There are cases when self-development turns into self-destruction.
Among my friends there is a special category of people who have suffered from personal growth trainings and self-development books. Behind the beautiful covers and inspiring appeals lies the danger of not only losing time and money from purchasing a miracle technique, but also the risk of going down the wrong path, which will bring you a lot of troubles and grief.
If you listen to the so-called trainers, then success will shine for you only if you change the way their methods suggest. Most likely, you will be asked to leave your comfort zone, become a leader, increase your personal effectiveness, invest in yourself, get rid of negative attitudes and other nonsense. This sounds very nice and exciting, but in practice it doesn't work very well. Why?
It’s one thing to change your wardrobe, lose a couple of kilos or get rid of a bad habit, it’s another thing to break and reshape your own personality in a new way.
Let's say you have a friend named Petya who has stunning charisma. On a ten-point scale, where 10 points correspond to an exceptionally charismatic personality, we will conditionally give him 7 points. Let's say your charisma is developed by 2 points. Petya is well aware that charisma is his strong point and he successfully uses it to achieve his goals. If you focus on charisma, like Petya, then the return from your efforts will be minimal. By the time your charisma reaches Petya's level of 7 points, Petya himself will already be far ahead compared to you, and it may already be too late to achieve your goals.
Petya plays on his own field and uses his competitive advantage. What's stopping you from playing yours?
It will be much more effective to develop in yourself the quality that is already your strength. After all, you can reach your goal in different ways. You can choose either the quick and easy path or the long and hard one.
Don't be alarmed if your strengths aren't being a brilliant negotiator or being able to work 24 hours a day without a break.
How does a person prone to self-destruction behave?
This includes all the negative emotions and behaviors that people tend to use in stressful situations.
These are condemnation, gossip, envy, addiction, smoking and alcoholism. This includes despair, despondency, laziness, the inability to say no, and even living out of habit. The most terrible feeling is envy, which completely consumes a person. Envy is the main cause of most diseases. Constant dissatisfaction with the outside world, parents, and family has an extremely destructive effect on a person. A person refuses to take care of his family and parents, turns away from them. Self-knowledge through self-destruction also leads to unfair treatment of people and misuse of personal time and resources.
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Physically, a person harms the body with alcohol, nicotine, drugs or poisons. The most terrible self-destruction and etching of the body began with a harmless desire for self-knowledge and new sensations. A person can also cause physical harm to himself, cut himself, or even commit suicide.
Self-knowledge through self-destruction also harms psychological health. For example, a perfectionist will work until he drops to be the best and will bring himself to emotional overload. Striving to be better than everyone else and in everything, a person begins to constantly compare himself with others. When he becomes convinced that someone is more beautiful, more successful or smarter, he falls into depression and self-flagellation.
Also, psychological health undermines the desire to bring everyone to an imaginary ideal. When a person prone to self-destruction is in a leadership position, he drives his subordinates to a state of depression and apathy. He constantly finds fault, appeals to a sense of duty, manipulates, demands the impossible.
Self-destruction also manifests itself in relationships with others. Sometimes a person, thinking that he is moving towards self-development and self-knowledge, cuts off ties with people. He may stop communicating with his parents, leave his family, quit his job, or quarrel with friends. For the purpose of self-knowledge, begin to introduce yourself into new companies, while becoming addicted (for example, alcohol, drug, sexual, gambling addiction, etc.) or losing money.
- Mental illness
- Perfectionism
- The desire to deal with oneself, to punish for something
- False sense of guilt, remorse
- Megalomania
- Persecution mania
- Demonstration and manipulation
Some of these reasons are genetically inherent in a person, some appeared after experiencing trauma and violence. In any of these reasons lies low self-esteem, self-deprecation, devaluation of oneself as an individual. But sometimes deliberate self-destruction is demonstrative, or rather even manipulative.
For example, a person causes minor harm to himself (cuts his veins across), hoping to see the reaction of his loved ones. This raises his value, he sees that someone needs him and cares about him. Next time he will do something more serious to get what he wants with ease. After all, he already knows that he is valued.
If in childhood parents raised them using the “carrot and stick” method, then such a person in adulthood will be prone to self-development through self-destruction. For every effort or achievement you must receive a reward, and for any mistake or inaccuracy you must receive punishment. A person will either punish himself or reconcile himself with a violent attitude towards himself, perceiving it as a punishment sent by the Almighty. In one case or another, everything will be perceived as “atonement for sins.”
Self-development to the point of... self-destruction
The desire for development and self-improvement is certainly commendable. There is nothing sadder than looking back on your life and realizing that you spent it all in a state of uncontrollable sleep. In casual relationships, in odd jobs, meaningless and aimless. But an equally sad picture can be observed at the other pole, when a person turns into fanaticism in his desire for self-development. Nowadays various systems of human development are very fashionable. There are many of them - the oldest and the newest (mostly repackaged and modified old ones).
I like all the existing diversity of cultures, religions, views and everything in general. This is probably why I am interested in communicating with a man of science, with a spiritual practitioner, and with an ordinary “earthman” who finds his meaning and happiness in simple earthly affairs and joys.
There is only one thing I don’t like: fixation and blind fanaticism, when a person breaks away from reality and completely loses himself in his ideas about it. It frightens and repels, as if next to you is not a living person, but a programmed robot. He doesn’t see or hear you, he’s busy playing the programmed program...
And not only in communication with others, but also in your own life. Recently I met a man who, unbeknownst to himself, had reached the point of absurdity in his quest for development.
The first steps in this direction were quite reasonable and practical: there was a real goal, there was an awareness of one’s “shortcomings” and a desire to reach a new level in real life. But then he was so fascinated by the process itself that he went into this “self-development program”, like a virtual game. From real life he moved into the context of this game with its rules, values and goals. They no longer had anything in common with the world from which he came with his own, very specific tasks. But that didn’t matter anymore.
Perhaps in this virtual game he feels fulfilled. It has its own “levels” and its own “bonuses”, which have become an alternative to modern social life. But it is precisely their illusory nature, isolation, isolation from the world, the inability to realize these bonuses in normal human life that ultimately destroys the connection with the “world of people.”
I think being blinded by an idea (of any kind) is a worrying symptom. When healthy criticism goes away, sobriety of vision is lost. And then, in the place of one destroyed illusion, another is erected. Sometimes even more dangerous. If it absorbs a person so much that he becomes its walking embodiment, his mind is no longer “main.” And then the question arises, where does this path actually lead: to development or self-destruction?..
Oksana Tokareva
Self-hatred is the real self-destruction
Most often, self-destruction is based on feelings such as anger and self-hatred. There is nothing wrong with being dissatisfied with yourself. For a healthy person, this is a reason for self-development, a desire for change. But for an unhealthy person, dissatisfaction with oneself is very dangerous. He enters a state of guilt for the fact that he cannot be better, that something is not working out.
And he begins to cruelly self-destruct for any mistake. For example, a person decided to go on a diet and could not stand it and ate one cookie. For a healthy person, this is not a problem (he ate it, he ate it). For a self-destructive personality, this is an indicator that he is not capable of anything in this life. That he has no willpower and is the fattest on earth. Having made such conclusions, he will finish all the cookies to punish himself.
In psychiatry, this behavior is called auto-aggression - aggression directed inward (at oneself). It is difficult to identify in childhood. For example, a child may deliberately constantly fall or hit himself so that his mother will regret it. A teenager can engage in extreme sports. It is very important not to miss and to notice in time where the norm ends and the pathology begins.
- One reason is the fear that people will stop loving you if you express your anger. Fear that society will judge you and consider you inadequate.
- Another reason could be a situation where you were unable to show anger towards a person due to his unavailability. For example, the father left the family, the offender died or moved to another city.
- Of course, the most terrible cause of self-destructive behavior is childhood trauma - sexual or physical abuse. The child is inclined to think that if this happened to him, it means he is bad and deserves such an attitude towards himself. Very often, parents, without even thinking, utter phrases that in the future will lead an adult to the path of self-destruction. For example, “it would be better if you didn’t exist at all,” “all children are like children, but you are this and that,” “Zhenechka from the neighboring yard can do this and that, but what about you?” A direct call for self-destruction, this is the parental phrase “You behave badly - come up with your own punishment.”
Women are more prone to self-destruction than men. Maybe because from childhood they are forbidden to express anger and aggression, explaining it “well, you’re a girl.” By type of temperament, melancholic people are more susceptible to self-knowledge through self-destruction. Basically, people who are very sensitive, suspicious, and take everything to heart.
Can athletes who train too much be considered self-aggressive? On the one hand, they are great, they achieve incredible results, everyone admires their achievements, thanks to their hard work. But if playing sports crowds out everything else from an athlete’s life, if he stops communicating with friends, dating the opposite sex, or condemning people for not playing sports, then such behavior can hardly be called normal.
There is an exit
My friend (let's call her Anya) does not have any special talents other than a good sense of style. However, having developed it in herself, she managed to realize herself in the fashion industry.
Gentle and kind Lisa, who was often bullied as a child, now works with difficult children and teaches them to fight back against bullies. She has excelled in this field and is constantly giving lectures.
The introvert Sergei, who prefers computers to people, created his own successful IT startup.
Pasha, who does not like to do anything with his own hands, has learned throughout his life to masterfully delegate work to other people. Now he is a major leader. He shows up at the office around lunchtime and leaves before everyone else.
What would happen to the main characters in these stories if they made decisions not based on their own strengths, but as advised by business coaches? It is unlikely that their results would be satisfactory.
If you are convinced that in order to succeed, you need to become a different person and take on someone else's role, this will lead to nothing but growing dissatisfaction with life. There is no formula for success that works for every person. There is no secret, no step-by-step methods for achieving happiness and wealth.
Everything you need is already within you. You already have all the necessary qualities. Listen only to yourself, because no one knows your strengths and weaknesses better than you. Use only those techniques that develop your strong qualities and bring you closer to yourself, and not those that remake you into another person, and then you will leave the path of self-destruction and take the path of self-development.
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