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

So I’m motivated to work on

it and change it. And time has borne her words out. Over the past

several years that I’ve worked on this issue, I have changed a great

deal in how I deal with it. Now when the envy gets triggered, I don’t

feel so entwined with the other person - I recognise that it’s my OWN

pain getting triggered, not something they are doing to me. And so I

can acknowledge the pain in a more responsible way, taking ownership of

it by saying, ‘The jealousy feelings are getting triggered again, and

I’m feeling worthless and inferior. Can you reassure me that I’m not?’

That’s a lot better than making some snide, hostile, or self-pitying

comment that puts the other person on the defensive or makes them feel

guilty… I do prefer the term ‘partial’ because that’s what it feels

like to me. It’s like a building that’s partially built - the house of

narcissism. For me, the structure is there, but not the outside, so you

can see inside the skeleton to all the junk that’s inside. It’s the

same junk that’s inside a full-blown narcissist, but their building is

completed, so you can’t see inside. Their building is a fortress, and

it’s almost impossible to bring it down.

 

My defences aren’t as strong … which makes my life more difficult in

some ways because I REALLY feel my pain. But it also means that the

house can be brought down more easily, and the junk inside cleaned

out…”

 

Thinking about the Past and the World

 

“I don’t usually get rageful about the past. I feel sort of emotionally

cut-off from the past, actually. I remember events very clearly, but

usually can’t remember the feelings. When I do remember the feelings,

my reaction is usually one of sadness, and sometimes of relief that I

can get back in touch with my past. But not rage. All my rage seems to

get displaced on the current people in my life.”

 

“…When I see someone being really socially awkward and geeky,

passive-aggressive, indirect and victim-like, it does trigger anger in

me because I identify with that person and I don’t want to. I try to

put my negative feelings onto them, to see that person as the jerk, not

me - that’s what a narcissist does, after all. But for me it doesn’t

completely work because I know, consciously, what I’m trying to do. And

ultimately, I’m not kidding anyone, least of all myself.”

 

Self-Pity and Depression

 

“More self-pity and depression here - not so much rage. One of the

things that triggers my rage more than anything else is the inability

to control another person, the inability to dominate them and force my

reality on them. I feel impotent, humiliated, forced back on my empty

self. Part of what I’m feeling here is envy: that person who can’t be

controlled clearly has a self and I don’t, and I just hate them for it.

But it’s also a power struggle - I want to get Narcissistic Supply by

being in control and on top and having the other person submissive and

compliant…”

 

Regretting, Admitting Mistakes

 

“I regret my behaviour horribly, and I DO admit my feelings. I am also

able, in the aftermath, to have empathy for the feelings of the person

I’ve hurt, and I’m horribly sad about it, and ashamed of myself. It’s

as though I’d been possessed by a demon, acted out all this abusive

horrible stuff, and then, after the departure of the demon, I’m back in

my right mind and it’s like, ‘What have I DONE???’

 

I don’t mean I’m not responsible for what I did (i.e., a demon made me

do it). But when I’m triggered, I have no empathy - I can only see my

projection onto that person, as a huge threat to me, someone who must

be demolished. But when my head clears, I see that person’s pain, hurt,

fear - and I feel terrible. I want to make it up to them. And that

feeling is totally sincere - it’s not an act. I’m genuinely sorry for

the pain I’ve caused the other person.”

 

Rage

 

“I wouldn’t say that my rage comes from repressed self-contempt (mine

is not repressed - I’m totally aware of it). And it’s not missing

atonement either, since I do atone. The rage comes from feeling

humiliated, from feeling that the other person has somehow sadistically

and gleefully made me feel inferior, that they’re getting off on being

superior, that they’re mocking me and ridiculing me, that they have

scorn and contempt for me and find it all very amusing. That - whether

real or imagined (usually imagined) - is what causes my rage.”

 

Pursuing Relationships with Narcissists

 

“There are some very few of us who actually seek out relationships with

narcissists. We do this with the full knowledge that we are not wanted,

despised even. We persist and pursue no matter the consequences, no

matter the cost.

 

I am an ‘inverted narcissist’. It is because as a child I was

‘imprinted/fixated’ with a particular pattern involving relationships.

I was engulfed so completely by my father’s personality and repressed

so severely by various other factors in my childhood that I simply

didn’t develop a recognisable personality. I existed purely as an

extension of my father. I was his genius Wunderkind. He ignored my

mother and poured all his energy and effort into me. I did not develop

full-blown secondary narcissism… I developed into the perfect ‘other

half’ of the narcissists moulding me. I became the perfect, eager

codependent. And this is an imprint, a pattern in my psyche, a way of

(not) relating to the world of relationships by only being able to

truly relate to one person (my father) and then one kind of person -

the narcissist.

 

He is my perfect lover, my perfect mate, a fit that is so slick and

smooth, so comfortable and effortless, so filled with meaning and

actual feelings - that’s the other thing. I cannot feel on my own. I am

incomplete. I can only feel when I am engulfed by another (first it was

my father) and now - well now it has to be a narcissist. Not just any

narcissist either. He must be exceedingly smart, good looking, have

adequate reproductive equipment and some knowledge on how to use it and

that’s about it.

 

When I am engulfed by someone like this I feel completed, I can

actually FEEL. I am whole again. I function as a sibyl, an oracle, an

extension of the narcissist. His fiercest protector, his

purveyor/procurer of NS, the secretary, organiser, manager, etc. I

think you get the picture and this gives me INTENSE PLEASURE.

 

So the answer to your question: ‘Why would anyone want to be with

someone who doesn’t want them back?’ The short answer is, ‘Because

there is no one else remotely worth looking at.’”

 

Making Amends

 

“I mostly apologise, and I give the person space to talk about what

hurt them so that (1) they get to express their anger or hurt to me,

and (2) I can understand better and know better how not to hurt them

(if I can avoid it) the next time there’s a conflict. Sometimes the

hurt I cause is unintentional - maybe I’ve been insensitive or

forgetful or something, in which case I feel more certain that I can

avoid repeating the hurtful behaviour, since I didn’t want to hurt them

in the first place. If the hurt I caused has to do with my getting my

trigger pulled and going into a rage, then that hurt was quite

deliberate, although at the time I was unable to experience the other

person as vulnerable or capable of being hurt by me. And I do realise

that if that trigger is pulled again, it might happen again. But I also

hope that there’ll be a LITTLE TINY window where the memory of the

conversation will come back to me while I’m in my rage, and I’ll

remember that the person really IS vulnerable. I hope that by hearing

over and over that the person actually does feel hurt by what I say

while in rages, that I might remember that when I am triggered and

raging. So, mostly I apologise and try to communicate with the other

person. I don’t verbally self-flagellate, because that’s manipulative.

Not to say I never do that - in fact I’ve had a dynamic with people

where I verbally put myself down and try to engage the other person

into arguing me out of it.

 

But if I’m in the middle of apologising to the other person for hurting

them, then I feel like this is their moment, and I don’t want to turn

the focus toward getting them to try to make me feel better. I will

talk about myself, but only in an attempt to communicate, so that we

can understand each other better. I might say, ‘I got triggered about

such-and-such, and you seemed so invulnerable that it enraged me’, etc.

- and the other person might react with, ‘But I was feeling vulnerable,

I just couldn’t show it’, etc. - and we’ll go back and forth like that.

So it’s not like I don’t think my feelings count, and I do want the

other person to UNDERSTAND my feelings, but I don’t want to put the

other person in the role of taking care of my feelings in that moment,

because they have just been hurt by me and I’m trying to make it up to

them, not squeeze more stuff OUT of them…”

 

“So when I’ve been a real jerk to someone, I want them to feel like

it’s OK to be pissed off at me, and I want them to know that I am

interested in and focused on how they feel, not just on how I feel. As

for gifts - I used to do that, but eventually I came to feel that that

was manipulative, too, that it muddled things because then the other

person would feel like they couldn’t be angry anymore, since after all,

I’ve just brought them this nice gift. I also feel that in general,

gift-giving is a sweet and tender thing to do, and I don’t want to

sully that tenderness by associating it with the hurt that comes from

abusive behaviour.”

 

Why Narcissists?

 

“I am BUILT this way. I may have overstated it by saying that I have

‘no choice’ because, in fact I do.

 

The choice is - live in an emotionally deadened monochrome world where

I can reasonably interact with normal people OR I can choose to be with

a narcissist in which case my world is Technicolor, emotionally

satisfying, alive and wondrous (also can be turbulent and a real roller

coaster ride for the unprepared, not to mention incredibly damaging for

people who are not inverted narcissists and who fall into relationships

with narcissists). As I have walked on both sides of the street, and

because I have developed coping mechanisms that protect me really quite

well, I can reasonably safely engage in a primary, intimate

relationship with a narcissist without getting hurt by it.

 

The real WHY of it all is that I learned, as a young child, that being

‘eaten alive’ by a narcissist parent, to the point where your existence

is but an extension of his own, was how all relationships ought to

work. It is a psychological imprint - my ‘love map’, it is what feels

right to me intrinsically. A pattern of living - I don’t know how else

to describe it so you and others will understand how very natural and

normal this is for me. It is not the torturous