Inside the Mind of an Emotional Masochist
The good, the bad, and the ugly
I’ve been in therapy for 10-years, and it’s the first time that any of my therapists allow a label slip out of their mouths. And it’s this one. I’m officially an Emotional Masochist.
The term was new to me. I love self-analyzing, but no one has ever given me such a hot lead like this before! I got all excited, like an investigative journalist who’s just been tipped off by a whistleblower.
Why would someone be excited about being labeled an emotional masochist? — you may ask. Well, it makes a lot of sense:
Emotional Masochists make great therapy patients because they love to pick at their wounds…
Like so many things that therapists say, I know this one is only going to make full sense a few years from now, but I’ve already started to do my mental homework, and this is the raw cut.
Come with me, and you may find some traces of yourself in this as it seems to be much more common than we think.
What Is an Emotional Masochist?
The official definition goes like this, according to an article in Psychology Today:
It is a pervasive pattern of self-defeating behavior, beginning by early adulthood and present…
