What’s your preference? Eating a can of worms or humble pie?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You misunderstood me.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“You’re being too sensitive.” or “You’re reading too much into this.”
“How could you think such a thing about me? I’m so hurt” (or offended, or whatever).
“I would never do that to you!”
These claims are often coupled with non-verbal communication such as tears (genuine or contrived), nervous laughter, silence, eye rolling, indignation, and so forth to confuse or minimize the person who is questioning and/or confronting them.
Have you had similar interactions with others? Surely, we all participate in these types of exchanges as both speaker and listener. Perhaps we speak these words with integrity and honesty. Or, we might speak them dishonestly and manipulatively. Claims like these serve as offensive and defensive maneuvers during conflicts and rivalries for these basic reasons:
- to attain, retain, and/or increase the relationship power dynamic and/or one’s personal status
- to control another person
- to dominate another person
- to protect oneself by denying and deflecting wrong doing
- to shift blame
- to project one’s own weaknesses and character flaws on to others
- to undermine and smear another person’s character and credibility
- to manipulate and gaslight (denying the other person’s reality or perceptions) including other subversive tactics to make another person doubt him/herself. Also known as “crazy making.”
In varying degrees, we all rely on these strategies because they often work—for awhile. But a long term reliance on these self-serving approaches will surely damage and potentially destroy relationships and one’s own self-worth.
We can condense manipulative, dishonest behaviors into one word: pride. Its subset word is denial.
My previous post discussed aspects of interpersonal conflict, its aftermath, and the journey toward forgiveness. I also outlined subsequent harms when viewing and posturing oneself (and others) as a perpetual victim or martyr. (I exclude victims of parental, family, spousal abuse, bullies, and other abusive relationships.)
In this post, I discuss the concepts of pride, denial, and pretense as strategical power maneuvers in interpersonal interactions and within relationships. I also discuss the hindrances and dangers of relying on dichotomous (“either/or” and “win/lose”) reasoning as a lens in judging self and others. Lastly, I connect these strategies to dysfunctional relationships with oneself and others and offer suggestions for attaining a lasting personal peace through the Savior’s atonement.
Jesus Christ Lovingly Offers Us Consistent Servings of Humble Pie
The scriptures teach us about Christ’s “peace that surpasses all understanding.” I don’t claim to have a perfect understanding of this principle, but through the years, I continue the work of focusing on the Savior and trusting Him while I chip away at my own pride and denial. Through Him, we transform and transcend. I love how the Savior lovingly reveals our personal weakness while helping us to overcome and transform them into strengths. His role as Redeemer assures our compassionate nourishment and increased spiritual capacity when we willingly and consistently partake of Christ’s “humble pie.”
Christ won’t force us to eat it, however. Think of the brass serpent fashioned by Moses to heal the ailing Israelites bitten by poisonous serpents. One simple look at the brass serpent would have healed them. Too many chose their pride and died for it. Likewise, Christ continually offers us servings of humble pie, but our free-agency and our pride determine whether or not we partake.
“The Denial of St. Peter” by Gerit Van Honthorst
Natural Laws, Social Realities, and the Scourge of Pride and Denial
Natural law necessitates forms of contrast and comparison between humans, species, principles of right and wrong, and so forth. Unfortunately, contrast and comparison coupled with social realities can foster personal pride and denial. Still, a natural hierarchical order can serve as navigational tools for self-measurement, growth, and spiritual balance. There is, however, a difference between living under God’s laws which lead to righteous social cohesion versus creating our own self-serving laws that lead to unrighteous pride and conflict.
We all know that life can be hard. To help manage life’s difficulties, humans will, at times, create alternate realities using pride and denial as coping mechanisms. Listed below are some of these alternate realities reflected in various behaviors and personality traits. We all engage in these behaviors in varying degrees and at various times:
Prideful mindsets and behaviors:
- Careful crafting of one’s public persona that is incongruent with one’s private behavior; an inner world of self-deception while manipulating and/or deceiving others
- The inability to be accountable or take responsibility for wrongdoing; blaming others instead
- The need for attention and validation through praise and admiration
- A lack of empathy and difficulty accepting others’ feedback
- A sense of superiority over others and an inflated sense of self-importance and entitlement
Forms of denial in mindsets and behaviors:
Again, denial serves as a defense and/or coping mechanism often fueled by personal pride.
- Distortion of information (regarding self and others) to fit a preferred narrative
- Passive-aggression such as indirect hostility, subterfuge, and triangulation with allies to undermine a person or group who feels threatening
- Justification for negative behaviors to avoid personal realities regarding the self
- Projection of one’s feelings and behaviors onto another person or group
In short, pride often leads to denial because admitting personal flaws or mistakes can threaten one’s self perception. American and Western societies utilize these mindsets and behaviors pertaining to group think, public discourse, and politics. Individuals often rely on pride and denial for these basic reasons:
- To maintain a positive sense of self even if it’s distorted or inaccurate
- To protect oneself from perceived threats to one’s public persona
- To avoid having to confront painful truths about one’s self or belief system.
For years, I’ve been listening to Canadian clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson. I quote some of his insights regarding the perniciousness of denial:
“An entire psychological structure is built on denial. Denial of reality, denial of consequence, denial of shared humanity. People with self-serving tendencies construct their entire identity around a false self … that is grandiose, superior, always right. To maintain this illusion, they must reject anything that threatens it including the emotional consequences of their own actions. When they truly hurt you, they can’t afford to truly reflect on what they have done because doing so would force them to confront the reality that they are flawed, imperfect, or even cruel.
That kind of self-awareness is terrifying for them; it would collapse the fragile house of cards they’ve built … so instead of facing that guilt, they project it, they minimize your pain, invalidate your feelings, and shift the blame onto you or others. This projection is not just manipulation, its psychological self-preservation. It’s their way of avoiding the shame that lies beneath …
There is part of them (often buried deep in their subconscious) that knows they’ve done wrong. But instead of taking responsibility which would require humility and vulnerability, they engage in denial. They re-write the narrative in their own mind so that they can live with themselves.
These mental gymnastics aren’t just tactics to deceive others, they’re primarily aimed at deceiving themselves. The guilt doesn’t disappear, it festers. It shows up in other forms: anxiety, restlessness, depression, rage, etc., but they don’t trace it back to their own behavior. Instead they blame unfair circumstances or anything but themselves. If questioned or confronted … they immediately armor up with rationalizations and distortions that numb the pains of their guilt”
(Jordan Peterson. (n.d.). Home [Rules for Life]. YouTube. From: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQc2G64w5ow).
Don’t we all relate to the “easy out” of denial? Surely, hiding in the shadows of pride, denial, and pretense helps in avoiding painful realities about ourselves and others. In the dark, we can avoid the hard, “dirty work” of self-examination and self-correction. Sooner or later, however, reality catches up and the truth exposes our behaviors in our intra and interpersonal relationships—including our connection to God. Then we face our lost opportunities for spiritual and emotional growth.
Fortunately, as we journey to the promised land, Jesus Christ offers a path that, by its very nature, offers abundant fruits along the way: the fruits of personal integrity, increased spirituality, inner peace, forgiveness, love, and healthier relationships—if we choose to access them.
Psychologist Dr. Scott Peck defines the intersection of pride and denial (which he also defines as a form of laziness). He writes, “… all sins are reparable except the sin of believing one is without sin” (People of the Lie, 1983, p. 73).
Dr. Peck often interchanges the words “pride” and “evil” when referring to sin. We might bristle at the word “evil” because it sounds so harsh. Still, if we can cast aside our pride—for a moment—we might see bits and pieces of ourselves within these paragraphs:
“The Pharisees were the fat cats of Jesus’ day. They didn’t feel poor in spirit. They felt they had it all together … who deserved to be the culture leaders in Jerusalem and Palestine. And they were the ones who murdered Jesus. The poor in spirit do not commit [pure] evil. Evil is not committed by people who feel uncertain about their righteousness, who question their own motives, who worry about betraying themselves. The evil in this world is committed by the spiritual fat cats, by the Pharisees of our own day, the self-righteous who think they are without sin because they are unwilling to suffer the discomfort of significant self-examination.
Strangely enough, evil people are often destructive because they are attempting to destroy evil. The problem is that they misplace the locus of the evil. Instead of destroying [or hurting] others, they should be destroying the sickness within themselves. As life often threatens their image of self-perfection, they are often busily engaged in hating and destroying that life—usually in the name of righteousness”
(p. 76).
Dr. Peck continues:
“Utterly dedicated to preserving their self-image of perfection, they are unceasingly engaged in the effort to maintain the appearance of moral purity. They worry about this a great deal. They are acutely sensitive to social norms and what others might think of them. They dress well, go to work on time, pay their taxes, and outwardly seem to live lives that are above reproach. The words ‘image,’ ‘appearance,’ and ‘outwardly’ are crucial to understanding the morality of evil. They intensely desire to appear good. Their ‘goodness’ is all on a level of pretense. It is, in effect, a lie. That is why they are the ‘people of the lie.’
Actually, the lie is designed not so much to deceive others as to deceive themselves. They cannot or will not tolerate the pain of self-reproach. The decorum with which they lead their lives is maintained as a mirror in which they can see themselves reflected righteously. Yet the self-deceit would be unnecessary if the evil had no sense of right and wrong. We lie only when we are attempting to cover up something we know to be illicit.
Some rudimentary form of conscience must precede the act of lying. There is no need to hide unless we first feel that something needs to be hidden. For everything they do … they [have] a rationalization. The problem is not a defect of conscience but the effort to deny the conscience its due. We become evil by attempting to hide from ourselves. The wickedness of the evil is not committed directly, but indirectly as part of this cover-up process.
Evil originates not in the absence of guilt but in the effort to escape it. Here we are talking about avoidance and evasion of pain. Evil people are likely to exert themselves more than most in their continuing effort to obtain and maintain an image of high respectability. They may willingly, and even eagerly, undergo great hardships in their search for status. It is only one particular kind of pain they cannot tolerate: the pain of their own conscience, the pain of the realization of their own sinfulness and imperfection. They hate the light that shows them up, the light of scrutiny that exposes them, the light of truth that penetrates their deception. The submission to the discipline of self-observation required by psychoanalysis does, in fact, seem to the like suicide”
(p. 77).
Obviously, we need not write ourselves off as hopelessly evil. People can become incrementally evil, as we all know, but they are anomalies. The Prophet Joseph Smith taught that mortals are not born inherently evil. After Adam and Eve partook of the forbidden fruit, mortals were subsequently exposed and susceptible to the spectrum of sin and evil. Christ’s atonement offers redemption from sin through repentance and in seeking His forgiveness. Humility strengthens our resistance to temptation. In other words, we starve our sinful natures while feeding our humility. This process fortifies our connection to the Savior, feeds our inner peace, and provides an increased ability to extend grace in forgiving ourselves and others.
Comparison and Humility Cannot Co-Exist
The book, The Spirituality of Imperfection, provides a helpful study in humility, repentance, and forgiveness. Written by Dr. Ernest Kurtz and Dr. Katherine Ketcham, it emphasizes humility’s centrality to spiritual and emotional growth. They connect self-acceptance to heightened spirituality:
“St. Bernard, when asked to list the four cardinal virtues, answered: ‘Humility, humility, humility, and humility'” (1992, p. 185).
“Another pearl of wisdom: A man went to Wahab Imri and said, ‘Teach me humility.’ Wahab answered: ‘I cannot do that, because humility is a teacher of itself. It is learnt by means of its practice. If you cannot practice it, you cannot learn it'” (p. 185).
“Humility signifies, simply, the acceptance of being. It is the embrace of the both-and-ness, both saint and sinner, both beast and angel, that constitutes our very be-ing as human. Beginning with the acceptance that being human—being mixed (and therefore sometimes mixed-up)—is good enough; humility involves learning how to live with and take joy in that reality. Humility is above all, honesty. True humility neither exaggerates nor minimizes but accepts”
(p. 186).
Sounds simple enough. Until we read what’s next:
“To be humble is not to make comparisons. Comparisons are dangerous and foolish; the problem with both ‘first’ and ‘last’ as goals is that both are extremes. The humility of ‘both/and’ … begins with the acceptance that we are neither ‘very special’ nor absolutely ‘worm.’ The humility of ‘both/and’ refuses precisely the kind of uniqueness the claim to be exceptional that is the ‘either/or’ demand. We try, even demand, to be ‘all-or-nothing'”
(p. 187).
Dr. Jordan Peterson dissects the concept and effects of pride:
“Some people will look at the truth and reject it—not because they can’t see it, but because accepting it would require giving something that they’re not willing to give.
Pride is the great corrupter. It blinds, it distorts, it twists reality into something unrecognizable. A person consumed by pride does not see their own flaws. They see only what shields them from those flaws. They do not hear the voice of reason. They hear only what reinforces their delusions. They do not recognize a helping hand, they see only a threat to their control.
Pride is one of the most insidious forces in human nature. It masks itself as strength when in reality it is profound weakness. It whispers lies telling a person that they are whole when they are broken; that they are right when they are lost; that they are above the need for guidance or correction.
Pride is the great barrier between a person and transformation because transformation requires the humility to admit insufficiency. It requires the recognition that something within needs to be dismantled and rebuilt. But for the prideful this is impossible. They cling to their self-image with such intensity that even the idea of questioning feels like death.
When you are dealing with someone consumed by pride, you are not dealing with a rational being open to reason and dialogue. You are dealing with someone who has erected walls so high and thick that no truth can penetrate them. It does not matter how gently you present reality. It does not matter how much evidence you provide, how clearly you outline the path forward, or how sincere you are. They have already decided that they know best. They have determined that the world is wrong and they are right. Anything that challenges this belief will be met with resistance, with anger, with outright denial.
This is what makes pride so dangerous. It’s not merely stubbornness, it’s not merely a refusal to listen, it is an active distortion of reality; a defense mechanism designed to protect a fragile ego at all costs. When someone is drowning in pride, they will rationalize their most destructive actions and convince themselves that they are the victim even when they are the architect of their own suffering”
(Youtube. (n.d.). “Rules for Life”).
Dichotomous Reasoning Feeds Pride and Denial
Regardless of the noxious outcomes, we have all reasoned and judged ourselves and others through a dichotomous lens at various times and in varying degrees. When we choose these two mindsets as our life’s reference points, we generate impossible standards and expectations for ourselves and others. The arbitrary, illogical, and unreasonable assumptions and rules we set upon ourselves and others result in deep wells of personal anxiety, depression, guilt, sanctimony, condemnation, pride, inflated egos, and so forth within ourselves and directed at others.
Dichotomous propositions also create enormous amounts of pride, denial, and negative energy while triggering acidic behaviors against others. The longer we slog around in the quagmire of demeaning and demoralizing dichotomies, the more we become entrapped in a bog of shame, blame, resentment, and anger—all because of our pride, inability, or refusal to adopt healthy perspectives. Such perniciousness also detracts and diminishes the redemptive role of the Savior.
Dichotomous reasoning, however, is not inherently wrong. God’s commandments are framed in obvious dichotomies that admonish us to forsake sin and become perfected in Christ.
Let’s take a closer look at the two most common types of dichotomous reasoning:
The “Win/Lose” Proposition
This mindset or approach produces self-aggrandizing behavioral patterns due to its predicated and unwritten rule that says:
In order for me to feel good about myself, I must win and you must lose. There can only be one winner. And it’s not you.
The “win/lose” dichotomy can be expressed consciously or unconsciously. Either way, this strategical, prideful approach seeks to control and dominate others by framing them as inferior or less than. Surely, we’ve all witnessed and experienced this dichotomous approach in interpersonal communication and in public discourse: individuals and/or groups posture themselves as morally superior; they and their opinions are “right” and “good.”
The typical approach or narrative goes like this:
In order to infer or proclaim superiority, Person X maximizes his personal accomplishments and moral character when interacting with Person Y.
At the same time, Person X minimizes or denies the accomplishments and moral character of Person Y in attempts to make Person Y feel inferior to Person X.
Person X simultaneously minimizes his own weaknesses and imperfections to maximize his feelings of superiority over Person Y.
Inversely, Person X has impossible expectations of himself. He defines himself as a failure by magnifying his weaknesses or “badness” while minimizing or denying his own accomplishments and “goodness.”
The “Either/Or” Proposition
The simplicity of disjunctive or “either/or” reasoning provides a quick and easy process for interpreting information about people, places, and events. Our personal subjectivity, however, filters our perception with faulty logic or reasoning causing inaccuracies in our concluding judgments. Additionally, individual levels of pride and denial foment faulty reasoning and distortion. An excess of pride or denial proportionally increases our errors in judgment. In turn, these excesses and errors manifest themselves in behavioral patterns.
The “either/or” reasoning narrative is typically structured like this:
Either A (the speaker is confused) or B (the speaker is hiding something).
Conclusion: A. the speaker is confused. (or B. the speaker is hiding something) depending on your choice.
Either we fight and damage the relationship (A) or we find a mutually agreeable compromise (not A, therefore B)
Conclusion: Not A. We find a mutually agreeable compromise
There’s also hypothetical disjunctive reasoning framed like this:
If the message was poorly delivered (A) then the listener misinterpreted the context (B).
Conclusion: B. The listener misinterpreted the context.
If the message was poorly delivered then (A) then the listener misinterpreted the context (B).
Conclusion: Not B. The message was poorly delivered.
When we see this logic written out, we can more fully understand the narrow lens with which we judge others because no other “choice” is available to in which to judge and make conclusions.
In the end, most people become increasingly conscious and aware when interacting with a competitive “either/or” or “win/lose” type of person. Whether blatantly or subtly judged as inferior, less than, or a sinner by a person of this sort, we feel the sting.
“Plotting Mischief,” by Frank Stone
Can’t Mend It? Perhaps It’s Time to End It.
Elder Neil L. Andersen teaches us:
“We need to withdraw ourselves from anger and contention, whether that means leaving the presence of some people, or leaving certain situations. We cannot be a peacemaker when we have anger and contention in our hearts and minds.
Jesus taught us to withdraw from the circle of anger and contention. In one example, after the Pharisees confronted Jesus and counseled how they might destroy Him, the scriptures say that Jesus withdrew Himself from them, and miracles occurred as ‘great multitudes followed Him and He healed them all'”
(“Following Jesus: Being a Peacemaker,” General Conference, April 2022).
A couple of years ago, I ended an unhealthy friendship (for the second time) with a woman I’ll call Sarah. During the 25 years I had known her, I felt that Sarah had repeatedly jeopardized and twice gambled away my friendship due to her incessant need to compare herself to me. She framed nearly every interaction between us through a competitive “win/lose” lens. I felt demeaned and reduced to nothing more than Sarah’s personal “measuring tool” for gauging her own successes at my expense. On top of that, I strongly sensed her underlying hostility toward me in the form of back-handed compliments. (In fairness to Sarah, I obviously write from my own perspective. Sarah is speaking to others about our conflict in starkly different terms.)
My repeated attempts at honest conversation and resolution provided a temporarily relief for both of us. I had been surprised by Sarah’s initial denials and dismissiveness of my concerns and feelings. She said I was confused, and that I was confusing her. She claimed I misinterpreted her behaviors. Combined with her insistence on feeling absolutely no tension between us, and that I was overthinking our interactions, just underscored my suspicions of her manipulative and underlying hostility toward me.
Over the years, I recognized a cyclical pattern in our communication dynamic: whenever I inferred or indicated a new round of tension between us, Sarah’s deflection maneuver was to “kill me with kindness.” Her passive-aggression immediately transformed into kindly acts of service—temporarily. When the initial chaos calmed down, her competitive “win/lose” routine always resurfaced. Foolishly, I “went along to get along” to keep the peace.
I repeatedly asked myself:
Why can’t Sarah and I talk openly and honestly?
Why can’t we discuss and resolve our differences like mature adults?
Why can’t we find permanent resolution?
What does Sarah really want from me and for what purpose?
How can I extricate myself from this negative, unhealthy dynamic and live in my own personal peace?
Clearly, Sarah and I were both in pain and feeling victimized by each other. Sarah’s “everything-is-fine” pretense might have been a coping mechanism or maybe a useful avoidance strategy. Regardless, nothing was going to change unless I changed.
After 25 years and with a clear conscience, I flat out told Sarah that our friendship wasn’t working for me. I gave her an ultimatum: if she sincerely wanted my friendship, we would have an honest discussion and negotiate a permanent peace. If she wouldn’t cooperate, I wouldn’t expend anymore energy into an unhealthy, artificial connection. Sarah’s predictable “I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about” response struck the final blow. For her sake and mine, I permanently “pulled the plug” on our “friendship.”
Paradoxically, my dichotomous “if/then” mandate was my only path to attain a complete and lasting personal peace. Sarah’s free-agency to accept or decline was her choice. Since then, I have lived in complete peace and hope the same for Sarah.
Good Guy or Bad Guy? Saint or Sinner?
My experience with Sarah specifically illustrates the complexities involving dichotomous reasoning and its influence on intrapersonal (self-talk) and interpersonal interactions. The dynamic of “good or bad” and “saint or sinner” role play applies to all of us.
For example, when feeling boxed in by Sarah’s dichotomous and competitive interactions or “role-play,” I felt tempted to cast myself in the role of “saint” or “concerned friend.” Thus, with no other available role, I could cast Sarah in the role of “sinner” or “manipulator.” On the other hand, Sarah, in her dichotomous role play, could cast herself in the role of “saint” or “innocent victim,” and cast me in the role of “sinner” or “mean troublemaker” because I questioned her motives and set my own parameters.
Certainly, dichotomous role play can produce some hard to accept moral dilemmas. For instance, If I’m a sinner, how could I possibly be a saint? If I’m a saint, how could I possibly be a sinner?
American culture and politics encourage this dichotomous mindset. Hollywood movies and the media fixate on assigning the roles of “good guys” versus the “bad guys” narrative. Don’t we all want to be the good guys? This role, however, requires referencing and categorizing ourselves and others into “either/or” and “win/lose” dichotomies. Thus, in failing to acknowledge our capacity for wrongdoing, we easily relegate the “bad guy” or “sinner” role to others. Realistically, all of us act the parts of “good guy” or “saint” and “bad guy” or “sinner”; oftentimes, simultaneously. Either way, our acceptance of this truth provides us with an emotionally healthier, more spiritually balanced approach regarding ourselves and others. Surely, pulling ourselves out of toxic emotional quagmires takes courage and hard work. But, as we re-adjust, redefine, and refine our perceptions, we enjoy a more productive and fruitful journey to the promised land.
The “Kill with Kindness” Strategy
Previously, I explained Sarah’s sudden but temporary kindly acts toward me whenever I spoke my truth to her. I believe that Sarah’s sudden kindness signaled her desire to maintain some sort of connection to me even if it was a negative one. I concluded that Sarah’s on-again-off-again kindness was an opportunistic smoke screen or stage for Sarah to act in her roles of “kind saint” and “victim” within a protracted power struggle with me.
Regardless, the manipulative “kill with kindness” approach is very common in interpersonal conflict. Weaponized kindness is a strategical power play; its purpose is to attain the moral high ground to control and dominate. This maneuver is an oxymoron because to “kill with kindness” necessitates playing the manipulative role of “kind killer.” At the same time, it assigns the “sinner” or “bad guy” role to its opposition.
The “kind killer’s” sense of self is reinforced along with the “goodly” reputation or public image. Still, no matter how it’s packaged, “killing with kindness” is a covert, self-serving counterfeit because it relies on consistent deception and subterfuge. The “kind killer” tells us:
See how kind I am to you even though you are being mean to me? My manipulation and meanness doesn’t matter. My present kindness toward you automatically makes me the better person. And, I’m going to make sure everyone else knows how kind I am and how mean you are.
Conclusion
In the end, “either/or” and “win/lose” role play ultimately comes down to this:
- A life lived behind a carefully crafted mask while speaking well-rehearsed lines on a marked stage, forever seeking applause from a real or imagined audience.
- Nothing but a perfect performance on center stage is acceptable. But then comes the next performance. And the next … and the next … Furthermore, there’s only room for one star to occupy the front and center of the stage.
- After a performance, feelings of anxiety, insecurity, depression, distraction, and so forth, surface if the audience wasn’t large enough, or the applause loud enough or long enough.
- Feelings of pride, superiority, sanctimony, and arrogance are incited after each successful performance—especially when followed by repeated curtain calls and lots of attention.
- Inevitably, the stage lights fade to black, the curtain comes down, the audience disperses, and the actor/s returns home to ruminate about their performance, plan their next act, and then start rehearsing.
Truth and reality are difficult taskmasters, but they ultimately “set us free.” I refer to this long but worthy quote from Dr. Jordan Peterson regarding self-serving role-play versus reality:
“Now imagine you’re a person who has spent years carefully constructing a false image with elaborate masks stitched together through charm, manipulation, selective truth, and exaggerated confidence [or faux humility] … you become a master performer. Every interaction is curated, every emotion is filtered, every relationship is transactional. You don’t connect, you extract … for your own purposes. You depend on consensus. You need a collective agreement—spoken or unspoken—that says you are wonderful and special, as powerful as you believe yourself to be …
They [actors] don’t know who they are without someone watching them because they build their self-image and persona, and demand a supporting cast. Everyone has a role as “the admirer, the audience, the scapegoat.” But there’s no internal compass, no authentic self to return to and they become lost.
Underneath that dazzling performance is something shallow, something deeply fragile. They’re not afraid of merely being caught in the act … it’s far more profound; being seen, really seen—not as the character they play, but as the disordered uncertain individual beneath the bravado. Think about the mechanics of control. It isn’t always overt but often subtle. A look here, a carefully phrased comment there; it’s the manipulation of meaning, the distortion of reality to suit their ego.
They’ve spent years perfecting their art of control. Every smile is calculated, every compliment a transaction, every gesture laced with manipulation. It’s all designed to make you need them, to make you react to them, to make them essential to your emotional ecosystem. So, when they realize they no longer matter to you, it’s like discovering their entire performance was for nothing; a fear of being insignificant. A fear of being ordinary. A fear of being unseen, unwanted, and indifference confirms that fear. For all the false bravado, they are deeply insecure, and that’s why they crave admiration. It props up the fragile sense of self they’ve cobbled together from external sources.
At the moment one person pulls away from their narrative, it introduces doubt … a virus to the psyche. Now, they are no longer in control of the story anymore, and that’s intolerable because if they are not writing the narrative, who is? If they are not directing the performance, what happens when someone else takes the stage and tells the truth? They have lost control over another person’s perception of them. It’s the collapse of their scaffolding, and that’s why they try to smear your character the moment you step out of their orbit. If they can’t control you, maybe they can control how others see you. They’ll rewrite the story to cast themselves as the victim; you’ll be painted as ungrateful, dangerous, unstable because they are trying to regain control over the broader narrative.
Manipulation isn’t power; it’s fear dressed up as confidence. Real control doesn’t come from domination; it comes from coherence and integrity. The truth doesn’t need to be managed the way a lie does. The truth stands on its own. The truth is louder than they are. The only real power is in truth, accountability, and integrity”
(Youtube. “Rules for Life).
Here’s to throwing off the mask, cleaning up the act, trashing the script, firing the director, clearing the stage, lowering the curtain, exiting the theatre, and getting out of show business.
Home is where we are safely ensconced in the Savior’s arms. In mortality, we learn the significance of making Christ our home. In this undertaking, we’re neither complete saints nor complete sinners. Christ’s love is not dichotomous. No matter how saintly and sinful we are, He loves us and meets us where we’re at. When handing our masks and our vulnerability over to the Savior, we become vessels of increased grace, humility, spirituality, and power. And our ability to offer grace to ourselves and others proportionally increases.
I’ll take another serving of humble pie, please,
Julie
