I spend my day talking to people, and i love it. All day, every day, talking to people from all walks of life with their different perspectives, opinions and styles. I am lucky to be blessed with an inordinately large amount of friends, and i keep making more every day. People on Facebook (Jenny was the latest) and LinkedIn are always complaining about the constant queue of new connections flowing through to me. I just love talking to people, learning about them, seeing through them and understanding who they are.

They say men speak figuratively and literally, and women tend to speak emotionally rather than focus on the specifics of words and grammatical correctness. For me, words are incredibly important as they have greater power than atom bombs. Words are important because language controls thought, and thought controls language. Accuracy is more than just being anal about punctuation. It’s about clear communication. The two things are inseparably intertwined and almost all our initial cognitive development as children is based on the interdependence between what we think and how we express it through words and language.

Some people use language to express thought, some to conceal thought, and others instead of thought. If you want to know how someone is feeling or what they believe, listen to how they speak and the words they use. If they are depressed, weak and negative, the things they say, the way they say them and the actual words they use will reflect that. Everyone inside of us is communicated in our expression of it, and you cannot hide it no matter what some claim. It’s the same stupidity that makes people think they can somehow “control”, “fake” or “suppress” body language.

Human beings are innately tuned to beam their emotional state outwards and express it both voluntarily and involuntarily. Suppressing it, or causing it to be notably absent, is beamed out too and it always draws attention to the unnatural condition you are enforcing, hence defeating the original purpose. As they say, if you want to call someone’s bluff, look for what they are over-compensating for.

All the great writers, artists, politicians and scientists have known the relationship between language and thought, and many have used it for their own gain. As George Orwell noted so infamously, “if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.” Get someone to talk to themselves using the language you want them to, and you come to control their thinking. Soften words and they don’t react to things as violently (call rebels and outright protestors “insurgents”, call recession the “credit crunch”). Get them to talk to each other negatively and you have a useful chain reaction.

Definitions of words and concepts control everything in our lives, so it’s essential to get them right. It’s our starting point for everything we say and do, and most of the things you think you have defined correctly in your head are incorrect and point to something else entirely. Before you label others and point fingers, or ask for something from them, you need to know 100% that you are communicating the right concept.

The relationship between the language we use and the way we feel is summed up perfectly by a well known African proverb: “one lie spoils a thousand truths.”

The human condition is often dichotomous, i.e. it has 2 diametrically opposite sides that conflict, but are easily blurred. We assume we know what things mean, but the chances are that we were given the definition by someone else who had already got it wrong and we never bothered to question it. To love truth is to love the accurate use of language to communicate it. Someone’s dedication to what is true and right can be measured by their attitude to how they use and abuse words and ideas.

So where better to start than to look at stubbornness, pride and conceit?

To be stubborn is to me immovable and immutable in the face of persuasion. We often perceive it to be a characteristic strength or a positive affirming quality. Unfortunately not. There is being stubborn, and then there is being principled. The difference between being stubborn (a negative antisocial quality) and principled (a positive assertion of character) is in the reasoning and motivation behind the behaviour itself. Stubbornness is almost always a knee-jerk defensive reaction to something/someone else and based on how we feel towards it; being principled is about upholding a defining belief that is righteous. It’s the difference between being upset and doing the right thing.

I’ve been told a lot of times that i “need to be more humble”, and what has always pissed me off about it was that i understood the sentiment, but the concept was wrong. WHen someone’s language is wrong, their reasoning is wrong. If you are not humble, you are supposedly “arrogant”. Again, this is not the case, and allow me to explain why.

Let’s revisit the definition of humility.

Humility:
A lack of false pride - the defining characteristic of an unpretentious and modest person, someone who does not think that he or she is better or more important than others.

Pride in one’s self, our achievements and our loved ones is good and healthy, whereas false pride is obnoxious. What is false pride? Conceit. The opposite of humility is NOT arrogance. It is conceit, Having reckless and excessive (false) pride beyond that is known as hubris. Pretentious means to assert a pretence, or false persona, and is almost always negative and unlikeable. But that again is about displaying yourself as something or someone else.

Someone once said to me that they were a “proud” person but also “didn’t have a problem with humility”. Pride is the enemy of humility and as you have probably have already realised, you can’t have both at the core of your being at the same time in the same way light and dark cannot co-exist simultaneously, even if they create shades of light between them. What that person was referring to was self-esteem, and having a lack of self-esteem is NOT the same as humility and does not mean you are humble.

Let’s look at the definition of self-esteem:

Self-esteem:
a person’s overall self-appraisal of their own worth.

Having a false and/or excessive self-appraisal of ourselves is arrogant, and conceited.

When we say people are “arrogant”, we are inferring that they think they are better than us, i.e. their view is unequal. They are judging us for being inferior to them. But again, arrogance doesn’t mean that, it means to have a false estimation of your own abilities and importance – it does not refer to the treatment of others or their abilities. Humility implies a belief in equality between people, whereas poor self-esteem implies inequality because you are naturally inclined to think you are worth less than others (inferior). Humility means none are superior or inferior, whereas self-esteem issues mean you start by thinking you are less.

Ironically the most common way the mind deals with self-esteem is to swing itself the other way and create the defence mechanism of arrogance, conceit and hubris.

And hence all these qualities are the characteristics of God.  Humility comes from knowing we are all imperfect under Him; we cannot be proud, arrogant or conceited as He gives us the ability to do all things and can stop/constrain us; to serve others is to honour Him, and put the welfare of others, above ourselves. Pride in ourselves comes from knowing we were made just as we were supposed to be and have what we need to accomplish our dreams; our value, self-worth and self-esteem comes from who our Creator is; we cannot be stubborn when the Father has unusual and unknown ways in which he accomplishes things.

Humility is plural - it means to accept we are all flawed and imperfect; that we are all worthy and unworthy; that we accept forgiveness and should forgive each other. It does not mean we personally should consider that we are less than others, it means we are less than what we should be when it comes to the Father’s intended creation.

When we are talking about all these very ugly traits (pride, stubbornness, conceit, hubris etc), what we are actually referring to is the umbrella concept of something that inevitably develops from a lack of self-esteem – self-adsorption.

Or as it’s known in academic circles: narcissism.

Narcissism is defined as excessive love or admiration for oneself; where a person is preoccupied with themselves, lacks empathy for others and has an unconscious lack of self esteem. The name was chosen by Sigmund Freud, from the Greek myth of Narcissus, who was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. A narcissist is described as turning inward for gratification rather than depending on others and as being excessively preoccupied with issues of personal adequacy, power and prestige.

The story of Narcissus is legendary and fascinating.

Narcissus was the son of the river god Cephisus and the nymph Liriope. When Narcissus was born, Tiresias (a seer) was asked if the child would live a long life. Tiresias replied “If he never knows himself”. As a handsome youth he left a trail of broken hearts from rejected lovers of both sexes. Narcissus wanted nothing to do with falling in love from anyone and rebuffed all attempts at romance.

His cruelty to Echo was not the only instance. Finally, the nymphs offered a prayer (curse) that he might feel what it was to love and meet no return of affection (i.e. unrequited love).
“So may he himself love, and not gain the thing he loves.”

Narcissus, upon finding an image of himself in a pool then fell in love with himself and, not being able to find consolation, he died of thirst at the pool, for if Narcissus had reached to take a drink, he would have shattered his own image into thousands of pieces.

Malignant narcissism is generally what Bond villains and murderous dictators tend to suffer from, but extreme trauma or arrested emotional development can lead to narcissistic personality disorder, which you will know, if you have ever experienced it, is unbelievably trying.

Narcissistic people are incredibly difficult to deal with, obsessive and absolutely focused on what they want and their issues above everyone and everything else. They walk around in a world of their own and are unable to connect or empathise with others, or realise their own responsibility when accepting the consequences for their actions. The worst thing is that they often wrap it all up and try to sell it as that they are so “caring about others’ feelings” or some other kind of righteous goal. The truth is that what others feel is irrelevant, and what they care about is how those others make *them* feel.

They don’t care if they hurt someone because their own feelings always take priority - what they care about is if that person’s pain hurts them or makes them feel bad. They desperately try to stop people getting angry not because they care about them as they claim, but so they won’t be shouted at, frightened or hurt. They will say they love someone when they want someone to say it back to them so they can feel loved, not because they mean it. Everything the narcissist does is about getting what they want and what they feel (even though they will claim it is about others), and it’s a very, very childish ego-driven state.

It’s important to understand that being in love with yourself does not mean you think you are better than anyone else or that you even like yourself. It just means that you are obsessed with yourself, and the way others opinions about you make you feel.

When it comes to narcissists, they are the only thing that matters. The tragedy is that what they want most in the world (for the world to be as concerned with them as much as they are with themselves) is completely unobtainable as the greatest, most loved and most beautified all have one thing in common – their self-sacrificing nature (the absolute opposite of narcissism). All have served others or higher principles than themselves. Seeing themselves as they really are would cause them to shatter like glass, just as it was that the water was to poison thirsty Narcissus.

We all have a degree of self-adsorption and self-interest, as if we didn’t, natural selection just wouldn’t function. What matter is the degree to how much someone is self-adsorbed. Thankfully nature has provided a natural cure to that kind of behaviour: parenthood.

Now if someone is still in a childlike state and narcissistic, the next step up the lunacy scale is to perpetually live in another childlike state - being histrionic. And my word, we all know a few of these types. All you have to do is look on Facebook or go out to a pub on a Friday night. We’re talking about attention-seekers, or “dramatic” people. Yes, it is a recognised mental state that needs therapeutic treatment of varying degrees because it’s indicative of an psychological disorder.

Histrionic means “deliberately affected or self-consciously emotional; overly dramatic, in behaviour or speech.” It is characterised by a pattern of excessive emotionality and attention-seeking, including an excessive need for approval and inappropriate seductiveness, usually beginning in early adulthood.

Histrionic women are described as self-centred, self-indulgent, and intensely dependent on others. They are emotionally labile and cling to others in the context of immature relationships. As well, they over-identify with others; they project their own unrealistic, fantasized intentions onto people with whom they are involved. They are emotionally shallow to avoid distress and have difficulty understanding themselves or others in any depth. Selection of marital or sexual partners is often “highly inappropriate”, probably to seem scandalous and alluring.

Women may apparently show “inappropriate and intense anger masking their internal battle between the quest for intimacy” and avoiding appearing mental, and they often form “entirely negative convictions towards the male gender and treat them like pawns as a defence mechanism for concealing their own inadequacies”. According to the psychopathology, they may engage in self-mutilation and/or manipulative suicide threats as one aspect of general manipulative interpersonal behaviour. If you know someone like that, they need help, urgently.

Why is it important to be accurate with words? Because people use them flippantly and irresponsibly – frequently because they haven’t got the faintest idea of what they think or mean, only what they feel. I sit there listening to people accuse me of all number of things because i’ve pointed out something they’re doing that is thoroughly obnoxious and they’ve just thrown crap back at me that i once believed. Manipulative crap that about me being nasty, fair and unreasonable, or just 4 year old girl tantruming because they’d been found out and didn’t want to be.

One thing i have learnt, as chauvinistic as it sounds, is that a lot of women turn into little girls who are screaming at their daddy when they are under stress and you need to remember that because you often get tied up in knots trying to get a mature conversation even started, let alone continued.

Word are bombs, and they are arrows. Ideas are invulnerable and bulletproof. It is our command of them that makes us what we are and causes us to feel as we do. How we use them affects others and changes their minds and lives. To be slapdash with how we communicate is to be slapdash with the hearts of those we love, and in some cases, those we do not even know yet, and may never know even if they were meant for us and to love us. To care for the truth is to spend time articulating it, as language stirs the soul and can lift our spirits and warm the inside of our chests; they can heal or they can harm, and we use them wisely or at our peril.

If you’re a narcissist, you’ll only be thinking one thing: that this article was about you.