That made me laugh out loud.

I'm told (by media) that the entire generation of now-20-somethings is convinced of its own above-average specialness.

Personally, I like the formula for success recently highlighted in the New York Times. You need three things.

1) A superiority complex — a deep-seated belief in their exceptionality.
2) Insecurity, a feeling that you or what you’ve done is not good enough.
3) And impulse control.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/op...s-success.html

I am simultaneously convinced of my own superiority and my own inferiority. The formula worked well for me until crippling anxiety made me suicidal. Thus, here I am posting to a psychotherapy forum in the morning.

One way I got through the hardships of childhood and early adulthood was to stick to this mantra: "Nobody cares. Nobody cares about me. Everyone has their own problems. I need to take care of me."

And that worked until I hit my mid-30s. Then I began to think, "If nobody cares about me, well then neither do I. I'm out of here."

And since then, I've gone in the direction of, say, winter4me's mother. I'm convinced that nobody could understand what I went through. Nobody understands my problems. I'm special in that I suffered. And the born-privileged can't really be suffering because they've always been rich.

My biggest aversion to melodramatic behavior, however, is that life isn't that hard. It is often an unintelligent way to look at life, lacking creativity about problem solving.

Stopdog, I thought of this article when I read your post on exclamation points:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/03/fa...anted=all&_r=0