Do you know someone who approaches most relationships as com-petitions - i.e. whose self-respect depends on being superior to other people in some ways? Such people are often dominated by a well-mean-ing Competitor personality subself. Their attitude and behaviors usually promote conflict, defensiveness, shame, hurt, distrust, anxiety, avoidan-ces, and resentments in others.
The Competitor is usually devoted to fiercely protecting the Shamed Child subself by constantly proving and demonstrating "I'm the best!" (and/ or "I'm better than you!") This Guardian subself may work with others like the Entitled One (" I deserve to be recognized as superior!"); the Egotist / Narcissist, ("I am superior, and my needs are more important than other peoples'"); the Magician (who justifies offensive aggressive, manipulative behaviors); the Controller, who seeks to get others to do what s/he wants; the Warrior / Amazon, the Inner Critic ("You're such a loser!") and the Per-fectionist ("You could have done it better!"). Overactive Guardian subsel-ves like these haven't learned to respect and trust the wise leadership of the resident true Self and other competent Manager subselves.