Divorce taught me that I had been very codependent in my first marriage. Many would argue that my ex-wife was narcissistic. As KEW readers and listeners know, I don’t like either of those words but I think they describe some very human attributes.
Some people are very confident and others are not so much. The extreme ends of this continuum result in things like narcissism and codependency.
I have a whole episode about this dynamic:
But what those very human traits or characteristics really represent is a dichotomy of self-awareness and fear.
Extremely (and often unjustifiably) confident people can easily become narcissistic. Please see this episode for more about that:
Similarly, under confident people can often look to others to take responsibility when they question their own worth.
One side is characterized by an unnatural LACK of fear, and the other a healthy or perhaps unhealthy ABUNDANCE of fear.
Or maybe both sides are about fear.
In this Episode, I explore the interaction between more narcissistic people and more codependent people. More importantly, I investigate human relationships and how they often contain attributes of this continuum.
I argue that self-awareness creates a responsibility to bravely face our fears. And perhaps the lack of del-awareness perpetuates an unnatural avoidance of this investigation.
I am starting to think that everything is either a retreat from or a call toward fear.
And that the opposite of fear is not only bravery but love. More on that next week.
YouTube video: https://youtu.be/0OrUiDqaUnQ