That was a strange dark night with a silver lining yesterday. I think I’ve got it worked out: I am not depressed, I am shamming.

Yes, I do have a whole lot going on, but I am thinking the reason I’m not getting ahead with some points is because I have excuses for everything. ‘Not being able to’ and ‘depressed’ is the main. Always has been since, wow, since early age but mostly since I got shunned at school for publicly exposing people who were stealing from the student activity fund. They stole money, sold tickets to a humongous party we had organised (5000 kids) on the black market, making 20 box a ticket on top of the real price. In the end I think 1000 tickets went for the correct price. It worked out, I was the only one in the student board who cared, all the rest had…

There is a mass of literature available on narcissism and codependency and a quick search on the internet will reveal hundreds of websites. It has become very fashionable to label and kind of self-centered behavior as narcissism and the “victim” as codependent. While there are truly many cases of this kind of emotional abuse, one must be cautious in rushing to diagnose. However, one of the best books on the subject is The Human Magnet Syndrome by Ross Rosenberg and it offers some interesting insights into why we attract the people we do. While most of the book is standard fare, describing various personality disorders and trying to ascertain why people have either narcissist or codependent tendencies, one theory he puts forward stands out.

He highlights the Continuum of Self Value in a range from minus 5 to plus 5. Minus 5 being in his words:

” A codependent who…