More Learning

What I learned yesterday evening is that neurotics, which Freud calls "Introverts", deem fantasy to be equal to doing. In fact they inhibit their 'doing' so that they do not act on their fantasies. Secondly, all babies are born initially as narcisists, the world revolves around them and their needs, and then as adults they supress that feeling with reality. However, when they have a child, they revive that narcissism and place it on the child with fantastic feelings of good will and promise for the child, that their life will be so much better than the parents' lives. This adoration can have the affect of creating an ideal-self for the child. To me, this explains my low self-esteem; even though my friends and family accept me and see me in a good light, positively and lovingly, I see myself as failing miserably to attain my ideal, or fantasy, self. The task is still to learn that the "fantasy" Ideal-self is an illusion, and that I am, as my real self, quite acceptable. The neurotic problem is in comparing myself to an impossible fantasy potential.  Although we all hear the third person voices in our head, they are based on our parents' voices and voices from society, and they are ever-watching our every move and comparing us to the ideal, if we are neurotic. Others never form the Ideal-self and are free of it's commands. This is the self-crititcal voice we sometimes hear. This is the one that makes codependents so dependent on their environment and believing their every move is being observed and is important to everyone else. The 'watcher' is actually the Ideal self, the critic, not the environment. Anyway, I thought it a valuable piece of information for my recovery.