Winners and Losers

Joseph Burgoin
Points of Departure
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Self-Esteem and Self-Sabotage
25

Competition is a fact of life; the desire to win at games, get the highest grade in the class or bring home a blue ribbon from the county fair is a feeling most of us can understand.  Playing sports provides an outlet for competitive urges; watching your favorite professional teams allows us to compete vicariously.

Competitive urges may also pervade our lives in many other areas:  Who has the bigger house?  Whose kid got into the better college?  Who drives the nicer car?  Who has the more prestigious job?  Who is better-looking or fitter?  Who is more popular, smarter, wittier?  People regularly make such comparisons and often feel in competition with their friends and acquaintances, whether or not they realize it.  As long as it's not a preoccupation or source of great distress, this is "normal" -- that is to say, competition is everywhere.

Competition becomes toxic, however, when you add the element of triumph.  I don't mean that word in its positive sense, as in "His victory was a triumph of self-discipline and fortitude."  The triumph I have in mind goes hand-in-hand with the humiliation of others.  In this sense, when you are victorious it means there must be a contemptible loser.  "Personal best" doesn't apply in that instance; seeing others go down to defeat is a major part of the gratification.  Feeling superior to and better than those losers is the goal.

I think this feeling is more commonplace that you might expect.  Why, after all, do so many people tune in to reality-based TV shows like "American Idol" or "Project Runway," where week after week, the "losers" are dismissed from the competition by contemptuous judges, often in extremely degrading ways.  A very large part of the viewing public must derive satisfaction from witnessing this humiliation, no doubt identifying with the triumphant winner or the sneering judge.

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Separation and Merger

Joseph Burgoin
Points of Departure
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Relationship Issues
11

In a prior post on neediness, I discussed some of the ways intolerance of needs shows up in relationships.  Another way to approach the issue is to think about the degree of  separation you can tolerate between you and your loved one.

When I was a young man and everyone my age was dating and forming new relationships, it used to bother me when my friends got involved with someone and suddenly became completely unavailable.  They'd spend every spare minute with their new flame.  You know the type of couple I'm talking about -- the ones who seem joined at the hip.  A certain amount of preoccupation with a new romance is natural, but when two people can't bear to be separated and abandon older friendships, they've merged identities.  On some level, they are no longer two distinct people.  Only when you're really separate do you feel need, longing, desire, jealousy, etc.

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Basic Shame, Toxic Shame

Joseph Burgoin
Points of Departure
·
Shame/Narcissism
78

In this video, I discuss the concept of basic shame and how it shows up in psychotherapy.

<a href="http://www.linkedtube.com/YfL2anC8Bgc936b4f8b95d38cfe0e83b1e99a8b36cb.htm">LinkedTube</a>

[NOTE:  Shame and its toxic effects are a central theme of my website; all articles related to this topic can be found under the heading Shame/Narcissism in the category menu to the right.  This gateway post contains basic information about the roots of shame in early emotional trauma.  For a case illustration of shame and its effects upon relationships, you might want to read my post about toxic shame avoidance, using the film 'Avatar' as a metaphor.  To learn more about core defenses against shame -- narcissism, blaming and contempt -- click here.  I've also written about normal or everyday shame and the process of healing shame.]

When most people use the word shame, they usually mean to describe an experience that comes up because of outside influences -- our parents' disapproval or the opinion of society-at-large, for example.  If I do poorly on a test or my business fails, I might not want anyone else to know because I'm afraid they'll think less of me.  Shame also arises when we violate our own internal values, but we've usually absorbed them from our families and the world around us.

Over my years of psychotherapy practice, I've come to understand that there's another kind of shame, one in many ways distinct from the type described above.  I refer to it as basic shame and I'll be using that phrase repeatedly on this site.  Here's my basic shame definition.

When things go very wrong in childhood, for whatever reason -- an alcoholic parent, bitter divorce, mental illness in those around you, a mother with bipolar or manic-depressive issues or a father with highly narcissistic behavior -- it almost always damages you at your roots and deforms you psychically, just like a birth defect or physical handicap.  You may feel fundamentally afraid and insecure in the world.  You might find it impossible to love and trust other people.  You could be prone to violent emotional outbursts or struggle with an addiction yourself.  If the environment is toxic, we're almost always damaged by it in lasting ways.  With my clients, I often talk about mental scars or psychological handicaps.  They impose limitations and have to be taken into account just as you would a physical handicap.

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About Neediness

Joseph Burgoin
Points of Departure
·
Relationship Issues
·
Unbearable Emotion
25

I've never dealt with a client in psychotherapy who didn't have trouble tolerating neediness in one way or another. In graduate school, the readings on this subject were fairly dry and theoretical, with talk about "feeding relationships," or "good breasts" and "bad breasts" and how early frustration leads to particular defensive structures; but the bottom line is that the way we navigate that early experience of need often forms the basis for some enduring character traits throughout life.  We humans tend to generalize from one kind of need to another, so that those early encounters with deprivation might affect, for example, our love relationships in later life.

Here's an example from my practice, and one that will likely remind you of other people you've known.  One of my clients came from a fairly chaotic background; the details aren't as important as the fear of abandonment he grew up with.  As an adult, he found it impossible to sustain a relationship with a woman of any length.  He preferred Internet pornography and masturbation, forms of desire where he didn't have to depend upon another person to satisfy him.  His attitude toward women was largely remote and contemptuous.  Nobody was good enough; women only wanted to use him him to get what they wanted from him.

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About the Author

Joseph Burgoin
Points of Departure

California Clinical Psychologist License No. 12878

Joseph Burgo, Ph.D., has practiced psychotherapy for more than 30 years, holding licenses as a marriage and family therapist and clinical psychologist.

He is the author of Why Do I Do That? Psychological Defense Mechanisms and the Hidden Ways They Shape Our Lives and The Narcissist You Know: Defending Yourself Against Extreme Narcissists in an All-About-Me World (Touchstone, September 2015). A regular writer and commentator for news outlets including The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and NPR, he is also the voice behind the Psychology Today blog “Shame.”

Joe provides face-to-face video psychotherapy through a secure online platform to clients in Europe, Asia and Africa, as well as throughout North America. He earned his undergraduate degree at UCLA and his masters and doctorate degrees at California Graduate institute in Los Angeles and has taught at the graduate level. He has served as a board member, officer and instructor at an affiliate of the International Psychoanalytic Association.

This site condenses Joe’s insights garnered over a lifetime of work in the mental health field, and from his personal struggles to continue growing after his own 13 years of individual psychotherapy and psychoanalysis came to an end.