“Coffee, meringue and all in openwork – envy as I eat my Breakfast,”

Wonderful Breakfast and stunning dinner, well-groomed mother neat children, a tireless traveler, conqueror of the waves, the peaks, the depths of a Stranger… a beautiful life photo in social networks is a genuine envy, and even drives disheartened. What is the reverse side of the glossy success and what makes people imitate it on the Internet – says psychologist Natalia Skuratovskaya.

Photo: unsplash

  • Social networks distort the perception of reality, psychiatrists think
  • Therapist: What’s hiding happy social networks?
  • “Shame!” “Horror!”, “Please repost!” – how social networks use our emotions
  • Photo from a birthday party where he was not invited – what more can hurt children in social networks

We found out that this is a success

– She lives in an old apartment with peeling plaster, torn Wallpaper and furniture of the epoch of the first years of the plan. It looks like from the kitchen table of crumbs, spreads out on the area openwork napkin and take picture to instagram a Cup of coffee with thick foam and meringue on the saucer. None of the followers knows how she lives, but many have time in the morning to envy how she eats. What’s going on?

People trying to mislead others in an imaginary success. Simulate still life, beautiful life. What motivates him at this point, hard to say. Maybe there are no forces to tidy up the apartment, maybe no desire. And obleplennuyu live. But there is a desire to collect huskies and hear from others: “Ah!”

This is the normal approach. For such a strategy can stand a fairly innocuous (in psychological terms) a desire, especially without straining, to obtain from the outside world for confirmation of their own success. This success without self-motivation, no “suck it up”, without the “manage all”. Someone is not necessary everywhere, someone does not need a perfect order in the house.

– Why do we envy someone else’s success?

What is success? We found out that this is a success? Whose criteria, strap? They are our own or have we learned them in the process of education? Maybe they are forced upon us by our parents, the point of reference audience?

Some girls, for example, I want to marry a tycoon. They study the lives of businessmen, their girlfriends, wives, because such a life is for them the criterion of success. All that in the future these girls will make the attempt to at least appear to represent compliance with this criterion.

Many of us learned parenting programme, where success is a career, a high position, a significant Bank account, confidence in the future that will certainly on a rainy day was postponed.

In other words, people have quite different success criteria. Some rely on the active, confronting them passively, others rich, others beautiful (although the last category of the evaluation). Someone thinks a beautiful woman is well-groomed and dressed in expensive brands, and some as natural, by which unnoticed that she is making at least some effort to be beautiful. It doesn’t matter what the markers of success conning people. It is important – they are his own or he uncritically from someone learned.

– What does it affect? Less jealous?

If the criteria are internalized with no critics from my side, the mimic man can be anything, but will definitely be unhappy. It will “piss off”, if there appear success criteria that do not coincide with significant for him. It will annoy even those criteria that are close to him, but to reach them he is not.

And all that we bring from childhood?

Exactly. Many of my childhood stand the idea of: “just the way you are, will not love you”. Therefore, we have to show that you’re on the five plus. You need to be the ideal child to parents, the ideal student for the school. Need to justify waiting, to hide failure, then you will love. A person becomes important to demonstrate how smart, mysterious, sudden, how unfortunate. Search approval, as well as search of mercy – the story about love.

Some of us whiners demonstration, other demonstration successful. Both – a way to attract attention, and attract the sort of attention in which a person feels a deficit. To get approval and faith shown in the picture (if the picture is beautiful – a matter of principle) is a confirmation of self-worth. If a person is always complaining about life, he seeks above all love-care. This is a story about “I want to handle.”

Interestingly, the plaintive posts in social networks and their authors have their audience, and thus clearly have the support and sympathy. There came haters saying “get yourself together, lift your ass off the couch”, but these haters definitely jumped a crowd of sympathizers. Such is the triangle of co-dependent relationships. Accident going around the circle of rescuers that his background feel successful, they feel good. Himself complaining gets a portion of the support, attention and the right to show this side of life, and even under the cheers: “you are brave, not afraid to stand in Aglantzia!”

In Orthodox asceticism, there are two things: “pride” and “thin pride”. The latter is a situation when a man is proud of his humility, asceticism, forgiveness. But all these different varieties of the same sin.

Natalia Skuratovskaya. Photo: Yefim, Richman

– Assume that others show their success because they have problems with self-worth. But why do we even care of other people’s systems? Why someone else’s success is still annoying?

The causes can be natural and unnatural (neurotic). We contend, because intuitively feel that all is not as it seems. Feel discomfort from the insincerity of the other. In fact, anyone who does not likes to be lied to. No matter in what form: whether the success of exaggerating or embellishing neschastnoi. We feel that this is not the whole truth, one side of the coin. We hate when our emotions are being manipulated. This is a natural irritation.

But imagine a man brought up in the conditional love. He had similar success criteria with what he sees in others. However, he understands that to this bar not to jump. And post in instagram, any other social networks, where everything looks great, where the screen looks a mother of five children with perfect hair and home, which and the children are all prodigies, is seen as a rebuke to myself. And this is a neurotic irritation.

And how do we respond to accusations? The reaction of most, especially the vulnerable and do not feel their own value, people say: “Yes, he is a fool” or “You will all die”. On the one hand, it is envy, on the other – the inclusion of resistance, the desire to find a flaw, to regain peace, to make sure that “I’m not that washed-up loser.”

Likes become more important than real relationships

– Those who sticks out his life, always accompanied by those who hide. Existing in social networks, they have nothing ever to say for themselves.

Not only in social networks. It is quite traditional, especially for people the generation of our parents and grandparents, who have lived life with the idea of “keep your head down”, “don’t draw attention”, “don’t tell about success, because to be envied”. But this is not irritating, because the others know nothing about them.

But two decades ago, people almost all were not spread about his personal life and income, and those who “chatted”, considered not very smart. What is the breakthrough that we are witnessing? Where is this rampant desire to show their lives, sometimes prikrasa her?

First, there is a convenient tool for demonstrating the success of the social network. This has never happened. Before you could brag about to her friends and relatives, which sooner or later bragging annoying. This served as a deterrent. Now you can brag to all the world, knowing that any audience but will catch up.

And if you brag about regularly, if not going a circle of admirers and haters (“Yes they are jealous of me”), it will feed the self-esteem of the bouncer.

Second, with the intrinsic value of people are bad. In traditional society, the success criteria were unified. Standards were few for whom it was important wealth for some people, scientific or creative success, for someone – create a strong family with children. The number of standards was limited.

Today’s generation of people under thirty (and it is a global process, it concerns not only Russia) grew up in a situation completely vague criteria of success. To answer the question “what is success?” is not obtained, because the answer is facing a different paradigm and ideology.

And again, blame the Internet?

Throw in the space of public discussion a new paradigm due to the Internet costs nothing.

Disorderly in any case, selects role models. If it makes a teenager or a man, by the degree of understanding close to the teenager, he chooses the most notable samples, that is, those who shout louder.

It is not only in the Internet. A certain role of mass media, pop culture, and which offers models of success. Our parents would call them vulgar, vulgar, not intelligent, in a word, would not approve. But parents, no one asks. But all know the story about “five seconds to attract the attention of” either you’re taking out about all the best and immediately or didn’t see.

Another important psychological change in the era of social networks is the lack of objective criteria. Their own value, people began to calculate the number of subscribers, likes, views. It becomes more important than real relationships with real people.

– But why?

Yes, because it’s clear how to get likes and views. But how to get hold of a real person?!

As a psychologist I spoke with teenage bloggers, with channels in YouTube that have tens and hundreds of thousands of subscribers. They are all very lonely. They come to therapy to talk, but not about his success.

Photo: unsplash

If you build the image of the glossy, prosperous life, which strongly goes against the way a person lives in reality, there is a danger that this gap will begin to devour the person. At some point inevitably comes the understanding that the approval of the fans and likes are not the real you, and your fake personality. The image of devouring the true self. Triggered the mechanism in neurosis.

Authentic self in the paddock, it can not be shown because the circumstances of upbringing it happened or you used to be ashamed of yourself. There are about neurotic I am that man makes the world, hoping to get approval, love and support. But once there is an internal crisis and people understand that the false self is a parasite, it takes away life, the chances of a real relationship, takes away close people.

To get close to people can not, for fear that the other will find what you really are. With this mechanism of neurosis are related, for example, a situation where successful bloggers suddenly quit public life. Such stories are popular in the West. The fact of the matter is in the news meet the “Oh, what would YouTube’s star, millionaire so-and-so left”. It turns out that left to treat depression. A year poluchivshij from depression, begins to live offline.

By the way, in a safe position are irrational bloggers. People who Express in the social network all without a trace. Often this is due to nature. Extroverts tend to tell everything about himself, it is difficult to think alone. This person is congruent to itself, organic. He does what he wants, not what you hoped to get approval and support.

What I really want is the most difficult question

– Does the pursuit of someone else’s success itself? Can we hope that one day he will cease to envy?

Is not itself held nothing at all. The chance at freedom is a deep internal crisis that happens once with the person.

And only?

For many years I have conducted business training for managers. It was a training on leadership, about the ability to motivate staff about the development of emotional intelligence. To understand own motivation, the participants were asked to answer the question: what I want in the future ten years or as a result of your life? Often, the answer was an amount of money. People are seriously saying you want to have a personal fortune, net of tax, in billions of dollars.

Then I asked the following question: what will you buy for billion? Previously, the money was a paper that can be folded into a stack, and now the ones and zeroes in the virtual space. When money is the goal in life, a person wants them to buy something, not necessarily material. For example, want to gain influence, power, social status and the illusion of love and even acceptable self-image.

Ironically, often millions of dollars to the right person only to stop feeling like a loser. Although the true goal is just to be loved.

When I asked the last question, there is a theatrical pause, quite painful. I give people 15 minutes (group training) to admit to yourself and others what you want really.

Understand if the person is caught (e.g., being on the verge of depression) and realized that not living your life if realize that change takes effort, he will have to answer the question: “What do I really want?” The question is particularly difficult for those who are accustomed to substitute their desires for external standards.

– But “what you want” is a difficult question.

Incredibly difficult. But after the response begins release. If a child is lucky, the person learns to recognize and Express their desires in the age of 2 to 3 years, and 5 years make sure that this can even be achieved. But if did not work – you have to suffer.

First you need to believe in their right to want somethingand not to fulfill someone else’s program success. Secondly, we have aboutto realize that “my desires can be fulfilled”. Want scary, especially to those who carries the program “nobody cares what you want” or “what you want is stupidity, you need to find a rich husband, go to College, to go abroad to make a career…”. If a person has lived with this all my childhood, adolescence and youth, it is likely that he had forgotten how to want.

And someone did not have time to learn. Remember the old joke?

– Sonny, go home.

– Mom, I’m cold?

– No, you’re hungry.

So, to free themselves from the yoke of success, as well as envy and state “I hate”, from the desire to humiliate those who doth protest too much/complains – is problematic. For this we need not only to understand what you want, but to recognize a right to want it. To admit that such a fate is worthy of respect.

There are many people who do not make a career, cross stitching and happy. In General, do not aspire to riches is not a defeat, especially if you want creative freedom, if you dream to travel with a backpack… Career and social success it is absurd to oppose what you love.

Photo: unsplash

– But what about women who are invested in children, feeling shame and frustration due to the fact that the dropouts? They do it for the good.

And what about the children, in which the program is laid the “you must live instead of me my life, achieve my dreams”?

As a student I was tutoring, preparing to the University. I was a student. Her mother is a merchandiser, a father without higher education, but the Director of a large vegetable base. For the Soviet era – status and wealth, which is attached to the complex is the only daughter to enroll in the best University.

For young ladies chose Philology, although she could not read a single book, and in the test dictation of half a page made over 70 errors. Generally, the teenager was absolutely crushed by overbearing parents, learned helplessness is obvious.

I decided to mentally prepare her father and mother, that my daughter is unlikely to succeed. As a student-psychologist, ventured to try to help the adolescent in psychological terms, to find the motivation and get rid of the stupor that prevented to learn – and she told me about the dream to be a kindergarten teacher. The girl did not want any of the Institute or a scientific career – it was only kindergarten, she was getting real pleasure and was happy, coming up with games and spending time with young children.

Worth a lot of effort to convince parents that the kindergarten – worthy dream. Convinced. A month before admission, we stopped classes. In late summer the call: “Can rejoice or sympathize, I entered the Moscow state pedagogical University at the faculty of Philology. Parents insisted”.

Then I was soaked in cold sweat, after all, dumped her at the finish line, but it turned out that the essay she wrote on 4 and decided on the second course translated into pre-school education. Thank God, she believed in her life that could be.

Parents, dissatisfied with life, which, too, someone tried to prove that successful, who felt his own inadequacy to an external image, make their own children a tool to achieve success. This is a chain reaction.

– That is neszhimaemoi?

In fact, becoming obsolete. Please note, the generation of “20 years and about” clearly denies the criteria of success of previous generations. They don’t need no career, no money. They want to travel and communicate with like-minded people. The paradigm has changed. Generally, paradigms are changing waves. Now this.

The previous generation was fond of downshifting. People came to the handle, throwing all departed who is in bungalows in Goa who is in the hut in the forest. Left to console themselves with the fact that it was spiritual life, and finally, nobody needs to prove anything. This is happiness. Another thing, the kind of happiness you can get, not moving.

– Spiritual life – is not a panacea for all ills?

When looking for a cure, find usually self-deception. Always an important motivation a person comes to so-called spiritual life. We don’t know what’s going on inside. And the man himself might not know. There is a certain religious practice, but spiritual she or Antigona – you can only handle the fruit.

For example, many people run to religion from a sense of his own failure, as in protection. “No, the money and career I don’t need” – say these people trying to devalue hung them values.

– What is necessary?

Quietly admit that some people need the money and career, I do not blame them, and I no longer needed. Want to be a Baker, a seamstress, a gardener, to live in harmony with oneself and the world, have a lot of free time to work in the fresh air, with no one to compete, to be happy.

And someone to do this, go to the monastery and be happy there.

In other words, the success is a story about love, about how you love life, know and love their dreams?

And this story begins with how I feel loved. To love and not be afraid of being abandoned and rejected, it is necessary love to. Motivational slogans don’t work here. Motivators – demotivate. If a person is, he does not need whipping.

But if he feels that he has no strength, apathy (there is the concept of “intelligent laziness”, when intuition suggests that we do not go that way, emotional sphere yells: “Stop, you’re wasting your time and energy, nothing good will happen”), then, spurring, he will end up having a nervous breakdown. It’s guaranteed.

Neurosis may be the opportunity to confess yourself. To understand what I wanted. Someone, alas, such a discovery need a heart attack or stroke.

And only in a hospital bed, half-paralyzed man begins to think, and what he wants in life really.

If you understand their desires, give yourself the right to want it and to realize it, then the usual techniques of the pressure of others, stereotypes and clichés, labels and criteria will lose power over you. And genuine the success of others – will entertain or inspire, not to cause envy.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.