Selfishness

A difficulty I have encountered which has contributed to my depression is the mixed message in our society about selfishness and altruism.

As a general rule, selfishness is defined and portrayed as being negative and not something that one wants to be (or be known as), yet when someone is going through difficulties, it is often said that they need to "help themselves" (IE. Be selfish).

In fact, the entire industry of popular "psychology" is based not on generosity and altruism, but rather on selfishness; it's even called "Self-Help".

I've often heard people say "So-&-So, he's just TOO NICE a guy". How can someone be "too nice"? None of us will ever be half as nice as we can!!!

The difficulty I've had is when at times I've be nice, or generous (perhaps naively), I was actually criticized. That just did not make sense to me. In my mind, I was doing it in good faith, and for a good reason. Whether the (hoped for) result was reached or not was not the goal, I just wanted to help.

It would make me depressed to realize that I couldn't even be nice!! I did what I thought was right, and still got shit, how useless am I!!!!

After this happened a few times, I got less enthusiastic about being nice or helpful, and then I was accused of "selfishness". This in turn also made me depressed.

The most depressing part was the contridiction which (in my mind) was "whether I do something nice or whether I don't, the result is the same (criticism)". That left me depressed that I didn't do the right thing either way, and more importantly, that there was no "right thing" I could do.