Its not so bad to be good to yourself, or even to do so for your on cause. Ive always argued that there is no such thing as a “selfless” act, as the self is ALWAYS present as the actor and there’s typically always going to be a reason that the self is benefiting, even if it’s simply because it “feels good to do good”, thats still something that you’re doing for yourself. So, its not about whether YOU are getting something from the experience, its about whether or not it matters to you that the OTHER involved in the interaction is benefitting. OTHER being either specific(person) or non-specific(the community/the world)
So, rather than feeling disingenuous, i implore you to instead appreciate that you’ve delved deeply enough into the analysis of your own actions and intentions that you’ve discovered that the root of any and every action is found in the service of one’s own self; since you experienced doubt leading to cognitive dissonance when evaluating your goodness, feeling it may be tainted by an underlying motif relating to self-gratification.. I’m personally of the impression that arriving at such an impasse is both evidence of the validity of your intended goodness and also evidence of your fastidiousness in exercising your self-awareness to the point of realizing that at the core of all of your actions and beliefs is… you.
So for what its worth, I want you to know that I think you’ve done great, and ARE wholeheartedly a good person.
You know what bad people do?
They don’t worry about how good they are, or how bad they’ve been, just whether or not they’re feeling good at the moment and securing the ability to continue to feel good even if it happens to be to the detriment of others.
Thats a bad person, and they are everywhere and more often than not, work very hard and do great jobs at painting a positive and honest image of themselves to often assist in the acquiring of their true goals- you know, like the story of how the American Indians were helped out by the seemingly friendly ships of visitors from europe in return for helping them learn how to survive in america… whosever idea it was to use and refuse them, THATS a bad person, whos goodness was “inclusivegoodness” which allowed for morally justified harm and disregard for others.
I sympathize with the fixation on moral goodness and have felt “imposter syndrome” frequently so i feel that i have at least some measure of understanding where you are coming from, so if you keep reading ill share a bit of my own thoughts on goodness that I think might help frame things in a better light.
My encouragement is simply, “aye, thats you, and thats awesome”
And i mean this because,
Theres only two types of “goodness” in my book, one is inclusive and the other is not. I believe there is merit in non-inclusive goodness for sure, but only caring for those closest to you can put you at odds with the rest of the community, especially if “closest to you” is just your own self.
Inclusive goodness is what we offer to everyone without any prerequisite conditions, most often considered altruistic or charitable but in every case, every act is for the purpose of ones own expression of their values. So it could be said that the charity is like a peacocks feathers.
But a peacocks feathers are truly the show of the health of the peacock, and theres nothing to feel ashamed about there.
We live to be recognized despite what some people may think, which is why almost all illness in the realm of psychology must be measured by its effect on a persons relationships, wether with others, life, spirits ideas or just ones own self.
So, to summarize, i see tremendous goodness and the potential for consideration for others that is both wholesome and awesome. You’ve just arrived at a linguistically convoluted aspect of social psychology where it becomes kinda gray because it confusing when the simple form of good and bad is “good is when you do for others” and “bad is when you do wrong to others” which makes more sense when you replace wrong with “not good” and it becomes “bad is when you do “not-good” to others”, so we create a circumstance of feeling guilt when we think we should help but dont, and we call this bad, especially if it was expected of us to help, a common experience of childhood.
Hopefully from this realization you can eventually find more confidence and security in your own personal goodness as you are, down to the root, a person who sincerely cares about their impact on others and what it means about your own self.
Thats not to say the OCD will go away, or that any of this is a solution or any kind of instruction. I still have the thoughts invade my mind that try to convince me that ive falsified my own memories of circumstances to convince myself that i do what I’m doing because i care about the person I’m doing it for, and that the truth is a kind of “long-con” where I consider the idea that I’ve successfully manipulated myself into being who i needed to be and acting the way i did to accomplish some ulterior goal with a self-serving motif. The mind is powerful, and thats why im here too, i couldnt handle all that power on my own and eventually caved. :)
So, i hope this answers the various questions you had and wasnt too long of a response or otherwise inappropriate in nature.
