Pathological Altruism Vs. Healthy Selfishness | Reclaiming One’s Grip On Rebellious Self-Care

ARE YOU HAPPY TO HELP? OR DOES YOUR HELPING COME WITH A COST?

By Jennifer Finch, M.A., LPC, NCC, CBCT

April 29, 2023

In 2013 Matthieu Ricard wrote a book called, “Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World”. (New York, NY: Back Bay Books.)

During this time, I began my dive into the compassion literature and was fascinated that we could study compassion as a science. As I studied and learned to practice compassion meditation a little over a decade ago, I discovered that a lot of what I was doing as a mom, a wife, a sole caretaker of my mother dying of cancer, a psychotherapist, and healer on a spiritual path, was unhelpful. To me. To others. I was giving, giving, giving, and the world and those around me felt as if they/it were taking, taking, taking.

I kept throwing my efforts and energy into doing more for others, but none of it fixed a doggone thing. It didn’t keep my mom from dying. It didn’t make my marriage stronger or more intimate. My kids weren’t magically more healthy, happy, and loved. My clients weren’t exponentially getting better. And I wasn’t becoming MORE compassionate. In fact, somehow, I was feeling worse and wretchedly tired of caring for others. On some days, even watering a plant felt like too much.

What I came to discover is that I was doing it wrong. The more effort-ing out there, the more negatively impactful it was for ME, in here. Secretly, sometimes even unconsciously, under my breath I began blaming others for my misery. The age-old rant, “It isn’t fair!” I couldn’t resist a touch of schadenfreude on occasion.

My body became riddled with anger, resentment, frustration, hurt and deep pain. Trying to pull myself up by my bootstraps, and rejecting others’ attempts at loving and helping me, didn’t work either. Although it was a strong suit of mine. I wore it almost every day since I was about 6 years old. Now that old, tattered, and worn-out suit has graciously been donated to the Good Will. Receiving help of any and all kinds feels amazing! And is heart-opening. Recognizably it can be harder to receive than to give for many, especially trained caregivers. But I highly recommend giving it a try and letting others (the right others) come into your heart.

Pathological Altruism

The scientific literature has a name for what I was doing. It’s called pathological altruism. It’s when we truly believe that we are giving out of our hearts and benevolent kindness, our tireless work ethic, and feel we are really helping someone; but really, it’s out of resentment, sometimes even out of contempt. It is giving out of an empty self that really has nothing left to give. Sometimes it is giving out of a depleted vessel of a body flush with anxiety, perfectionism, rigidity, and agitation. I recall working 12–plus-hour shifts at the hospital without stopping to eat or take a sip of water, all under the concealed guise of healthy caregiving and “doing my job.” For years I virtually ignored, until I couldn’t even feel my own body’s biological detection system signaling me that I needed to stop and pee. And I would get miffed if someone else took a longer break when I allowed myself none.

Pathological Altruism (PA) says “I don’t wanna be doing this, living this life! But if I don’t do all of this then the world will collapse!” (or maybe I will…not sure which might feel worse). Like Jack’s raging bile duct (*Fight Club), PA strongholds onto hope that someone out there will wake up and come help it in the exact way it wants to be helped.

PA, often passive-aggressively, demands to be cared for in the way it feels it “deserves” to be cared for while simultaneously blocking out care. It hopes to be loved in the explicit way it rigorously “deserves” to be loved, while simultaneously blocking out love. (Unconsciously of course, these are structural defense patterns that were once very necessary.) But, despite it being out of our own view, it reeks of righteousness, ego, and a grand sense of importance. It’s an exaggeration of how big my helping really was. And how tremendously impactful my efforts of giving were (not). In reality, all of my “doing” wasn’t accomplishing much except stretching out my own postponement of having a healthy respect for my own health, growth, happiness, joy and freedom. There is no positive impact on self and others in the evidence of PA caregiving.

In fact, it is hard to distinguish PA from what we tend to think of as pure selfishness. It is a hard truth to realize that all our giving and helping isn’t helpful. All our excess busy-ness and frantic to-ing and fro-ing is plain gluttony negatively impacted on others. Chronic tardiness, and persistent “too-much-going-on,” are classic plays in the PA handbook; demonstrating how busy, grandly important and UN-selfish we can be. For me, over-committing to others just exacerbated my own maladaptive psychological outcomes, until I was left in a heaping pile on the floor, dissociated from my own body, and unable to get up. My Self had left Me. Or rather, I had abandoned my own Self.

To punctuate with a little psychological science:

“In his 1939 essay “Selfishness and Self-Love,” Erich Fromm opened by declaring that “Modern culture is pervaded by a taboo on selfishness. It teaches that to be selfish is sinful and that to love others is virtuous.” In his essay, Fromm argues that this cultural taboo has had the unfortunate consequence of making people feel guilty to show themselves healthy self-love, which he defines as the passionate affirmation and respect for one’s own happiness, growth, and freedom.” (Scott Barry Kaufman1,* and Emanuel Jauk2,3, 2020.)

1939 ya’ll!

Fromm’s argument goes on to clarify that taking an interest only in oneself and an inability to give with pleasure and respect the dignity and integrity of others, is the oppositive of self-love. It is what we would readily equate with narcissism or even pathological tendencies. Selfishness without any regard or concern for others is a kind of greediness. And greediness, like other fragrant maladaptive constructs contains an instability and is devoid of any real satisfaction or contentment. It is a bottomless pit. An endless effort to satisfy. Grasping at love. Clinging to happiness which is a location that we can never arrive at. An addiction to Self. A tragic expression of unmet needs.

Abraham Maslow in 1943, wrote a paper, “Is human nature basically selfish?” (in Future Visions: The Unpublished Papers of Abraham Maslow, Hoffman E. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications; ), 107–114.) This was a literary answer, a call and response, with Fromm. Maslow called for a clearer term that could help cultivate communal well-being. “Maslow noted that in the process of psychotherapy it is sometimes necessary to teach people at certain times to engage in a “healthfully selfish manner” — to have a healthy respect for oneself that stems from abundance and need gratification — that “comes out of inner riches rather than inner poverty” (p. 110).” ((Scott Barry Kaufman1,* and Emanuel Jauk2,3, 2020.)

Calling for the Need for a New Vocabulary That Incorporates the Notion of Healthy Selfishness

To modernize Maslow’s term, I call it “Rebellious Self-Care.” A more vibrant movement reclaiming our whole Selves, even when we are giving to others to no avail. No more inner poverty!

I like to think of Rebellious Self-Care as a bi-directional arrow that can point outwardly and inwardly at the same time. Pathological Altruism would only point outwardly. Selfishness would only point inwardly. Healthy Selfishness is being able to turn the arrow around in whatever direction it is unbalanced and lacking. Finally getting the arrow to stabilize in an outward and inward direction, (nonduality), and living your life from there in every single moment is Rebellious Self-Care. It is not a practice or an exercise or an hour-long activity of Instagram Self-Care tactics; it is a way of living. It is also Boundary-Full. It is also Confidence.

I look back at that treacherous time in my life. I was not embodied. I lost my footing and my strong back. I couldn’t even feel my own legs. Facing my mother’s death, caring for two toddlers, trying to connect with a husband who was in hotels in nameless places. I was straddling little league, superficial conversations about grade school assignments on the freezing cold, butt burning bleachers; and a chemo lab where each week newbies arrived with big saucer eyes, and frail but hardened veterans thinned out week to week and were never to be seen again. In between those two elevator floors was a wormhole universe where I evaporated. Like a Haruki Murakami novel.

I called it caregiving.

Even my mother’s hospice nurse told me to get out of the house and go live my life. Her wise message fell on deaf ears. I wasn’t ready to hear it. I felt I was doing good. I was an efficient fixer. Despite it all, it felt as if my needs were not appreciated or “mirrored” in the eyes of any of my significant others. I couldn’t even meet their eyes because mine were vacant, somewhere with my soul between those two elevator floors. An exaggerated need for responsiveness from others is an attachment wound. For me, it rooted in feeling ashamed to be dependent on others for support. I learned to be as undemanding as possible (in certain situations) but underneath was a brittle façade of self-sufficiency. And underneath that façade was a plush carpet of anger, frustration, and resentment at having to sacrifice so much and receive so little in return.

Changing the Generational Culture

“Selfishness is often regarded as an undesirable or even immoral characteristic,”(Scott Barry Kaufman1,* and Emanuel Jauk2,). Which is why for generations we have learned to steer clear of anything remotely underpinned with its scent. Our mother’s mother’s mother’s mother clearly and consistently demonstrated that we do, we act, we help others, we take one for the team, we suck it up, we don’t complain, we tone our rebellion down, we move around quietly, don’t speak up or ask for help, we are capable of 20-hour days, we get up at 3:00am to make the pies, dinner is a meat and two veg, the children are all washed and sparkling with happiness, and the house is perfect etc. However we received the message, we got it loud and clear. That memorandum was imprinted into our body-mind the size of a billboard. Now Pinterest/Instagram/FB ARE our parentified billboards. No rest for the weary. You must keep persevering no matter how tired or overworked you are. We will rest when we die. And SELFISHNESS IS BAD! Sitting down and resting, the ultimate display of selfishness for all to see, would be the ultimate taboo.

The Importance of Considering the Motivation Underlying the Behavior Rather Than Just the Behavior Itself

What I have come to know in the research, as well as in my own experience is that not all selfishness is bad, and not all altruism is good. The works of humanistic and psychodynamic psychologists point to a more complex picture.

Altruism, universally considered desirable and virtuous, has a dark shadow.

“What we value so much, the altruistic ‘good’ side of human nature, can also have a dark side. Altruism can be the back door to hell.” — Oakley et al. (2012)

Altruism, even given from a genuine prosocial orientation is minutes away from turning rotten. The spectrum can be knocked off balance in one single vapor of a maladaptive thought and hence becomes tipped into the vector of pathological altruism. PA is associated with vulnerable narcissism and enlivens itself through selfish motivations for helping others. There is an unspoken expectation that something (praise, recognition, love, help, kindness, likes on social media) will be returned in exchange for our giving efforts.

Ask any narcissist if they are a narcissist; ask any martyr the same question.

Even the most powerful mirror in the land won’t show us what we cannot recognize. This is what a blind spot is. We cannot see what we cannot and are unwilling to see. Until one day, we hit rock bottom. We crash and burn, the barn burns down, and we collapse in that heap on the floor. Even our healthiest defense mechanisms break. This is the first crack in that idealistic armor that told us we could do it all. In the pitch darkness a burnishing sliver of hope is all it takes, and you will suddenly see. Things can be different. I can be different. It is a harsh truth of life when we wake up and see it so clearly: that our exhaustion, burnout, anger, and resentment was our own fault. We stopped caring for our own selves, which is the lush breeding ground for festering blisters of vexation.

Facing the Harsh Truth

Even with well-intentioned benevolence in my heart to love and care for all those around me, if I have a black hole in my own heart devoid of self-love, it all becomes a puddle of stagnating water. A pathogen that originates in selfish motivation.

I can see now that it wasn’t genuine care about others’ well-being as much as it was a strategy to manage others to satisfy my own impulses to avoid my own unmanageable pain and heartbreak. Like zugzwang in chess, If I stopped giving and doing and “being compassionate” the end result would be an immobile static-facing of my own deprivation. Every move felt impossible, and I would have preferred to pass and not make one. This is what stuck feels like. Stuck is the Chinese finger pull-toy of: keep on doing the same thing even though it makes us feel more stuck.

Unconsciously hoping that some calvary will come and save me from a nightmare of hard and difficult in my life sounds ridiculous. Yet I hoped. And when even the gentlest townspeople showed up, I am certain I pushed them away with a blowhard stance. The pain was leaking out and speaking in uncouth and regrettable ways.

Every time someone tried to help, I would be polite and say, “There is nothing you can do.” I grew angrier. And out of that anger, I did more. And more. Made more sandwiches, threw more dinner parties, attended more social weekend gatherings. To prove somehow that I could do it ALL. Deep down I already knew I couldn’t. My body needed rest and I ignored it. I just wanted to rage quit. But, like the Ouroborus serpent eating its own tail, I kept going outward and neglecting my inward Self.

Don’t be fooled by those actors and actresses on social media, or our bosses on podiums, or even by our own mothers. They make it look like they can do it all, but it is an illusion. They can’t sit down either because of some meta-narrative that incorporates the notion that we cannot rest. This just makes me sad now. Ironically, that sadness for my own neglected self is what allowed altruistic compassion to be purely and more authentically cultivated. Trying to “achieve” compassion from the other “doing” proxy version of me, was a futile disembodying task. I needed to fundamentally change who I was.

So entirely fragmented, I became unrecognizable. In all of that witnessed giving, I couldn’t see that I was leaving my SELF out of the equation. I was a doormat to the endless needs of others.

Martyrdom should be one of the seven sins.

I found it initially helpful to commiserate with other martyrs, and we would collaboratively say, “bless their heart” to the ones that tried to offer help but instead offered pithy comments. I have learned as a refurbished southerner transplanted from Chicago that certain colloquial phrases are like walking a tight rope on a razor’s edge. But despite my discomfort with southern slander, misery loves company, and I collected a tribe of other pathological altruistic givers. We became trauma bonded. Until the world became hopeless, dark, and grim. We squeezed the love and light right out of our own selves. It was our own doing.

Let In the Pain And Allow Altruistic Surrender

The loss of my mother was my calvary. Her death knocked me smack into the bottom rock. In the blink of an eye, in one flash moment when my mother was gone, I realized I no longer needed to care for her. It took my breath away, and what little was left of me disappeared like smoke into the mystic dense air. Then I woke up. And, I swallowed the harsh reality of how suffocated I had become, bound up in my own tight grip on caregiving. I had to completely redefine myself. Give my life a new purpose that included ME. Learn to let go of the totality of my past me. And, re-learn to firmly take care of MYSELF diligently and respectfully.

My own “altruism” was choking me out of my own life. Like kudzu along a freeway. It was like lecturing a bird how to fly to truly learn what it takes to care wholeheartedly for myself again. Past habits went away kicking and screaming. It took a lot of UNDOING, a lot of BEGINNER’s MIND, and a lot of LETTING GO. Until finally, altruistic surrender!

True altruism is the ability to be present to ourselves and then to others and not needing anything back. Nothing at all. No praise. No recognition. No need for apologies. No thank you notes. The Pyrex dish doesn’t even need to be returned. It is giving out of another dimension entirely. Pure giving. It is giving out of a freedom and a non-attachment and a whole and present body and mind. And it feels vital and good. This is motivation to care more, but differently:

1. Let go of all self-oriented maladaptive motives.

2. Foster growth by taking care of oneself.

3. Feel less shame when thinking about ourselves and our own needs.

4. Give to others from that stable self-esteem.

We don’t need to sacrifice ourselves for the benefit of others. With a little maturation and embodiment work any individual can obtain healthy altruism that can gratify their needs directly, regulate their body-mind and, also enjoy enhancing the good of others.

I don’t always get it right. Every human of course will struggle with pure giving quite a bit, especially in a westernized economy. The true lesson is that it is a lifelong process to learn to no longer self-neglect while we continue to give. I can still go days without attending to my most basic needs. Some decades (child-rearing) will be harder. Sometimes life delivers us more (cancer), but there is still room for me to hold onto myself even on tough days. It is imperative. Finding personal fulfillment in caring for others and “doing our job” is possible without burnout when we reclaim our whole selves.

PSA Announcement

This article can be a PSA disclaimer to the innate caregiver, frontline worker, mom/dad who gives 120%, or to anyone who focuses on others while excluding an individual’s self.

A well-cared for body-mind gives us the ability to care compassionately for others and let go of our anger and resentment. To cease pathological altruism. But, we must be willing to give up our ego, our righteousness, our false narrative that it is all up to us or the world will crumble. If we don’t take a closer look at what underlies our giving, our helping might be harmful to oneself and to others.

We must be willing to take a rebellious, unmitigated, communal stance and sit down and relax. Guilt is not invited to the party.

The old-world definition that staples selfishness with any behavior that brings pleasure or benefit to the individual is archaic. We must not assume that selfish or unselfish behavior is either good or bad until we determine where the truth exists. It may be at certain times selfish behavior is good, and at other times, it is bad. It may also be that unselfish behavior is sometimes good and at other times bad. What I am merely stating is how a good deal of what appears to be unselfish behavior or altruistic, may come out of forces that are psychopathological and that originate in selfish motivation.

Goodbye for now. I’m off to eat a healthy snack and head to the gym.