Pseudo-altruism: we all do it

It's an argument as old as time: can human beings be truly altruistic?

Altruism is defined as the view that other people's well-being is equally, if not more important than one's well-being or survival. Some of you might be thinking in your heads "I know someone like that. I know someone that selfless," but sit down and think about it, how truly selfless can one be?

There have been people who suggested that altruism is simply an ego defense. A form of sublimation (channeling negative urges into positive socially acceptable behavior) in which an individual overcomes his anxiety by stepping outside his/herself and serving others. This is not to say that people cannot be selfless, but I personally believe that people MAKE themselves altruistic. I do not believe that people are truly and purely altruistic.

Pseudo-altruism however is a lot more common and definitely more detrimental. During this period that I've been home a lot and alone with my thoughts, I decided to do some reflection and try and fix myself one problem at a time. One of my initial findings was that I tend to exhibit pseudo-altruism A LOT. I started to observe my friends (at least the memories I had of them right before the pandemic) in an attempt to understand if this was a thing everyone did or if it was just me. I managed to single out 8 times this year that my friends had exhibited this behavior. I tried to go back to last year and I could clearly single out 16 times ANY of my friends had exhibited the behavior. Before I get too deep into it, I should probably let you guys know what "pseudo-altruism" is.

The term "pseudo" shouldn't be strange to medical (as in pseudo-aneurysm) and psychology students. It is a term (usually a prefix for another word) used to mean: fake, artificial, imitation or 'not genuine.' Pseudo-altruism is a pattern of behavior used by people who can't properly cope with rage and hurt. The repressed rage or hurt then unconsciously manifests itself as "concern for others." For example, person A has hurt person B, person B who cannot properly process the hurt unconsciously walks around with rage in their heart towards person A. Person A then hurts another person; person C. Person B then reacts "on behalf of " person C. person B has convinced themselves that they reacted PURELY out of concern for person C meanwhile, unconsciously person B reacted towards person A "on behalf of person C" because they had anger towards person A. Another example would be amongst 3 people: Sarah, Bob and Mary (purely made up characters).  Sarah and Bob had a falling out, Bob then becomes acquaintances with Mary. Sarah then goes up to Mary to voice her "concern" about their budding friendship because Bob could potentially hurt Mary. Sarah believes she was just warning Mary for her own good but unknowingly, she has just acted out of the rage she feels towards Bob. This does not make Sarah a bad person. It doesn't mean that Sarah was being malicious about the situation, it just means that Sarah has problems dealing with being hurt and her mind subconsciously tried to find another way to tackle the pent up anger she had. Ironically, most times this way of dealing with misplaced rage doesn't work long term. It's only a matter of time before Sarah starts looking for another person to "save" from Bob and from there,the cycle continues.

Unless you're like me who knows how to recognize toxic traits in yourself, you might go on for years and years, even your whole life, not recognizing that you're exactly like Sarah. You're going on with life, letting your misplaced anger CONSUME you and occasionally distracting it with pseudo-altruism.

I did a lot of research for this post because the information on this is quite limited, but the idea came to me at the best possible time because I had been exhibiting this behavioral pattern and I didn't even know it. I had been walking around for months letting my misplaced anger and hurt blind me and weigh me down. I think about a lot of my friends now and recognize this same behavior in them and I see how much it affects their souls. Sometimes, people hurt us more than we could've imagined. They leave us shattered and we have to pick up the pieces ourselves. It's hard to forgive and it's definitely harder to forget but in order to move on, you have to properly process what you're feeling. You have to let yourself go through the whole ride of recovering from being hurt. You don't have to be strong all the time and it's OK if you need some time to get yourself together. I see now that if I had just allowed myself to heal, I probably wouldn't have needed to teach myself this lesson. However, I think I needed to make that mistake in order to educate you guys better.

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you guys enjoyed.

Love you loads.