Malignant Self Love, Samuel Vaknin [reading tree txt] 📗

further. This passive-aggressive reaction has been

noted, though, with narcissists as well.

 

INVERTED AND OTHER ATYPICAL / PARTIAL (NOS) NARCISSISTS

 

Inverted Narcissists Talk about Themselves

 

Competition and (Pathological) Envy

 

“I have a dynamic that comes up with every single person I get close

to, where I feel extremely competitive toward and envious of the other

person. But I don’t ACT competitive, because at the very outset, I see

myself as the loser in the competition. I would never dream of trying

to beat the other person, because I know deep in my heart that they

would win and I would be utterly humiliated. There are fewer things on

earth that feel worse to me than losing a contest and having the other

person gloat over me, especially if they know how much I cared about

not losing. This is one thing that I actually feel violent about. I

guess I tend to project the grandiosity part of the NPD package onto

the other person rather than on a False Ego of my own. So most of the

time I’m stuck in a state of deep resentment and envy toward her. To

me, she’s always far more intelligent, likable, popular, talented,

self-confident, emotionally developed, morally good, and attractive

than I am. And I really hate her for that, and feel humiliated by it.

So it’s incredibly hard for me to feel happy for this person when she

has a success, because I’m overcome with humiliation about myself. This

has ruined many a close relationship. I tend to get this way about one

person at a time, usually the person who is playing the role of ‘my

better half’, best friends or lovers/partners. So it’s not like I’m

unable to be happy for anyone, ever, or that I envy every person I

meet. I don’t get obsessed with how rich or beautiful movie stars are

or anything like that. It only gets projected onto this partner-person,

the person I’m depending on the most in terms of supplies (attention,

reassurance, security, building up my self-esteem, etc.)…

 

…The really destructive thing that happens is, I see her grandiose

traits as giving her the power to have anything and anyone she wants.

So I feel a basic insecurity, because why should she stay with a loser

like me, when she’s obviously so out of my league? So really, what I’m

envious of is the power that all that talent, social ability, beauty,

etc., gives her to have CHOICES - the choice to stay or leave me.

Whereas I am utterly dependent on her. It’s this emotional inequality

that I find so humiliating.”

 

“I agree with the inverted narcissist designation - sometimes I’ve

called myself a ‘closet narcissist’.

 

That is, I’ve internalised the value system of grandiosity, but have

not applied the grandiose identity to myself.

 

I believe I SHOULD BE those grandiose things, but at the same time, I

know I’m not and I’m miserable about it. So people don’t think of me as

having an inflated Ego - and indeed I don’t - but scratch the surface,

and you’ll find all these inflated expectations. I mean to say that

perhaps the parents suppressed every manifestation of grandiosity (very

common in early childhood) and of narcissism - so that the defence

mechanism that narcissism is was ‘inverted’ and internalised in this

unusual form.”

 

“Maybe there aren’t two discrete states (NPD vs. ‘regular’ low

self-esteem) - maybe it’s more of a continuum. And maybe it’s just the

degree and depth of the problem that distinguishes one from the other.

 

My therapist describes NPD as ‘the inability to love oneself’. As she

defines it, the ‘narcissistic wound’ is a deep wounding of the sense of

self, the image of oneself. That doesn’t mean that other disorders - or

for that matter, other life stressors - can’t also cause low

self-esteem. But I think NPD IS low self-esteem…

 

That’s what the disorder is really about - an image of yourself that is

profoundly negative, and the inability to attain a normal and healthy

self-image…”

 

“Yes, I’m a survivor of child abuse. But remember that not all abuse is

alike. There are different kinds of abuse, and different effects. My

XXX’s style of abuse had to do with trying to annihilate me as a

separate person. It also had to do with the need to put all his

negative self-image onto me - to see in me what he hated in himself. So

I got to play the role of the loser that he secretly feared he was. I

was flipped back and forth in those roles - sometimes I’d be a Source

of NS for him, and other times I was the receptacle of all his pain and

rage. Sometimes my successes were used to reflect back on him, to show

off to the rest of the family. Other times, my successes were

threatening to my father, who suddenly feared that I was superior to

him and had to be squelched. I experience emotions that most people I

know don’t feel. Or maybe they do feel them, but to far less extreme

intensity. For example, the envy and comparison/competition I feel

toward others. I guess most of us have experienced rivalry, jealousy,

being compared to others. Most of us have felt envy at another’s

success. Yet most people I know seem able to overcome those feelings to

some extent, to be able to function normally. In a competition, for

example, they may be driven to do their best so they can win.

 

For me, the fear of losing and being humiliated is so intense that I

avoid competition completely. I am terrified of showing people that I

care about doing well, because it’s so shaming for me if I lose. So I

underachieve and pretend I don’t care. Most people I know may envy

another person’s good luck or success, but it doesn’t prevent them from

also being happy for them and supporting them. But for me, when I’m in

a competitive dynamic with someone, I can’t hear about any of their

successes, or compliments they’ve received, etc. I don’t even like to

see the person doing good things, like bringing Thanksgiving leftovers

to the sick old guy next door, because those things make me feel

inferior for not thinking of doing that myself (and not having anyone

in my life that I’d do that for). It’s just so incredibly painful for

me to see evidence of the other person’s good qualities, because it

immediately brings up my feeling of inferiority. I can’t even stand to

date someone, who looks really good, because I’m jealous of their good

looks! So this deep and obsessive envy has destroyed my joy in other

people. All the things about other people that I love and take pleasure

in is a double-edged sword because I also hate them for it, for having

those good qualities (while, presumably, I don’t). I don’t know - do

you think this is garden-variety low self-esteem? I know plenty of

people who suffer from lack of confidence, from timidity, social

awkwardness, hatred of their body, feeling unlovable, etc. But they

don’t have this kind of hostile, corrosive resentment of another person

for being all the wonderful things that they can’t be, or aren’t

allowed to be, etc. And one thing I hate is when people are judgemental

of me about how I feel, as though I can help it. It’s like, ‘You

shouldn’t be so selfish, you should feel happy for her that she’s

successful’, etc. They don’t understand that I would love to feel those

things, but I can’t. I can’t stop the incredible pain that explodes in

me when these feelings get triggered, and I often can’t even HIDE the

feelings. It’s just so overwhelming. I feel so damaged sometimes.

There’s more, but that’s the crux of it for me, anyway.”

 

Getting Compliments

 

“I love getting compliments and rewards, and do not react negatively to

them. In some moods, when my self-hate has gotten triggered, I can

sometimes get to places where I’m inconsolable, because I get stuck in

bitterness and self-pity, and so I doubt the sincerity or the

reliability of the good thing that someone is saying to me (to try to

cheer me up or whatever). But, if I’m in a reasonable mood and someone

offers me something good, I’m all too happy to accept it! I don’t have

a stake in staying miserable.”

 

The Partiality of the Condition

 

“I do agree that it’s (atypical or inverted narcissism) not MILDER. But

how I see it is that it’s PARTIAL. The part that’s there is just as

destructive as it is in the typical narcissist. But there are parts

missing from that total, full-blown disorder - and I see that as

healthy, actually. I see it as parts of myself that WEREN’T infected by

the pathology, that are still intact.

 

In my case, I did not develop the overweening Ego part of the disorder.

So in a sense, what you have with me is the naked pathology, with no

covering: no suaveness, no charm, no charisma, no confidence, no

persuasiveness, but also no excuses, no lies, no justifications for my

feelings. Just the ugly self-hate, for all to see. And the self-hate

part is just as bad as it is with a full-blown narcissist, so again,

it’s not milder.

 

But because I don’t have the denial part of the disorder, I have a lot

more insight, a lot more motivation to do something about my problems

(i.e., I ‘self-refer’ to therapy), and therefore, I think, a lot more

hope of getting better than people whose defence involves totally

denying they even have a problem.”

 

“When my full-blown XXX’s pathological envy would get triggered, he

would respond by putting down the person he was envious of - or by

putting down the accomplishment itself, or whatever good stuff the

other person had. He’d trivialise it, or outright contradict it, or

find some way to convince the other person (often me) that the thing

they’re feeling good about isn’t real, or isn’t worthwhile, or is

somehow bad, etc. He could do this because the inflated Ego defence was

fully formed and operating with him.

 

When MY pathological envy gets triggered, I will be bluntly honest

about it. I’ll say something self-pitying, such as: ‘You always get the

good stuff, and I get nothing’; ‘You’re so much better than I’; ‘People

like you better - you have good social skills and I’m a jerk’; and so

on. Or I might even get hostile and sarcastic: ‘Well, it must be nice

to have so many people worshipping you, isn’t it?’ I don’t try to

convince myself that the other person’s success isn’t real or

worthwhile, etc. Instead, I’m totally flooded with the pain of feeling

utterly inferior and worthless - and there’s no way for me to convince

myself or anyone else otherwise. I’m not saying that the things I say

are pleasant to hear - and it is still manipulative of me to say them,

because the other person’s attention is drawn away from their joy and

onto my pain and hostility. And instead of doubting their success’s

worth or reality, they feel guilty about it, or about talking about it,

because it hurts me so much. So from the other person’s point of view,

maybe it’s not any easier to live with a partial narcissist than with a

full-blown, in that their joys and successes lead to pain in both

cases. It’s certainly not easier for me, being flooded with rage and

pain instead of being able to hide behind a delusion of grandeur. But

from my therapist’s point of view, I’m much better off because I know

I’m unhappy - it’s in my face all the time.