Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited

Excerpts from the Archives
of the
Narcissism List

Part 14

1. Abusive Parents

When abusive parents abuse - they are children again, trying to cope with their own past abuse. It is through the abuse of their children that they are trying to resolve open conflicts, to "balance the accounts", to regain a sense of justice and predictability and internal peace. If abuse is a fact of life, a natural phenomenon, an inevitability, something parents are supposed to do to their children - then all is well, past abuse hurts less, and a serenity of mind is restored. This is an accountancy of pain in which each entry is a writhing, screaming, aching child.

But the abusive parent IS such a child himself or herself. This is what makes abuse impossible to cope with emotionally. Because to do so means to have the insight that we never had caring parents, that our parents were children, and that, therefore, we were never really loved as every child deserves to be and should be.

Is it better to give life in an instant and take it away over many years - or not to give life at all? I am not sure what the answer is.

If we hate and loathe ourselves - does this preclude hating and loathing our tormentors and abusers?

Aren't they the reason we hate ourselves in the first place?

Should the fact that we share genetic material with someone shield him or her from well deserved hate, scorn, contempt, and upbraiding?

Are abusers exempt from punishment only because they were abused before? Is this the world we inhabit: mechanical, unstoppable, deterministic? No free will, no love, no forethought, no consciousness, no conscience, no sentient beings capable of remoulding themselves through inspection and introspection?

Our abusers are accountable to us, the abused - because they could have behaved differently.

In this case "love thyself" does NOT, cannot go together with "love thy parent", for instance.

If you let your abuser go, you ARE.

While if you do not - you are NOT.

Your abusing parent NEGATES you. You are like matter and anti-matter, positive and negative, acid and base. He attacked your very BEING when you were defenseless, unable to resist his doubting of your existence. And his voice keeps casting doubts on your existence, from inside. The hatred that you feel is your BIOLOGICAL reaction to this voice. HE permeated your cells first - and they react allergically, forming antibodies of hatred that begat fear (of being left alone) that begat rage.

And as long as he possesses you and inhabits you and infests you - you do NOT exist really and fully. This is the choice you are facing:

Being - but alone, or Not Being - in the company of the poltergeists of your childhood.

This is the famed Stockholm Syndrome. Hostages side with their captors rather than with the police.

I heard the view before - that shame and grief are bound together, one probably a derivative of the other - and I disagree with it strongly. Grief has for too long been considered to be an auxiliary emotion, a derivative reaction, a "reactive" sensation. In my view, it is a SPECTRUM of emotions (shame included, for instance at one's helplessness). Trying to reduce it to a one-dimensional construct is wrong. It is interesting to note that Love and Grief - the two strongest emotions known to Mankind - have been reduced this way so often.

2. Hatred and Anger

Hatred is often massively suppressed anger, ossified into the weird stalactites and stalagmites of hatred.

Hatred does not flow - anger does. Hatred is a structure - anger, a stream.

Hatred is a being, it permeates every cell. It feels so natural that it is hardly ever noticed. It speaks through anger, though. Hatred is static - anger the dynamics, its energy, its changing aspects, its holographic angles.

Anger you feel, hatred you live.

What is wrong with hating those deserving of hate? I can see nothing wrong in an emotion PER SE. If it is proportional and directed at the appropriate target - it is correct and true and worthy. There can be no healing where emotions are suppressed, even (perhaps, especially) negative emotions. Emotions are created to be felt, even the extreme ones, fostered in extreme circumstances by extreme monsters masquerading as human beings.

If I were you, I would have befriended my hatred. I would have studied it and let it study me. I would open up to it and allow it to inhabit me.

Afforded the luxury of being unconditionally accepted, maybe your hatred would not feel the pressing need to assert itself. Its existence not threatened by false morality of "right" and "wrong" and "negative" and "positive" - perhaps your hatred will allow you to accept yourself. Strike an agreement with that which can never go away. And remember: it is not YOU who gave birth to this monster and bred and fed it and indulged it. It is your father. It is HIS hatred that merely resides in you. Isn't it only very ethical and  righteous to return a deposit to its rightful owner? You are returning HIS hatred to HIM. It is the way of the world. This is how it has to be. And you should feel no guilt, or shame, or blame for succumbing to that which is greater than us all: to human nature.

3. Narcissistic Regression versus NPD

Narcissistic reactions (regression) are short term and not all-pervasive.

The regression is reactive, directly attributable to a specific event, and highly correlated with other grief and loss related reactions.

Moreover, in narcissistic regression, the narcissistic behaviors do not persist. They recede with time until they vanish completely. They do not overtake the whole personality, or permeate it.

They are confined to specific areas in the life of the affected person. They rarely involve lack of empathy and are more inclined to include grandiosity and magical thinking (omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence).

Narcissistic regression sometimes appears with substance abuse.

There is no conclusive evidence that alcoholism and narcissism are related.

You must also clearly distinguish alcoholism from social drinking or reactive drinking (for instance, due to a life crisis).

BUT

Impulsive behaviors (drinking, gambling, reckless driving, or compulsive shopping) ARE one of the criteria of the Borderline personality disorder (though not of NPD).

Most addicts have narcissistic TRAITS. NPD is an addiction to Narcissistic Supply. The 12 step programs address this attribute of addicts DIRECTLY by attacking their narcissism. They are obliged to relegate the control over their lives to a higher power (not necessarily God).

4. Narcissists and Abandonment

Narcissists are terrified of being abandoned exactly as codependents and Borderlines are.

BUT

Their solution is different. Codependents cling. Borderline are emotionally labile and react disastrously to the faintest hint of being abandoned.

Narcissists FACILITATE the abandonment. They MAKE SURE that they are abandoned. This way they secure the achievement of two goals:

1. Getting it over with - The narcissist has a very low threshold of tolerance of uncertainty and inconvenience, emotional or material. Narcissists are very impatient and "spoiled". They cannot delay gratification OR impending doom. They must have it all NOW, good or bad.

2. By bringing the feared abandonment about, the narcissist can lie to himself persuasively. "She didn't abandon me, it is I who abandoned her. I controlled the situation. It was all my doing, so I was really not abandoned, was I now?". In time, the narcissist adopts this "official version" as the truth. He might say: "I deserted her emotionally and sexually long before she left".

This is one of the important Emotional Involvement Prevention Mechanisms (EIPMs) that I write about extensively in: http://narcissism.cjb.net/msla.html

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