They both have nothing to really be confident about. It’s all a lie.

You might think that the psychopath has all the self-esteem in the world. And because of that, they might not care about their public image as much as the narcissist does. It’s true, they don’t, but for other reasons.

First of all, a psychopath is certain about how bad they really are. They don’t need your opinion to confirm that. In addition, they want their delusion to remain intact, and that’s why any input or feedback from you is not welcome, because it might distort their delusional perspective of themselves. They are superior, and perfect in every way imaginable, and you don’t get to touch that bubble. Any attempt to touch it could lead to its destruction. They don’t want that to happen. To the eye of the inexperienced observer, that might come across as extreme self-confidence, high and solid self concept, and total lack of insecurity about anything there is that has anything to do with them or how great they really are. But, despite the lack of all of the above being extremely obvious to the experienced observer, perhaps to a highly mind-blowing level, the presence of another underlying explanation for this phenomenon is enough in itself to pull you like magnet in the direction of a totally different, albeit extremely opposing explanation.

It appears that what we’re dealing with here is encountering all the different alternatives or results that you can get. If it is possible to exist and be differentiated and distinct, it will take place. It’s just a statistical probability. What else could be there that didn’t already exist?

Trying to explain it in terms of a normal person who got subjected to trauma until they became like that doesn’t work and will always fail, because that’s not what happened, and that doesn’t explain anything. They are not formed, they just happened. They exist, because these are all the possibilities that can exist or take place. What else can you expect to exist that didn’t already show up, exactly as you predicted it to be like?

This explains the vast inconsistencies that we can find across all descriptions of what certain types of abusive people look or can look like and how they behave. They have a lot in common, but expecting every type to stick to its own type no matter what is absurd to say the least, not to mention, impractical. One can be borderline and do everything that you can only expect from a person with antisocial personality disorder, without them being antisocial or having antisocial personality disorder at all, because all variants can exist, and they probably actually do. We don’t have to abolish or dissolve distinctions altogether between different types of presentations or disorders and assume they are all one big personality or post traumatic disorder, in order to find no inconsistencies or contradictions, because we can always understand that what we’re dealing with is just or only a variant or a variation of the same disorder, because what can exist, will probably do at some point. We don’t have to think there’s no such thing as a female psychopath because it turns out that borderline females are all antisocial or sociopaths. They are just borderline with extreme potential for outbursts of violent behavior. They still don’t qualify for being a full-blown sociopath, antisocial, or psychopath. A fallacy of that nature has been committed by the best of us in psychology and psychiatry. They don’t think like each other, and they don’t approach the world the same way. They may exhibit the same external behavior, but what lies beneath the surface is entirely and totally different, it’s almost a scientific crime to put them under the same type, category, or disorder.

For example, there’s a difference between someone who is being abusive because they lack control over themselves or their behavior, and one that has no problem with controlling themselves to an extent that they can never feel bad no matter what they do to you. The first could be a borderline, the second, definitely a primary psychopath.

If you give the psychopath feedback, this might mess with whatever delusion they have about themselves. In the face of that, a psychopath blocks all sorts of feedback or input they get from anybody, because they are so bad there’s a very high probability that whatever feedback you give them will destroy their delusional, excessive, fake, over-inflated self-esteem, self-confidence, self concept, and grandiose image. This is what makes it seem unshakable to the outsider. It is not a greater degree of self-esteem or confidence than that which a narcissist seems to possess that a narcissist typically has. The narcissist just builds their fake confidence and grandiose delusions about themselves through external supply they gather from others like an addict. They build their false, fake, and delusional self from false evidence first. According to the amount of recent evidence that can enlarge and maintain their delusion, that they garner and collect from everybody they consider to be a source of supply, they will feel good about themselves. So their confidence is contingent upon what you think of them, for how long you thought so, and how many people thought the same. The difference is that if they run out of supply, they will feel worse about themselves. So they chase supply like an addict just to exist, because they can’t sustain their delusion without that kind of supply. They both have the same problem of insecurity. I am here to argue that of the two, the psychopath is the most insecure. In order to maintain such a grandiose delusion about themselves despite being so low in reality when it comes to self-esteem, self-confidence, self-image, and self-concept, they have to not listen to what you have to say. These things are so low, no amount of supply can help lift it above a minimum threshold or level that can sustain such delusions. Anything will expose the reality about them. Everything will serve as proof that they’re lying to themselves and others. Everything will expose to them how bad and horrible they really are in every way imaginable, and they know it. Since they can’t maintain such a delusion through any distorted or twisted interpretation of whatever feedback, input, opinion, or supply they can get from others and from the external world, they cannot afford to rely upon such sources or sorts of supply to maintain or sustain anything. They sustain their grandiose delusions about themselves through, ironically enough, internal validation. This is the epitome of falsely validating yourself exclusively from within. Even if your beliefs about yourself are infinitely delusional, they potentially can still remain forever, unshakable.

Nevertheless, a narcissist doesn’t make do with whatever supply they can get because they are any better. A narcissist doesn’t have less insecurity about themselves than that of a sociopath, or a psychopath, necessarily.

Remember, they are just what happened to exist. Those who are okay with misinterpreting feedback that doesn’t necessarily mean anything positive about them as solid proof that they are the best there is, become narcissists. Those who question evidence like there’s no tomorrow, as part of how they regularly abuse others, will use that pseudo skeptical self-doubt poison that they use against others to abuse them further, against themselves as well, because they use it to make themselves think that they are smart or to look smart in front of others. And since they use their rules too strictly, even if they backfire against them or hurt them, they will use that against themselves as well. It is what they think makes them special, so they cannot afford to not use it against themselves, even if it did them more harm than good.

Which makes them forever be dissatisfied with whatever evidence you give them to feed into their superiority or grandiose narrative or delusions.

The end result or final conclusion they have about themselves is the same, absolute vacuum, and they both escape it, bypass it, deny it, or run away from it, through building massive delusional castles around it. They just do so through different methods or mechanisms. One is okay with adding insult to injury, lies upon lies to justify other lies, extending the delusional space or aspect of their fantasy, false narrative, delusional beliefs, and psychosis to the evidence or feedback itself that they receive from other people or to their interpretation of said feedback, not just to the final conclusion about themselves, which is having a grandiose delusion about themselves that has nothing to do with reality, and so they thought that moving mountains in order to make what others said or did means they’re so great and special, is a good use of their time and energy, no matter how preoccupied they become with it or obsessive about it, to the extent that to them supply that fuels and feeds into their false narrative has become identical to addiction and substance abuse, whilst the other one, the psychopath, is too critical and skeptical to get their hands dirty and do the trick of trying so hard to change, alter, or tamper with the evidence to make it suit the narrative or match their false beliefs or delusions they hold or have about themselves, so they choose alternative methods to maintain or sustain such delusions, that have nothing to do with what others think of them, perhaps because they noticed that nothing can change that kind of belief, because the truth about them is that bad, or always worse than that of the narcissist, or they are too skeptical and critical, or they don’t want their delusion to be dependent or contingent upon supply that they can only get from others, which makes it not so practical, or they just are unable to misinterpret the feedback they get from others to suit their false narrative.

Anyhow, they are not as confident as you think they are. They either harbor the same amount of insecurity as that held or harbored by a narcissist, or worse, that is, they are even more insecure, which makes whatever supply they can get from others for that purpose, utterly and perpetually, useless.

Why you can’t heal despite doing everything right.

Like a medical student, who loves to skip the epidemiology section of every disease they are trying to learn, your subconscious skips the etiology of your unhappiness or your beliefs that you’ve developed about yourself one way or the other or from external sources, outside influences, or even random negative self talk.

Your unconscious or subconscious aren’t interested in causes. They don’t care about why we have such a belief about you. For some reason they find that to be ultra boring or something. Perhaps it has something to do with simplifying things or avoidance of overload. Maybe they are more invested in automaticity or getting things done. Maybe they are only interested in the outcome, with disregard to how they managed to get to it. They just need to be programmed, so that they escape the state of having the place where the belief is held remain empty as a placeholder. So it doesn’t matter to them how they got programmed, or where they got that programming from. They don’t care how reliable such programming is. They just want to be programmed, to make your life easier, better, or containing less suffering. They, for a mysterious reason that doesn’t make sense, want to avoid absence of certainty when it comes to your default programming, so they’d rather make do with whatever beliefs they can harbor, than remain empty, filled with curiosity as to what the real truth actually is. Because they can’t work without a belief system or an algorithm. Done is better than perfect fits this case, ironically enough, perfectly. The same could be said about habits and the development of habits or habit formation.

The problem lies within the fact that whenever you try to deal with those false beliefs that are ingrained in your system in order to purify your system from wrong or mistaken beliefs about yourself or the real world, in order to minimize detachment from reality as much as possible, and stay closer to the ultimate and absolute truth to the best of your ability, you do a subconscious or unconscious deep dive. You engage in heavy introspection. You do deep meditation. And while you’re doing so, you completely shut down the conscious part of your mind, thinking it will just be an obstacle standing in your way. Thinking that you need to throw away, bypass, turn off, or completely shut down the conscious parts of you in order to heal.

But you seem to forget the fact that both your unconscious and subconscious aren’t interested or invested in the causes of your beliefs, where they came from, how they came to being, or how did they arrive at such conclusions in the first place, despite the fact that your unconscious and subconscious worship the truth, especially the unconscious, which cares about the truth like there’s no tomorrow, so they elevate whatever beliefs you currently have about yourself, to the level of fact, even though they know if they went the extra mile and tried to make the connection or association between those beliefs and their causes, where they came from, how reliable the sources of those beliefs are, or how accurate or close to the truth those beliefs are, they would’ve known that they are all false, inaccurate, or wrong, and have nothing to do with reality, even though they know and are aware of all the causes and origins of those beliefs and where they came from or how they got there. How they got into your subconscious or unconscious in the first place. They would even provide you with evidence as to why those beliefs are indisputable, just to keep the conversation flowing, even though they know that none of what they provided you with as evidence is definitive or conclusive. Better yet, they know that the beliefs themselves are wrong and shouldn’t be there, and they have all the evidence in the world to prove that none of those beliefs is true, but they withhold the evidence, and keep spewing whatever evidence they can throw at you that can theoretically speaking support the claims they’re making or holding on to, or support whatever inaccurate beliefs they have about you or the real or external world, because you didn’t ask. You didn’t ask them to tell you whether or not those beliefs are true, or accurate. You asked for evidence to support those beliefs or claims, and there you have it. How am I doing? I always do what I’m told, and I followed your instructions or orders. If the outcome is too far away from what you had in mind or wanted, that’s not my fault. I’m but a humble servant of the order. It is you who gave bad instructions or orders. They really think this way. They know, and besides, they don’t care. You asked them about causes. The most unimportant and boring topic in the whole possible existence. Don’t expect us to be all enthusiastic about giving you a valuable or helpful answer. After all, why should we care. These are causes man. Causes are lame. What is wrong with you, just let us remain programmed and filled with crippling restrictive beliefs and habits in peace!

We need to be programmed and filled with habits, to make your life easier. To automate everything. Even though we care about the truth more than anything else in existence. And even though we know all these habits are bad habits that are significantly contributing to every single failure in life you’ve ever had. Even though we know and are aware that those habits are ruining your life. Even though we know that these beliefs are wrong. Even though we know the evidence we’re providing you as to how accurate those beliefs are is false and cannot be further from the truth. And we are all totally aware of all this. Because we don’t have the authority to question the system, or the status quo. We don’t have the authority to change or correct beliefs or belief systems. We can only be programmed, and we love it.

In order to figure out everything in an honest way, you need to integrate the conscious part of your mind into that deep diving experience or process to the fullest, because only your conscious mind can clear and disperse this nonsense. Only the conscious mind can stop this madness in its tracks.

But you will encounter what you would call endless negativity, when you turn your conscious mind on during the process of introspection or meditation, or whatever you’re doing to engage in a deep dive to fix things. This negativity is just coming to terms with the causes of and reasons for your suffering all those years. And since the conscious part of your mind, you in other words, is smarter, they cut to the chase. They skip directly to the causes of and reasons for your suffering, so that you fix things right away, because you know why your life sucks. You know why you keep failing. You know what you’re struggling with on the daily just to keep your head above the water. You know why the conditions and circumstances you have, you’re going through, or you’re stuck with are unliveable. That, my friend, is not negativity that you need to do away with. It’s logic.

Go all in, and then rest all you want afterwards.

The reason you hit burnout too frequently or so easily is because you either are doing something that you hate for a living because you’re out of options or because you think since you’re following your passion, you’ll never hit burnout.

If you are doing something that you hate, against your will, because you are out of options, you will definitely hit burnout before you even get started, just by thinking about it. That I understand, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Your feelings are valid, and you either need to switch what you’re doing or hang in there just a little bit longer until you can. Until you can afford to make the jump. Until you can finally do what you’re meant to be doing on this earth for good unchecked. Unopposed. You are exhausted here because you’re not supposed to be stuck in here. You know you can do better.

But what drives people crazy is hitting burnout despite doing the right thing. Despite following their passion and doing what they’re truly meant to be doing. Not only that, but they hit it sooner than expected. They burnout prematurely, all while saying the same thing: I no longer feel good afterwards. I do everything like I used to when I first started, but I can feel nothing. I don’t feel anything at all, despite doing everything right.

The problem lies within the fact that you almost always leave working on what you’re passionate about, what you love, or what you’re truly meant to be doing with your life prematurely, before you start feeling good. Before the floodgates open. Before any reward kicks in. Before getting any intrinsic reward from what you’re doing. Because you leave when you feel exhausted. You determine whether or not you’re supposed to leave based upon your battery. Your energy. How exhausted you really are at the moment, in order to pace yourself, and sustain yourself in the long run. You judge everything in terms of how you run a marathon. Forgetting along the way that your ultimate purpose of life isn’t running or winning marathons, and ignoring the physical limitations humans have when it comes to running a long distance. And you treat your passions and the only things that make you feel and come alive the same way.

You quit based upon how tired you feel, or how much you’ve accomplished today, with disregard to how good you feel, or how rewarded you are from working on what truly makes you feel like yourself. You quit before you experience that high, that makes it all worth it. You leave before you feel any different from where you started today. You leave before you achieve enough, and your body cannot release more reward than it thinks you deserve, but you leave anyway, settling for or even ignoring the reward breadcrumbs that got thrown your way today. You leave before you get your fair share of Serotonin and Dopamine that you need to stay sane. You leave before you get intrinsically rewarded enough for what you did today, because you don’t want to link when you should stop working on any given day to how good you feel when you stop working. You want to treat it as if somebody else is doing the work and you just give the order.

There are many complex processes that take place that determine when is the right moment to leave. And your intuition doesn’t know what your north star is or what you value, and so doesn’t know when exactly to compel you to leave work this day. And in order to reach that state, you have to succumb to your perfectionistic tendencies, where all your reward can naturally come from, because it means that we know there’s no reason for not giving you maximum reward today for what you did today. Because everything is perfect. And you really deserve it. And we know it, and there isn’t a part inside of us that thinks otherwise or has a different opinion. There isn’t a part of you that wishes you gave them the chance to do something more or better. You didn’t deny yourself or suppress yourself because you had to finish fast today to catch something else and have a balanced life. You didn’t leave before doing everything as perfectly as humanly possible or as you could, because you didn’t factor in fatigue, and so you didn’t quit prematurely because you were too tired to carry on. You did everything according to your highest standards. You didn’t leave before everything was perfectly done to the best of your ability. You lived up to your true and full potential. You fully expressed yourself. And that my friend, is true authenticity. Others could have done it better, but not you, so you can’t blame yourself. You did it, and you did your best. And now it makes sense to give you all the intrinsic reward there is. The thing that makes you truly alive and totally yourself and who you really are as a living being. The thing that you gave up everything for. The thing that you tasted once before and know fixes everything. The thing that makes you come alive. Now your body has no reason to assume you don’t deserve any of it or you shouldn’t have any of it. And thus you won’t be denied any of it.

In order to feel it, you need to not treat this with control like you’re parenting yourself. You need to give in. You do not need to give the inner child full control and just wait for things to happen on their own and take care of themselves. Both the adult self and the inner child have to work side by side together, not like a team, but like one. One entity, in complete unity. Anything else feels like either pure inhibition, where the grown-up parts of you are the ones in charge taking care of business and running things, or your inner child running around doing everything alone, unopposed, and unchecked, leading to chaos you cannot seem to be able to control. This is what makes your passion special. Everybody gets to participate, everybody gets to work, and everybody gets taken care of. No one got left behind.

Wait until there’s absolute and total alignment concerning the right moment to leave today. Wait until you’re satisfied and fulfilled. Make sure there’s no resistance. And the impulse to quit and call it a day is totally unopposed. Wait until leaving is a no-brainer. Don’t leave before you start feeling good.