- Narcissists are focused on self-esteem enhancement
The Survival Guide for Living With a Narcissist
Here are the survival tips that nobody ever tells you.
Posted Oct 23, 2017
by
Elinor Greenberg, Ph.D.
The main goal in life of most people with narcissistic personality disorder (or adaptations, as I prefer to call them) is self-esteem enhancement. Narcissism can be conceptualized as a self-esteem regulation disorder in which narcissists are perpetually insecure about their status. They may appear highly confident to you, but there is always a lurking doubt about their self-worth underneath the confident façade.
In essence, this means that self-esteem enhancement is ultimately more important to them than you can ever be. When their self-esteem dips, narcissists only have two choices:
- Go into a shame-based, self-hating depression.
- Become grandiose and insist that they are special, perfect, and omnipotent—while devaluing other people as inferior to them.
Naturally, they choose the latter. As the closest person to them, they are likely to devalue you in order to feel more important again. A wise woman once told me, “When they feel fat, they complain about your weight.”
- Narcissists lack emotional empathy
A lack of emotional empathy means that narcissists do not feel bad when they hurt you. They may not even notice your reaction. If they do, they are highly unlikely to care. If you complain, they will deny responsibility—“You are too sensitive.” Or they will blame you—“If you weren’t so stupid, I wouldn’t have to correct you so often.”
This means that it is highly likely that during the relationship, they will repeatedly hurt your feelings, both accidentally and on purpose. You need to be prepared for this as it is an inevitable and inescapable part of being in a relationship with a narcissist.
- Narcissists lack the capacity to see themselves and other people realistically
Narcissists lack “whole object relations”: “Whole object relations” is the capacity to simultaneously see both the good and bad qualities of a person and accept that both exist. This capacity is normally developed during early childhood through copying your parents and, most importantly, through being seen realistically and accepted and loved for who you are by your parents, despite your imperfections. This capacity can be acquired later if the person with NPD is sufficiently motivated and has appropriate psychotherapy.
Without “whole object relations,” narcissists alternate between two extreme views of themselves and other people: either they are:
- Special, perfect, omnipotent, and entitled (all-good), or
- Unworthy, flawed, defective garbage (all-bad).
What this means for you, their mate, is that they cannot see you in a realistic and stable manner. You, too, are either “special” or “worthless.” Narcissists can quickly switch back and forth between these two alternative views of you depending on how they feel in the moment.
This has little or nothing to do with you. Early in the relationship, they are likely to see you as perfect, flawless, and special (all-good). Then, as they get to know you and begin to see the imperfections that we all have and the ways that you differ from their ideal fantasy mate, they are likely to switch to seeing you as irredeemably flawed (all-bad).
Happiness is temporary: This lack of “whole object relations” plays itself out during the relationship on a moment-to-moment basis. This makes any happiness that the two of you ever feel together temporary and fragile. It is vulnerable to being disrupted unexpectedly because narcissists are so hypersensitive and unable to maintain a stable, positive image of you when they feel angry, hurt, disappointed, or frustrated by you.
Narcissists lack “object constancy:” In essence, this means that the moment that your narcissistic mate feels something negative, it disrupts the positive connection between you, and everything positive flies out the window.
Your whole positive history with them and everything nice that you have ever done for them is now totally out of their awareness. You are left wondering how this can happen: one minute your mate is totally loving and the two of you are so happy, the next minute your mate hates you.
The answer is that the lack of “object constancy” is a consequence of not having “whole object relations.”
Remember, if they cannot simultaneously see you as having both liked and disliked traits and behaviors and accept you as a whole person, they can only switch back and forth between loving and hating you. This switch is totally dependent on which aspect of you or which of your behaviors, the liked or the disliked, is foreground in the moment. Think of this like a camera that can only see what is immediately in front of it in the present. The past does not exist for a camera.
No comments:
Post a Comment