Excerpt from "The Choice" by Arbinger Institute

Self-Betrayal

As a person, I know what it means to be a

person. I have a sense of what people need.

For example: I see a person in need, and 
I feel to help.




My responsiveness to others' needs is my 
deepest sense of what is right.


I can resist this responsiveness toward 
others' needs.


If I do, I betray my deepest sense of what 
is right.




Betray my deepest sense of what is right
and I betray myself.




Betray myself and I do wrong. Do wrong
and I seek to be justified. I begin seeing a
world that makes the wrong seem right.


Example: My child cries in the middle of
the night, and I feel to get up and tend to
her before my spouse wakes up.
But I don't.


I now say:


"I got up last time."

"My spouse is not as busy as I am."


"My spouse is probably feigning sleep."




Another example: I obtain information
that would help a coworker and I feel I
should share it. But I don't.


I now say:


"This person doesn't help me."


"This person is too dependent on others already."


"I worked hard for this information."




The people I felt to help now seem
blameworthy.


I feel justified in not helping.


But did they seem blameworthy when I
felt to help?


Why do they seem blameworthy now?


Betray myself and I seek to be justified by
blaming others. I become resistant to them.




People Or Objects


So I betray myself, and people to help
become objects of blame.


Instead of people with their own lives, I
now see others as obstacles in mine,


or as vehicles to be used for my purposes,


or as irrelevancies that offer me no
advantage.




Consider:


When I felt to get up and tend the baby
before my spouse woke up, was my spouse
a person or an object to me?


And how was I seeing my coworker when I
felt I should share the information I had
obtained?




Compare:


How did I see my spouse and my coworker
after I betrayed my sense of what I
should do for them?




Responsive is who I was.


Resistant is the way I made myself in
self-betrayal.


Reducing people to mere objects is the
way I resist them.