Listen to hopeful people

Too many fears to be managed simultaneously, we normally prefer to postpone. We Establish Symbiotic Relationships And not only that, but we can experience the change of the others as precursors to abandonment. This behavior can happen with every important person in the codependent's network but it's especially blinding in parenting and couples. In parenting, codependent parent knows that the children will soon leave home to form another family. The temptation to find more or less unconscious stratagems to delay this moment as long as possible can be openly dysfunctional, sometimes trespassing in behaviors that analyzed through the lens of codependency seem only a genuine and profound parental attack, but can provoke deep family conflicts and lacerating sensations of guilt or inadequacy on one side and abandonment on the other one. Siblings' partners never seem good enough, any decision about their professional and personal independency seems to be the right one, and every autonomous and personal decision about the future will be questioned or criticized. Sometimes, the best decision seems to give up: when it occurs, we see that somebody never looks for a partner or never finds a job. When it moves through the decision to start a familiar therapy, normally it highlights how the codependent parents overprotected the children, increasing their dependency and avoiding autonomous decisions, and how it started to open the crisis long time before. Even if it is less usual today, another fairly widespread behavior until a few decades ago was to choose among the siblings the sacrificial victim whose destiny would be to remain forever at home with his or her parents with the mission (never fully recognized) to take care of them. In fact, Machs excel in careers and social conditions where there are indefinite rules and boundaries. It is Machiavellians who were able to see opportunity in chaos. They thrive in competitive environments. They possess minimal emotional detachment to other people and things so they are able to manage their impulses. This way, they are more patient than most and when an opportunity arises, they are able to see it and seize it. On the outside, Machs may be friendly and charming. To get what they want, they can covertly prey on other people's guilt or sympathy or any other human emotion that they could sink their claws into. When these subtle tactics fail to help them get what they desire, they use coercion. Moreover, they can practically get away with anything by formulating a credible basis for denial for when they're caught. That said, when the shit hits the fan, they're not afraid to carry out threats.

For Muir, being in nature was a transcendent experience. When he ventured into the wild, he did not just see mountains, streams, and meadows; Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? In Nature, Emerson used different language to describe the same feeling. In the woods, he wrote, I feel that nothing can befall me in life,--no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair. Standing on the bare ground,--my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,--all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball. I am nothing. The currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God. It was perfection. It may sound odd, yet upon arriving at the cafeteria, I was delighted to see that there was no lunch food remaining, except for self-serve drinks and a large bowl of whole, raw red apples. I didn't even know that I didn't want anything else! Everything seemed so perfectly in place! I walked to pick up a single apple from the large bowl. I sat down smiling and joined a woman who I had not yet met. My eyes lit up when I learned her name was Mary. It was perfect! She was also there for the writing retreat. I happily munched the apple and listened to her talk, speaking only when words came.

In many cases, this decision was implicitly and silently accepted not only by both parents and the chosen daughter or son but also by the brothers and sisters of the victim. It's amazing to see how this practice can be started by narcissistic or codependent parents with the same probability. The only main difference between them is that the narcissistic parents choose to act fully aware about the meaning of their strategy. On the contrary, the codependent parents achieve the same result but because of the fear to be abandoned. This tacit pact has more concrete chances of success by preventing the chosen son or daughter from finding a stable couple to live with. When this happens the planned strategy of the family triangle was foiled by the presence of a consort who somehow had to find a place to join the family. This tacit agreement between parents and victim, however, must guarantee the fairest possible compensation. For example, the chosen son or daughter would have to receive an economical life support while living in the parents' house, thus obviating the economic effort of buying a house or the need to find a full-time job. Outside parenting, in toxic/romantic relationships this behavior causes a deep dependency on the partner. It will be especially lacerating if we are codependents and our partner is deeply manipulator. You see this sort of thing done by successful and powerful people every time. Even if it turns your stomach, you can't deny that this kind of mindset is effective in politics and in the corporate world. So does this mean that Machiavellianism promotes amoral behavior? Not really. First, to be truly Machiavellian, you need to stop seeing things in black and white. There's more to life than simple honesty vs. As previously mentioned, Machiavellianism is all about getting that perfect balance. It's not about being dishonest all the time. It's not about turning into a psycho who can't tell the difference between honesty and dishonesty. You actually need to distinguish between the two so you can use both honesty and dishonesty in a way that will become most profitable for you.

Muir and Emerson had the same experience in nature that Jeff Ashby had in space and that Cory Muscara had at the monastery in Burma. But all they had to do in order to break the roof was walk outside. If this is mysticism, as Emerson's biographer writes, it is mysticism of a commonly occurring and easily accepted sort. In a study published in 2015, the psychologist Paul Piff and his colleagues investigated the effect an awe-inspiring encounter with the natural world would have on their research subjects. Would they feel, as Emerson did, like a transparent eyeball after a walk in the woods? To find out, the researchers led ninety undergraduates, one at a time, into a towering grove of eucalyptus trees. Half of the students spent one minute staring up at the two-hundred-foot-tall trees, while the others looked at a tall building a few yards away for the same amount of time. The students did not know the purpose of the study--they had been told the researchers were studying visual perception. Even so, that single minute beneath the towering grove was transformative. After the students spent some time looking at either the tree or the building, an experimenter approached each one with a box of pens and a questionnaire to fill out. I saw great love radiate from her eyes. I felt like the luckiest person in the world to be with her. During our time together, she spontaneously offered me a article she had written called People of the Passion. I was elated. All afternoon and into the evening, the experience continued like a never-ending strand of pearls, each wonderful moment strung together with the one prior. That night, I laid on the little bed and smiled. The most peaceful, dreamless sleep embraced me. The next morning, after a restorative night of sleep, I woke feeling incredibly refreshed. I heard the sound of people celebrating with singing, whooping, and cheering. Tambourines and other musical instruments played.

The narcissistic partners, for example, change so much once our sentimental relationship becomes stable, and our fear to be abandoned will be used against us. When it happens (and it happens very often), immediately, we accuse them of not loving us as they used to do in the past and to be looking for the right moment to leave. Our first irrational strategy to save the relation is to control the partner and to do any effort to deserve love. For us, it is not easy at all to accept that our narcissists never changed, they are just showing their original and real nature. This generates a recurrent dynamic: we accuse them basing on the right principles (You are not the person I thought, and you don't love me), but our perspective is wrong (the narcissists are showing who they really are and our perception of love was based on a mirage, on a manipulation). Above all, that change is not a precursor of abandonment, it's the beginning of a stable betrayal. It generates a strong crisis in the codependent partner. Self-esteem and self-confidence disappear, our identity seems to be suddenly changed and we do not understand who we are. Month after month, year after year, we lose clarity and our energy. Gradually we depend on a toxic relation that we are calling love. According to the Machiavellian's viewpoint, turning others into stepping stones to reach the top is not really an immoral act. It's simply the way things are. If other people allow themselves to be stepped on, then chances are, they deserve it. Imagine a staircase. At the top of the staircase is your goal. There you are climbing it steadily. Then, on one of the steps, you see a person lying asleep. Do you stop? Do you sacrifice your goal because someone decided to snooze on one of the steps? If you don't step on him, it's either you go down or you stagnate in the same place that you're standing in.