Substitute-Sense-of-Self-oriented System

All the various unhealthy mental and emotional ‘structures’ include, but are not limited to, habits, beliefs, motives, attitudes, goals, fears, needs and emotional ‘highs’. These structures develop naturally in a child deprived of adequate regard as a ‘real person’ by the caretaker such that the child cannot develop a Natural-Sense-of-Self. Therefore the unhealthy System is the result of a natural compensation for the absence of the healthy structure: a Natural-Sense-of-Self.

Because there is so much at stake for the person (‘to feel alive, allowed to be’) these structures add up to a way of living in which a person’s life is organized around the only ‘goal‘ of reaching – by the results of their actions – an emotional ‘high’’. Their ‘motives’ are Indirect, and their ‘habits’ and ‘needs’ are often conditions or requirements they are addicted to fulfilling to avoid the emptiness and terror of ‘not existing’ in the eyes of other people.

These structures provide the person with some (false, mistaken, superficial, fake) semblance of feeling they exist, The entire pathological Substitute-Sense-of-Self-oriented System therefore operates as if it were a matter of life or death. Consequently, the need to fulfill the conditions leads to compulsions and the need for Reward/High Link leads to addictions. These are inevitable parts of the structures of the Substitute-Sense-of-Self-oriented System.