Yup.
 

Been supporting this for virtually my entire adult life.

Whether or not and how we respond to people like this is a good measure of our sobriety, our growth and maturity, and what feel about ourselves.

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That says it all. Thank you

Kind of reminds me that everyone else is a bad driver .........

Thing is, they never feel that way. Like calling out a narcissist, they take it as a compliment.

I am one of them today. It's not really funny. But it kind of is. At least I can see it. Shrug. Tomorrow is another day.

I don't follow.

Never feel what way?

I think he or she means that people are quick to point out character flaws in others but are unable to see their own. However, the saying you posted is pretty much doing the same thing, so I don't know.

The people who make others feel bad, they never really feel bad about it. They just go on, happy with themselves, happy with hurting others.

Oh, okay. Thanks.

I seriously doubt that people who derive pleasure from hurting other people are happy in the conventional sense of that word. Wherever there is overt sadism, masochism is lurking in the shadows. And vice-versa.

The compulsion to hurt other people, and/or confusing self-harm and harm to other people with pleasure, is typically associated with a virtually shattered ego and a total absence of self-esteem. Thus the compulsion to exert power over vulnerable others in order to feel some semblance of power, or just to feel alive. And not to feel the internal terror with which their lives play out, with the absolute exclusion of anything even resembling joy or happiness. The whole enterprise, the only purpose in their lives, is to avoid ego-annihilation, even (or especially) when that means hurting other people and further degrading themselves. A life of self- and other- degradation can under no circumstances be described as "happy," no matter how much we stretch that word's meaning.

Abusive parents, bullying of any kind, verbal and physical abuse, men who take advantage of women in distress, people who hurt animals...Pick your least favorite.

One way to measure a society is by referring to how it treats the most vulnerable among them. It's probably true that individual character can be measured in the same way, including how we treat our own most vulnerable "parts."

Not really. There's a significant difference between recognizing torment from other people for what it is, and tormenting the tormenters. One might have imagined that this distinction is or would be obvious.

The slave may dislike or even despise his master, but that's not the same thing as the slave wishing to enslave someone else. And certainly not the same thing as actually doing it.

I see it as another way of saying that when a person acts out their negativity, actually being them is a very unpleasant place to be. It's true. It doesn't hold any blame or judgment, to me. It's a friendly reminder that those who are acting out are unhappy, and to a) not take it on and b) remember that they hurt.

I dunno. I know people who will live and die being abusive, no regrets. I want to believe what you're saying, but I have seen this too many times over. I don't think anyone's crying in a secret corner of their heart , I'm not trying to be contrary I just don't think most mean spirited people stop and think anything about it. But if you have any examples I do want to hear. Society is pretty awful to its weakest.

Well, I guess I'm just stupid. Be glad you are not me.

I don't take you as being contrary.

Bear in mind that we cannot easily know what's in another person's heart. What you're describing is a person who lives a life of misery. And their primary regret has much more to do with having been born than it does with dying, though they are often partly or fully unaware of this.

What's going on with people who are miserable, and the best way for them to externalize what's going on inside, is to attempt to make other people feel their own misery. And they have knack for doing this. In my business, this process is sometimes referred to as "projective identification," which is essentially projecting our self-hatred on others so as to render it less toxic and less frightening. If I attribute to other people that which I hate in myself, it is much less threatening than when I wholly accept it as part of who I am. If I make other people "bad," then that allows me to be the "good one." It's an extremely primitive defense, and it's purpose is to fend off the death of a self that is disorganized and fractured in the extreme, and never at all confident in its continued existence.

When we come across people who are like this, we can conclude with no measure of uncertainty and without ambiguity that the way that they treat us and other people is a reflection of their internal experience, the way they experience themselves. This I can guarantee, not matter what we may perceive on the outside, what they say, or what they do. At some point, my only choice is to treat them with either compassion or indifference.

I can tell you from professional experience that people who live miserable lives do not live, nor do they die, without regrets.

I hope that you're just joking. I didn't suggest that you're stupid.

Myself as an example I am quite nice to others because I know how it is to be stepped on... but that doesn't reflect how I feel about myself because I was taught that I'm no good, I was a scapegoat. I mean wouldn't it mean I am good to myself? I'm not. I'm awful to myself but only after years and years of having negative messages from literally everyone around me growing up. I mean I'm capable of feeling good until someone comes along and acts like I should be hanging my head in shame over my life, my appearance or my (past)job and like I have some nerve being happy.

I'm sorry if I hijacked this thread I will return to observing.

All I can say, sleepie, is that we don't always appreciate the goodness in ourselves. Just another reason why support, and not just any support from anyone, is so crucial in life.

If people didn't hijack my threads, I'd be the only one posting in them.

How should one interpret, "One might have imagined that this distinction is or would be obvious," if not suggesting one is obtuse?

I don't do debates. I'm sorry for insulting you.

I know nasty people who don't seem to know any other way ( one is my sister in-law ) who doesn't have a good word to say about anybody ,who has betrayed her own sister and even her own grown up children on some occasions to gain favour ,makes up vicious lies ,turns things round her way . Just a horrible individual !!! is it her fault ? is her behaviour here choice? was it ever her choice to be constantly mean and nasty ( she was mean 35 years ago and still is ) , I don't blame her upbringing as my wife is not remotely similar in nature . I tolerate my sister in-law only as a way of keeping the peace and for my wife sake , if not for my wife I'd never let her in my from gate .

No condescension there either; ok, later, guys...

Haha. Touche'

Well said EndGame. Sadly too many people in the world are indeed small and petty. Glad we aren't them.

My father spent much of his career teaching. One year, for the high school yearbook, the teachers were asked to give one sentence of advice. Dad wrote: "Live each day like it was your last and one of these days you'll be right."

Dad died unexpectedly in his sleep two years ago. On his final day, he planted the last flowers he needed to complete his garden, practiced his tuba, had coffee with a dear neighbor and dinner with Mom.

It reminds me of something I saw once here on SR -- and I'm 99 percent sure it was you, EndGame, who shared it -- about the final scene in "Saving Private Ryan" when the now-elderly title character returns to the D-Day Beaches and cemetery and asks "was I a good man?" He was.

Some people bring good to their time on Earth. They earn respect; they are loved. They find what brings them joy.

My father's own father was pretty much a waste. He spent most of his life obliterating his mind with alcohol. He wasn't really missed. The tears that were shed at his funeral weren't for what was but for what could have been.

Something in him enabled my father to make choices, to take a different path. He chose to be a good husband and good father. His contributions earned the respect of his community. That might make him sound perfect, a real-life Sheriff Andy Taylor, but he wasn't. For a chunk of his adulthood, he was one of us. For the last quarter of his life, though, he chose sobriety.

He chose to be better.

I don't know why some people, including my paternal grandfather, reject the choices they have. Among our members, SR has many who didn't get the parents or the childhoods everyone deserves. There is great empathy and compassion for them here, as there should be.

I do pity those who decide to befoul the space they inhabit, to fail in their obligation to build something better for themselves and those around them. When it's all over -- and they may realize it or they may not -- the last day of their lives will pretty much reflect the entirety of their lives. They are neither respected nor mourned.

It gives me great comfort and strength to know I, like all of us, have been given the chance to determine my own path, to make the choice to be better. The self-governance we chart can honor those who went before us or, out of necessity, reject it and create a fresh, better legacy.

Yes, Venecia, it was I who referenced the final scene in Saving Private Ryan. Very moving, especially given what takes place up until that moment.

Due in large part to the often powerful denial that's required to sustain an angry, unhappy lifestyle over the lifespan, it rarely happens in my work, but it does happen: Elderly people -- in my case, all men -- come in with a haunting uneasiness that they describe as a sense of having lived an entire life without ever knowing what happiness is, without experiencing love, without ever having made, or even attempted, a genuine and supportive connection with another human being. Their regrets are so overwhelming, that I've felt as though I'd suffocate if I didn't get up and the leave the room. In most cases, they leave the session in tears, and I never see them again.

Two things that I experienced before this: Years ago, I was working in the psychiatric unit of a major medical center in NYC. This was at a time when hospitals, with government approval and prompting, were discharging people with severe and persistent psychiatric problems back into their communities, rather than keep them hospitalized for extended periods of time. Some for years, others until their deaths, up until that time. Day treatment centers became the primary monitor and source of help for such patients to learn interpersonal skills, take classes, enhance their abilities in activities of daily functioning, job skills, and other kinds of assistance, whose mission was to help patients to avoid future hospitalization.

During one of my early team meetings with social workers, psychiatrists and another psychologists, the lead psychiatrist brought up the introduction of a new medication for psychosis that seemed to hold some promise. In trials, a significant number of patients experienced a virtually wholesale clearing of psychotic symptoms. His concern was along the order of what happens when we introduce such a drug to a person who's been psychotic for his entire adult life when he regains clarity of thought, when a person awakens to a broken life that could span decades and whether or not it would be unethical to withhold such medications from certain patients. He was more interested in having people consider the consequences of administering such a drug, rather than promoting withholding it.

The movie Awakenings, with Robert De Niro and Robin Williams, based on the memoirs of Oliver Sacks (The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat). (Spoiler alert, but I won't tell you about how it all turns out.) The story is based on a group of patients who've suffered an outbreak of encephalitis years before the setting of the movie. All are catatonic/unresponsive to internal and external stimulation. They are literally going through the motions in life, and nothing more. Dr. Sacks/Robin Williams experiments with dopamine treatment in order to help stimulate the patients' brain chemistry and, after a time, they come back to life. They have a party for the patients...I think they take them out to a club or something. Everyone seems to be having a great time. In the course of the evening, Sacks asks his patients how they're doing, and is pleased to see them enjoying themselves. But when he approaches a woman in her, I don't know, late seventies-to-early eighties, who is obviously distressed in the extreme, and asks her if she needs anything, she responds, "I need it to be 1937."

My message in this thread (which didn't start out that way) and, generally, if I have any message at all, is that it's never too early to start getting the help we need, though there will be a time when it might be too late. And even if it isn't too late, why would anyone want to sacrifice any more time in life than we already have?

Endgame, you a smart cookie.
Thanks for your words. Your original post made me feel pretty damn bad, and rightly so.
I poured all my anger and resentments onto my ex yesterday and the day before.
I was one of THOSE people. And yes. Nobody would want to be me.
It was a good wake up call. I need to learn some humility in my self work. I know the anger is part of the denial.
But, hey. At least I'm working on it.

Struggling to improve ourselves is not common among the hopelessly bitter. You had an angry day. Or moment. Not the same thing as living an angry life. Maybe you'll have more. For me, it was part of the deal I signed when I got sober.

I wan't exactly the nicest person in the room when I was drinking, and I was no one's go-to guy for support in my lengthy period of early recovery. I had nothing meaningful to offer to anyone else; I only wanted to be left alone.

Wow. That's frightening.

Great thread EndGame and contributors, very thought provoking.
xx