Written by Bedirhan Atabay
Although it is expected from a person to not glorify himself to be above others, there are many people that stay out of this expectation and tend to glorify all of their successes and positive sides above others’ successes in order to be able to prove themselves as superiors. The people that fit this categorization are most likely having a Superiority Complex. Those people strongly believe that their successes are above anyone else’s and think of others as inferior to them. However, this is not the case on most occasions, as those people tend to be far different than what they describe themselves to be or think themselves to exist as. Even though Superiority Complex is not accepted as a mental issue or a categorization method in modern neuroscience, here is a list of several common traits of the people that can be categorized as having this complex. However, before reading our list, it will be prominent to note that the traits on the list are from a theory created by Alfred Adler in the early 20th century (1,2).
1- On some occasions, they are not superior at all.
Even though they accept themselves as people above anyone else with superior accomplishments, they tend to be just lying to themselves and have a huge feeling of inferiority or true belief in their superiority that is not accurate at all (1,2,3). They can sometimes acknowledge the fact that they do not possess superior abilities to the others in some cases they think so, and they deny this fact deep inside. They are keen on over-estimating their successes, that is a major reason behind their personality.
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2-They mostly lack the required evidence to prove their claims.
People with this complex are sometimes unable to prove their claims to be legit, this is because they do lack the evidence to prove it (1). This is not something they do without evidence in order to prove themselves as superior, it is something that they do because they genuinely believe in in some cases (1).
3-They can act rude to people who disagree with them.
These people are really keen on being rude and mean to people who disagree with their claims. They can belittle the person they are talking to, and they can really be self-centered in many cases (1).
All of these traits and of being devastating for the people with this complex due to the consequences it can have on their social status, the lack of self esteem that can occur due to their magnification of successes and attempts to escape from criticism, and an occurrence of a high self-esteem that can make you feel worse then you would casually be when you fail, reduce the amount of effort that you are giving to accomplish your goals, and pushing away other people from you, resulting with the increase of the negative effects of the first consequence I have mentioned (1,2). Therefore, one must build an accurate feeling of self-perception in order to get rid of this feeling. The things that can be done include:
-Creation of a program that is not exaggerating the successes of the person.
-Trying to be happy for other people’s successes.
-Forgiving your own mistakes and not letting yourself feel bad about it (1).
If all of those goals can be accomplished, then one can eventually get rid of their complex and build their own self-esteem (1). It should also not be forgotten that those complexes are pretty common in recent days especially as it has been stated that a majority of people accepted themselves superior to the others; therefore, you should never feel alone as a person having this problem and work hard to get over it while getting help from experts if required (1,3).
References:
Brennan, D. (Ed.). (n.d.). Superiority complex: Causes, symptoms, and more. WebMD. https://www.webmd.com/mental-health/what-is-a-superiority-complex.
Holland, K., & Legg, T. J. (2019, August 29). Superiority complex: Understanding it, traits, treatment and more<. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/mental-health/superiority-complex.
Gupta, S. (2023, January 18). What is a superiority complex?. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/superiority-complex-causes-characteristics-and-coping-7095818.
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