their field? We are proud of ourselves because we feel that we have achieved something that others have not achieved. But the moment we see that there are others who have far exceeded our capabilities, our achievements pale, and pride must also die.

The difficulty with this approach is that it takes five days or five months or five years to fight vanity in this way, but the time comes when we forget about others who have surpassed us in our field. Again we enter into ignorance and accumulate our ego and pride.

Then after a while perhaps sincerity reappears. Nobody wants to deceive themselves all the time. So, sincerity should come to the fore and help us get rid of vanity, which is not a solution to anything.

As the explanatory dictionary says, vanity is the need for evidence of one's own superiority over other people. On the one hand, this is a sign of morbid pride. On the other hand, the desire to be better than others is excellent, and sometimes the only one for self-development. Perhaps, with this tool of evolution, nature slightly overdid it. Competitive spirit and self-affirmation as a motivation work great if they do not reach outright humiliation and tyranny.

Trying to be better than others by playing by the rules and developing personal skills is a healthy motivation. Perhaps the whole point is that nature encourages human development, rewarding those who are successful in this business with a sense of satisfaction. And a man - a cunning creature - has learned to deceive himself and experience satisfaction from pseudo-development. This is self-deception, in which, in order to “keep up the mark”, one does not need to grow oneself, it is enough just to humiliate other people. In order to stay on the level, it is much easier to lower others than to actually advance in one's own evolution. But a substitute for “development” by belittling other people is a fake, an imitation of development, a dead model, which in reality is rather a degradation.

Vanity of nothingness

Vanity is a way to deceive yourself by getting satisfaction from the illusion of your own greatness. In advanced stages, vanity develops into star disease and further into delusions of grandeur self-satisfied paranoia, with which a person imagines his own power, beauty and genius out of nowhere. All this is the other side of humiliation. Vanity is an exalted meanness.

Sometimes, when we ask for help, or when this help is offered to us without our asking, we can experience humiliation, because there is a stamp in our heads that help is needed by weak, helpless, or inferior members of society. Another proud person will not ask for help, even if someone's life depends on it.

We are humiliated not so much by "kings" as by people equal to us, but in their vanity, who imagine themselves to be kings. And if this happens, it means that our position is below average, you can spit in our direction and pour slops as long as we allow it. In a certain sense, the desire to be “above” others is the baseness that tries to rise at the expense of others.

A vain nothingness rejoices in someone else's pain, becomes an "energy" vampire who feeds on someone else's suffering. Insignificance seeks out people's sore spots in order to feel power over them. Legs grow from here, including: selfishness, snobbery, ambition, pride, star fever, etc. Putting on all these pompous masks, we flaunt our own humiliation within ourselves. We exalt ourselves to the skies, trampling our own suppressed insignificance into the mud. This is how we create and maintain an internal psychic split in which our greatness is the other side of our insignificance.

When a person experiences humiliation for a long time, he loses self respect, and self-esteem becomes low. He closes himself off from others, hides his pain, defending himself with a mask of false personality, which is artificially designed to hide psychic trauma. As the internal split grows, the psyche becomes less and less stable, and the person is in continuous tension, because he cannot be himself, cannot reveal his insides to others, or even to himself, disfigured by the bleeding wound of humiliation.

With such a wound in the soul, a person painfully perceives any criticism, accidentally heard extraneous laughter takes it at his own expense as a mockery, and even an innocent remark reminds him of suppressed humiliation.

At the same time, an outside critic is sometimes perceived as if he saw through the humiliated, revealed his secret about a mental wound in the soul, got under the skin, and, recognizing a weak spot, pricked him in his very epicenter.

All these are personal hallucinations of a wounded soul. That is why the therapist, listening to the client, at some appropriate moment may ask a question about similar cases from the past. Perhaps, in early childhood, when the child was unable to digest humiliation, this experience was repressed into his unconscious. And in the unconscious, mental wounds do not heal, but continue to bleed. To heal, you need to patiently open up, eliminating all false guises, face your own fears.

It is not surprising that even innocent criticism can cause hatred in a wounded soul. A humiliated and conceited person is greedy for flattery, and is extremely dependent on the opinions of others, which others sometimes consciously or unconsciously use. The once humiliated person often plays it safe, defending himself even where there was no smell of an attack, which makes him seem unreasonably harsh and aggressive.

The more neglected the “situation”, the more tense a person is, the more difficult it is for him to communicate with other people, the more alone, at times, a person feels. In such a situation, the role of a psychologist can be indispensable. A suffering person needs to be simply listened to, allowed to be himself, accepted without any judgment, sensitively and with respect for his essence.

The love of a vain nothingness

At the opposite pole, it is convenient for a sick psyche to attribute internal self-aggrandizement to “victories” on the love front. Such a person in a relationship does not build relationships so much as asserts himself, tries to prove to himself with another victory that he is not a miserable nonentity. And if this self-affirmation is resisted, "love" suddenly turns into hatred.

Why do we hate our beloved? He did not amuse our pride, did not exalt our person, showed that we are unworthy of such an attitude, and therefore our conceited majesty falls into the other extreme - humiliation. Hate is mixed with love, because the refusal of reciprocity tramples down pride, which in fact was just a cover for one's own inner insignificance.

And by the way, the stronger the beloved has trampled our pride into the dirt, the stronger we “love” him! Remember? One extreme supports and strengthens the other. This kind of painful "love" goes hand in hand with vanity, hatred, and humiliation.

Let me remind you that this is not at all about some real insignificance, but only about his conflicting feelings and guesses at his own expense. We do all this with ourselves. This is how mental mechanisms work. We trample ourselves into the dirt in order to exalt ourselves later. Most of us suffer from such mental “wounds” to varying degrees.

The vanity of civilization

Our entire civilization rests on the self-assertion of its own worthlessness. Remember your childhood. We've always liked heroes who were particularly adept at pleasing their ego. The cooler the hero, the more masterly he exalts his ego: the indestructible terminator, or the powerful Neo, who defeats the neurotic Smith, Cinderella, who made her way from the bottom of society straight to the prince, Barbie, born in the wealth and luxury of pink glamour.

What is Pushkin's fairy tale about a magic mirror worth! The sly mirror inspired the proud queen that she was "the sweetest of all in the world." And so, a whole mess ensued around the low self-esteem of the queen! The “cruel” truth that the young princess is more beautiful, the painful psyche of the queen could not perceive reasonably, and in order to keep her image on top, the queen was ready to go “breaking bad”. The list is endless. Every story has a good example.

And we become the greatest masters in this difficult matter of conceited self-aggrandizement on the spiritual path, when, renouncing pride, we amuse it precisely - pride at more and more sophisticated and refined levels. I think this should be treated with calm understanding.

Vanity and humiliation

A long experience of humiliation does not mean that a person can be put an end to. On the contrary, overcoming the imbalance, we gain wisdom and become stronger than we could become without this tempering experience. All mental "diseases" are overcome. Our weaknesses are simply those mental “muscles” that need to be worked on first of all, turning weakness into strength.

Often, when we see others being criticized, we can easily recognize the subjectivity of the critic. But if they criticize our person, then we begin to take criticism seriously. There is a kind of "coupling", when the critic's hallucinations seem to coincide with the hallucinations of the humiliating one.

For example, a dominant boss scolds a subordinate, reaching tyranny, towering over a person who depends on him. And the subordinate, actively participating in the "game" not on an equal footing, is humiliated, affirming himself in the position of a weak junior manager. The subordinate perceives this as an “objective” reality, a “common” space in which this single process of humiliation and elevation between two subjects takes place. All this feels so realistic, as if it really is an objective reality. And the reciprocal hatred of the boss also seems justified and appropriate.

However, this whole situation takes place in the head of the subordinate. There is no "objective" reality where the boss in the role of alpha male humiliates a subordinate. These are all subjective perceptions, dualistic mind games that most people play in their heads every day.

What really goes on in the boss's head is irrelevant. The subjective experiences of the boss do not go beyond his head. If the boss masturbates in public amuses his vanity - this is his "national" problem. The subordinate only hears the timbre of the voice, sees facial expressions, and characterizes all this in accordance with his life experience. And if in his experience there is a psychotrauma of humiliation, it is naturally projected in a new similar situation.

In psychology, there is a term "classical conditioning", which refers to the process of developing a conditioned reflex. Have you heard the joke about laboratory monkeys?

Two monkeys in a cage are talking:
- Girlfriend, what is a conditioned reflex?
– Well, how can I explain this to you… Do you see this lever? As soon as I press it, this man in a white coat immediately comes up and gives me a sugar cube!

Conditioned reflexes appear when, for example, we react to a neutral situation emotionally, because in our head it is associated with another situation from the past, where we already showed these emotions.

That is, when a subordinate hates the Boss, it is possible that he actually hates his father, or a bully classmate who in the past subdued our subordinate by suppressing him. Perhaps the boss's remarks were innocent, but some subtly similar undertones of his actions aroused repressed feelings in the subordinate, and caused an inadequate reaction.

That is why it is advisable to maintain a healthy self-esteem in a child, because the child's consciousness is not yet able to fully realize the illusory nature of mental duality. Trauma inflicted in early childhood is repressed into the unconscious, and may haunt the individual throughout life. After all, it is in childhood that our basic ideas about the world and society are developed. It is extremely difficult to change them in adulthood.

To humiliate others is a much worse kind of pride than to exalt oneself beyond one's merit.
Francesco Petrarca

Pride is an echo of former humiliation.
Stepan Balakin

Do not humiliate yourself in front of anyone: do not look down on anyone!
Leonid S. Sukhorukov

If you have not humiliated yourself, nothing can humiliate you.
Richard Yucht

Conscious humiliation

Sometimes humiliation is deliberately chosen for various reasons. For some, humiliation is a kind of psychological extreme that provides a liberating feeling of looseness, overcoming boundaries and freedom from fear.

Something similar, with a characteristic rush of adrenaline, is felt by fans of extreme sports, for example, during parachuting. The looseness of feelings gives a feeling when "the sea is knee-deep".

In other cases, some people like to feel like a subordinate thing, with which the owner will do whatever he wants. This, I believe, is a distorted need for acceptance and trust, somewhat analogous to a child's trust in parents.

I have already said above that humiliation is the other side of vanity. Perhaps people who have great power over others (bosses, bosses, etc.) may consciously choose humiliation to smooth out self-esteem and defuse tension.

In our society, there is even a separate psychosexual subculture “BDSM”, which is based on humiliation and domination in sexual relations. Followers of "BDSM" get excited and defuse emotional tension by violating social conventions and taboos in their role-playing games.

Sometimes they humiliate themselves in order to manipulate the vanity of another person, whom they exalt with their humiliation. For example, by humiliating himself, a person in the role of a weak person simply seeks to relieve himself of responsibility in order to leave all difficult matters for a “strong” personality, greedy for flattery and vanity. Humiliated at the same time, he can consider himself smarter, since he managed to achieve what he wanted with his “cunning” manipulations. Or the humiliating one simply wants pity, and longs to stay forever in where it is convenient for him to be helpless and weak.

Beggars and beggars also play on pity for their humiliating position. They say that some of these "beggars" earn by humiliation much more decently than their benefactors.

Sometimes people come to deliberate humiliation in order to avoid punishment from the dominant authority. If the authority is led to the "game", it also, in its psyche, increases the split, swinging the pendulum of vanity and humiliation.

Another rather rare variant of conscious humiliation is for the spiritual purpose of pacifying pride and vanity. But with such a goal, a person is not so much humiliated as he learns to show humility. And such humility, I think, should not be confused with humiliation. Ordinary humiliation is always a certain kind of self-deception and rejection of the current situation. Humility on the spiritual path, on the contrary, is associated with the acceptance of the life that is happening. Humiliation is different from humility, just as neurosis is different from holiness.

Inertia

Understanding how our psyche operates, how we become attached to the pendulum of humiliation and vanity, helps to draw attention to these mental mechanisms. But even their conscious understanding does not guarantee complete liberation from these experiences. I can speak from my own experience.

Inertia is like one of the key laws of the mind. A mind without habits is the mind of a Buddha. And if a person claims that he does not have pride and a sense of self-importance, most likely, this means that his pride is so highly developed that it prevents a person from recognizing its presence.

The way out of this painful duality is self-knowledge, diligent systematic awareness, sensitivity and attentiveness to the manifestations of one's own psyche. In order not to get involved in this game, be honest with yourself. Does it really matter what leads other people? What is driving you?

If you don't play vanity and humiliation, it becomes boring to humiliate you. Not getting the desired result, the petty tyrant ceases to get his painful pride.

If you can laugh at yourself, no one can laugh at you. A person is humiliated not when he bows, but when he feels humiliation. The very experience of humiliation is a sign of an internal split.

The strong one is not the one who rises, but the one who no longer needs it. It is quite possible to be a successful and prosperous person without becoming a conceited idiot. Such impulses in oneself should be carefully examined so that they go out in the bud. Vanity is just a game of strength and a real internal split. True strength is our healthy psyche, creative will, developed abilities and talents.

© Igor Satorin

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