Need to Be the Center of the Universe? Think Again!

“The thought ‘so-and-so has betrayed me’ protects us from

the more painful thought ‘no one thinks about me.”

Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life

Most everyone has created dramas in their heads from time to time. Some of these paranoid dramas are based in assumptions we make which are rooted in irrational thinking. It’s easy, when we are feeling especially bad about ourselves, to make an assumption about someone else’s behavior and to connect that behavior to us in derogatory ways.

For example, have you ever been walking down a busy street and seen someone coming your direction who is laughing? Just as your eyes focus on this person, their eyes meet yours and suddenly you’ve made the assumption that they are laughing at you for some unknown reason. You shift your eyes to the sidewalk and question yourself “Is it my face? My body size? My clothing? Do I look like a dork?”

Then as this person passes you, you look back up and notice she is still laughing and she is on her cell phone. Suddenly, you know that your paranoia was just that: paranoia based in a faulty assumption. This particular lady wasn’t laughing at you and probably didn’t care that you existed, if she even really noticed you at all.

Codependents tend to see themselves as the center of the Universe. Everything is about them. Why? Because so many of us are still so emotionally immature. Children believe that the entire world rotates around them and that they are the center of attention in everyone’s life. This is natural. But many of us addictive thinkers never grew out of this childhood normality. It thus became an adult abnormality for us.

And as a result of this abnormality we are often paranoid. We think that everyone is always focused on us and that every expression of disproval—even from a complete stranger—is aimed at us. This is irrational thinking based in irrational assumptions and paranoia.

Truth is most of the world around us doesn’t know or care that we exist. All of their expressions of disapproval are about them, not us. But as Stephen Grosz says in The Examined Life, this could also be part of the problem.

Grosz says “we are more likely to become paranoid if we feel insecure, disconnected, alone. Above all, paranoid fantasies are a response to the feeling that we are being treated with indifference.”

So many of us codependents grew-up in homes where we felt like we didn’t count and we were invisible. This may be why we end up staying so self-centered: because, as children, we felt like no one ever really cared and today we desperately want someone—anyone—to care.

So when we are walking down a busy street we want people to see us. We want someone to acknowledge we exist and we’d rather created negative attention for ourselves than no attention at all. So if we imagine someone is laughing at the way we are dressed, at least we feel like we aren’t being treated with indifference. We are getting some type of attention, even if it is imagined, paranoid and negative.

For some of us, it’s actually less painful to get negative attention than no attention at all.

Thankfully, recovery is about learning that we do indeed count in this world. First, however, we need to count with us. It’s nice when we are important to other people, but we first need to be important to us. That takes some of the edge off of needing to be the center of everyone else’s universe. We only need to be the center of our own universe. And that needs to be a universe where we speak kindly to ourselves, and where we treat ourselves like we are important by accepting and loving ourselves just the way we are.

Once we count (are important) with ourselves, we will find that we do count with other people-- in positive ways. We won’t feel the need to be the center of the Universe anymore and we will be able to walk down the street being less paranoid and more alive to the beauty of a given day.