“Before You Help Others, You Must First Help Yourself”

"Before you assist others, always put your oxygen mask on first."

I come from a generation in which air travel was a luxury. On my first flight in a real commercial aircraft, I was already almost 40 years old.


I was a little scared. When the stewardess explained the rules for emergencies, I listened attentively. Then she said something that disturbed me:

“Before you help others, always put your oxygen mask on first.”

In my school days, I would have already received 3 expression errors for this article. I would have ruined a good grade for myself. Because I started three sentences with the bad word “I”. This word one avoided, if at all possible. And to begin a sentence with “I”, that one did not do at all. Now, I should take care of myself first? I had never heard that before. It seemed to me quite wrong, unmoraclous, evil.

“Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself

We were brought up with the Christian commandment to love other people. The fact that self-love was not only also mentioned in the Gospel, but could possibly even be a prerequisite for being able to love others at all, was downright taboo.

The short summer of self

With the exit of the 68er movement there were then some years in which self-realization and thus also self-love was recognized. But while we in our Encounter groups always had this claim to harmonize self-love and love of others, we were seen by the conservative old people as indecent egoists, and at the same time denounced by the frustrated 68er generation as “Paradise now” birds. We were held responsible for the failure of the revolution of those who had long since started the “march to the institutions” and afforded the expensive red wine, while we had to buy the cheapest Lambrusco at the discount store to make ends meet.

However, we did not give up our self-realization movement at first. Until a new attack was launched against us:

Suddenly we were all narcissists and child molesters

Then in the mid-1980s, unexpectedly for us, there was a sudden reactionary push. While the discourse was still going on in all the big cities that the children should not be excluded and brought up in a morally dishonest way, but that we wanted to meet them amicably, in the hope that they would not grow up as disturbed and dishonest as we had just survived, suddenly it was said that we inconsiderate egoists would abuse the children, also sexually. In fact, we had just learned to affirm sexuality and questioned whether children should be protected from it.

They should be protected from the hypocrisy, the self-denial, the guilty conscience that was our daily companion. We sang along at the top of our voices to the song from the 1982 film “The Wall” by the group Pink Floyd:

“We don’t need no education, we don’t need no Thought control. No dark sarcasm in the Class room, teachers let them kids ago. Hey, teacher! Leave us kids alone”

And suddenly we were the bad guys.

We were just not narcissists

We would be a new type of socialization: narcissists, with an exaggerated self-esteem, it was suddenly said.

Until today, the corresponding evaluations have remained in the ICD-10 as disorders or even mental illness. Symptoms like a feeling of “grandiosity”, “importance”, the feeling of “being something special”, combined with the oh-so-arrogant assessment of not being “understood” by the mainstream, but only by some people. Sometimes the state-certified “experts” also talk bluntly about the “God complex”. Because of this “overestimation” of our importance, we would react to “offers of help” with attacks, rejecting these helps.

What is interesting about this disorder, really a disorder of self-realization by those in power, is that of all things, the therapeutic approach we favor: person-centered conversation would be helpful. True! Right!

In truth, the narcissist is precisely not the self-absorbed. It is not the one who, like us cynics, like us romantics, sees himself as an artist, as chosen, as becoming God, created to become kings (Novalis).

Narcissists don’t look in the mirror with self-absorption or take one selfie after the next, preferably with a filter that makes them look more attractive. They are not self-absorbed, they are insecure to the max. They need to see their face to make sure they are still there at all. Narcissists, like the king in the fairy tale, are constantly dependent on the latest clothes, they have to ask, like the wicked stepmother of Snow White, in a panic: “who is the fairest of them all”, because they are dependent on recognition from outside, from the coercive society.

And in fact, they even believe that the way they live, they are only fulfilling themselves. They just want to be the way they are. Not to change for anyone. Not to be told anything by anyone. They dare to say “I”. But they are further away from their self than any generation in the history of mankind. And then they are also do-gooders. They react with great dismay to every supposed injustice.

If you are suffering from narcissism, you really can’t help anyone in your situation. You really have to learn that before You Help Others, You Must First Help Yourself to provide yourself with the necessary oxygen first to become a loving person. I

In fact, we can help narcissists best with the person-centered approach.

Listening to them, accepting them, trying to understand them so that they themselves learn to want to understand themselves and others. In addition to peson-centered contacts, an unconditional minimalist diet is recommended for them.

As little as possible should distract them from looking at the world, understood as a loving look in the mirror. Reflecting in the things they really love. No matter what it is at first. In mirroring in the things we love, we can find self-love. No matter what it is that we love. Only: let it be as few things as possible, so that we do not get lost in the forest.