When I was in psychotherapy a few years ago, I was struck by how fast and blunt my therapist was in making this point:
If you don’t like what you see—and more importantly—you don’t like what you’re getting (behavior, attitude, treatment) then get the fuck out as quickly as possible.
It’s not going to change.
It’s not going to get better.
Save yourself.
She was unforgiving and unflinching in this advise, though her demeanor was kind and calm when delivering it. That’s why I call her the “Lovely Therapist” as an epithet of anonymity.
But it wasn’t just the Lovely Therapist who held this belief about human nature.
All of the psychologists I read in books and on blogs, that I listened to in podcasts and on YouTube—they all had the same attitude.
Never, ever wait around for another person to change.
Safely assume change is not coming, get out, and move on.
A Feature Or A Glitch?
This appears to run counter to the beliefs of the general public.
When the topic of dysfunctional and toxic relationships comes up among everyday men and women, there’s a lot of rationalization and forgiveness handed out.
Why do so many people believe in second and third and fourth chances?
When you pick away at the veneer, there’s this fundamental belief that a person is inherently good deep down and he or she and can healed and ultimately saved. It is believed that all of the bad shit we see day in and day out is just a defense mechanism, and we have an obligation to work past it.
But what if the bad stuff is a baked-in feature and not a glitch to overcome?
This is a topic Dr. George Simon talks about in his two incredible books (please buy using the affiliate links below):
Character Disturbance: The Phenomenon Of Our Age
In Sheep’s Clothing: Understanding And Dealing With Manipulative People
And it all starts with what personality is.
Out With Classical, In With Psychodynamic
People generally believe in the “classical model” of personality, whether they realize it or not.
This classical model of personality posits that, to some degree, we all are damaged and fragile flowers underneath it all. We are wounded by our childhood wounds, traumas, hardships—you name it. And everything we layer on top of that to hide it as we grow up and develop into adults is a persona, or psychological mask (like in the video-game series).
This damaged core of our psyche is supposedly riddled with neurosis. As Dr. George Simon sees it, neurosis appears in people as “overly anxious, excessively apprehensive, [and]inordinately fretful” behavior. This hyperactive anxiety is pervasive in a person’s life, and it causes the individual to experience psychosomatic symptoms like headaches, ulcers, and panic attacks.
But then there’s the more contemporary model of personality, which is the “psychodynamic model.”
With the psychodynamic model of personality, we’re not all fundamentally the same underneath. Humans are, instead, a complex cocktail of internal and external ingredients that make us who we are. It all directs how we behave and operate in life.
In Simon’s own words:
The multi-dimensional model allows for the increasing scientific evidence that we are not all the same. Each of us has a unique collection of traits. Some developed as a result of learning, some we were simply endowed with by nature, and some developed as a result of the dynamic interaction between our innate predispositions, the environment in which we were raised, and the choices we’ve made.
I find that last line interesting—the choices we’ve made. It shows that we do play a part in our own destiny, and we can always choose to behave differently, no matter how difficult it is.
Simon continues:
Personality, therefore, is seen—not so much as a false face or a pretense—by rather as a stable set of traits, preferred thinking and behavior patterns that define our unique style of interaction over a wide variety of situations, and for most of our lifetime.
But, what about character?
“Deficiencies Or Disturbances Of Character”
Character, as George Simon views it, is the collection of “socially desire qualities” that appear within a person’s personality. They’re the virtues of a person, as he puts it, comprising elements like:
– Self Control
– Self Respect
– Ethics
– Loyalty
– Fortitude
– Social Conscientiousness
Therefore, Dr. George Simon explains a character disturbance as the following:
Mental health clinicians in all disciplines increasingly find themselves intervening with individuals whose problems are related to their dysfunctional attitudes and thinking patterns; their shallow, self-centered relationships; their moral immaturity and social irresponsibility; and their habitual, dysfunctional behavior patterns.
All of these stem from an underdeveloped conscience and reflect significant deficiencies or disturbances of character.
That’s all a fancy way of saying a “disturbed character” is an individual who thinks and acts badly based upon this his or her choices and thoughts and attitudes.
There’s no need for a diagnosis since we’re not all clinicians—but we should all be keen observers of action over words.
And don’t fret over trying to figure out a person’s laundry list of past traumas. It’s about willful behavior in the present. And if that willful behavior is bad, turn around and walk the hell away.
Because no one is so special that you should put up with bad behavior and abuse.
