I am a bad person and I realize it, what should I do? What does it mean to be a good person

September 9, 2019
Psychology of Personality
Angelica Braldi

I am a bad man. Such a categorical statement is often emotional, uttered in a moment of emotion, guilt, and repentance. If a statement appears in such circumstances, then it does not at all indicate that the person actually thinks so; it is not his belief, but simply words reflecting internal experiences.

Just as rarely, the statement “I am a bad person” sounds like an ultimatum. It is used for a kind of speculation, the purpose of which is to attract increased attention to oneself. As a rule, the declarant expects that the people around him will begin to convince him of the opposite, shower him with compliments and talk about how wonderful and good he really is. Of course, in this situation, a person also does not worry about the presence of bad qualities in his character.

However, there is also a true awareness of oneself as an unworthy, bad, vicious individual. And in this case, the phrase “I am a bad person” is either an objective assessment or evidence of a personality crisis and the presence of complexes, for example, low self-esteem.

What does the concept mean?

Of course, all assessments of human actions, character traits, and behavior patterns are subjective. What is a virtue for one may be considered a sign of depravity by another. There is no truth in such an assessment, regardless of what parameters one judges by.

As a rule, people make the verdict “I am a bad person” based on generally accepted ideas about good and evil, traditional for a particular society. For example, is cannibalism bad? Absolutely yes. This is exactly how any person who grew up, for example, in a country with a Christian culture, will answer. That is, developing this analogy, it can be argued that a cannibal is a bad person. However, if the same question is asked to an aborigine of Australia or Polynesia, “savages” from the African or South American jungles, the answer will be the word “no”. In many cultures, eating a killed enemy is a sign of reverence and respect for him. That is, there cannibalism is a property of a good person.

Similar to this example, you can consider absolutely any character trait. Even hypocrisy and the habit of lying are not bad qualities in every culture.

Is it possible to define the concept

Despite the fact that the concept of a “bad person” is very vague, it is quite possible to give it a clear and unambiguous definition. This is a psychological paradox. Moreover, this definition will be equally significant for any society, regardless of what value system is traditional in it.

A bad person is one who does not follow the norms accepted in society, does not share the value system and violates laws, rules and traditions.

As a rule, people who do not conform to the norms accepted in society by their character traits, actions and behavior cause a lot of trouble to their loved ones, causing them to experience mental suffering and feel shame.

An example of this can be a completely banal situation that often happens to people who have been married for many years. One partner begins to cheat on the other. The one who is faithful feels like a victim, experiences mental pain, and sometimes guilt.

and what makes it so?

First, a very important digression 〈 !!! 〉

Pay attention to the well-known joke and saying of psychologists: “If you want to see a neurotic, look in the mirror.”

She says that certain neurotic traits, inclinations and needs can be found in any person without exception.

This also applies to the dark signs of bad character listed below. Almost all of us have them.

But! The point is not in their very presence, but in their strength and level of development.

A need, trait, tendency becomes neurotic, i.e. painful and begins to interfere with the life of a person and those around him if it is overdeveloped, if its strength exceeds the average level of normality, if it begins to control a person’s behavior and thinking.

In all other cases, if it is not noticeable or manifests itself very rarely, then it is not possible to say about a person that he has an intolerable character.

So, …

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1. The need for a strong and responsible friend or partner

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Such a person wants someone to take responsibility for his life and for most of his key life decisions.

This could be a friend, husband, wife or parents.

He wants such a person to act as an Assistant for him. And he will play the role of the Victim, receiving certain dividends from this.

For example: managing life, solving everyday and any other problems, finding a job, making money, etc.

At the same time, the master-victim skillfully manipulates his assistant, gradually turning him into a victim and becoming a pursuer.

Example: sofa husband.

As soon as the wife gathers the courage to throw off the burden of the Savior-Helper and stop supporting him and pleasing him, he either begins to get sick and suffer, causing self-pity.

Or she turns into a tyrant husband, tormenting her with physical and emotional violence.

But he can’t live without her, and neither can she without him. As a rule, there is someone third (child, mother-in-law, mother-in-law, etc.).

Together they create the Karpman triangle, and grow into its neurotic structure.

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2. The need for power over others

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This is mainly expressed in the need to constantly control everyone.

In an effort to subordinate people and life events to your will and reason. Such a person is afraid of everything that he cannot check and control, even if such control is imaginary and far-fetched.

He does not tolerate a state of uncertainty well. He is devoid of spontaneity and plasticity of behavior.

Such people often bow to authority, power and strong people. At the same time, they despise the weak and dependent.

They strive to achieve superiority over others in order to effectively manipulate them.

If such a person's need for power is not satisfied, he feels very bad.

He is oppressed by anxiety and a feeling of uncertainty. He becomes nervous and irritable.

Dealing with him is always difficult, and sometimes downright dangerous - you can lose your psychological health.

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3. The need to exploit others, using them for one's own purposes

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Such a person treats others as a means of satisfying his personal interests and achieving his goals.

At the same time, he does not think about the problems of others, and is even offended if another person does not want to help him and indulge his whims.

This is the one about whom they often say: “He was just using me.”

He is an excellent manipulator, easily makes others dependent on himself, but he himself often depends on someone.

Collective portrait

person with severe

character

As you understand, this is difficult to create, since there are so many different signs and manifestations of a bad character, often mutually exclusive.

Nevertheless, the following general proposition can be formulated.

It's uncomfortable and awkward to be with him. There is always tension and anxiety in a relationship with him.

He doesn't like others. Treats others either condescendingly or with servility.

It is very difficult to come to an agreement with him; he either often and unreasonably changes his opinion and plans, or adheres to them with reinforced concrete stubbornness.

Most often, after close and more or less prolonged communication with such a person, you feel tired and overwhelmed, or nervous and filled with negative emotions.

Based on this generalized portrait, three types of people can be distinguished.

Types of people

What actions does such an individual perform?

If someone declares: “I am a bad person. What should I do?”, before giving advice, you need to find out what exactly is being discussed. What manifestations can we talk about in this case?

For example, from a conventional point of view, a bad person does the following:

beats the weak, including family members and children;
rapes, both physically and mentally;
mocks those who cannot answer him in kind;
does not fulfill its obligations;
violates the laws of society;
rowdy, hooligan, interferes with the lives of others.

The list can be continued. However, the listed actions make it possible to understand what is meant by the concept of “bad” by most people.

What emotional traits correspond to this concept?

Quite often, people utter the phrase “It seems to me that I am a bad person” not because they commit any unacceptable actions, but because of the presence of certain emotions, temperamental characteristics, and characteristics of thinking.

As a rule, many begin to consider themselves bad, noticing the following traits:

anger;
envy;
anger;
arrogance;
the desire to seem like someone else.

Again, the list of character traits and emotions experienced by a person can be continued. However, this very short list is quite enough to understand what feelings we are talking about.

People often feel vicious, “dirty,” and disgusting. As a rule, this is not an objective assessment, but indicates the presence of deep psychological problems.

Can a good person turn out to be bad?

There is nothing in nature that has only a creative or, conversely, destructive principle. As a rule, every phenomenon has both good and bad sides. The same is true for people.

What it means to be a good person or, conversely, a bad person is not only abstract, but is often dictated by circumstances. The same people often exhibit completely different personality traits when faced with a specific situation or when communicating with someone.

This means that a good person can “fly off the rails”, lose his temper in the presence of some provoking factor or when under the influence. The influence of bad company, which parents so often talk about when trying to explain the behavior and actions of their teenage children, is the most striking example of what can turn a good person into a bad one. A stressful situation, a natural disaster and much more pushes people to actions that they do not expect from themselves, let alone others.

The difference between a truly good person and a bad one in this context will be that the former realizes the wrongness of his actions, emotions, and actions. He repents and tries to change, correct what he did or prevent it from happening again.

Schedule issue

And lastly: having a diagnosis presupposes a certain culture of living with it. It makes sense to immediately tell someone close to you about it. For example, several of my relatives know my signs of hypomania, they are quite obvious, and they tell me: “Isn’t it time for you to take a pill?”

Being unpredictable is the worst social interaction you can do. Firstly, those around you will know if something goes wrong, why it is going wrong and what to do about it.

A separate point is work. It would be good if the opportunity to sometimes drop out of the work process was provided. I went to a psychiatrist for the first time in 2012, my employer, having learned about the diagnosis, which I told him about myself, was understanding, and since then, as a rule, my schedule takes into account the presence of the disorder and allows me to work with it effectively so that the process itself does not suffer from exacerbations.

Thank God, now humanity is moving away from such a traditional concept of self-organization and time management, which was very well suited for office workers and which is not very well suited for people with mood disorders and in general for people who are not very good with monotonous routine and monotonous activities .

Here I can recommend stories about flexible planning, about a flexible schedule, what is now called Agile in programming and is gradually moving into other areas of life.

What kind of a good person is he?

What does it mean to be a good person? It is quite difficult even for scientists to answer this question unambiguously. This concept is as vague as the idea of negative qualities. And just as in identifying bad properties, public opinion and moral and ethical standards accepted in society play a key role in identifying good ones.

A good person fully corresponds to them. And absolutely sincerely, from the inside. This means that people with positive qualities do more than just know the difference between good and evil. For example, such people do not pretend to sympathize with others because this is accepted in society. They do something at the behest of their soul, because for good people, good feelings and actions are natural.

Psychologist on how to overcome the idea that you are a loser

WHAT TO DO WITH THEM?

– Some attitudes make our life easier, but most, on the contrary, complicate it. All installations can be worked with, and we have the strength and capabilities to do this.

There is no magic pill for negative attitudes; it requires discipline, responsibility and regularity. The first stage is identifying and tracking negative attitudes. Starting to notice them is the first step towards change. This is quite difficult to do on your own. It’s easier if the attitude was formed quite recently, but if it was a “gift” or “inheritance” from family or society, then difficulties may arise.

You need to test the strength of a negative attitude : what will happen in your life if you get rid of it? Why did you need it? After all, it often happens that a secondary benefit is hidden behind the attitude: for example, meeting the expectations of society and parents. To change such an attitude means not meeting the expectations of society, betraying parents, experiencing guilt, fear, and anger. It often happens that it is easier for us to suffer and complain than to solve a problem. It's easier to come up with a bunch of excuses for why we didn't do something than to explain why we don't want to do something. It is important to understand what need our negative attitudes satisfied and how to satisfy this need without resorting to them. We need to think about what we will replace the removed installation with so that there is no emptiness left.

Then you can begin to reformulate the negative attitude into a positive one . You need to formulate a rational alternative belief and try to follow it in reality.

For example, when setting to catastrophizing, you need to replace an extremely negative assessment of the situation with one closer to reality. Answer yourself the questions: “What is the worst that can happen?”, “What will I do if this happens?”, “What will be the consequences?” Or, when establishing a must, remember how often people behave the way you intended, and replace the words “must”, “must”, “should” with the words “want”, “would like”. Or, with an evaluative attitude, try to evaluate not individual traits and actions of people, but the personality as a whole.

The process will take some time, but the more you try, the more you will succeed. It is important to reformulate negative attitudes into action. For example, “every time I become more and more beautiful.” The wording “every time” speaks of the application of your efforts and your activity. We need to act, and act differently than before. After all, by formulating a positive attitude, we thus take responsibility and begin to act in accordance with these changes. Yes, this may cause fear and resistance, but this is normal, because you are breaking the rules you have set for yourself. Don’t take on all the negative attitudes at once, work with one or two. Try, challenge your automatic thoughts, record results and changes. If something doesn't work out, don't be afraid to ask for help.

How to figure out whether a person is bad or not?

Often people who are worried that they are not good say: “They say that I am a bad person.” That is, it is not they themselves who feel like this, but it is instilled in them by the people around them. There is a theory that if you repeat the same thing to someone daily and repeatedly, the person will believe it.

Accordingly, there are two options for why people consider themselves not particularly good:

others think so;
the person himself comes to this conclusion.

Not everyone is able to independently detach themselves from their own “I” and look from the outside. Objectively evaluate your qualities, emotions, way of thinking, actions. Even practicing psychologists cannot always understand whether a person is bad or not.

However, you can try. There is no point in self-searching, since one thought inevitably leads to another, and this process becomes endless. It makes sense to try to write down all those qualities, actions, actions that are a reason to think about the bad essence of a person. Of course, exactly the same thing needs to be done for inverse properties.

Then you just need to compare the graphs. If it turns out that the column with good qualities and actions turns out to be longer than the list of bad ones, it means that in this particular period of time it is this side of human nature that takes over.

Am I becoming a bad person or have I always been this way?

Over there, my friend Vaska asks me to tell my wife that we were fishing together. A friend! How not to help? But she is his legal wife, and Vaska should not hide strange trips to God knows where under the guise of fishing. How can you ask me to lie? Because in this case I become a bad person. And betraying a friend is also not good.

The worst thing is that those around me obviously think that I am a very bad person. After all, if my friend Vaska had not considered me capable of lying, he would never have asked me for such “help.” And I feel sorry for Vaska, he keeps telling me how touchy his wife is and how she doesn’t want to understand him.

And I also feel sorry for my wife Vaskina - she is a very decent woman. There is no way to deceive her. It turns out that in any case I will turn out to be a bad person.

How to become a good person?

Often people who consider themselves bad are not bad, but experience problems of a psychological nature, namely, they belittle themselves. How to increase self-esteem and self-confidence is almost the same as becoming a good person. But there is no recipe, no list of actions that could turn evil into good.

This does not mean that you cannot cultivate good qualities in yourself. The process of changing yourself begins with the question “How do I understand that I am a bad person?” Anyone who thought about this took the first step towards re-evaluating their emotions, feelings, and actions.

Most psychologists and clergy believe that in order to stop being bad, you should simply constantly do only good deeds and control yourself.

Am I a bad person?

In fact, people are different from each other. System-vector psychology of Yuri Burlan identifies eight vectors. A vector is an innate set of desires and mental properties that influences behavioral scenarios and even external signs inherent in a particular person.

For example, I am a carrier of the anal vector - a very reliable and honest person. I never deceive anyone. I try very hard to be good and behave in such a way that no one can say that I am a bad person.

I am particularly diligent and persevering. The special care with which I separate clean and dirty, white and black, truth and lies. It just doesn’t work with kindness. I’m just a person of extremes: if you stand, you’ll only die. And life very often poses tasks in which you need to show flexibility, even opportunism in some cases. And then I just fall into a stupor. After all, it is the opportunist who is the worst person in the world.

But I just want to be good for everyone. A very simple desire to be right, to be worthy, so that you don’t feel ashamed in front of people. So that everyone respects and immediately understands: I am good. I'm not some flimsy, slippery guy. A bad person is not about me.

How to increase self-esteem?

Low self-esteem does not arise out of the blue; you are not born with it. This is always a consequence of the influence of other people, their reactions to failures, actions or emotions of a person.

How to increase self-esteem and self-confidence are extremely important questions. Depreciation of one's own personality, capabilities, skills, lack of faith in the likelihood of achieving results in anything are problems that prevent people from living fully. For example, a feeling of self-doubt often becomes the reason that a person does not even try to do anything.

It is very difficult to fight this, especially if there is no one nearby who would say: “Come on, go ahead, everything will work out, I believe in you.” Therefore, you need to say such phrases yourself, tuning into the beginning of the day. And of course, do not be afraid of difficulties, but try to do something. Over time, the attitude of others will change. A person will definitely notice approval from others. This will mean that problems with low self-esteem have been resolved.

Words vs pills

The most common pharmacological drugs improve this exchange of neurotransmitters in the brain, especially if we talk about antidepressants, mood stabilizers, “trunks” and the like.

Pills are not needed to replace a personality; after drinking them, you will not become a different person, this is a story about fixing what was broken.

The most advanced antidepressants are called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, and sometimes norepinephrine and dopamine. They affect different people a little differently. For example, both I and my co-author Anton have clinical depression, but my depression is more in the direction of apathy, and his depression is more in the direction of anxiety. He is helped by a medicine that affects serotonin more; I was helped by a medicine that also affects dopamine and norepinephrine.

Accordingly, if you go to a specialist, it may take some time to find a personalized cocktail of medications or one medication that is right for you. I changed four patterns until I found mine.

In addition to pills, there is another remedy - psychotherapy. From the point of view of evidence-based medicine, some types of psychotherapy work no worse than antidepressants, primarily cognitive therapy, especially in the case of anxiety disorders.

Here it is worth understanding that this is not a story about someone taking you from point A to point B, but about the fact that you yourself, under the supervision of a specialist, will make your way from point A to point B. And not immediately, but in short periods. then in dashes. So slow. The main thing is to make these progressive movements.

Why cognitive therapy? The well-known psychoanalysis is a wonderful thing, it is very good for introspection. But it’s not very good when you have panic attacks and you need to solve the problem now. The cognitive-behavioral method is about learning to change your behavior in real life.