Is there a distinction between a big ego and confidence?

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lotusblossom
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25 Aug 2010, 6:44 am

hale_bopp wrote:

lotusblossom wrote:

hale_bopp wrote:

Laz wrote:

hale_bopp wrote:

No, i'm not. I think I summed up the egos pretty nicely. Ego is a sense of self importance.

Do you think if you reversed those summarised situations with a man rejecting a women you would have the same outcome? There seem to be slight differnces (wether that is due to the nature of female identity in our society or biological function I am uncertain) between the way a man's ego works and a woman's ego works

Good question.. maybe. I've rejected people and been rejected. If someone rejects me I'm usually "meh". I can't speak for other women.

I'll get annoyed initially if they led me on in any way bu eventually you realise that its life and you move on.

I think it must be an integrity issue or something. Ive been hurt very much when someone I really liked/loved rejected me. However I would not say horrid things to them or behave badly, where as Ive come across a number of people who behave appaling when someone rejects them. I cant understand how they would behave like that and have no dignity.

It depends on the situation, how deep you were and how it's handled. I don't consider being rejected by someone the same as being dumped. Being dumped is a lot more painful.

clearly its not the same as being dumped, I meant like when your really crushing on someone or liked them in secret for years, it can really hurt when they turn one down. But you and I would not respond by sending hate mails or making nasty face book pages or by sitting outside their house!

hale_bopp
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25 Aug 2010, 6:48 am

lotusblossom wrote:

hale_bopp wrote:

lotusblossom wrote:

hale_bopp wrote:

Laz wrote:

hale_bopp wrote:

No, i'm not. I think I summed up the egos pretty nicely. Ego is a sense of self importance.

It depends on the situation, how deep you were and how it's handled. I don't consider being rejected by someone the same as being dumped. Being dumped is a lot more painful.

Ok i've got you know.
I'd probably cry after that but get over it pretty quickly. Its more a feeling of disappointment than deep hurt though. Some people don't take it well. I told some weird aspie guy who was coming onto me that I wasn't interedted in dating him and got torrents of verbal abuse back for weeks.

Varies with personality types too. Im not one to recoil or persist. If someone shoots me down, I go straight into my shell and stay there.

In other words completely avoid the person/people (when its friends not b/gf) as much as I can, whereas others would become hostile or simply keep persisting.

Main reason I didn't get bullied as much at school as my NT sister. Just takes wisdom to know they aren't interested and nothing you can do can change it. First thing that goes through my brain to myself "Your interest is unwanted - make them forget about you as fast as possible and move on"

ladyrain
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25 Aug 2010, 8:25 am

Laz wrote:

If you have ever been in a position of leadership amongst your work colleagues or friends you have been demonstrating confidence. You use confidence to re-assure other people that your course of action is correct even if the circumstances are quite volatile. I'll give you an example of this....

I had a "patient" a few years ago who had managed to breakout of the home while he was in a dangerous manic state. I was the nurse in charge that night and had four young inexperianced support workers who had never dealt with this individual before and were quite terrified of the behaviour they had just witnessed prior to him jumping over the fence and doing a runner.

He later returned armed with a broken glass bottle with full intention of doing me or my support workers harm. One of the support workers was outside assessing the damage he had done and trying to see what direction he had gone when he returned and he blocked off the entrance back into the home. So I basically went out and confronted him knowing full well that I had a good chance of being stabbed or maimed by this guy. Eventually I managed to calm him down and the situation slowly de escalated. But when I initially went to confront him, to the support workers i appeared to be the confident nurse who was in control of the situation. The reality was, I was absolutely sh*****g myself and I made myself go out and do it because i knew i couldn't leave the support worker out their on her own :lol:

Laz, I think in your example you were describing bravery, rather than confidence.

ToadOfSteel
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25 Aug 2010, 8:45 am

GoatOnFire wrote:

ToadOfSteel wrote:

GoatOnFire wrote:

No. Narcissism is narcissism...

Well, if so, the question is why does saying it one way have a very negative connotation while saying it the other way has a very positive connotation if it is essentially the same thing?

One person's confidence is another person's ego, and vice versa. Selfishness is a by-product of the reptilian brain, which evolved when animals had to be selfish in order to survive. It's a completely different case now. The only way a society can ever really work is if people come to the realization that they are only one of many, and their own personal importance is no less or greater than the next person. That's the problem facing American culture today. It's not feminism (like fs would have you believe), it's not racism or sexism or anything else like that, it's the fact that American culture (and to a lesser extent, other western cultures) legitimizes and glorifies selfishness and narcissism, under the guises of "individualism" and "confidence", respectively. The good of the whole is largely ignored in the process. That's why you see so many people in the US complain about taxes when many European countries have taxes that are twice as high. That's why you have people such as Paris Hilton glorified as celebrities. And the list goes on.

billsmithglendale
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25 Aug 2010, 12:11 pm

GoatOnFire wrote:

Aside from that saying someone has a "big ego" has a negative connotation as opposed to saying that someone is "confident" carries a positive connotation, is there really any difference between having a big ego and being confident?

Or does it have to do with the level of confidence?

Maybe there is an optimal level of confidence and if you are described as egotistical then you have taken the level of confidence too far.

Is it possible to be too confident?

Confident-- your pot of "confidence" is full or filled near the top, but not overflowing. You are realistic to optimistic about your abilities, but not self-deceivingly so. You establish your place, and stay firm, but you draw the line and do not go overboard in terms of asserting yourself. (e.g., not bragging or rubbing it in people's faces constantly).

Big Ego -- thy pot overflows precipitously. Your view of yourself far exceeds reality, and you may take umbrage at anyone's suggestion that there is a mismatch between your ego and what is real. You go overboard in terms of showing people how great you are.

DemonAbyss10
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25 Aug 2010, 12:34 pm

back when I used to be in the 'market' for a girlfriend, if I got rejected I tended to just go whatever. A few of those women I am not good friends with. The only thing that bugs me about it is when another guy sees you with a lot of female friends that you don't have a sexual relationship with, they start hurling the gay-bombs like crazy at ya, most likely purely out of jealousy. And yet even with those things I tended to be of the "low self esteem" variety, minus the butthurt and all that s**t.

Well nowadays i am borderline Asexual, out of my own choice in all actuality. I don't see the point in sex other than to have kids, and kids absolutely disgust me, unless they are my cousins or somewhere else on the tree. But yet I wouldn't mind a female companion to simply talk to and live with. Lets say I wouldn't mind the company, hence why I feel like I am a borderline case.

Now my favorite form of entertainment in the world does involve those with big egos. Its called lets pop the bubble and watch someone turn themselves into a degenerate mess. Yeah, In other words it can be considered "trolling" those with huge egos simply to see them crash and burn, which is something that they all deserve anyways for having such a big ego in the first place. And yeah I do make a distinction between big ego and confidence, as most of those with huge egos tend to be overtly prideful and narcissistic.

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ToadOfSteel
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25 Aug 2010, 2:39 pm

billsmithglendale wrote:

Big Ego -- thy pot overflows precipitously. Your view of yourself far exceeds reality, and you may take umbrage at anyone's suggestion that there is a mismatch between your ego and what is real. You go overboard in terms of showing people how great you are.

Which is basically the case if you say anything good about yourself without sufficient proof of merit, whether through others remarking on said merit, or a quantitative analysis if applicable (i.e. you can't say you're good at math until you can prove that you are, indeed, good at math).

Booyakasha
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25 Aug 2010, 3:19 pm

I've met confident people with average sized egos, under confident people with gigantic egos, over confident people with gigantic egos and those that have neither.

Confident as in having a feeling of emotional security resulting from faith in oneself and a firm belief in one's powers, abilities, or capacities, big ego as in having an exaggerated sense of self-importance aka big fluff of inflated nothing.

Last edited by Booyakasha on 25 Aug 2010, 3:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Craig28
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25 Aug 2010, 3:21 pm

I wholeheartedly believe that Aspies have the right to brag to NT's about their exploits and successes.

CrinklyCrustacean
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26 Aug 2010, 5:48 am

If you have confidence, you are happy in yourself and satisfied with what you can and have achieved. You also believe (with good reason) that you will be able to achieve other things without too much difficulty. If you have a big ego, you constantly try to get attention for the achievements you have made (a "Look at me!" kind of attitude) regardless of the significance and size of your achievments. Egocentric people are essentially selfish. It's the difference between a man who knows he can get an engineering job because of his Masters in maths and PhD in mechanical engineering, and the man who brags about the things he's invented (even if it's only a toaster) to get enough attention to warrant a job.

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