The subjective experience of narcissistic people is saturated with feelings of shame and the fear of feeling shame.
Nancy McWilliams
I’ve written before that shame is an organizing feeling in the narcissist’s psyche. It can be so deep that sometimes it is not even felt. A narcissist can say in all seriousness and with complete sincerity, “I have absolutely no shame.” In fact, the deeper the shame, the stronger the defenses that keep it from being felt. And the greater the shame, the more serious the forms of compensation required for the narcissist to feel a safe haven from possible humiliation.
Grandiosity and arrogance are the golden armor with which the narcissist’s very vulnerable and insignificant self is surrounded.
Meanwhile, within the narcissistic personality can be played out two poles of experience of shame: where it is too much, and where it is clearly not enough. If there is an excess of shame, then we are dealing with a picture in which the person, due to this intolerable and blocking feeling, feels “subhuman” all the time. He is all the time in a state of “not up to…” no matter how much he has done or achieved. He has so much contempt for himself inside that he extends this attitude to others. He seriously feels that everyone around him treats him with disdain and devaluation. His attitude is always as if he is “from below.” His world is filled with more important, knowledgeable persons who have a lot of power over him and his self-esteem. Moreover, he is convinced that it is solely in their hands. There is someone external and very important who controls the narcissist’s self-esteem. Most often on such roles “frozen” parents, from whom you still want to demand: “Recognize me at last! Praise me! Then I can consider myself normal!”
Once upon a time there was a Little Narcissist.
All around her were people like people. And she was the only one with something globally wrong. Wherever she came and with whom she would not compare herself — everything was not in her favor and with a huge gap.
One day she got tired of feeling the worst and drowning in shame.
So she went into isolation and never came back from there.
In doing so, the person ignores the mass of positive evaluations and reflections available. All of this falls into the narcissist as into a bottomless well, and he remains engulfed in the intense shame of his own inadequacy and inferiority. This is a typical picture for deficit narcissists.
The second pole of shame in narcissistic personalities is its deficiency. If this is the case, then we will have to face the other extreme: the personality lacks shame as a normal regulator of adequacy. The person may seriously fall into megalomania and grandeur. No matter what he does — everything is normal, everything is good and even wonderful. There is such pride, which does not correspond at all to real merits and achievements. His attitude toward others is arrogant and dismissive. He looks down on everyone and even contemptuously. To protect himself from his shame, he puts on the mask of “I am better than others”, “I have something you have never dreamed of”. And if people from the previous group want to empower everyone around them, these “excessive” narcissists willingly wear the crown of their own exclusivity and dominance over others, remaining inaccessible to anyone.
Not surprisingly, this type of person is often idealized by people with unstable self-esteem.
Fragments from the forthcoming book “Fragile People: A Secret Door to the World of Narcissists”