Indirect Relationship with Self

See also Direct Relationship with Self also described on the page Direct versus an Indirect Relationship with Self.

When you sense your ‘self’ only through the responses of others to your actions in an unhealthy way, you have an indirect relationship with whatever we might want to call your ‘self.’ It’s indirect because you are not in touch with your Real Self/Actual Self. (link to Natural-Sense-of-Self) It never developed due to a lack of the right kind of affirmative feedback from your primary caretaker, for you as an infant and young child. You were forced (by Nature) to develop coping mechanisms which over time you identified with as being ‘you’.

However your personal well-being is not your basic concern in life, nor is it being served by your actions. (In fact, you are out of touch with your real needs and desires, having adopted instead the need and desire to do whatever would bring approval.)

Instead, your motive in life is accomplishing the conditions and requirements you have (subconsciously) accepted to get approval from your caretaker and achieve your Hidden Agenda of getting approval and the resulting ‘feel-good-about-Self’ as a Substitute-Sense-of-Self.

So instead of you being the touchstone of your existence, you experience whatever passes for a ‘self’ via your achievements: conditions to fulfill, tasks to complete, trying to be perfect in order to get the good-feeling-about-yourself ‘high’ that serves as your only Sense-of-Self.

It is a dramatic condition in which you are actually skipping life altogether, although that is not apparent to the outside world, nor to your conscious mind, who is too busy juggling Ego-References to even notice.