Just a Bully

The way I was raised, I never felt good enough. If I got a B+, why wasn’t it an A? It felt like a tiny flaw (at LEAST) was always found in whatever I was doing, and I was chastised for it. Always. How could I be so STUPID as to forget XYZ? I never felt I received praise, and I was always terrified of screwing up. And if I did do something right, it was expected, and we’d just be on to the next thing I screwed up on.

Then I got to college, and I saw how, based on those standards, everyone around me was a complete screw-up. Everyone else was an idiot. I was shocked and horrified. But guess what? That made me feel a whole lot better about myself. For the first time ever, I felt like I was doing okay. I may not be perfect, but I sure am a hell of a lot better than all these other idiots. And so began my judgmental reign.

Really, I’m just a bully. A compassionate bully who generally doesn’t say stuff to people’s faces, but a bully nevertheless. The more I notice other people screwing up, the more I can pat myself on the back for being smarter or better than they are. That’s my praise.

So my being judgmental is just to make me feel better about myself. Just like anyone else who is judgmental. Just like the horrible people who comment on YouTube and the people who viciously attack their opposite political parties. I have boundaries, and it may be on different things, but it’s exactly the same problem. Great…

How do I work on this? I guess every time I have a judgmental thought I need to turn it around on myself and tell myself it is okay to do or be whatever “it” is. But how do I believe myself? I don’t right now. If someone makes a really stupid decision, I can’t convince myself that it isn’t bad to make such a decision. If someone doesn’t know something completely obvious, it’s hard to not feel like they are an idiot, and that’s a bad thing. And I’m terrified of having people ever think I’m an idiot, so I make damn sure never to come off that way.

I’ll have to meditate on it. It’s funny how freeing others from your judgment is tightly tied to freeing yourself from judgment.