I have a good friend who is recognized by everyone as a good person, always taking care of other people's emotions, helping others deal with various things, and people are of course very grateful for his efforts.
But it is precisely such a "good person" who dares to reveal in front of his best friend that he does not want to be a good person, and often feels the pain of resignation and hurt because of helping others.
On the one hand, he gains self-confidence and satisfaction by helping others to do things and establishing a "good person" image, but on the other hand, he always doubts his motives as a "good person" and questions what he does.
I don't know if there is such a person around you, or if you are such a person, he is the "old good man" in the eyes of everyone, but he has become his least favorite.
In a book I recently read, The Birth of the Self, I saw an enlightening explanation for this dilemma, which says that the pain of the "good old man" is rooted in the fact that "the self has not yet been formed."
The author of this book is named Wu Zhihong, a famous psychologist, psychological counselor, and best-selling author in the mainland. He graduated from the Department of Psychology of Peking University under the tutelage of Professor Qian Mingyi, a well-known psychotherapist in China.
Teacher Wu Zhihong's works such as "Why Home Hurts People", "Why Love Hurts People", "Thank You for Your Imperfections" and other works have sold more than one million copies, and their words are directly touching the heart and thought-provoking, and are deeply loved by readers.
In addition, Mr. Wu Zhihong is also the course manager of the App, and the two courses of "Wu Zhihong's Psychology Class" and "The Birth of the Self" are opened, with more than 400,000 fans to follow, learn, change and grow.
This book "The Birth of the Self" was inspired by the courses received on the APP.
In this book, teacher Wu Zhihong deeply analyzes the origin of the self, why to form the self, and how to solve the dilemma faced in reality by finding the self.
One of the points that impressed me most in the book was that the author believed that people who did not form a "self" were usually deeply depressed and miserable, like the "good old man" we mentioned at the beginning.
According to the book, if a person is too difficult to express anger, he will turn around and squeeze himself, put himself under pressure, become helpless, and finally may feel ashamed and hate himself for acting so weak.
If you want to break this vicious circle, then you must re-establish yourself and know yourself.
How to re-establish ourselves and know ourselves, we must first have a basic understanding of ourselves.
Among the theories involved are Margaret Mahler's theory of infant and young child psychological development, the late Oedipus theory proposed by Freud, the originator of psychoanalysis, and the five-stage theory of self-birth and development that the author Wu Zhihong pondered and proposed.
Margaret Mahler's theory of infant and young child psychological development focuses on the period before the age of three, and Freud's Oedipal period theory focuses on the ternary relationship between the child and the parents at the age of three to six.
In the book "The Birth of the Self", the five-stage theory of self-birth and development summarized by the author is more perfect and deeper, including: the shell of narcissism, the embrace of motherhood, the family harbor, the social melting pot and the infinite world.
The book compares these five stages to the growth model of "egg-chicken-eagle".
The shell of narcissism is a good incubation environment provided by maternal love for children, when the child is born into the arms of maternal love, forming the initial intimate relationship, the child before the age of three is like a "chicken" without aggression, but after the age of three, the child of the individualized self will become a "little eagle", rush out of the arms of maternal love, enter the harbor of the family, and exercise themselves in the three-dimensional relationship between the parents and themselves. Then enter the social melting pot, and finally enter the infinite world to soar.
This is a process of individual self-birth and development, in which there is a central contradiction, that is, the contradiction between basic satisfaction and necessary boundaries.
In the initial stage of self-formation, the child needs to experience the affirmation of the self from the mother and the family, and he can recognize his own needs without being denied, so as to obtain the most basic self-recognition of "I am good".
This is the foundation of the individualized self, and it is also the strong core of the inability of external things and perceptions to change.
The sense of boundaries is the letting go and support of parents to their children after the child forms himself.
The author believes that boundary consciousness is a condition for the emergence of individualized selves and will be further consolidated by the development of individualized selves.
I agree that many times we have psychological and emotional problems, often because of the lack of understanding of the boundaries of the self.
The book "The Birth of the Self" helps us to break the inherent cognition of the self through a large number of pages and words, so as to re-establish a complete self, which includes the confirmation of the self, no longer excessively eager for external responses; basic satisfaction, able to stretch the personal motivation and will; the birth of the self, learning to respect their own feelings; and self-realization, playing the function of individualized self.
There is only one me in the world, believing that through step-by-step efforts and changes, knowing ourselves and living ourselves is no longer a painful and tangled thing, on the contrary, it will make us happy and nourished, and make us more accepting of our own existence.