I am not anyone else

Now, before I could believe in myself, I have to know who I am. But first and foremost, I need to know who I am not:

• I am not anyone else

• Everyone is different, individual and unique

• What applies to everyone else does not apply to me

• Someone else’s misfortune, tragedy, illness is not mine.

• Despite my conditioning in childhood, I am not benefitting others by sympathizing and taking on their misfortunes

• I am not benefitting myself by applying the misfortune of others to myself.

• I cannot avoid the misfortunes of others because avoidance is not helpful

• I need to learn to view the misfortunes or fortunes of others as an outsider – separate from them.

• Just as others are not me, I am not others.

Think about a doctor in a hospital. The doctor is conditioned to see himself as separate from his patients. If doctors would behave like I do emotionally, they would always be applying all of their patients’ illnesses to themselves and wonder if they themselves have the problems that their patients have. Similarly and possibly more intensely, a psychotherapist cannot engage with patients with severe mental illnesses and start to wonder if they too are going crazy, hearing voices, bipolar, schizophrenic, etc. Therapists need to see themselves as individuals unto themselves who went to school and obtained a degree in mental health. This independent individual, licensed to treat individuals with mental illness now opens a practice or works in a facility where s/he listens to patients who are separate people with their individual issues. The therapist speaks with them. The therapist diagnoses the patient. And the therapist treats the patient. The therapist does not become the patient or think that they may have the same issue as the patient.

Think about the therapist I called, the psychiatrist I contacted, or the neurologist I consulted with and visited. They see patients all day and hear about and get deeply involved in their issues. But they do not become intimate or personal with their issues. They understand the roles: I am me, the doctor, and you are you, the patient. You can tell me all about what you are experiencing and feeling and I will listen to your story and tell you want I think you can do to change the way you think, feel and behave.

I have a problem where my sympathetic portion of my brain is overly sensitized to things it perceives. That, coupled with paranoia and hypochondria, and you have an individual who is so overly sympathetic that every tragedy or illness triggers sympathy and personalization of the other person’s tragedy. One night I’m listening to a news story about mental health issues resulting from years of war in Liberia and thinking that the severe mental illnesses resulting from the extreme trauma the people there incurred applies to me, and the next morning I’m reading the transcript of Michael Jackson’s last words, and thinking that I have the same mental disorder that he had and that ultimately resulted in his early death.

The common denominator is that in both cases:

• I am applying things that happened to others to myself

• The individuals to whom I am comparing myself are extremely, beyond the ability to contrast, different from me

• The individuals to whom I am comparing myself have endured trauma that is extremely, beyond the ability to contrast, different from me

• The individuals whose issues I am “adopting” are extremely, beyond the ability to contrast, different from each other

• The individuals whose issues I am “adopting” don’t benefit from me internalizing their tragedy

• The individuals whose issues I am “adopting” do not want me to internalize their tragedy

• The individuals whose issues I am “adopting” would never care enough about me to internalize my tragedies

This is not a hardwire issue as described earlier. It is a learned behavior. I got it from my father who conditioned me to believe that if you have enough worry, sympathy and pain for someone else, you may actually be able to help them or make their problems easier to handle.

The problem is, that it’s not true. In fact, it’s the furthest thing from the truth. And since it’s not true, it needs to be changed. And the way to change the behavior of internalizing and reacting emotionally to the tragedies of others is to:

• Recognize and acknowledge the behavior or emotional reaction

• Recognize that it stems from a false belief system

• Recognize what the false belief system

• Challenge the false belief system to prove that it is in fact false

• Adopt a healthy belief system

• Begin to react behaviorally and emotionally based on the true belief system.