An inferiority complex – a person’s vision of himself as a defective, defective, failed person. This is looking for flaws and focusing on them. This, in turn, results in disrespect for oneself, devaluation of oneself, a feeling of unworthiness and incorrectness. A person does not accept himself and believes that no one will accept him, moreover, he himself does not want to burden anyone’s life with his presence.
The essence of the phenomenon
The term “inferiority complex” was coined by the Austrian psychologist Alfred Adler. For the first time he applied it to children. Due to their psychophysiological characteristics, they all feel weak and partly inferior (“Here I grow up …”). In small doses, this feeling is beneficial, as it encourages you to become stronger, better, healthier, smarter, more capable. But if the oppression of the environment and other negative factors are added to the natural complex, then development, on the contrary, slows down and is disturbed.
However, the child grows up, becomes an adult, but the same offended child lives inside him, feeling insecure, insecure and helpless, with a pronounced need for recognition and love, happiness. However, against the background of an inferiority complex, this need is satisfied in a perverse way – by belittling others, craving for power and aggression, fighting for personal superiority and domination.
Inferiority complex in men
The main reason for development is maternal overprotection or, on the contrary, a lack of maternal love, the need to win the mother’s favor. The male inferiority complex is more often manifested:
- aggression;
- arrogance;
- attachment to things, hobbies that emphasize status and masculinity.
The following forms of manifestation of an inferiority complex in men can be distinguished:
- King David syndrome (avoidance of old age by choosing a young companion);
- boss syndrome (constant stress and proof of masculinity);
- Napoleon’s syndrome (ambition and vanity, striving for success);
- fear of impotence;
- lost energy syndrome (men suffer after 50 years);
- Lot’s syndrome (unwillingness to let the daughter go into the arms of another man);
- Hercules syndrome (material or other dependence on a woman);
- Kotovsky syndrome (rejection of baldness, shaving off the rest of the hair);
- Don Juan’s syndrome (breaking up relations with girls).
Men more often suffer from complexes against the background of physical weakness or material incapacity, sexual dysfunction or non-sexuality. Although appearance plays a significant role in this, especially height.
Inferiority complex in women
Women are naturally more emotional, therefore the risk of developing a complex is higher, more often associated with appearance. Popular forms and manifestations of the female inferiority complex:
- rejection of appearance or physique;
- sexual disorientation, denial of gender identity;
- rejection of men;
- guilt;
- fear of loneliness;
- worries about untapped potential;
- conviction that no one loves a girl and suspiciousness about this.
In women, complexes are more often associated with appearance, rejection of oneself provokes the development of insecurity. Because of her, a woman withdraws into herself, is overly self-critical, belittles her own achievements.
Inferiority complex (reasons)
Feelings of self-inferiority are usually accompanied by feelings of shame and guilt, as well as self-pity.
An inferiority complex develops against the background of:
- dislike in childhood;
- lack of friends, understanding, support;
- peer bullying, ridicule;
- destructive style of parenting (reproaches, criticism, demands, beatings, humiliation, overprotection with learned helplessness in the future, ignoring the child and his needs);
- incompetence of teachers and teachers (insults, public reprimands);
- long-term deprivation and frustration, economic and social instability.
Up to 7 years old, a child cannot assess himself independently, and at 7 years old this process is just starting to start. Up to this point, he draws conclusions about himself according to the assessments of his parents (before school), peers and adults (in primary school). This is what causes the childhood roots of the inferiority complex.
In some cases, the complex develops at a young or mature age. Its prerequisites are the weakness of the psyche, suggestibility and one or more tyrants nearby, destroying the personality of a person. The most vivid example is the destructive relationship between a man and a woman, in which a beautiful and self-confident girl turns into a notorious “shadow” under the yoke of insults, humiliation and beating of a tyrant partner. The situation worsens if the girl grew up in continuous love and care, in the complete absence of constructive criticism, praise, that is, in “greenhouse” conditions. Although there are also opposite relationships: a tyrant woman and an inspired man.
The human psyche is a fragile and mobile element. We feel some kind of influence on ourselves every second. Thus, an inferiority complex can develop against the background of external assessment (parents, peers, other members of the environment) and their own assessment. But! Their own assessment also comes from outside: public opinion, the influence of the media.
Defense mechanism and signs
The human brain will find the answer to everything, especially when it comes to survival and adaptation. The answer to the conviction of one’s own worthlessness, unattractiveness and inadequacy is an inflated Ego, or pride, arrogance.
To prevent anyone from noticing the problem of personality, an image based on overcompensation is created. That is, a person does not just reproduce those features that he lacks (in his opinion), but exaggerates them, as if masking a hole in his soul. From the outside it looks like:
- like arrogance;
- superiority over others;
- absolute rightness and awareness always and in everything;
- humiliation and insult of other people;
- deliberate love for yourself and your appearance;
- swagger and arrogance;
- ostentation, boasting;
- show off;
- inadequate attempts at self-assertion by cultivating and demonstrating material achievements, the number of partners, and so on;
- defiant behavior and desire in any way to deserve the attention of others;
- disputes to hoarseness for the sake of defending their innocence.
You can endlessly patch a hole with money, cars, girls, men, humiliation of other people, shocking, you can create the illusion of a self-confident (and even too self-confident) person. But this will not solve the real reason and the wound will not heal, self-esteem will remain underestimated, fear of attention and evaluation from the outside will remain, and smart people around will sooner or later understand the real reason for this behavior.
“The best defense is attack,” says the defense mechanism of the psyche. And a person, so that no one noticed his shortcomings and imperfections, seeks out in other people something that can be paid attention to and thereby distract him from himself. Therefore, those who are faced with cruelty and humiliation in the future often humiliate and criticize others, defending themselves.
But there is a second model of behavior caused by an inferiority complex. It is the opposite of the previous one. The person remains in the role of the humiliated and insulted. Among the signs:
- inadequate chronic feelings of shame and guilt;
- self-humiliation, humiliation;
- victim position;
- the desire to cause self-pity;
- internal prohibitions on the expression of emotions (aggression, discontent), on defending one’s rights and personal boundaries, fulfilling desires and meeting needs;
- increased anxiety;
- psychosomatic disorders;
- vigilance and suspiciousness;
- avoidance of traumatic conditions (depending on a particular case, for example, if a person is dissatisfied with his appearance, he refuses to be photographed, does not look in the mirror).
With such behavior, a person tries to get what he lacked and lacks: love, care, recognition and acceptance, support.
The consequences of an inferiority complex
A person with a traumatized psyche is vulnerable and always in fear. He will in any way protect himself from others, any negative (in his opinion) manifestations from the outside. But not everyone will want and will be able to communicate with an egocentric and arrogant person:
- For some, such a relationship will become an eternal war and disputes with the upholding of personal righteousness, and not the search for truth.
- Someone does not want to obey, realizes that they want to break him, and leave.
- The other will not want to participate in the victim’s games.
Close relationships do not develop because of the chase of a wounded person (a person with an inferiority complex) for quantity, another tick instead of looking for love and strong relationships.
In relationships, men with an inferiority complex often show sports interest, take in quantity, treat girls as a consumable, fall in love and abandon, use. While women with an inferiority complex can be in long-term relationships, they will direct all their forces to devalue and destroy a man: to subdue, belittle, manipulate feelings of guilt, pity, resentment, duty. The second female variation is a game of “dynamo” (seduction of a man and refusal at the last moment).
Fear of loneliness and death, uselessness and abandonment, depression, suicide, neuroses, personality degradation, escape from reality, addiction and delinquency, job loss and the inability to build a career due to fear of failure are popular consequences of an inferiority complex. Children have noticeable speech problems and developmental delays.
How to get rid of an inferiority complex
Being in a false image, a person remains divorced from reality. And he is fighting, in fact, with fictitious difficulties. In the process of working on the complex, you need to develop awareness of yourself and your life.
During psychotherapy you need:
- develop the emotional intelligence of the individual;
- go through and work through negative traumatic experiences;
- change attitudes and stereotypes of thinking and behavior;
- change the opinion and attitude towards oneself, people, the world.
That is, all work is aimed at a person’s rethinking of himself. As a rule, the true reason for the trauma of the psyche in adulthood is forgotten, goes into the subconscious. Because of this, it is almost impossible to figure out the situation on your own. Only competent help from a psychologist will help you return to childhood and re-look at the traumatic event, get rid of the hardships of the past.
When psychotrauma is brought to a conscious level, it turns out that the person is still torturing himself in vain. It is important to understand that children react more sharply to events, one random phrase is enough for trauma. Customers are often surprised when they look at the problem again. They understand that nothing was terrible, and if it was, then in adulthood they have all the tools to cope with difficulties.
Thus, to get rid of an inferiority complex, you need to find and solve its root causes. You can directly deal with what worries you: increase confidence, adjust self-esteem, lose weight, build muscle, have surgery, change clothes. But this is not a solution to the problem. As long as the old thinking is alive, a person will constantly find more and more flaws in himself. And only with a change in thinking can you supplement your new real image with a posture or figure correction, an increase in public speaking, and so on. But more often, after psychotherapy, a person does not want to change anything in himself and understands that he has thought up problems and shortcomings for himself.
