Your personal Tumblr journey starts here
I'm gonna be brutally honest here and projecting a lot so be warned fellow kinnies
An important figure in your life (the orphanage “headmaster”) taught you that people who don’t help others with their existence do not deserve to live, and it would be better if they were dead.
The irony is, you only extend this belief to yourself, because you recognize that in extending it to others, you would be believing some other people do not deserve to live. And you recognize how cruel, terrible and wrong that is. Yet, you cannot see how cruel and terrible it is to yourself.
Since you believe the value of your life comes from how much you benefit others, you try to help people as much as you can. To others, it seems like you are a kind and selfless person, but deep down, you have two things motivating you:
• the suffocating fear of being unworthy of living if you aren't of any use to people around you
• the rush of "selfish” joy you feel when you have a great impact on someone, when you are the most important person to someone and are irreplaceable to them. Because these make you feel useful and worthy of living.
Because of these, you have the tendency to form codependent relationships, with you as the "giver". It ensures that someone always needs you, so you are always worthy of living. You may even become slightly manipulative, befriending and trying to become close to those who seem more in need of help, more isolated, more lonely.
Because they're more likely to need you, as desperately as you need to be needed.
Because you help people out of the selfish motivation to make yourself feel better, so that you feel like you deserve to live more, you feel endlessly guilty. Because.. an actually kind person would help others, for others to be happy, not for themselves, right?
Additionally, since the belief that helping others gives you the permission to live was taught to you, you feel your kindness was a taught behavior as well. You feel that at your core, you are a selfish person who was just taught not to be, and that makes all the selfless actions you’ve done worthless. Maybe you approach caring for others in a calculating way: memorize their interests, check up on them, listen to them; these will make people happy.
Guilt for your existence, for your mistakes, for failing to help people, is the biggest driver of your emotions. Guilt controls your life, and it is an exhausting emotion to live with.
You’re not concerned about other people or your appearances, reputations or social status, because how people treat others around them and their hearts is much more important to you.
The belief that chains you to the cycle of guilt is one in your past. The headmaster in your life is gone now, but the flashbacks and words remain. Why is that? Is it because you became so used to them, that they kept you safe? They were all you ever knew, the only way you knew how to navigate the world. With no other guide, you are terrified of letting go of this belief, which defines your existence.
Maybe you are terrified, if you let go of this belief, you will become a terrible and selfish person. Or maybe you are scared of becoming better, because it would feel like your past never happened.
Okay thanks for reading! Will post part 2 when this gets 20+ notes :D