Loneliness At The Top

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Remember when we all played the popular game "King of the Hill" as a child? You climb higher than everyone else and yell that there is no urine: "I am the king of the hill!" And of course, the main task: to stay on top, pushing everyone who strives to take your place. But sooner or later, someone pulls you down by the leg, and you climb again. Whether it will be possible to take the coveted place and shout again is unknown. But as you climb back, you feel insignificant in front of someone who proudly looks at you from above. And, of course, at any moment he can push you, because he is above, he knows better. He is the king of the hill.

A fun game that teaches you to achieve your goals and win. But not everyone is ready to learn this, and not all experiences in this game are pleasant. Imagine for a moment that your whole life is such a game. Happened? Any person has a desire to build close relationships from the very beginning. A long and fulfilling relationship, a strong family, and the ability to feel needed by someone are important parts of life.

So why am I talking about this here? And to the fact that this King of the Hill is always alone. He is alone on the top of this very mountain. After all, as soon as someone else appears nearby, according to the rules, a struggle arises and the opponent inevitably needs to either push or fall himself. If you eventually fell, you feel humiliated. If you have not fallen, the delight of victory comes along with a feeling of loneliness. And again and again and again.

Have you met people like that who always have to fight with someone? A sort of "yakalok" who stick their nose everywhere and express their "authoritative" opinion. In principle, these are not bad people, and you can even be friends with them … for a while.

It seems that you just talked well, the person is amazingly smart and handsome, but then someone else appears and your acquaintance, as if by chance, humiliates you and puts you in a disadvantageous light, while remaining at your best. Or another example: your friend really did a great project, you really admire him and say how professional he is, and he listens to it with pleasure. When you succeed in something well, then he publicly announces that this is only because it was he who taught you. This can be said in jest or seriously, but such situations are repeated with enviable constancy. And in all the behavior of such a person shows that you should be grateful that he communicates with you.

Not very nice.

Moreover, your success is actually not connected with him in any way, but as if your success somehow hurts him. Isn't it strange?

In fact, for such a person, the King of the Hill may be only one person, and if this is not himself, then he is a failure. And to feel like a failure is to experience the humiliation that he has known so much from childhood.

Let's go back a little to childhood. How old do you remember yourself? Probably, at the age of 5-6, the first fragmentary memories. Do you remember how your mother felt sorry for you when you were sick? Were you crying, breaking your knee or because of the toy taken away by the mischievous Bear in the kindergarten? When I asked one of my clients if she remembered how sorry her mother was, she replied that this had never happened. And if she broke her knees, she became very ashamed. She felt guilty and tried to hide it from adults so as not to cause them problems. Very comfortable baby, right?

But in childhood, when mom comforts us, kisses and says that everything is fine, it happens to everyone - this is the first experience of another person accepting such complex emotions as pain and fear. And through such acceptance by the mother of our emotions as something natural, understanding and acceptance of oneself arises.

But mom is the first simulator of intimacy, trust, warmth in relationships. And in many ways it depends on her whether we train our heart muscle to create warm intimate relationships with other people or not.

What happens to our child, whose mother does not form this very closeness? His mother, in response to emotions, does not accept them, but ignores them. And then the child has a feeling that he is somehow not that, uncomfortable, not ideal, not suitable for his mother. And a completely different function is being trained - to be perfect, to win and win.

I don't want you to get the impression that the mother of such a child does not like him at all, she is somehow atypical and angry. Not at all. Most likely, she, too, was once not taught that tears and worries are normal, so the vivid emotional reactions of the child seem unbearable to her. She is afraid of emotions. And so he says: “You are to blame, there was nothing to run on the street. Go, anoint your knees with green paint! " or “There was nothing to give your toys to this Mishka, next time don’t give toys to anyone!” Eat your medicine and get well sooner. " What kind of closeness is that ?!

Feelings of guilt for the inconvenience and shame if this situation repeats itself is what these people are very familiar with. The slightest failure, inconvenience caused to others, or the success of someone nearby is their personal humiliation.

Maybe from my examples it is not entirely clear why other people's successes hurt them so. Do you remember Mishka from kindergarten. Indeed, in this situation, Mishka, having taken the toy, remained the winner, and our hero, having given it away, became the defeated one. And all this is just a game: who understands the rules is the King of the Hill, and who does not understand is a loser.

Trainings like: "Become successful in two days!", "Ten ways to overcome shyness and become rich!", "How to stop being defeated and become a winner!" created by such people for the same people. After all, only those living in such a world are sure that in two days you can learn a lot - a successful person will tell you what to do, and everything will work out by itself. But these trainings do not teach the ability to get closer to others, feel warmth in relationships, make friends and be friends with them. For them, their whole life is an endless race to the top, and even if they have reached this very top, there is always someone who is better.

And this very phenomenon - the loneliness of a leader - has two sides. One side of the coin: victory bestows recognition and benefits. And the other side, the same loneliness. The toxic loneliness of an unconsoled child. A child whose whole life has become an endless race to perfection, a race to conquer the mountain. And whether he succeeds or not, he will be alone in any case. Because everyone who surrounds him is potential rivals, and there are simply no friends or relatives.

Working in therapy, I am increasingly amazed at how seemingly small, insignificant actions of a mother or father lead to quite significant consequences. Therefore, think about when your child cries or worries about the resulting bad mark when he breaks his knee, is it so important for you to blame him for this, or sometimes you can just hug, accept these experiences and admit his right to make a mistake?