Story Ambition & the Trap of Treating Yourself as a Means to an End

[Celerity]

As I have discussed before, I was (and to an extent still am) a very ambitious person. Even as a young kid, I was driven by a need to prove myself always in everything. Average was unacceptable failure. This paradoxically made me very risk averse, even lazy to a degree. I often only attempted those things I had already shown an aptitude for. This was greatly limiting because life demands being able to take good risks, but the most damaging aspect of this perspective by far was its impact on my self-worth.

I could say that my self-worth was balanced on a knife's-edge, but that would be inaccurate. What I know now is that I did not actually know what true self-worth felt like. As such, I could only feel its absence without being able to identify the source. Even when well-fed on accomplishment and praise, my ego remained a very fragile thing. One setback or failure or criticism would place me right back at square one. This precarious situation eventually culminated in a very painful and predictable collapse. Life, even for the happiest of us, is filled with difficulty and failure. Many get by through ignorance or a robust denial of their mistakes, but no one like me who had lived and breathed self-hatred could do this for very long.

And so, after losing everything I had worked for, I had to come to terms with how much I had fucked up. This took years and roughly followed the stages of grief in a fashion. The process seemed like it would never end, but I have finally learned from this experience, and I have hope that this will prevent me from ruining my life as I feared.

Long ago, I accepted that I failed in part because I had chosen a bad path that did not have the opportunity I though it did. Even if I had succeeded in my goals, the sacrifices required would never have been worth it. But the most important shift in thinking has been my reluctance to sacrifice my well-being for success and my refusal to consider success as a precondition to having value as a person. I am in the process of pursuing something very difficult and uncertain once again, but my motives are starkly different than they were before. I am ambitious because I want to live a more fulfilling life, not because I have to prove to myself or anyone else that I have worth. Even after failure and with nothing in my life going right, I still have value, and I still deserve to live a good life.

With this new understanding, it is easy to see now why no accomplishment was ever enough and why all of life's difficulties seemed insurmountable. I realize now that I had always viewed myself almost in the third person, as a means to acquiring X or feeling Y. Without these desires fulfilled, I had no value. I couldn't ever understand why I was so easy on other people, quick to forgive and praise, when I was so punishing and hateful toward myself. The difference was that I saw them as they were, as flesh and blood people whose worth was inherent and unconditional. I saw myself, on the other hand, as an object, a mere instrument to pacify the incessant demands of a wounded ego. Framed in this way, my habit of self-hatred was not only self-destructive but morally wrong. If it is a sin to treat any human being as a means to an end, it was a sin I committed a thousand times over with myself.



I say all this because I need to get it out on a page somewhere for my own healing, but I have also posted this because I think my story could help someone going through the same struggle. I see signs of this self-destructive cycle in many posts on here. I can't easily trace how it was that I got to this point since I reached it very slowly over many years, but I have some theories. First, I read Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw and attended group therapy where I could observe people I admired suffering the same self-doubt. I understood through this that I didn't arrive as a broken person into this world but was rather made that way - and that none of how I was abused as a child was my fault. I also realized that I wasn't alone, that in fact many people had suffered similar experiences and nonetheless were able to climb out of their dark past into a bright future. The second turning point I have identified was allowing myself to hit rock bottom with support. This allowed me to see that life was worth living even when it did not turn out the way I planned. I am by no means "doing well" with my life. I work a low-wage, dead-end job under my parents' roof. Though I know I would be a lot less peachy if I did not have a plan to improve, I have been able to cobble together a great deal of peace day-by-day even when it seems like things will "never get better". I don't hate myself for where I am or where I was. Even if things don't go as well as I would like - and they probably won't - I have a peace of mind now that I have never had, even at the height of my success.

 

[xx1]

this is a really incredible story! i'm so glad you've found peace. it doesn't sound like it's been easy for you, and i'm proud of you for working so hard for yourself.
the feeling of being a means to an end resonates with me greatly, and i was admittedly a little shocked to see the phrase so soon after i'd spiraled over it.
my one question is: how do you talk about it? i feel like every time i try to put this sentiment or anything similar into words, i fail. is there a good starting point? should i wait until i hit my real breaking point and work back up from there? wishing you happiness and health!

 

[Celerity]

this is a really incredible story! i'm so glad you've found peace. it doesn't sound like it's been easy for you, and i'm proud of you for working so hard for yourself.
the feeling of being a means to an end resonates with me greatly, and i was admittedly a little shocked to see the phrase so soon after i'd spiraled over it.
my one question is: how do you talk about it? i feel like every time i try to put this sentiment or anything similar into words, i fail. is there a good starting point? should i wait until i hit my real breaking point and work back up from there? wishing you happiness and health!

Well, the good news is that I reached this point before I could actually put it into words. I firmly believe it's something you have to experience fully for yourself first before your mind can rationalize it. The fact that you have thought of a similar idea is a good sign. I had inklings of this idea and smaller realizations - like my old goals being rather worthless things in the first place - well before I was able to put this into words. I hope that you do not have to reach anything like rock bottom to get this. As stubborn as I am, it may have been necessary for me, but I have to consider that so-called "well-adjusted" people do this with failure all the time over shorter timespans and with much less pain, so it has to be a process that can be expedited.

Now, if you are talking more specifically about how you go about explaining this to other people, it is really hard. I am not sure how possible it even is if someone has not gone through it themselves and thought through it in detail. As I understand it, a big milestone in development is retaining a robust sense of self-worth through childhood. Neglectful/abusive parents and traumatic life experiences, particularly those that involve shame, have the potential to greatly damage one's self-worth and identity. This results in self-worth being less of a quality that is effortless and largely unconscious into something that requires conscious effort to maintain. How do you make someone aware of something they take as a given and are not even consciously aware of? The fact that shame is a near-universal human experience inclines me to believe that almost anyone could grasp the point I am making, but I also sense that experiencing moments of shame does not really prepare a person to fully understand what could be called a shame-based personality or worldview where the feeling of shame is constant even in the best of times.

When I have tried to explain this, I have used some analogies for how shame is converted into (twisted) motivation. The one that seemed to work best was being on a treadmill with no off switch and no way to hop off. The minute you stop moving, you fall. Such as it is with trying to feed a shamed ego whose demand is constant. The appetite is insatiable because what you really need is self-worth, not accomplishment. You're living off of junk food (accomplishment, praise, victory, dominance) so to speak instead of fruits and vegetables (satisfaction from hard work, healthy self-respect, contentment, equanimity). I have also shared the conversations I had with the "inner critic", a concept that pops up a lot in therapy. Basically, even when I attempted something really difficult that most people did not have hopes of achieving, I still treated it via the inner critic as something I must do and, if I could not do it, I was worthless and pitiful and deserving of pain. I had never before shared such internal monologues (dialogues???) with someone else. Something about stating it out loud reveals how ridiculous and irrational it all was.

 

[xx1]

Well, the good news is that I reached this point before I could actually put it into words. I firmly believe it's something you have to experience fully for yourself first before your mind can rationalize it. The fact that you have thought of a similar idea is a good sign. I had inklings of this idea and smaller realizations - like my old goals being rather worthless things in the first place - well before I was able to put this into words. I hope that you do not have to reach anything like rock bottom to get this. As stubborn as I am, it may have been necessary for me, but I have to consider that so-called "well-adjusted" people do this with failure all the time over shorter timespans and with much less pain, so it has to be a process that can be expedited.

Now, if you are talking more specifically about how you go about explaining this to other people, it is really hard. I am not sure how possible it even is if someone has not gone through it themselves and thought through it in detail. As I understand it, a big milestone in development is retaining a robust sense of self-worth through childhood. Neglectful/abusive parents and traumatic life experiences, particularly those that involve shame, have the potential to greatly damage one's self-worth and identity. This results in self-worth being less of a quality that is effortless and largely unconscious into something that requires conscious effort to maintain. How do you make someone aware of something they take as a given and are not even consciously aware of? The fact that shame is a near-universal human experience inclines me to believe that almost anyone could grasp the point I am making, but I also sense that experiencing moments of shame does not really prepare a person to fully understand what could be called a shame-based personality or worldview where the feeling of shame is constant even in the best of times.

When I have tried to explain this, I have used some analogies for how shame is converted into (twisted) motivation. The one that seemed to work best was being on a treadmill with no off switch and no way to hop off. The minute you stop moving, you fall. Such as it is with trying to feed a shamed ego whose demand is constant. The appetite is insatiable because what you really need is self-worth, not accomplishment. You're living off of junk food (accomplishment, praise, victory, dominance) so to speak instead of fruits and vegetables (satisfaction from hard work, healthy self-respect, contentment, equanimity). I have also shared the conversations I had with the "inner critic", a concept that pops up a lot in therapy. Basically, even when I attempted something really difficult that most people did not have hopes of achieving, I still treated it via the inner critic as something I must do and, if I could not do it, I was worthless and pitiful and deserving of pain. I had never before shared such internal monologues (dialogues???) with someone else. Something about stating it out loud reveals how ridiculous and irrational it all was.

this is exactly how i feel!! i knew in a conceptual way that genuine self worth was what was needed, but i've always imagined the precursor to self satisfaction being the victories and achievements. i hadn't thought to flip the order, but really, how could i be enjoying those achievements without the will to do so? you've been great help! you're a wonderful person and i appreciate you greatly. thank you.