WHAT TEACHES PEOPLE TO LIVE IN THEIR OWN SKIN?

Speaking to the son of two extremely narcissistic parents, he told me he had to teach himself to be empathic because neither of his parents were.good at listening to other people's feelings.  We talked about this and I questioned how can a kid know that one should be empathic and actually figure out how to become self-taught as though it is an art. We are exposed to many more than our parents and can see for ourselves that many others have a better way of dealing with life.  That is what mentors are all about.

I believe that some day psychiatry will throw away personality diagnoses in favor of reflecting the results of brain tests of chemistry and watching, with scans,  how the brain handles particular informational stimuli.  For years I watched women diagnosed as 'borderline personalities' only to become perfectly 'normal' when their clinical depressions were properly treated with pharmacology.

Humans  have so many vulnerabilities that inhibit their comfortable adjustment to the society around them.  One of the worst is the empty feeling with which a clinical depression leaves one.  Regardless of how satisfying life may seem be at a given time, that empty hole in their psyche, felt in the pit of their stomach, never allows them to feel loved or worth being loved.  These two states are the most basic and universal desires of humans...to be loved and to feel lovable.  Its basic to most everything we do.

Happiness is certainly felt when one is comfortable in his/her own skin, feels capable of logical thinking and making reasonable life choices, and has many healthy relationships.  Alas, some people never achieve those abilities nor seem to have the equipment to achieve them.  One of the things I tried to impress graduate students who would soon be treating therapy patients was to realize that you cannot 'feel' for anyone else.  If you are caught up in emotions around someone else's experience,  you are not 'feeling for' that person. you are feeling for yourself and need to dig in your own memory for that which was triggered by the other person's experience.  Only by doing that self-exploration to gain insight into yourself will you be able to hold onto where you begin and end.