The nature of being proud

Let's talk about being proud:
proud
1. Feeling pleasurable satisfaction over an act, possession, quality, or relationship by which one measures one's stature or self-worth.
2. Occasioning or being a reason for pride.
3. Feeling or showing justifiable self-respect.
4. Filled with or showing excessive self-esteem.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English language list several shades of meanings. I copied only these four and then checked a Polish Language dictionary to see if I find what I expected to find. And I was not mistaken. The meanings given were very similar to the ones I listed above, this seems to be a word with a close correspondence in meaning between these two languages. However, there is one significant difference - in the order of the meanings given. Does it matter? As far as I know, the order of the meanings should, on principle, reflect the order of the most common to the least common usage. Don't ask me how it is determined but at least here it collaborates with my hypothesis, namely that in Polish the word "proud" carries the "excessive" meaning more often than in English. It may be a little redundant to say at this point(but I will say it anyway) that meaning number 4 above moved up to number 2 in Polish, the first meaning being basically the same. It is hardly a proof but still, must mean something, right?
It is not good to be proud in Poland. It may be changing but I think its negative connotation has a long way to go before it gets degraded to number 4... You can be proud of somebody else, for example your friend has just finished a marathon on a wheelchair - it is very natural to be proud of such a strong willed friend. You have a right to be proud, especially if you somehow helped the person to achive this incredible feat. But you should never say you helped because then your being proud is not that noble anymore. The assumption goes - you have your share in the success - no wonder you are #4 proud!
Under certain circumstances, you are allowed to be proud of your kids. It is tricky, though. You boast about their grades, awards, successes, and whatever else a little too much (and the question is what is too much? - never easy to say) and you are just another crazy parent and everybody assumes your kid must be average at best - maybe you are trying to cover up for something? If everything were so well you'd feel satisfied and wouldn't need to make all this fuss... Everybody hates you and your kids too, just in case they are as full of shit as their parents. Again, if your kids overcame some extraordinary difficulties to achieve what they did you are given a little more room to carry your pride around.
Now, the most problematic situation to deal with is being proud of yourself. Here, even if you had worked your butt off and fought with cancer while writing a bestseller or learnt to paint with your mouth after an accident that left you paralysed.... even then you should not talk too much about how proud you are. People will be proud of you, some have not lifted a finger to help you out but for some reason they will tell you how proud of you they are. I understand that semantics can be really complicated at this point - of course, it is not the same kind of pride every time - when you are proud of somebody who truly deserves it, you feel moved by the achievement, you appreciate the amount of effort it took to do this particular thing for that person but what you are really doing by saying: "I am so proud of you," may actually be this: "I feel proud for you, so you don't need to taint your wonderful success and your admirable person with this low feeling."
So how do you speak about your successes in Poland? The best way is to tell some friendly or easily bought person all about this and let them sing your praises. But you have to pick very carefully, it cannot be somebody that would benefit from making your achievements widely known even in the slightest way, like taking credit for some of it. That would make you lose all credibility. Ideally, it should be somebody superior to you, or an expert in the field of your success, totally unrelated to you. Your role then will be to be appropriately embarrassed, get a little red in the face if you can, and say something like "Oh, stop it, that was not that great. I was just lucky!" They won't like it but they will accept that you did what you did. And that it is something.
Maybe I do have an issue with this word - there is one more aspect of it that I could say something about but I'll leave it for some other time because it's getting late here in Poland. Maybe the fact that I have had several traumatic experiences with words make me want to be a linguist? Something like the idea that many people decide to study psychology to find solutions to their screwed up lives... I guess I should have considered psychology... Well, a little too late now!
Anyway, it does seem sometimes that when you talk to people about your failures, problems, and difficulties you come across as more approachable and friendly than when you toot your own trumpet too often (is that how you say it? Anybody?). Unless you overdo the complaining, of course. I don't think friends or relationship gained this way can be true and lasting. You will just get a little attention, for as long as you serve the purpose of making people feel better about themselves, either because they realize they are not as miserable as you are or because they can be so nobly supportive and helpful. The moment you are not needed anymore... well, who wants a needy or whiny friend around all the time? Get a grip, finally!