Most of the times we look too judgmental at people that have too much pride. When this happens, I’m asking myself what this self-pride means and where it comes from. Every time something happens and we don’t like it, some sort of denial kicks in and some automatic thoughts go through our head, like this can’t happen to me; it must be some mistake; it can’t be right; it’s not real and so on. Denial is the first defense mechanism we use to protect ourselves from stuff that can hurt us. I believe that this denial comes from self-pride because we feel too special for those bad things to happen to us.
This pride is used in too different ways. The first one is to ignore everything and everyone saying that we are wrong. We use this to keep going forward for the things we want despite everything. For example, running for the person you like despite everyone saying that it is not the one for you. The second way is to use the self-pride is to hide your true feelings from yourself and from everybody else. It’s a way to lie to yourself because the truth is too hurtful. For example, when you know you’ve done something wrong and refuse to admit it even for yourself because you can’t be wrong. As you see, self-pride and denial are tightly connected.
We use self-pride to keep our ego up when things are bad for us because we can’t take the whole hit at once. In this way, we dose it and take it little by little until we can handle the whole thing and still be functional. Most of the times, it’s not a conscious behavior, but it is necessary for our ego to keep an acceptable level.
I think that the level of pride is linked to the problems we have. When you see someone having too much pride, most likely that person has so much problems that he or she barely handles. Of course, it is not a general opinion. There are people that are proud of themselves even though they do nothing… so if their shit is bigger than usual, they’re so proud that they feel they could receive a Nobel prize for that, but this is connected to the experiences they had in life until that point.
Our pride keeps our ego to a safe level until we can handle the whole problem. Usually, this pride kicks in when the problems we have are connected to us personally (for example, if someone refuses to go out with us) and it should keep us on the right track. If it doesn’t, it’s a problem of low self-esteem, but this is a problem for another post.
