When External Loyalty Becomes Personal Betrayal

When you choose LOYALTY as a value and take it to an extreme, you may place loyalty to a person, a brand, an institution, a technique/method, or certain products/services above loyalty to yourself.

Do youknow those people who are extremely devoted to a particular style of pants? These are styles that look ridiculous on people but are worn by some stars. In such situations, the sense of the ridiculous is canceled out.

But let’s not laugh at or disdain those in this situation. It’s the same mechanism as in the previous situation. Oops!

Essentially, you manifest your loyalty/submission to external forces and values, which you elevate to the status of authority in your life. You become subservient, and submissive, and tend to forget or abandon your inner needs. You ignore personal values, and regarding your authentic values, you end up denying them.

When you take loyalty as a value to an extreme, you end up betraying yourself and your inner self to support an external image that wants to appear “authentic.”

You put on a “mask” of loyalty at any cost, while your true authenticity is lost at the expense of that mask, which you cling to desperately (sometimes at the cost of your vital resources, money, time, health, and family relationships).