AND GARY
Like most of us, Angeline has been raised to believe Myths 1 and 2. As a result, when her nine-year-old son Gary does something that bothers her, she says to him, “You’ve made me angry at you.”
Instead of focusing on Gary’s actions—for example, he didn’t put away his toys, as he promised he’d do—she makes the problem the way she feels about his actions. Instead of Gary learning that he is responsible for taking care of his possessions, he learns that he is responsible for fixing his mother’s feelings.
In an extreme version of Myth 2, a parent blames their child for the parent’s feelings—and for how the parent responds to those feelings. “Now look what you’ve done. You make me so upset that I dropped my tea mug and broke it.” Or, “If you had cleaned up your room like you promised, I wouldn’t have gotten so angry and yelled at you.”
When people in a relationship believe Myth 2, their disagreements typically turn into ever-escalating arguments, and no satisfactory resolution is ever found. Each person holds the other responsible for their own happiness or satisfaction and blames the other for not providing it. Each then resents the other for not doing their part.
Myth 3: The Needs and Wants of Other People Are More Important than Our Own
This third myth implies that our own needs and wants don’t really matter, and it is especially pervasive for children. Thus Myth 3 naturally erodes our self-esteem and self-confidence.
Myths 1 and 3 are typically taught together, so they reinforce one another. As we learn that we’re responsible for how others feel, we also learn that other people matter far more than we do—or that we don’t matter at all.
Myth 4: Following the Rules Is Also More Important than Addressing Our Needs and Feelings
When rules are properly designed and applied, they can help remove chaos from our lives. This is why we have stoplights and stop signs. However, when rules are made more important than the human beings they are meant to serve, people become wounded—especially if they are young.
One of the hallmarks of EN is that it often puts rules before people by elevating obedience and compliance and discounting genuine human needs. Teaching children to not interrupt adult conversations is important. However, they also need to be able to interrupt if there is an emergency.
Adding Up the Myths
These four myths don’t just pervade our culture; they are cultural norms. We teach them to our kids to help them grow up and become functional adults. Some people would even say the myths of EN help children learn to be kind and thoughtful.
However, the myths of EN do nothing of the sort. They make all of us—those who learn it and those who teach it—smaller, younger, less functional, and more wounded.
To teach kindness to others, we must first be kind ourselves. EN, and the myths that support and perpetuate it, are not kind.
Yet these myths are everywhere. As we age, our mentors, teachers, and role models—and, eventually, our peers—all live by these four myths and teach them to us.
Year after year, we repeat these myths to ourselves and learn to act them out, over and over. With each thought and each action, we internally reinforce their hold on us. Eventually we come to believe them and live by them. Then we also teach them to others.
By the time we are adolescents, most of us have internalized all four myths—and we have put them together into the following narrative, which we constantly, yet subtly, communicate to each other:
• When you feel angry, sad, or hurt, or when you act in ways I don’t like, I am responsible for your feelings and behavior. This means it’s my responsibility to fix you or the situation, so that you feel better and act appropriately.
• And when you feel good or act in ways I like, it’s because I did the right thing.
• Furthermore, when I feel bad, it’s your fault—and your responsibility to fix me or the situation so I feel better.
This narrative is the basis for the everyday narcissism that almost everyone shares.
Why is this a form of narcissism? Because, as a result of the lifelong training I’ve just described, almost all of us live by the following unconscious (and false) principles:
• I am responsible for how other people feel and behave. Therefore, I experience myself as all-powerful.
• I am responsible for how others act toward me. Therefore, I once again experience myself as all-powerful.
• Other people are responsible for how I feel and behave—and are supposed to make me feel safe, happy, and okay. Therefore, I am the center of the universe.
The myths and principles of EN take root in our psyches because they are taught to us, over and over, by people we trust.
The first two principles of EN involve an unrealistic obligation to others (and their unrealistic expectations of us). The third involves our own unrealistic expectations of others.
The myths and principles of EN take root in our psyches because they are taught to us, over and over, by people we trust. Yet the myths and principles wound us deeply.
Worse, in our mostly misguided efforts to soothe our wounds, we often wound others in much the same ways that we were wounded. We then pass on our everyday narcissism to others, as if it were a virus.
Outgrowing Narcissism
In order to survive, babies or young children need the world to revolve around them. Parents must attend to them closely, meeting their needs and keeping them safe.
As we grow older, however, we naturally want to become ever more independent. By age two, we start letting our parents know that we can do things ourselves, such as put on our coats and take off our shoes. With each passing year, our parents back off a little further, and we are quick to remind them that this is what we want and expect of them.
By nature, as we grow older and gain more skills and confidence, we would outgrow our childhood narcissism. Over time, systematically, we would seek more and more independence. We would stop demanding or expecting the world to revolve around us. We would learn to do more and more things ourselves: tie our shoes, ride a bike, comb our hair, brush our teeth, and so on. We gain our physical independence slowly and methodically.
However, our process of emotional independence is thwarted. Even as we gain more physical independence, we simultaneously internalize the EN myths and the principles that accompany them, and we develop emotional dependence rather than independence. We believe, in all the perverse ways I previously described, that the world does revolve around us.
As we mature, most of us learn to meet our own physical needs. Emotionally, however, most of us struggle with everyday narcissism, which stifles our emotional development and our independence. We carry this EN into adulthood and into most or all of our relationships.
Nearly all of us suffer from EN without knowing it. It has a tremendous impact on our lives, creating anxiety, anger, depression, an unnatural emotional dependence on others, and less fulfilling relationships.
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