A World Beyond Narcissism
Premium articles on narcissism and other cluster B types. Find freedom and personal power through knowledge of psychology and the practice of spirituality.
The Narcissistic Family: A Shattered Mythology
The narcissistic family is an isolated cult of one. It does not worship God, has no affinity to the state, and is cut off from the mythology of its people and nation. The solitary focus of worship and submission is the narcissistic parent.
All roads lead to the narcissist. The narcissistic family does not have a greater sense of tribe. It may physically dwell in a village, a city or a nation, yet it has no affinity or loyalty to any of these. The core to understanding why, unsurprisingly, also lies with the narcissist.
A narcissist carries the core trauma of being neglected, shamed, controlled, treated coldly, objectified, and above all, not seen for who they truly are. Due to their dysfunctional environment, the narcissist felt chronically unsafe and unworthy. In the face of unfathomable fear and shame, their True Self shattered into countless fragments. On the edge of death and disintegration, they made a last-ditch effort to salvage a sense of self: They split off from their True Self, and they created a grandiose, all-powerful false self.
While it may only be a construct in their mind, the false self plays a crucial role in stabilising the narcissist’s identity and psychology. It is the gargoyle at the edge of their soul keeping them safe from the destructive power of their trauma.
Yet at their core, the narcissist remains paranoid, dissociated and detached from reality. The narcissist does not see people as they are. They cannot empathise with them, or feel their plight, or relate to them. What the narcissist sees are abstractions of people. With their black-and-white infantile thinking, the narcissist attaches labels to these abstractions based on a binary system of good and evil. There are no shades of grey. The narcissist idolises people based on what they deem to be good, or they vilify people based on their own paranoia.
Ultimately, the narcissist has one criteria for judging people; do they buy into the false self, and do they provide it with narcissistic supply? This paints a picture of someone dissociated from reality and existing within a bubble of mistrust and delusion.
Inside this bubble is where the narcissist’s spouse and children find themselves. The narcissist is suspicious of outsiders, sensitive to losing control, and has expectations of nothing less than perfection. The spouse and children are therefore expected to live up to impossible standards, never disappoint the narcissist, and never stray from the narcissist’s control.
The Intergenerational Narcissistic Family Explained
Family creates the strongest of bonds. As we grow, our family shapes us physically, spiritually and psychologically. We take on its customs, rituals and beliefs about the world. It is not only a group to which we belong, but an ideology which we inherit.
When you consider a family tree, you can see how one person’s belief system can trickle down and affect dozens and eventually hundreds of people through each generation. Usually, a child internalises a great deal from their family, but as they separate and actualise, they grow in unpredictable ways, and the influence of the family is diluted by the child’s experiences outside the home.
In the narcissistic family, the development of the child is much more tightly controlled, which means the influence of the family becomes more potent and absolute. The most frightening thing about the narcissistic family is that through this tendency toward isolation and gaslighting, one person’s delusional agenda can rain down over generations like a dark shadow, without anybody realising it.
Consider the following family tree:
A three-generation narcissistic family tree.
Bold: Parents (Head narcissist and spouse)
Italic: First generation (Children of narcissist)
Normal: Second generation (Grand-children of narcissist)
Jane is a malignant narcissist with a strong, controlling personality. Francisis a mild-mannered man with a dry sense of humour. Together they have four children; Fred, Harry, Bill and Christine. Because it is headed by a narcissist, their family takes on the structure of a typical narcissistic family, which is organised as follows:
Fred (Golden Child), who is the oldest, has a superiority complex, championed by his mother as the leader of the family. Fred respects his father but believes himself to be the strongest and wisest in the family.
Harry (Scapegoat) is the ‘angry one’ who receives the bulk of his mother’s and family’s criticism and ridicule. Harry resents Fred’s overpowering personality and bossiness, and they often fight.
Understanding Borderline Personality Disorder
The term ‘borderline’ describes a person on the ‘border’ of psychosis; between control and chaos, capable of falling head-first into panic, fury or depression at any time.
The Root Cause Of Borderline Personality Disorder
The trauma which causes borderline personality disorder is as complex as its name: Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or C-PTSD for short. A person with borderline personality is often a child of divorce, with the tension between the parents creating an environment full of hostility, chaos, uncertainty and terror. In many cases, one or both parents have their own personality disorder. Mothers who are narcissistic or borderline themselves often create borderline children.
Such environments are unpredictable, and the child is always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The chaotic parents offer little container within which to feel safe. If the parents are divorced or separated, the child is usually forced between homes. The parents’ moods are often unstable and terrifying to the child, especially when the parent is a borderline or a narcissist. As a result, the child is flooded by negative emotions, unable to regulate how they feel. Their sense of Self shatters, and the child loses continuity in their identity.
The Borderline Mindset
Plagued by Complex-PTSD and lacking a stable role model, the borderline suffers greatly. Their solution is to seek out the perfect love, aiming to regulate their inner turmoil through an ‘ideal’ partner. By establishing love with the perfect person, the borderline can calm their fear and alleviate their suffering through a bright future with a beloved who will never leave them.
How Narcissism Spreads Through Families
Narcissism is a virus that runs rampant within a ‘tribe’ of people who have ‘low immunity’.
Narcissism does not emerge for no reason; it is a reaction to a core trauma of the Self. It is a compensation strategy for survival. It usually begins with a person who was severely emotionally or physically abandoned by their parents. They experience a fall from grace, a rupture in the childhood ‘Garden of Eden’.
As children, we live within a secure bubble, convinced that we are all-powerful and immortal. Slowly but surely, reality creeps into that bubble as our grandiosity is challenged and tempered. If our parents manage this carefully and lovingly, the result is an assertive and humble adult who can contribute to the world.
Not everyone has an ideal upbringing. When there is conflict or economic hardship in a society, the parental system is put under extreme stress. The parents become short-tempered, controlling and abusive to ensure some semblance of stability within the chaos of their world. The child’s bubble is not only challenged; it suddenly bursts. This leaves them exposed to the fear of abandonment and an extreme feeling of terror and insecurity.
Beyond mere survival, the child also needs a healthy sense of pride. They need to feel empowered within their world so they can be confident to act and thrive within it. When the child lives in an abusive dystopia of chaos and hardship, they have no hope of easing into the world with a healthy sense of pride. Instead, they become saturated in toxic shame, believing themselves to be unworthy and inept.
With the parents having no patience or love to give, nothing the child ever does is right. Also, because the parents have lost sight of the divinity of their offspring, they stop ‘seeing’ their child and attuning to them. Quite the opposite — they become judgemental and contemptuous. As a result, the child comes to believe themselves as unlovable and repulsive.
In reality, the parent is simply overwhelmed and struggling to survive. The parent themselves feels incapable of dealing with a chaotic world, and of course will only mirror this state to their child. What can be more frustrating than a helpless child bringing you down when even getting by is nearly impossible? Taking it out on the children becomes the path of least resistance as the craziness possesses the parent.
The child absorbs this all like a sponge, and without any way of understanding the reality, will be overwhelmed by feelings of terror and shame. This is enough to destroy the child once and for all.
The Principles Of A Happy Family
Having written a lot about narcissistic and dysfunctional families, I spent some time considering what a ‘healthy’ family might be like, and came up with the following set of values:
Secure Attachment
There is no such thing as spoiling an infant in a healthy family. The mother and father know the importance of safety and connection in helping the child establish trust in others and a strong sense of Self.
As much as humanly possible, the healthy parent will remain open and empathic to their kid, giving them ample touch, eye contact, attention and mirroring.
Temporary Worship
While the child bonds with the parent, the guardians of a healthy family are careful not to abuse their child’s vulnerable position. They allow the child to depend wholly on them as a coping mechanism but they do not encourage it.
The parent will instead work with the child to help them transition from a state of dependence and worship to a state of personal power. The guardians are leaders, not demagogues. They communicate this by exhibiting healthy shame, which includes acknowledging their limits and accepting accountability for their wrong actions.
Over time, the parents demonstrate their flaws, and support the child in coming to terms with the fact that the only person who knows best for the child is the child. It only takes a long process of learning to trust their intuition and inner wisdom, and having the courage to make hard decisions in the world.
Personal Power
Infantilisation is supposed to be for a limited time — during infancy and early childhood. The more the child grows, the more they are encouraged to attend to their own needs. The guardian teaches the child the importance of informed decision-making and life skills, and that the reins for their life belong in their own hands.
Spotting A True Narcissist In An Attention Economy
I recently set up an Instagram account and began posting. I tried to make natural poses, and include inspiring quotes which reflected my authentic experience as a writer. Yet after just three posts, I had an undeniable sense that I was entering into narcissistic territory. From this discomfort sprang a series of connected thoughts aimed at reassuring me. I began telling myself: This is how the world is now. There are millions of content creators online, fighting for attention. This is how you promote your business. We live in an attention economy. This is normal.
Job Title: Professional Narcissist
Browsing through TikTok and Instagram, it doesn’t take long to spot someone dancing or pulling off a stunt. Provocative titles lead you into homemade sketch comedy, many starring a busty woman in revealing clothing with her partner-in-crime. Other times the video is simpler and more direct. A woman or man simply stands in a pose, making micro movements or turns to put themselves on display. They may be promoting the clothing they are wearing, but often not.
The advent of social media has made gaining attention not only socially acceptable, but an indispensable part of our economy. Many people’s livelihoods now depend on the eyeballs of the many. For a true narcissist, the money would be nice to have, yet the undivided adoration of thousands or even millions of followers is where the gold is. A steady stream of anonymous likes, notifications and comments create a kind of virtual narcissistic supply.
So what would happen if all of this virtual supply dried up? Even if this content creator or influencer still had all the money in the world, how would they feel? The same as any narcissist, in all likelihood. They would feel the pain of narcissistic withdrawal.
Every Narcissist Is Unique
In the DSM-5 manual, one of the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder is ‘A belief that he or she is special and unique…’
After years of contemplation, I have finally decided that it is time to give narcissists their time in the sun. To admit that, yes, they are indeed unique —except not in the way they think.
Same Old Narcissist
When people talk about narcissists, there’s a ubiquity to it, as though ‘the narcissist’ is one person. In the collective psyche, ‘the narcissist’ is a bogeyman, someone to despise and avoid. The best spell or weapon we have againt this bogeyman is called ‘no contact’. Otherwise, if you simply stand still and do not transmit any emotions, the narcisisst should lose their scent and leave you alone.
The narcissist’s traits and strategies are well-documented and widely-understood. Selfishness. Manipulation. Fantasy. Dishonesty. Infidelity. Gaslighting. Reactive abuse. Idealise-devalue-discard. The narcissist will suck your emotional life out of you and spit you out when they are done.
A narcissist is so predictable. Once a person’s behaviour fits the label in some way, they seem to lose all uniqueness as a human being. They become the label, and everything that comes with it. Narcissist.
The reality is far more complex. Yet is is not the narcissist’s favourite colour or the way they flick their hair which makes them unique — it is the narcissism itself. More specifically, it is the core trauma behind the narcissismwhich makes the narcissist unique.
A Recipe For Disaster
Complex trauma manifests in various forms, many of which are rarely spoken about in the popular discourse.
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