NOTHINGNESS Dead Inside or Self-sufficient

Self-sustaining self-sufficiency within firm personal boundaries is a sign of a stable sense of self-worth, maturity, resilience, and inner strength: the ability to spend time with yourself, productive and content is a gift. Self-sufficiency is intimately link to a sense of agency and personal autonomy (internal locus of control): a distinct, demarcated self; smooth, seamless, assured self-governance; and the capacity to act independently, based on free choice. These are the hallmarks of and the prerequisites to self-efficacy (Bandura): "how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations" and extract beneficial outcomes from one’s environment, human or physical. But self-sufficiency is often confused with insecure, fear-based, hurt-averse attachment styles: avoidance and withdrawal. Other mental health problems masquerade as self-sufficiency: the narcissist’s grandiosity, the psychopath’s defiance, the schizoid’s essential emptiness and solipsistic reclusiveness, and the borderline’s dysregulated emotions and mood lability. These are all forms of counterdependency, the exact opposite of self-sufficiency. Accustomed to “normal”, mentally healthy people, the intimate partners of narcissists and psychopaths keep probing, attempting with growing desperation and disbelief to pry open their inscrutable mates. Move on, folks, there’s nothing to see here. The psychopath and the narcissist are shimmering surfaces. They have no depth. Behind...