“The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”— Saint Bernard of Clairvaux
“They are not at fault; they seem to have been born that way.”— Alcoholics Anonymous, How It Works
What did psychiatrists notice about alcoholics that made King Baby seem like the right label for us?
His Majesty… the Baby.
Underneath the charm, the helping, the smiling, and the pretending to be reasonable, there’s often a childish demand to run the show: THEY DO AS I WANT OR OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! The problem wasn’t that life didn’t go our way—the problem was we thought it should. Haven’t some of our deepest motives secretly revolved around power, attention, and pleasure? Sometimes we chased those things by being charming, helpful, and overly friendly. Other times we blatantly tried to control the room, steer the outcome, or quietly manipulate things so the story ended the way we wanted it to. Either way, a lot of what we did came with strings attached. We did favors but expected loyalty. We gave things but expected gratitude. We showed up smiling but were already keeping score. Underneath it all was fear—fear that if people saw the real us, they might walk away. So we created a version of ourselves we thought the world would accept and played that part hard.
Eventually the plan falls apart—because the world never agreed to the script we wrote in our head. When that happens, the King Baby doesn’t look inward; he looks outward for someone to blame. If they had just listened. If they had just done their part. If they had just acted right. Blaming other people for the collapse of our plans is like throwing napalm on relationships—rarely anything survives it. Then the familiar resentment sets in and starts running the delusional “not my fault” loop in our heads. We replay the scene over and over, each time polishing the story a little more—making them more guilty and us a little more innocent. Before long they’re the villain and we’re practically saints, because after all we're the King, the judge, jury, and executioner.
Where is the King Baby costing you something in your life today?
