Surviving the Narcissist
Frequently Asked Question # 80
Rescue fantasies, malignant optimism, how to love, live with, or abandon a narcissist, narcissistic tactics, relationship dynamics, remaining friends with the narcissist.
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The Familiar is tempting but, it is a trap. The Unknown is terrifying but, it holds a promise. Your only chance at happiness, even survival, is to move on.
Question:
Is there a point in waiting for the narcissist to heal? Can he ever get better?
Answer:
The victims of the narcissist's abusive conduct resort to fantasies and self-delusions to salve their pain.
Rescue Fantasies
"It is true that he is a chauvinistic narcissist and that his behaviour is unacceptable and repulsive. But all he needs is a little love and he will be straightened out. I will rescue him from his misery and misfortune. I will give him the love that he lacked as a child. Then his narcissism will vanish and we will live happily ever after."
Loving a Narcissist
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I believe in the possibility of loving narcissists if one accepts them unconditionally, in a disillusioned and expectation-free manner.
Narcissists are narcissists. Take them or leave them. Some of them are lovable. Most of them are highly charming and intelligent. The source of the misery of the victims of the narcissist is their disappointment, their disillusionment, their abrupt and tearing and tearful realisation that they fell in love with an ideal of their own making, a phantasm, an illusion, a fata morgana. This "waking up" is traumatic. The narcissist always remains the same. It is the victim who changes.
It is true that narcissists present a luring facade in order to captivate Sources of Narcissistic Supply. But this facade is easy to penetrate because it is inconsistent and too perfect. The cracks are evident from day one but often ignored. Then there are those who KNOWINGLY and WILLINGLY commit their emotional wings to the burning narcissistic candle.
This is the catch-22. To try to communicate emotions to a narcissist is like discussing atheism with a religious fundamentalist.
Narcissists have emotions, very strong ones, so terrifyingly overpowering and negative that they hide them, repress, block and transmute them. They employ a myriad of defence mechanisms to cope with their repressed emotions: projective identification, splitting, projection, intellectualisation, rationalisation.
Any effort to relate to the narcissist emotionally is doomed to failure, alienation and rage. Any attempt to "understand" (in retrospect or prospectively) narcissistic behaviour patterns, reactions, or his inner world in emotional terms is equally hopeless. Narcissists should be regarded as a force of nature or an accident waiting to happen.
The Universe has no master-plot or mega-plan to deprive anyone of happiness. Being born to narcissistic parents, for instance, is not the result of a conspiracy. It is a tragic event, for sure. But it cannot be dealt with emotionally, without professional help, or haphazardly. Stay away from narcissists, or face them aided by your own self-discovery through therapy. It can be done.
Narcissists have no interest in emotional or even intellectual stimulation by significant others. Such feedback is perceived as a threat. Significant others in the narcissist's life have very clear roles: the accumulation and dispensation of past Primary Narcissistic Supply in order to regulate current Narcissistic Supply. Nothing less but definitely nothing more. Proximity and intimacy breed contempt. A process of devaluation is in full operation throughout the life of the relationship.
A passive witness to the narcissist's past accomplishments, a dispenser of accumulated Narcissistic Supply, a punching bag for his rages, a co-dependent, a possession (though not prized but taken for granted) and nothing much more. This is the ungrateful, FULL TIME, draining job of being the narcissist's significant other.
But humans are not instruments. To regard them as such is to devalue them, to reduce them, to restrict them, to prevent them from realising their potential. Inevitably, narcissists lose interest in their instruments, these truncated versions of full-fledged humans, once they cease to serve them in their pursuit of glory and fame.
Consider "friendship" with a narcissist as an example of such thwarted relationships. One cannot really get to know a narcissist "friend". One cannot be friends with a narcissist and one cannot love a narcissist. Narcissists are addicts. They are no different to drug addicts. They are in pursuit of gratification through the drug known as Narcissistic Supply. Everything and EVERYONE around them is an object, a potential source (to be idealised) or not (and, then to be cruelly discarded).
Narcissists home in on potential suppliers like cruise missiles. They are excellent at imitating emotions, at exhibiting the right behaviours on cue, and at manipulating.
(continued below)
This article appears in my book "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited"
Click HERE to buy the print edition from Amazon (click HERE to buy a copy dedicated by the author)
Click HERE to buy the print edition from Barnes and Noble
Click HERE to buy the print edition from the publisher and receive a BONUS PACK
Click HERE to buy electronic books (e-books) and video lectures (DVDs) about narcissists, psychopaths, and abuse in relationships
Click HERE to buy the ENTIRE SERIES of sixteen electronic books (e-books) about narcissists, psychopaths, and abuse in relationships
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All generalisations are false, of course, and there are bound to be some happy relationships with narcissists. I discuss the narcissistic couple in one of my FAQs. One example of a happy marriage is when a somatic narcissist teams up with a cerebral one or vice versa.
Narcissists can be happily married to submissive, subservient, self-deprecating, echoing, mirroring and indiscriminately supportive spouses. They also do well with masochists. But it is difficult to imagine that a healthy, normal person would be happy in such a folie a deux ("madness in twosome" or shared psychosis).
It is also difficult to imagine a benign and sustained influence on the narcissist of a stable, healthy mate/spouse/partner. One of my FAQs is dedicated to this issue ("The Narcissist's Spouse / Mate / Partner").
BUT many a spouse/friend/mate/partner like to BELIEVE that given sufficient time and patience they will be the ones to rid the narcissist of his inner demons. They think that they can "rescue" the narcissist, shield him from his (distorted) self, as it were.
The narcissist makes use of this naivetι and exploits it to his benefit. The natural protective mechanisms, which are provoked in normal people by love are cold bloodedly used by the narcissist to extract yet more Narcissistic Supply from his writhing victim.
The narcissist affects his victims by infiltrating their psyches, by penetrating their defences. Like a virus, it establishes a new genetic strain within his/her victims. It echoes through them, it talks through them, it walks through them. It is like the invasion of the body snatchers.
You should be careful to separate your self from the narcissist's seed inside you, this alien growth, this spiritual cancer that is the result of living with a narcissist. You should be able to tell apart the real you and the parts assigned to you by the narcissist. To cope with him/her, the narcissist forces you to "walk on eggshells" and develop a False Self of your own. It is nothing as elaborate as his False Self but it is there, in you, as a result of the trauma and abuse inflicted upon you by the narcissist.
Thus, perhaps we should talk about VoNPD, another mental health diagnostic category Victims of NPD.
They experience shame and anger for their past helplessness and submissiveness. They are hurt and sensitised by the harrowing experience of sharing a simulated existence with a simulated person, the narcissist. They are scarred and often suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Some of them lash out at others, offsetting their frustration with bitter aggression.
Like his disorder, the narcissist is all-pervasive. Being the victim of a narcissist is a condition no less pernicious than being a narcissist. Great mental efforts are required to abandon a narcissist and physical separation is only the first (and least important) step.
One can abandon a narcissist but the narcissist is slow to abandon his victims. He is there, lurking, rendering existence unreal, twisting and distorting with no respite, an inner, remorseless voice, lacking in compassion and empathy for its victim.
The narcissist is there in spirit long after it had vanished in the flesh. This is the real danger that the victims of the narcissist face: that they become like him, bitter, self-centred, lacking in empathy. This is the last bow of the narcissist, his curtain call, by proxy as it were.
Narcissistic Tactics
The narcissist tends to surround himself with his inferiors (in some respect: intellectually, financially, physically). He limits his interactions with them to the plane of his superiority. This is the safest and fastest way to sustain his grandiose fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience, brilliance, ideal traits, perfection and so on.
Humans are interchangeable and the narcissist does not distinguish one individual from another. To him they are all inanimate elements of "his audience" whose job is to reflect his False Self. This generates a perpetual and permanent cognitive dissonance:
The narcissist despises the very people who sustain his Ego boundaries and functions. He cannot respect people so expressly and clearly inferior to him yet he can never associate with people evidently on his level or superior to him, the risk of narcissistic injury in such associations being too great. Equipped with a fragile Ego, precariously teetering on the brink of narcissistic injury the narcissist prefers the safe route. But he feels contempt for himself and for others for having preferred it.
Some narcissist are also psychopaths (suffer from the Antisocial PD) and/or sadists. Antisocials don't really enjoy hurting others they simply don't care one way or the other. But sadists do enjoy it.
Classical narcissists do not enjoy wounding others but they do enjoy the sensation of unlimited power and the validation of their grandiose fantasies when they do harm others or are in the position to do so. It is more the POTENTIAL to hurt others than the actual act that turns them on.
The Neverending Story
Even the official termination of a relationship with a narcissist is not the end of the affair. The Ex "belongs" to the narcissist. She is an inseparable part of his Pathological Narcissistic Space. This possessive streak survives the physical separation.
Thus, the narcissist is likely to respond with rage, seething envy, a sense of humiliation and invasion and violent-aggressive urges to an ex's new boyfriend, or new job (to her new life without him). Especially since it implies a "failure" on his part and, thus negates his grandiosity.
But there is a second scenario:
If the narcissist firmly believes (which is very rare) that the ex does not and will never represent any amount, however marginal and residual, of any kind (primary or secondary) of Narcissistic Supply he remains utterly unmoved by anything she does and anyone she may choose to be with.
Narcissists do feel bad about hurting others and about the unsavoury course their lives tend to assume. Their underlying (and subconscious) ego-dystony (=feeling bad about themselves) was only recently discovered and described. But the narcissist feels bad only when his Supply Sources are threatened because of his behaviour or following a narcissistic injury in the course of a major life crisis.
The narcissist equates emotions with weakness. He regards the sentimental and the emotional with contempt. He looks down on the sensitive and the vulnerable. He derides and despises the dependent and the loving. He mocks expressions of compassion and passion. He is devoid of empathy. He is so afraid of his True Self that he would rather disparage it than admit to his own faults and "soft spots".
He likes to talk about himself in mechanical terms ("machine", "efficient", "punctual", "output", "computer"). He suppresses his human side diligently and with dedication. To him being human and survival are mutually exclusive propositions. He must choose and his choice is clear. The narcissist never looks back, unless and until forced to by life's circumstances.
All narcissists fear intimacy. But the cerebral narcissist deploys strong defences against it: "scientific detachment" (the narcissist as the eternal observer), intellectualising and rationalising his emotions away, intellectual cruelty (see my FAQ regarding inappropriate affect), intellectual "annexation" (he regards others as his extension, property, or turf), objectifying the other and so on. Even emotions that he does express (pathological envy, rage) have the not wholly unintended effect of alienating rather than creating intimacy.
Abandoning the Narcissist
The narcissist initiates his own abandonment because of his fear of it. He is so terrified of losing his sources of Narcissistic Supply (and of being emotionally hurt) that he would rather "control", "master", or "direct" the potentially destabilising situation. Remember: the personality of the narcissist has a low level of organization. It is precariously balanced.
Being abandoned could cause a narcissistic injury so grave that the whole edifice can come crumbling down. Narcissists usually entertain suicidal ideation in such cases. But, if the narcissist had initiated and directed his own abandonment, if it is perceived as a goal he set to himself he can and does avoid all these untoward consequences. (See the section about Emotional Involvement Prevention Mechanisms in the Essay.)
The Dynamics of the Relationship
The narcissist lives in a fantasised world of ideal beauty, incomparable (imaginary) achievements, wealth, brilliance and unmitigated success. The narcissist denies his reality constantly. This is what I call the Grandiosity Gap the abyss between his sense of entitlement grounded in his inflated grandiose fantasies and his incommensurate reality and meagre accomplishments.
The narcissist's partner is perceived by him to be merely a Source of Narcissistic Supply, an instrument, an extension of himself. It is inconceivable that blessed by the constant presence of the narcissist such a tool would malfunction. The needs and grievances of the partner are perceived by the narcissist as threats and slights.
The narcissist considers his very presence in the relationship as nourishing and sustaining. He feels entitled to the best others can offer without investing in maintaining his relationships or in catering to the well-being of his "suppliers". To rid himself of deep-set feelings of (rather justified) guilt and shame he pathologizes the partner.
He projects his own mental illness unto her. Through the intricate mechanism of projective identification he forces her to play an emergent role of "the sick" or "the weak" or "the naive" or "the dumb" or "the no good". What he denies in himself, what he is loath to face in his own personality he attributes to others and moulds them to conform to his prejudices against himself.
The narcissist must have the best, the most glamorous, stunning, talented, head turning, mind-boggling spouse in the entire world. Nothing short of this fantasy will do. To compensate for the shortcomings of his real life spouse he invents an idealised figure and relates to it instead.
Then, when reality conflicts too often and too evidently with this figment he reverts to devaluation. His behaviour turns on a dime and becomes threatening, demeaning, contemptuous, berating, reprimanding, destructively critical and sadistic or cold, unloving, detached, and "clinical". He punishes his real life spouse for not living up to his fantasy, for "refusing" to be his Galathea, his Pygmalion, his ideal creation. The narcissist plays a wrathful and demanding God.
Moving On
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To preserve one's mental health one must abandon the narcissist. One must move on.
Moving on is a process, not a decision or an event. First, one has to acknowledge and accept painful reality. Such acceptance is a volcanic, shattering, agonising series of nibbling thoughts and strong resistances. Once the battle is won, and harsh and agonizing realities are assimilated, one can move on to the learning phase.
Learning
We label. We educate ourselves. We compare experiences. We digest. We have insights.
Then we decide and we act. This is "to move on". Having gathered sufficient emotional sustenance, knowledge, support and confidence, we face the battlefields of our relationships, fortified and nurtured. This stage characterises those who do not mourn but fight; do not grieve but replenish their self-esteem; do not hide but seek; do not freeze but move on.
Grieving
Having been betrayed and abused we grieve. We grieve for the image we had of the traitor and abuser the image that was so fleeting and so wrong. We mourn the damage he did to us. We experience the fear of never being able to love or to trust again and we grieve this loss. In one stroke, we lost someone we trusted and even loved, we lost our trusting and loving selves and we lost the trust and love that we felt. Can anything be worse?
The emotional process of grieving has many phases.
At first, we are dumbfounded, shocked, inert, immobile. We play dead to avoid our inner monsters. We are ossified in our pain, cast in the mould of our reticence and fears. Then we feel enraged, indignant, rebellious and hateful. Then we accept. Then we cry. And then some of us learn to forgive and to pity. And this is called healing.
All stages are absolutely necessary and good for you. It is bad not to rage back, not to shame those who shamed us, to deny, to pretend, to evade. But it is equally bad to get fixated on our rage. Permanent grieving is the perpetuation of our abuse by other means.
By endlessly recreating our harrowing experiences, we unwillingly collaborate with our abuser to perpetuate his or her evil deeds. It is by moving on that we defeat our abuser, minimising him and his importance in our lives. It is by loving and by trusting anew that we annul that which was done to us. To forgive is never to forget. But to remember is not necessarily to re-experience.
Forgiving and Forgetting
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Forgiving is an important capability. It does more for the forgiver than for the forgiven. But it should not be a universal, indiscriminate behaviour. It is legitimate not to forgive sometimes. It depends, of course, on the severity or duration of what was done to you.
In general, it is unwise and counter-productive to apply to life "universal" and "immutable" principles. Life is too chaotic to succumb to rigid edicts. Sentences which start with "I never" or "I always" are not very credible and often lead to self-defeating, self-restricting and self-destructive behaviours.
Conflicts are an important and integral part of life. One should never seek them out, but when confronted with a conflict, one should not avoid it. It is through conflicts and adversity as much as through care and love that we grow.
Human relationships are dynamic. We must assess our friendships, partnerships, even our marriages periodically. In and by itself, a common past is insufficient to sustain a healthy, nourishing, supportive, caring and compassionate relationship. Common memories are a necessary but not a sufficient condition. We must gain and regain our friendships on a daily basis. Human relationships are a constant test of allegiance and empathy.
(continued below)
This article appears in my book "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited"
Click HERE to buy the print edition from Amazon (click HERE to buy a copy dedicated by the author)
Click HERE to buy the print edition from Barnes and Noble
Click HERE to buy the print edition from the publisher and receive a BONUS PACK
Click HERE to buy electronic books (e-books) and video lectures (DVDs) about narcissists, psychopaths, and abuse in relationships
Click HERE to buy the ENTIRE SERIES of sixteen electronic books (e-books) about narcissists, psychopaths, and abuse in relationships
Click HERE for SPECIAL OFFER 1 and HERE for SPECIAL OFFER 2
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook (my personal page or the books), YouTube
Remaining Friends with the Narcissist
Is
there life after the narcissist, a second restorative and recuperative act? The
narcissist finds it impossible to believe and begrudges his victims their
recovery. The narcissist considers himself both irreplaceable and indispensable
and his absence from his prey's life nothing short of a fatal injury. To imply
that anyone who had experienced the narcissist can be happier without him is to
undermine the narcissist's grandiose perception of himself as a Magic Unicorn.
This delusional mindset is further exacerbated by the narcissist's inability to
interact with real, 3-D people owing to his lack of empathy and all-pervasive
object impermanence (inconstancy). Instead, the narcissist relates exclusively
to avatars, imagoes, and introjects: internalized, largely immutable and
idealized avatars, renditions and representations of others. When real life intervenes
and people change, the narcissist is disconcerted, dismayed, and shocked.
Click HERE to Watch the Video
Can't we act civilised and remain on friendly terms with our narcissist ex?
Never forget that narcissists (full fledged ones) are nice and friendly only when:
a. They want something from you Narcissistic Supply, help, support, votes, money They prepare the ground, manipulate you and then come out with the "small favour" they need or ask you blatantly or surreptitiously for Narcissistic Supply ("What did you think about my performance ", "Do you think that I really deserve the Nobel Prize?").
b. They feel threatened and they want to neuter the threat by smothering it with oozing pleasantries.
c. They have just been infused with an overdose of Narcissistic Supply and they feel magnanimous and magnificent and ideal and perfect. To show magnanimity is a way of flaunting one's impeccable divine credentials. It is an act of grandiosity. You are an irrelevant prop in this spectacle, a mere receptacle of the narcissist's overflowing, self-contented infatuation with his False Self.
This beneficence is transient. Perpetual victims often tend to thank the narcissist for "little graces". This is the Stockholm syndrome: hostages tend to emotionally identify with their captors rather than with the police. We are grateful to our abusers and tormentors for ceasing their hideous activities and allowing us to catch our breath.
Some people say that they prefer to live with narcissists, to cater to their needs and to succumb to their whims because this is the way they have been conditioned in early childhood. It is only with narcissists that they feel alive, stimulated and excited. The world glows in Technicolor in the presence of a narcissist and decays to sepia colours in his absence.
I see nothing inherently "wrong" with that. The test is this: if someone were to constantly humiliate and abuse you verbally using Archaic Chinese would you have felt humiliated and abused? Probably not. Some people have been conditioned by the narcissistic Primary Objects in their lives (parents or caregivers) to treat narcissistic abuse as Archaic Chinese, to turn a deaf ear.
This technique is effective in that it allows the inverted narcissist (the narcissist's willing mate) to experience only the good aspects of living with a narcissist: his sparkling intelligence, the constant drama and excitement, the lack of intimacy and emotional attachment (some people prefer this). Every now and then the narcissist breaks into abuse in Archaic Chinese. So what, who understands Archaic Chinese anyway, says the Inverted Narcissist to herself.
I have only one nagging doubt, though:
If the relationship with a narcissist is so rewarding, why are inverted narcissists so unhappy, so ego-dystonic, so in need of help (professional or otherwise)? Aren't they victims who simply experience the Stockholm syndrome (=identifying with the kidnapper rather than with the Police) and who deny their own torment?
Narcissists and Abandonment
Narcissists are terrified of being abandoned exactly as are codependents and Borderlines.
But their solution is different.
Codependents cling. Borderlines are emotionally labile and react disastrously to the faintest hint of being abandoned.
Narcissists facilitate their own abandonment. They make sure that they are abandoned.
This way they achieve two goals:
1. Getting it over with The narcissist has a very low threshold of tolerance to uncertainty and inconvenience, emotional or material. Narcissists are very impatient and "spoiled". They cannot delay gratification or impending doom. They must have it all now, good or bad.
2. By bringing the feared abandonment about, the narcissist can lie to himself persuasively. "She didn't abandon me, it is I who abandoned her. I controlled the situation. It was all my doing, so I was really not abandoned, was I now?" In time, the narcissist adopts this "official version" as the truth. He might say: "I abandoned her emotionally and sexually long before she left."
This is one of the important Emotional Involvement Prevention Mechanisms (EIPM) that I write about in the Essay.
Why the Failing Relationships?
Narcissists hate happiness and joy and ebullience and vivaciousness in short, they hate life itself.
The roots of this bizarre propensity can be traced to a few psychological dynamics, which operate concurrently (it is very confusing to be a narcissist).
First, there is pathological envy.
The narcissist is constantly envious of other people: their successes, their property, their character, their education, their children, their ideas, the fact that they can feel, their good moods, their past, their future, their present, their spouses, their mistresses or lovers, their location
Almost anything can be the trigger of a bout of biting, acidulous envy. But there is nothing, which reminds the narcissist more of the totality of his envious experiences than happiness. Narcissists lash out at happy people out of their own nagging sense of deprivation.
Then there is narcissistic hurt.
The narcissist regards himself as the centre of the world and the epicentre of the lives of his closest, nearest and dearest. He is the source of all emotions, responsible for all developments, positive and negative alike, the axis, the prime cause, the only cause, the mover, the shaker, the broker, the pillar, forever indispensable.
It is therefore a bitter and sharp rebuke to this grandiose fantasy to see someone else happy for reasons that have nothing to do with the narcissist. It painfully serves to illustrate to him that he is but one of many causes, phenomena, triggers and catalysts in other people's lives. That there are things happening outside the orbit of his control or initiative. That he is not privileged or unique.
The narcissist uses projective identification. He channels his negative emotions through other people, his proxies. He induces unhappiness and gloom in others to enable him to experience his own misery. Inevitably, he attributes the source of such sadness either to himself, as its cause or to the "pathology" of the sad person.
"You are constantly depressed, you should really see a therapist" is a common sentence.
The narcissist in an effort to maintain the depressive state until it serves some cathartic purpose strives to perpetuate it by constantly reminding of its existence. "You look sad/bad/pale today. Is anything wrong? Can I help you? Things haven't been going so well lately?"
Last but not least is the exaggerated fear of losing control.
The narcissist feels that he controls his human environment mostly by manipulation and mainly by emotional extortion and distortion. This is not far from reality. The narcissist suppresses any sign of emotional autonomy. He feels threatened and belittled by an emotion not directly or indirectly fostered by him or by his actions. Counteracting someone else's happiness is the narcissist's way of reminding everyone: I am here, I am omnipotent, you are at my mercy and you will feel happy only when I tell you to.
Living with a Narcissist
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You cannot change people, not in the real, profound, deep sense. You can only adapt to them and adapt them to you. If you do find your narcissist rewarding at times you should consider doing these:
- Determine your limits and
boundaries. How much and in which ways can you adapt to him (i.e., accept
him AS HE IS) and to which extent and in which ways would
you like him to adapt to you (i.e., accept you as you are). Act accordingly.
Accept what you have decided to accept and reject the rest. Change in you
what you are willing and able to change and ignore the rest. Conclude an
unwritten contract of co-existence (could be written if you are more
formally inclined).
- Try to maximise the number of times that " his walls are down", that you " find him totally fascinating and everything I desire". What makes him be and behave this way? Is it something that you say or do? Is it preceded by events of a specific nature? Is there anything you can do to make him behave this way more often?
Remember, though:
Sometimes we mistake guilt and self-assumed blame for love.
(continued below)
This article appears in my book "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited"
Click HERE to buy the print edition from Amazon (click HERE to buy a copy dedicated by the author)
Click HERE to buy the print edition from Barnes and Noble
Click HERE to buy the print edition from the publisher and receive a BONUS PACK
Click HERE to buy electronic books (e-books) and video lectures (DVDs) about narcissists, psychopaths, and abuse in relationships
Click HERE to buy the ENTIRE SERIES of sixteen electronic books (e-books) about narcissists, psychopaths, and abuse in relationships
Click HERE for SPECIAL OFFER 1 and HERE for SPECIAL OFFER 2
Follow me on Twitter, Facebook (my personal page or the books), YouTube
Committing suicide for someone else's sake is not love.
Sacrificing yourself for someone else is not love.
It is domination, codependence, and counter-dependence.
You control your narcissist by giving, as much as he controls you through his pathology.
Your unconditional generosity sometimes prevents him from facing his True Self and thus healing.
It is impossible to have a relationship with a narcissist that is meaningful to the narcissist.
It is, of course, possible to have a relationship with a narcissist that is meaningful to you (see FAQ 66).
You modify your behaviour in order to secure the narcissist's continuing love, not in order to be abandoned.
This is the root of the perniciousness of this phenomenon:
The narcissist is a meaningful, crucially significant figure ("object") in the inverted narcissist's life.
This is the narcissist's leverage over the inverted narcissist. And since the inverted narcissist is usually very young when making the adaptation to the narcissist it all boils down to fear of abandonment and death in the absence of care and sustenance.
The inverted narcissist's accommodation of the narcissist is as much a wish to gratify one's narcissist (parent) as the sheer terror of forever withholding gratification from one's self.
The Need to be Hopeful
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I understand the need to be hopeful.
There are gradations of narcissism. In my writings I am referring to the extreme and ultimate form of narcissism, the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). The prognosis for those merely with narcissistic traits or a narcissistic style is far better than the healing prospects of a full-fledged narcissist.
We often confuse shame with guilt.
Narcissists feel shameful when confronted with a failure. They feel (narcissistically) injured. Their omnipotence is threatened, their sense of perfection and uniqueness is questioned. They are enraged, engulfed by self-reprimand, self-loathing and internalised violent urges.
The narcissist punishes himself for failing to be God not for mistreating others.
The narcissist makes an effort to communicate his pain and shame in order to elicit the Narcissistic Supply he needs to restore and regulate his failing sense of self-worth. In doing so, the narcissist resorts to the human vocabulary of empathy. The narcissist will say anything to obtain Narcissistic Supply. It is a manipulative ploy not a confession of real emotions or an authentic description of internal dynamics.
Yes, the narcissist is a child but a very young one.
Yes, he can tell right from wrong but is indifferent to both.
Yes, a process of "re-parenting" (what Kohut called a "self-object") is required to foster growth and maturation. In the best of cases, it takes years and the prognosis is dismal.
Yes, some narcissists make it. And their mates or spouses or children or colleagues or lovers rejoice.
But is the fact that people survive tornadoes a reason to go out and seek one?
The narcissist is very much attracted to vulnerability, to unstable or disordered personalities or to his inferiors. Such people constitute secure Sources of Narcissistic Supply. The inferior offer adulation. The mentally disturbed, the traumatised, the abused become dependent and addicted to him. The vulnerable can be easily and economically manipulated without fear of repercussions.
I think that "a healed narcissist" is a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron (though there may be exceptions, of course).
Still, healing (not only of narcissists) is dependent upon and derived from a sense of security in a relationship.
The narcissist is not particularly interested in healing. He tries to optimise his returns, taking into consideration the scarcity and finiteness of his resources. Healing, to him, is simply a bad business proposition.
In the narcissist's world being accepted or cared for (not to mention loved) is a foreign language. It is meaningless.
One might recite the most delicate haiku in Japanese and it would still remain meaningless to a non-Japanese.
That non-Japanese are not adept at Japanese does not diminish the value of the haiku or of the Japanese language, needless to say.
Narcissists damage and hurt but they do so offhandedly and naturally, as an after-thought and reflexively.
They are aware of what they are doing to others but they do not care.
Sometimes, they sadistically taunt and torment people but they do not perceive this to be evil merely amusing.
They feel that they are entitled to their pleasure and gratification (Narcissistic Supply is often obtained by subjugating and subsuming others).
They feel that others are less than human, mere extensions of the narcissist, or instruments to fulfil the narcissist's wishes and obey his often capricious commands.
The narcissist feels that no evil can be inflicted on machines, instruments, or extensions. He feels that his needs justify his actions.
Also Read
Codependence, Counterdependence and Dependent Personality Disorder
The Two Loves of the Narcissist
The Malignant Optimism of the Abused
Grandiosity and Intimacy - The Roots of Paranoia
Narcissists, Narcissistic Supply and Sources of Supply
How Victims are Affected by Abuse
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Recovery and Healing from Trauma and Abuse
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