Surviving Other People's Self-Esteem: The Lengths Some People Go to Just to Feel Better Than Others

By Darren F Magee

A book about how sometimes other people only feel good about themselves when they feel better than others. Not just how they convince themselves they’re better than you, but the lengths they go to convince you you’re inferior.
With some personal examples of devaluing, undermining, passive aggression etc this is a book about other people’s self-esteem, recognising when you’re being belittled at another’s expense and surviving it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Mar 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483563770

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INTRODUCTION

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent Eleanor Roosevelt

So why yet another self-esteem book? What makes this one different for the others? The first thing I’d say is that sometimes we see something written down and think, ‘hey I do that’, or, ‘hey I need to do that’. One way or another it normalises things for us. It’s that feeling we get when we realise that other people do what we do and feel how we feel.

I used to struggle to understand why other people feel the way they do, and react aggressively towards me in some situations. I watched quiet contentment in some others when the status quo is maintained, but hostility if I showed pleasure or achievement. I often wondered why I felt responsible for how others feel when they show displeasure at my being in a good place.

Then one day a friend remarked it was like someone becoming angry and aggressive and shouting, ‘You’re really enjoying that ice cream!’ And that changed how I viewed ‘haters’.

So I haven’t written this book to give advice on what to do when people are mean to you. I sometimes feel life would often be so much easier if only someone would give me a list of ten things to go and do to have a better life. I’ve written this book to talk about esteem, not only what it is but how ours often affects others and vice versa.

My aim is to point out behaviours from others and the effect they has on us. I’m not a mind reader so I won’t be writing about what other people think and feel. All I can do is give an opinion based on behaviours. I’ll give examples of how I’ve felt when other people have tried to undermine or belittle me, how I have managed or would have liked to have managed other people’s attitudes and behaviours better.

Some of the examples in this book are based on my own experiences. Some I’ve witnessed as they took place. Some are merely fictional to help demonstrate a point. My opinions come from my own feelings, reactions, behaviours I’ve noticed, from my own understanding and my experiences of being on the wrong end of a bully. In every case I have changed situations, venues, names, ages and in some cases even sexes so as not to identify anyone or anyplace.

Sometimes when reflecting on my own experiences my self-esteem begins to lower, and the temptation is to rant at how unfairly I feel I have been treated or been viewed by others. But that is not my intention in writing this book. The truth is that there have been times when I have behaved just as badly as some of the people in this book just to feel better about myself. I’ve been guilty of, ‘how dare people not see me the way I see me’, and I try to make myself feel better by devaluing or being hurtful to them. The term I’ve heard more recently for those who scorn and insult us is haters. They hate what we are, what we have or what we do. But when I think of that behaviour, I think of their self-esteem, and how they try to raise theirs by trying to lower mine.

I hope you find this book useful.

Life is ten percent what happens to us, and ninety percent how we react to it. – Dennis P. Kimbro

DON’T LIE, I KNOW

When I was about nine years old I would go swimming with a friend from school every week over the summer holidays. His mother would drop us off at the local leisure centre and pick us up about an hour later. One Saturday as his mother dropped me off home I saw one of the families from a few streets away at our front door. They were shouting and arguing with my mother. As I approached nervously the man pointed at me and I heard him tell my mother I had stolen their sons skateboard. I remember feeling terrified as I stood there with wet hair holding a sports bag with a damp