Armchair flattery - The lazy False Self

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

I’ve coined a new phrase since my run in with a Borderline... “Armchair Flattery”. It means we can create a false self without having to actually DO anything. It’s what a magician would call “Smokes and Mirrors”. Lets face it, it doesn’t really take much effort to impress a borderline. You have a guitar in the lounge, you know, the one your ex-girlfriend bought you when you said you wanted to learn guitar, the one you can play about half of three songs on and a bit of the Corus from a forth before you gave up. When you’re borderline sees you play (mediumly well) the only song you know, she all of a sudden thinks you are the lead guitarist for Cold Play.

When you tell her about the time you took a few months out to travel a bit of Australia and Thailand you are a free spirited traveller. Tell her you like the outdoors and you are a camping, hiking, canoeing, bear poo eating, camp fire starting bear grills who shuns society.

You are soo special and you didn’t even have to lift a finger. All you had to do was tell her you are and add the odd prop here and there to convince her.

The false self is such a lazy b*gger!

The twist of course is we all realise the borderline was nothing more than a fragile mirror that can be easily shattered and we are left with nothing more than broken pieces.

We are left alone now... Do we desperately try to fix the shattered mirror and get cut by its spiky shards in the process?... do we look for a new fragile shiny mirror?... .or do we get off that lazy armchair and go out and DO what we saw in ourselves in the first place!. We can go traveling, go camping, learn the guitar, learn a new language, meet new people and do things that we fear and challenge ourselves. Dive out of our comfort zones and discover ourselves in ways we never have before.

Armchair flattery - The Lazy False Self

[Visitor]

I’ve coined a new phrase since my run in with a Borderline... “Armchair Flattery”. It means we can create a false self without having to actually DO anything. It’s what a magician would call “Smokes and Mirrors”. Lets face it, it doesn’t really take much effort to impress a borderline. You have a guitar in the lounge, you know, the one your ex-girlfriend bought you when you said you wanted to learn guitar, the one you can play about half of three songs on and a bit of the Corus from a forth before you gave up. When you’re borderline sees you play (mediumly well) the only song you know, she all of a sudden thinks you are the lead guitarist for Cold Play.

When you tell her about the time you took a few months out to travel a bit of Australia and Thailand you are a free spirited traveller. Tell her you like the outdoors and you are a camping, hiking, canoeing, bear poo eating, camp fire starting bear grills who shuns society.

You are soo special and you didn’t even have to lift a finger. All you had to do was tell her you are and add the odd prop here and there to convince her.

The false self is such a lazy b*gger!

The twist of course is we all realise the borderline was nothing more than a fragile mirror that can be easily shattered and we are left with nothing more than broken pieces.

We are left alone now... Do we desperately try to fix the shattered mirror and get cut by its spiky shards in the process?... do we look for a new fragile shiny mirror?... .or do we get off that lazy armchair and go out and DO what we saw in ourselves in the first place!. We can go traveling, go camping, learn the guitar, learn a new language, meet new people and do things that we fear and challenge ourselves. Dive out of our comfort zones and discover ourselves in ways we never have before.

Armchair flattery - The Lazy False Self

[Blimblam]

if one went out and did those things would it make that ideal person any more real?

[fromheeltoheal]

So someone shares a tidbit of their lives with a borderline, the borderline extrapolates it in idealization and fantasy-seeking, the person enjoys the buzz, agrees with the borderline and creates a lazy false self, which is living a lie.  So now we have a liar together with someone with a personality disorder, match made in heaven!

Do we desperately try to fix the shattered mirror and get cut by its spiky shards in the process?... do we look for a new fragile shiny mirror?... .or do we get off that lazy armchair and go out and DO what we saw in ourselves in the first place!.

Are we doing what we saw in ourselves or the borderline saw?  How about we lose the mirrors, look inside authentically, and build a true life from that place?

[rotiroti]

“Armchair Flattery”

Well said! I will agree with fh2h, while the pwBPD did see the goodness in us and certainly did fantasize/idealize certain traits, i think it's an opportunity to look inside ourselves without the highlights. Either way, having learned from the experience and to grow from it is crucial

To add a bit, I knew my uBPDex for about 10 years. I've realized she had a long time to really get to know me. While her criticisms were hurtful, there were truth in them as well.

[Sunfl0wer]

if one went out and did those things would it make that ideal person any more real?

I guess not.  It's all perception.  How we choose to percieve ourself.  I can be a closet wife beater, but choose to percieve myself as a world traveler and person of adventure.  So which is real?  Both? Neither?

[Blimblam]

if one went out and did those things would it make that ideal person any more real?

I guess not.  It's all perception.  How we choose to percieve ourself.  I can be a closet wife beater, but choose to percieve myself as a world traveler and person of adventure.  So which is real?  Both? Neither?

I hope you don't mind sunflower but I am going to use this post to sort of explain how I see the idea of the self.  In my initial question it was in some ways a loaded rhetorical question.  It is obvious where my opinion lays within it and what is lacking is a response that provides my desired answer.  to quote Lacan, " desire is the desire of the other," and in doing so to be recognized by the other. We create our identity in reference to the lack of the other. How I understand the self to be is just a series of events just as that layer after layer and like a moving picture show and our mind weaves it all together to create a sort of consistant flow of who we perceive ourself to be. Except it is more like an oil painting and each time we identify ourselves in relation to the desire of an other it is like a new reference point and layer of paint added to the painting.  That it is actually a jumbled mess but like in the moving picture our mind fills in the blanks to create something that seems consistant that we can identify as the I.

[enlighten me]

Like blimblam says our self is layered. I like to think of it as a wardrobe. We have many outfits in there. If our pwBPD see's us as something then that outfit may be worn more.

I was taken in by my exs opinion of who I was. Istarted to see myself through her rose tinted eyes. I managed to ground myself fairly quickly though. Do we do this because we are uncertain of who we are? Or is it that we are just unhappy with our lives?

[hergestridge]

Interesting point. The thing is I always did it "all the way" and my wife didn't appreciate that much. She wanted new sensations. Hard worked never paid off with my exwife. The things I put effort into, like my career and my art, were things that mostly made her feel bored, annoyed or anxious. If I was to impress her I had to go for something like a new set of clothes (preferably something that was totally out of character).

With time I realized that what my wife despised about me was my strength of character. A very destructive situation.

[Visitor]

How about we lose the mirrors, look inside authentically, and build a true life from that place?

Yes exactly... I’m somewhat fascinated with the concept of mirroring.  They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery so you can imagine how powerful and alluring this is to a person with a low self-esteem. People with a low self-esteem tend to look outside themselves for validation (everybody does to some extent). When we do this the other person giving us feedback can either make us feel happy with their nice comments or bad with their not so nice comments.

Like when a person doesn’t feel they are attractive they will look into every mirror they pass, some mirrors are good mirrors and they will say “wow I look good today” and some mirrors are bad mirrors that will make them think they look like a bag of cr*p. A person with low self-esteem will use others as a mirror to see themselves constantly and there is no better mirror on this earth than the idolisation stage of a borderline relationship.

So, take the mirror away (which they always seem to do) and what are you left with?... .like the person who feels they are physically ugly you are left with your own perception. You are left with nothing more than who you feel and think you are, which for most of us is shallow, shakeable, self-loathing place. So what are you going to do now?... .yes yes we all know what we do first and that’s frantically search for our mirror that once reflected our true selves, but like EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THIS BOARD you come to realise it is gone, there is no more warm glowing, ego stoking, drama filled crazy mirror for us to look into anymore. It’s just YOU and your own thoughts and perceptions, a dark place of loneliness, heartbreak and a crushed ego to boot.  

When I think of my own experience with a borderline it really was the best thing that could have happened to me. It forced introspection. I started to search for answers as to why it happened and why I let it go on for so long. What I have come up with is fascinating. I am being forced to reopen doors and revisit things in my past I never wanted to look at again. Not to mention things that happened that I had no idea would have such profound affect on my adult life. What awaits at the end of this dark dense woodland is a stronger you, a more aware you. You will not be the same as the person you were before you came into contact with a disorder and that is a good thing.

I have gone inside myself and that is where I am finding all the answers.

[Blimblam]

visitor the mirroring is a very very interesting topic I agree. I am not sure if you have seen the film Solaris, a Steven Soderbergh film, but it is a very trippy film about mirroring and highly influenced by Lacan.

Within psychoanalysis there is some extremely interesting concepts of mirroring and how those mirrors have been internalized etc. Especially through the work of Lacan here is a link to a university module that simplifies a lot of Lacans concepts. Lacan himself is extremely difficult to read and secondary materials is, in my opinion, the way to go if his concepts appeal to you. There is a stage he calls the Mirror stage, and the gaze which is very interesting stuff.

https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/lacandevelop.html

Also in attachment theory they deal extensively with the concept of mirroring and though quite a long and clinical book it is the one I most highly recommend.

www.amazon.com/Affect-Regulation-Mentalization-Development-Self/dp/1590511611/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437747518&sr=1-1&keywords=fonagy+peter&pebp=1437747526866&perid=0TZFGQJ0H78N4BJSPA2J

[fromheeltoheal]

When I think of my own experience with a borderline it really was the best thing that could have happened to me. It forced introspection. I started to search for answers as to why it happened and why I let it go on for so long. What I have come up with is fascinating. I am being forced to reopen doors and revisit things in my past I never wanted to look at again. Not to mention things that happened that I had no idea would have such profound affect on my adult life. What awaits at the end of this dark dense woodland is a stronger you, a more aware you. You will not be the same as the person you were before you came into contact with a disorder and that is a good thing.

I have gone inside myself and that is where I am finding all the answers.

I agree Visitor.  Mirroring is common and ubiquitous among us social animals, and when I was younger I looked almost exclusively for external validation, I had no core as I put it, and what someone thought of me could totally elate or depress me.  My ability to self-validate has gotten a lot better with age, although I fell for the buzz of the borderline reflection as much as the next guy and when it was withdrawn I was crushed.  The upside was, like you, it forced me to be introspective, self-reflective, and also to consider external validation that much less reliable, so better step up the self-validation a little more.  And part of that is to manage who I let through the boundaries, no room for enablers or invalidators, but validation from people who care about me and want the best for me is invaluable.

[Blimblam]

"6-18 months of age. This stage, which Lacan terms the "mirror stage," was a central moment in your development. The "mirror stage" entails a "libidinal dynamism" (Écrits 2) caused by the young child's identification with his own image (what Lacan terms the "Ideal-I" or "ideal ego". For Lacan, this act marks the primordial recognition of one's self as "I," although at a point "before it is objectified in the dialectic of identification with the other, and before language restores to it, in the universal, its function as subject" (Écrits 2). In other words, this recognition of the self's image precedes the entrance into language, after which the subject can understand the place of that image of the self within a larger social order, in which the subject must negotiate his or her relationship with others. Still, the mirror stage is necessary for the next stage, since to recognize yourself as "I" is like recognizing yourself as other ("yes, that person over there is me" this act is thus fundamentally self-alienating. Indeed, for this reason your feelings towards the image were mixed, caught between hatred ("I hate that version of myself because it is so much better than me" and love ("I want to be like that image".Note This "Ideal-I" is important precisely because it represents to the subject a simplified, bounded form of the self, as opposed to the turbulent chaotic perceptions, feelings, and needs felt by the infant. This "primordial Discord" (Écrits 4) is particularly formative for the subject, that is, the discord between, on the one hand, the idealizing image in the mirror and, on the other hand, the reality of one's body between 6-18 months ("the signs of uneasiness and motor unco-ordination of the neo-natal months" [Écrits 4]): "The mirror stage is a drama whose internal thrust is precipitated from insufficiency to anticipation—and which manufactures for the subject, caught up in the lure of spatial identification, the succession of phantasies that extends from a fragmented body-image to a form of its totality that I shall call orthopaedic—and, lastly, to the assumption of the armour of an alienating identity, which will mark with its rigid structure the subject's entire mental development" (Écrits 4). This misrecognition or méconnaissance (seeing an ideal-I where there is a fragmented, chaotic body) subsequently "characterizes the ego in all its structures" (Écrits 6). In particular, this creation of an ideal version of the self gives pre-verbal impetus to the creation of narcissistic phantasies in the fully developed subject. It establishes what Lacan terms the "imaginary order" and, through the imaginary, continues to assert its influence on the subject even after the subject enters the next stage of development. "

"2) The Imaginary Order. This concept corresponds to the mirror stage (see the Lacan module on psychosexual development) and marks the movement of the subject from primal need to what Lacan terms "demand." As the connection to the mirror stage suggests, the "imaginary" is primarily narcissistic even though it sets the stage for the fantasies of desire. (For Lacan's understanding of desire, see the next module.) Whereas needs can be fulfilled, demands are, by definition, unsatisfiable; in other words, we are already making the movement into the sort of lack that, for Lacan, defines the human subject. Once a child begins to recognize that its body is separate from the world and its mother, it begins to feel anxiety, which is caused by a sense of something lost. The demand of the child, then, is to make the other a part of itself, as it seemed to be in the child's now lost state of nature (the neo-natal months). The child's demand is, therefore, impossible to realize and functions, ultimately, as a reminder of loss and lack. (The difference between "demand" and "desire," which is the function of the symbolic order, is simply the acknowledgement of language, law, and community in the latter; the demand of the imaginary does not proceed beyond a dyadic relation between the self and the object one wants to make a part of oneself.) The mirror stage corresponds to this demand in so far as the child misrecognizes in its mirror image a stable, coherent, whole self, which, however, does not correspond to the real child (and is, therefore, impossible to realize). The image is a fantasy, one that the child sets up in order to compensate for its sense of lack or loss, what Lacan terms an "Ideal-I" or "ideal ego." That fantasy image of oneself can be filled in by others who we may want to emulate in our adult lives (role models, et cetera), anyone that we set up as a mirror for ourselves in what is, ultimately, a narcissistic relationship. What must be remembered is that for Lacan this imaginary realm continues to exert its influence throughout the life of the adult and is not merely superceded in the child's movement into the symbolic (despite my suggestion of a straightforward chronology in the last module). Indeed, the imaginary and the symbolic are, according to Lacan, inextricably intertwined and work in tension with the Real. "

"EGO-IDEAL AND IDEAL-EGO (Lacan) : Lacan makes a distinction between the "ideal ego" and the "ego ideal," the former of which he associates with the imaginary order, the latter of which he associates with the symbolic order. Lacan's "ideal ego" is the ideal of perfection that the ego strives to emulate; it first affected the subject when he saw himself in a mirror during the mirror stage, which occurs around 6-18 months of age (see the Lacan module on psychosexual development). Seeing that image of oneself established a discord between the idealizing image in the mirror (bounded, whole, complete) and the chaotic reality of the one's body between 6-18 months, thus setting up the logic of the imaginary's fantasy construction that would dominate the subject's psychic life ever after. For Lacan, the "ego-ideal," by contrast, is when the subject looks at himself as if from that ideal point; to look at oneself from that point of perfection is to see one's life as vain and useless. The effect, then, is to invert one's "normal" life, to see it as suddenly repulsive. "

https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/lacanstructure.html

Whats not mentioned in that module is that when someone has taken the position of  "ego-ideal," in order to avoid seeing their own life as vain and useless they project that part of themselves onto a third party which becomes the "abject," or scapegoat, for the Nazis it was the jews for the Manosphere it is the "feminazis," for the Positive thinking Cults it is the "downers," or "negative people." From the Nazis to the Positive thinking cults they all use language like enforcing boundaries to keep the negative people or jews from destroying their ideal way of life.

[Visitor]

visitor the mirroring is a very very interesting topic I agree. I am not sure if you have seen the film Solaris, a Steven Soderbergh film, but it is a very trippy film about mirroring and highly influenced by Lacan.

Within psychoanalysis there is some extremely interesting concepts of mirroring and how those mirrors have been internalized etc. Especially through the work of Lacan here is a link to a university module that simplifies a lot of Lacans concepts. Lacan himself is extremely difficult to read and secondary materials is, in my opinion, the way to go if his concepts appeal to you. There is a stage he calls the Mirror stage, and the gaze which is very interesting stuff.

https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/lacandevelop.html

Also in attachment theory they deal extensively with the concept of mirroring and though quite a long and clinical book it is the one I most highly recommend.

 

Hi Blimblam

Some great stuff above thanks for your input  

I'm reading the link you provided now  

[Visitor]

visitor the mirroring is a very very interesting topic I agree. I am not sure if you have seen the film Solaris, a Steven Soderbergh film, but it is a very trippy film about mirroring and highly influenced by Lacan.

Within psychoanalysis there is some extremely interesting concepts of mirroring and how those mirrors have been internalized etc. Especially through the work of Lacan here is a link to a university module that simplifies a lot of Lacans concepts. Lacan himself is extremely difficult to read and secondary materials is, in my opinion, the way to go if his concepts appeal to you. There is a stage he calls the Mirror stage, and the gaze which is very interesting stuff.

https://www.cla.purdue.edu/english/theory/psychoanalysis/lacandevelop.html

Also in attachment theory they deal extensively with the concept of mirroring and though quite a long and clinical book it is the one I most highly recommend.

 

Hi Blimblam

Some great stuff above thanks for your input  

I'm reading the link you provided now