Spotting the Narcissist
He was a young man who sought out my services last year, the sort of crude-featured, dark skinned, dark eyes, black hair look that is considered male attractiveness in America. “Eddie” suffered from anomalous GI tract pains and had thrown up blood. He underwent a series of tests for Crohn’s and other suspected disorders and was put on proton pump inhibitors and clonipin, an anxiolytic. “Eddie” seemed to have everything going for him, and I was out to help what I felt we (and results from an endoscopy shared with him three days after our second session confirmed) were esophageal lesions and Barrett’s cells.
I won’t bore you with the healing Work or the fact that a second viewing of the esophagus (he has military insurance) showed that the esophagus was by then mostly healed. What I remember about Eddie was what he wanted to talk about outside the health challenge that brought him to me.
He shared that he seldom got sick and how lucky he is. The world- hell, the Universe or Multiverse, was here to serve him. He got breaks others worked for and did not get- mysteriously at head of line in airports (I’d like to see that one… piss off some fellow flyers…lol).
Mysteriously, the Parking Fairy would make sure he got a good slot if it was about to rain, and, best of all, the “stranger on the train” phenomenon first described in clinical lit decades ago- people would just randomly start an intimate conversation with Eddie because he has such a glow about him- things they’d never tell anyone else, even their spouses or best friends.
Along with this came an enormous sense of entittilement- like a male version of a “Karen.” The case just popped into my head last week for some reason or other. I’d bet we’ve all run into such a narcissist before. But have we considered the psychic cost should we get to know him or her better?
He speculated that the gut disturbance might have resulted in part because of his loneliness, which was hard to imagine, since he had the superficial banter and toothpaste smile that are considered personable. I decided not to delve further into his self-described sense of isolation since being around a narcissist can be quite tiring, suggesting an LPC he would work with.
He needed to vent and I did not have anyone right after his time slot, so I let him go on. Despite lots of “social life,” he felt no one really knew him, or he them. In the stories he tells about himself and his experiences, there is, as always in semiotics, a subtext for every text. The text is just how luck and fortune smile on Eddie. He is so special that even strangers can’t miss it. But the subtext is that the listener, myself in this case, is a schmuck and a loser for whom such things cannot and will not happen. I don’t personally believe it, but this shows how the narcissist’s attempt at self-elevation is based on her being granted “breaks” or boons not showered on the rest of us, our being of lesser status.
Such self-promoting stories always carry the additional subtext that the narcissist was somehow heir to unearned privilege. His status is inherently superior to that of his audience. Since he was born with this entitlement and “glow” that even strangers can feel or see, you can’t even earn it!
As social beings, we all tell stories in order to share our experiences. This is normal, and honest people with a healthy and even skeptical self-image in those stories share how they did not always glide through life, but often tripped and fell, or made unwise decisions. We might share even what we learned through our vulnerabilities or foibles.
By contrast in the narcissist’s stories, she was always the best, the dominator, the type A personality who always led others or excelled all others. In the narcissists’ stories, he or she is always the winner, the one who “figured it out” while everyone else is clueless, the one who always wins.
That sort of hyper-competitiveness and obsession about service-to-self is not correlated with life-satisfaction. Rather it is in service to others, to, as the saying goes, “giving yourself away” that real, lasting life satisfaction can be found.
In the final analysis, narcissists put out a lot of energy creating their ‘legend’ and then feel trapped in it by layers of inauthenticity. It is just as unpleasant for anyone closely connected to the narcissist, hence terms such as “She’s a legend in her own mind…”.
When you hear those stories, it’s probably a good time to cut yourself loose from the narcissist’s web of entitlement, privilege and ‘specialness” and just move on. That some, many of whom may have felt neglected in childhood and need to cultivate a pat on the head in adulthood, are stuck in this pathology is unfortunate for them. For the rest of us it should be a reminder to be humble and to live in and be of service to higher ideals.
For a great book exploring this subject, check out this book by Dr. Sam Vaknin.
Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited
“Sam Vaknin’s study of narcissism is truly insightful. The author has done probably more than anyone else to educate others to this poorly understood condition. In this, his twelfth book, he shares his considerable knowledge and experience of narcissism in a comprehensive yet easy to read style.”)
For a quick YouTube video about narcissism and how best to leave a relationship with a controlling narcissist, check out “7 Things That Frighten Narcissists to their Core” by Australian self-development guru, Richard Brannon- you don’t have to buy one of his courses in order to benefit from this: https://youtu.be/02yDlyRA0rc