Healthy narcissism gives us the backbone to be able to set goals, achieve something, assert ourselves, and strive forward. Yes, there are positions and circumstances where we do have to conform to what we claim to be. If we choose to follow our ambitions and claims, we are forced to “tighten” what we need to that desire. We must acquire new knowledge if we want to move into new areas. We need to learn more new skills. And this is a condition of our development. Healthy narcissism is a tremendous support in this.
There is also an area of relationships where our value and importance does not depend on what we have earned and what we conform to. This is that proverbial area of human intimacy. And it is clear that in this sphere, everything is not about conforming to something or trying to earn something. Most often, all the same, our relatives, friends, and loved ones choose us, not because we carry in our pockets a list of hundreds of our achievements. And they don’t need medals for exploits in labor and defense or diplomas from management to consider us valuable and important in their lives. Narcissists have it all mixed up. In the realm of relationships with people it seems to them that they need to conform and prove themselves. They try to “find the button” for other people to “let them into the relationship” and be loved. They wander between the hopeless attempts to get love and the shame that they do not correspond to this love in any way.
Once upon a time there lived a Little Narcissus.
She graduated from three universities, two MBAs, created two businesses, and even had a son. Well, anyway, you already know the story.
Time passed, and she still believed that she had not accomplished anything great at work. So there was nothing to love her for yet.
In the realm of narcissistic accomplishments, it is exactly the opposite! Inside, they aspire to many things, but endlessly drown in the feeling that they do not correspond to something. Or they refuse to conform, because they pretend that everybody has to “come and give it to them. And if they don’t, it shows that they are nothing. Or they don’t even claim to be, because the shame of claiming anything more than they are allowed inside is too toxic.
That’s how they live. In the realm of relationships, they try to take a place narcissistically. And in the narcissistic one, they can’t hold on to being just people who need the effort to achieve something and get something.
Exercise
Remember the list of your accomplishments you wrote last week? It’s important to stand firmly on your feet, grounded in reality and recognizing that your experience already includes much that you have accomplished. Let this be a list, a checklist, a plaque — in short, a materialized fulcrum.
It’s time to take the next important step. Consider this question. Do you think the people around you (family, friends, partners) would still choose you if you didn’t have these accomplishments?
Key to the exercise
Usually when people do this exercise, they have the following ideas.
First, for some reason they decide almost in unison that they will not be chosen by their parents without accomplishments.
Secondly, close friends and spouses, for example, choose them without any achievements, but that does not mean anything.
And in general, you do not want to believe these close people.
About the first one, I’ll tell you right away: stop it! These are your parents, and you are their children. We don’t choose our connections. We just have each other, with the relationships we’re capable of. Or not capable. And that’s definitely beyond our accomplishments, no matter how much we’d like to appropriate our ability with those accomplishments to guarantee ourselves better parents.
As for the rest, here’s what we can say: We all know how important it is to the narcissist to be noticed, but with what terror and shame he is afraid of actually being noticed, of being “exposed.” How he is haunted by a total sense of his own badness, uselessness, worthlessness (from the net).
Narcissus is in control of the very possibility of being noticed.
And the whole plot is twisted in a very interesting way:
- he thinks he can become someone when he is finally noticed, appreciated, and acknowledged;
- When they see him, recognize him, and even praise him, he devalues it, does not believe it, filters his attitude, i.e. in essence, remains “hungry” for all the opportunities he has;
- again remains “empty,” suffering that no one can appreciate him, which means he is doomed to be nothing…
All in all, a white bull’s tale! But why does the narcissist need it?
If he seriously admits that other people’s opinions matter to his self, it means that he has fallen into dependence on other people. And for him this is a totally unbearable defeat! He resists the fact that people mean something to him and, by the same token, any dependence on them. He wants to remain ALL to himself: father and mother, the world and people. So that his self-worth and all judgment depends on him alone. He wants to lock all reflection and feedback into himself. Think of Narcissus, gazing endlessly into the lake, and from that died.
If the narcissist seriously sees people around him, recognizes that they mean something and tell the truth about him and about relationships, it will destroy the foundations of his narcissistic world, in which everything is governed by himself. And where there are very different bases for relationships between people that are completely inaccessible to him. It is incredibly painful for him to feel that there is love and warmth and affection somewhere. And it is so unbearable that it is better to leave it as it is…
Fragments from the forthcoming book “Fragile People: A Secret Door to the World of Narcissists”