March 31, 2010

Narcissistic Traits and the NPI

Narcissus by J.W. Waterhouse, 1912

That’s me on a good-hair day: picking my bouquet of narcissus flowers, the ones that belong to me. Narcissus flowers otherwise known as "unhealthy traits and immature behaviors" require my dutiful scrutiny since I don’t like hurting other people, leaving a mess because I refuse to apologize or change my ways. As uncomfortable as it is to apologize for being self-centered, it’s even more uncomfortable not to. Not being able to make amends leaves me feeling, well---miserable. Like spending the night in a motel and not making my bed before leaving.

Leaving a mess for someone else to clean up is a decent metaphor describing what happens when the narcissist refuses to pick up his or her responsibility expecting you to do it yourself because you are the real mess-maker and therefore, deserve to be the cleaner-upper. Now, you aren’t sure who left dishes on the counter and might make the mistake of blaming yourself for a mess you didn’t create by yourself. It’s hard to know whose dirty plate is whose when only one person does the dishes. Before very long, you just DO the dishes without worrying about whose plate belongs to whom. Is this a housewife’s explanation of narcissistic plates, I mean 'traits'? Haha! Give me a break here, I’m doin’ the best I can.

When we’re taking a look at what psychologists define as ‘narcissistic traits’, we might over-examine our flaws and minimize the narcissist’s flaws. That’s been my experience, anyway. I minimized pathological traits because of my false assumption that everyone wanted to CHANGE their behavior if they hurt other people. That everyone harmed each other occasionally, but it wasn't intentional because as soon as we realized what we’d done, we'd stew in self-pity for a few days and eventually apologize. We woke up to our wicked ways and cleaned up the mess we left behind.

They do their dishes. We do ours. Everybody’s happy again. No hard feelings. Life’s a banquet.

Just take my word for it: I am not perfect and I make lots of mistakes and I’m one helluva dishwasher as a consequence. If you invite me to visit your home, I’ll do my own dishes, thank you very much! I may even make my bed before leaving, after washing and ironing the pillowcases so you won’t have to. My idealistic goal is to make sure I leave no messes behind when I pass through the pearly gates.

St. Peter will ask, “Did you make someone else scrub your bean pot or did you do it yourself?” And I can stare him right in the eye and say, “My bean pot was not only clean, dear sir, my daughter displays it on her counter!”

Narcissistic traits

When I first took the NPI (Narcissistic Personality Inventory), it seemed fairly frivolous. After all, who would be arrogant enough to select B: If I ruled the world it would be a better place.

The longer I’ve thought about this test, the more useful it becomes for self-examination, though it’s probably a fruitless measure of pathological narcissism. A covert narcissist would never pick “B” because it would be too honest. It would pinpoint their disguised grandiosity. Not just because they need to convince other people they aren’t narcissists but because first-and-foremost, they must convince themselves. Any attribute threatening their self-image is automatically denied by their psychic overlord. The overlord with big teeth who protects widdle narcissists from knowing the truth about themselves.

“They can’t handle the truth,” as Jack Nicholson said in A Few Good Men. And the more you insist they recognize the truth about themselves, the more they defend their pretenses! You end up being the persecutor because nobody can rescue the narcissist from his favorite position on the Drama Triangle: the Victim.

I know it’s never ever easy to hear the truth about yourself when it’s contrary to the person you believe yourself to be. “What? You mean I hurt you when I didn’t call you back on the phone?” So you take that thought and you sit with it and you justify not calling that person back because one day, back in 1973 on a hot August night, she said something you didn’t like and so, she doesn't deserve a reply in 2010! Who does she think she is anyway?!! She hurt you FIRST so she DESERVES your silence!”

Then you catch yourself in the ‘self-justification campaign’ and you admit to being insensitive so you call her on the phone, sufficiently humbled to apologize for ignoring her. That’s my life. Make a mess. Clean it up. Make a mess. Clean it up. I’ll be doing dishes on my deathbed. I will not be doing my X-husbaNd’s dishes, though. B: I take my satisfactions as they come and B: I hope I am going to be successful because B: I try to accept the consequences of my behavior and B: I like to do things for other people. Like keeping my dirty dishes out of their sinks and not cleaning up messes that don't belong to me.

Still, B: Sometimes usually I am not sure of what I am doing, which means B: There is a lot that I can learn from other people.

But here’s the mistake many of us make: We recognize our self-centeredness and identify with the narcissist’s struggles to work through narcissistic traits; we relate to the challenge of balance, being too much or too little either direction of the continuum. We understand unhealthy narcissism because we can tolerate the truth about ourselves.

The seven traits measured on the NPI are:

1) Authority
2) Self-Sufficiency
3) Superiority
4) Exhibitionism
5) Exploitativeness
6) Vanity
7) Entitlement

Take 3) superiority and; 4) exhibitionism, for example. Is it narcissistic to blog about our personal lives as if we’re such interesting and special individuals that other people should care? Or are we writing about our lives to figure out who we are, creating an honest, integrated relationship with our selves sans pretenses? I think the average person has numerous thoughts like this on an ordinary day, especially when you're learning about narcissism.

Self-examination is rarely pleasant. If it is, you're probably one. Narcissist, I mean.

ANYWAY, back to my point: The false assumption we make about pathological narcissism however is this: Narcissistic traits without ‘empathy’ are the foundation to objectification and therefore: exploitation. Empathy for others and communal values hold us steady, reigning us back to normal if we go too far either direction. Empathy is the glue to healthy relationships---with other people and with yourself. If you don't have glue running through your veins, there's a high probability you'll hurt the very people who care about you the most. That's a fact.

So what happens in the narcissistic relationship is that we see very clearly that the narcissist has issues, but assume their issues are no different than our issues. We assume all human beings want to love and be loved; maybe needing reassurance that they’re lovable until they feel secure enough to love us back. We assume everyone empathizes and would never be so callous as to ‘exploit’ people’s trust or devalue-and-discard them without chagrin. The idea that someone would manipulate other people and take advantage of them is so foreign we assume it only happens to people who aren't like ourselves. Certainly not to people we know. Like husbands and parents and wives and co-workers and children. Because once you’re ‘connected to someone empathically, the relationship becomes personal. You could not walk away from a mess and still think of yourself as a good person if you did.

You make the big fat mistake assuming that everyone else is like yourself.

The only way to leave a mess behind and justify it is to see people as serviceable objects, not human beings. To feel entitled to treat people the way they did not teach you to treat them, but because you’re so special, you're above the rules of common decency.

So you can take a list of narcissistic traits and for enlightenment purposes, view those traits through the eyes of empathy. Then take off your empathy glasses and examine those traits through the eyes of Prince Machiavelli. That might help you understand the distinction between narcissistic traits we all share---and pathology.

Hugs,
CZ

Resources

Narcissistic Continuum: Rescue yourself from the DRAMA







March 25, 2010

Therapy too expensive? Wait 'til you have a Midlife Crisis!




(I've no idea where this image was originally published. It's been sitting in my Clip Art file just waiting to be reposted and voila, today is the day.)


If you think therapy is too expensive when you’re younger, wait till you see what you do at midlife! Now THAT'S expensive. Untreated narcissism will cost you everything you worked for, saved for, and dreamed about because narcissism turns life upside-down at midlife. You will find yourself doing things you never could have imagined. Hurting people you may never forgive yourself for hurting. Tearing down walls that took years to build and hawking your principles and values for a blissful trip to LaLaLaNd. You will take thirty years of labor and spend it on a temporary escape from reality. Such a shame. Such a waste. Such a terrible legacy to leave your kids. Such a cruel thing to do to partners’ trust, not to mention demeaning their support through years of financial deprivation, believing retirement would be a sacred time to get to know one another as partners, not as two oxen yoked to the responsibility of providing for a family.

The misery and pain of ending a relationship that might have been salvaged with therapy, is devastating to everyone---including the person who resisted therapy because their hubris told them they could resolve their problems themselves. If there’s anything I’ve learned from 12-step, it’s this: Your head is a dangerous neighborhood to visit by yourself. You cannot fix the problems your head ‘thought’ you into creating in the first place.

It reminds me of an old joke about the truck driver who lost a ton of money after a year of making shipments and deliveries. He thought to himself, “Something has to change since one truck has proven to be unprofitable. Next year I’ll get two trucks.”

This is how it is with a narcissist who tries to fix his problems by meditating even more. Or reading self-help books incessantly. Or sitting alone, next to a stream and contemplating life, granting authority to his or her thoughts as the discerning filter to truth. If your thoughts are ‘distorted’ by paranoia, anxiety, distrust, fear and even self-loathing, the answers you’ll come up with will reflect your imbalanced perceptions of reality. And you won’t know it. Because your answers will appear to be the truth, undisputed as they remain by your unwillingness to consider viable refutation, or other people’s contradictory perceptions.

Even the very people, those who have proven trustworthy in the narcissist’s life, become adversaries when measurable facts contradict the narcissist’s 'truth'.

The first time my own mental health pushed me into therapy was back in 1989 when the Loma Prieta earthquake shook the ground of my being. Terrifying it was, as though my security in the world had been a preposterous illusion. I found myself acting in ways that were ego-dystonic (to use a psyche term meaning: my actions did not align with my values; I was uncomfortable with my behavior). When I woke up thinking about how much I hated my husband and my father and even my mom and subsequently taking my anger out on them and my children, I grabbed the telephone and called my HMO. I needed help and I knew it. Not that I wanted to admit my head was a bad neighborhood or anything of the sort because who appreciates knowing they can’t trust the way they’re thinking? Out of love for other people, out of concern for my impact on other people, out of admission that I was projecting blame on other people when “I” was the one having contemptible thoughts, I took advantage of the Loma Prieta earthquake to find out what was going on inside myself to cause such a ruckus in my life.

When you are hurting the people you love, feeling terrible about yourself, consider it a window of opportunity to understand your self and align feelings, thoughts, and behaviors with the person you believe yourself to be. If you’re not okay with busting other people’s chops because YOUR feet are shaking in your boots, consider yourself ‘normal’. It’s the people who are comfortable with contempt, disdain and aggression that will likely not see a problem blaming other people for making them ‘feel’ the way they do. The people who justify anti-social behavior by blaming other people are the ones who really need therapy but you see, they won’t take responsibility for themselves so they don’t go. It’s everyone else who’s the problem, not themselves. Psychologists call that being ego-syntonic. They are comfortable being assholes.

Now whether we put a co-dependent label on the importance I place on family and community, let’s just say my advice to ‘anonymous’ came from personal experience. The impetus to seeking therapy was not to serve myself (though in the end, that IS what happened); it was concern for my impact on people I loved---the people who did not deserve to be mistreated simply because my anxiety needed a reason to exist (or a place to go). My anxiety was my problem and whether my kids and my husband were acting like children or not, my anxiety about their behavior was my problem. So I took my problem to an objective psychologist to help me cope with it, digging all the way to China to find the root of my anxiety. And as expected, my parents sucked wind. Which was a huge wake-up call because I’m a mother and sucking wind is ego-dystonic. Once again, concern for my impact on my children kept me in therapy for a couple of years. See how it works? I did it for others but ended up benefiting myself.


When my son was having behavioral problems in France (show me an eight-year-old who wouldn’t), I took him to French psychologists while we lived overseas. To this day, he loves Madame Argeles for her knowledge, compassion and interest in helping him cope in a school that did not speak english. When my daughter was depressed as a teenager, I took her to a psychologist, too. Not that she kept going because in our household, any mama who paid attention to a kid in trouble, was an overly-concerned mama. A mama who, hummm…what was the pejorative label? O yes. An Overly Protective Mother. Back in the day, that was akin to being called "Unfit".

As long as Mom and Dad split on the efficacy of therapeutic intervention, a kid in trouble will take the easy way out and dismiss therapy as necessary because therapy hurts. It’s not like going to Lalaland. It's not fun. My daughter rues the day she left therapy to figure things out on her own and has since spent years recovering from the damage she did to her life in the pretense of not needing therapy. Pleasing her father by ignoring Mom’s advice, you see.

So when I write to someone like Anonymous, my perspective has a long-view, a reason to HOPE therapy can intervene before even ‘one’ untreated narcissist destroys people’s lives. Can narcissists be cured? Who knows? And besides, who knows if someone displaying narcissistic traits is actually NPD? Not even your local therapist knows for sure.

In my family, predisposition towards narcissistic behavior is common enough and treating narcissistic behavior has proven to have valuable results. If narcissism is nipped in the bud, that is. If it isn’t, if narcissistic traits flourish unabated, they rigidify over time, making it potentially impossible to change a narcissistic personality at midlife. Because our society has almost normalized narcissistic behavior, I am concerned people will dismiss the potential of narcissism to destroy their lives when they age. Unhealthy narcissism must be confronted, struggled with, challenged, viewed as destructive to not only the self, but others, too.

The Midlife Crisis may be the reification of unchallenged narcissism that could have been treated had it been taken seriously, not rationalized or dismissed as self-conceit or arrogance. Narcissistic traits are warning signs of that which is yet to manifest: complete and total isolation from other people. Who knows if treatment will cure narcissistic traits or prevent traits from becoming a narcissistic pathology at midlife? Does it matter? Maybe not to the person with the capacity to escape reality when life gets tough; but it certainly matters to those who are unwilling to accompany them to LaLaLaNd.

If you have narcissistic traits causing relational problems at home, at work, in your neighborhood, or your significant relationship, remember this: You cannot think your way out of problems your head got you into in the first place. Asking for help is an exercise in humility…a surrender of hubris. Asking for help drives a wedge in the concretization of destructive narcissism.

Even if you can’t solve the N-problem, manage it. Today. Like Now. Like don’t wait a moment longer.


Hugs,
CZ

Resources


Elsa Ronningstam, author of Understanding the Narcissistic Personality tells us there are two signs narcissism may not be ameliorated, even with treatment:
1) The inability to sustain long-term commitments; 2) The inability to tolerate criticism or disagreement




March 23, 2010

Help! I'm a narcissist!

The Pond by Vasiliy Polenov


Anonymous wrote:

“Thank you for this blog, and thank you for this post. I came across this site because I am a narcissist who has woken up, and I am trying to understand myself better so I can change…I feel like I am growing up and finally taking responsibility, finally becoming an adult. I still don't know how or why I realized all the inappropriate ways I had been acting in the past---how I treated lovers and friends, how I played a million different people to get others to like me, how pompous I was. It was like recovering from amnesia and reliving decades of horrible memories, except I was conscious through all of them. I carry tremendous guilt and shame, and I am trying to make amends to people when and where it is appropriate, without the desire to be forgiven.”  ~ Corrective Life Events: Can the narcissist change? 

Dear Anonymous,

See that pond, anonymous? It is far less inviting than the pond in a JW Waterhouse painting, isn't it? If you want to work on your narcissism, you’ll have to jump in an obsidian pool without shoes or even a face mask. You’ll have to walk to the edge of a splintery plank, plug your nose and dive head first in the water without anybody pushing you from behind or diving with you. You’ll have to make that decision, trusting you won’t drown. That even if you can't touch the bottom, you can tread water while learning to swim. You cannot lounge by the shore reflecting on your life, your accomplishments, your failures, expecting the ground to burst forth with narcissus flowers. You must do that which you fear the most and that means 'trusting the process.' It won't be easy. It may be the biggest challenge you'll face in your life. You know why?

Because narcissists don’t get therapy for their own benefit. They go to benefit others.

The predicament is that you must care about your impact on other people. Communal values are requisite. If ‘communal values’ rank way below self-concerns and your empathy deficits are as severe as the federal budget’s, why would you want to change? It would be more comfortable maintaining ego defenses than feeling as terrified and incompetent and anxious as everyone feels when confronting themselves. You have to care about your impact on other people.

Listen, everyone has narcissistic traits. We haven't always called them that, more like warts or rough edges. You can’t help but pick up narcissistic traits in a society rife with self-promotion. Everyone has N-traits and those traits have teeth, mercilessly biting us in the ass until they get our attention. So you have six months. The next six months is an opportunity via crisis. Your defenses are down and your willingness to seek help is up; your desire to change old patterns of behavior has finally arrived. Six months, for about six months people do whatever it takes to restore peace and order in their lives. Then the gig is up, separating narcissists-in-the-making from narcissists-fully-cooked.

I have listed thirteen things you can do, it's not a perfect list but it's a start. Narcissistic friends and relatives (even myself) work through ego defenses. Sometimes it takes a crisis to shatter grandiose perceptions and sometimes life just chips away at our rough edges over time.

A study by Drs. Ronningstam and Gunderson suggests people overcome narcissism through corrective life experiences and corrective relationships. The narcissists who don’t are the ones who end up hurting so many people they can never let their true self come out from hiding. If you don’t break through narcissism when you’re young, defenses rigidify, becoming impenetrable when you’re older. It’s imperative to seize your opportunity when you're only 25 years old, commit to change, and follow through with action, especially when you don’t want to. It will not be easy. The truth is that life isn’t easy on anyone whether we have a narcissistic personality or not.

13 Suggestions

Number one: Get treatment with a mental health professional who is knowledgeable and experienced treating narcissistic clients. This is your first long-term commitment.

Number two: Ask your family to educate themselves. This protects everyone from ignorance. The average person does not know how to cope with narcissistic relationships. They may assume they know how, but they do NOT. Learning about narcissistic relationships is the antidote to arrogance.

Number three: Do humbling tasks like washing floors, scrubbing dishes, cleaning toilets; any of the drudgeries ordinary people do. Clean up after yourself without considering the work to be menial. Life may be a banquet but it’s also a lot of grunt work. Grunt work is reality. It’s also the antidote to superiority.

Number four: Give back to society. Service work proves you aren’t nearly so bad off as self-pity suggests. Work in soup kitchens, volunteer for charity work and do it anonymously. Hell, pick up trash and do it without joining a group. Anonymity prevents self-deceptive narcissism from seeking recognition in the guise of altruism. Service is the antidote to entitlement.

Number five: Love is an elixir for insanity, at least in the short run. So, no lovers for a couple of years. Remember, you don’t abstain for yourself. You abstain out of caring for others. While Ronningstam’s research suggests a ‘corrective’ relationship ameliorates narcissism, don't assume ‘relationship’ means one-on-one. Broaden the definition. Create relationships that are healing, but platonic. Start with a plant. Human beings have amazing relationships with plants. Ask any gardener.

Number six: Get working again. Take stock of your skills and attributes, you have them. Promote a realistic assessment of your skills without inflating them to lies. Know Your Limits; know your attributes, too.

Number seven: Be scrupulously honest with yourself. If you clean up after your character everyday, you won’t ‘fear’ your true identity being revealed. No manipulation, no conniving and no lying. Each night before you sleep, review your day and make amends if necessary. Even to yourself. Honesty is the antidote to self-and-other deception.

Number eight: Drinking, drugging, gambling, any activity ‘escaping reality’ reinforces ego. The price of escape is high, very high----unless you take the easy road and opt out entirely. Some old narcissists choose to do that. I hope you don’t.

Number nine: Understand how narcissism affects other people. When you read my blog, you’ll realize how hard it is for empathic people to deal with grief and loss because they don’t have an easy way out. So when you feel as though nobody cares and they never loved you unconditionally anyway, remember a few of my messages, will you? Narcissists break people’s hearts and if that last comment makes you feel powerful and tough, consider increasing therapy to three times a week.

Number ten: Go to 12-step meetings for addictive behavior. One cautionary word: groups trigger narcissism. Narcissists start sizing folks up and dividing them into competition or admiring followers. But go anyway. Long timers spot arrogance a mile away and they won’t hesitate confronting grandiosity. Risk sharing your feelings with men, not women. Now that takes courage!

12-step establishes a code of behavior to compensate for a lack (or silenced) conscience. Even a religious organization based on an ethical code can restrict narcissism, though many churches have taken the route of entertainment---not self-discipline. If you go to church to ‘feel good’, it's another way to serve yourself and escape reality.

Number eleven: Take a walk. Everyday. Look at the trees. Notice the soil. Pay attention to sounds. Feel the wind on your skin. See yourself as a part of life. Notice other people are focused on where they’re going; witness the humbling truth that you are not the center of their universe. When you return home, repeat to yourself,“I am an ordinary person who struggles with problems just like everyone else in the world. There is no shame in vulnerability, no shame in making mistakes.”

And if the sun isn’t shining the day you’re scheduled to take a walk, it ain’t personal.

Number twelve: Don’t expect a miracle. Set goals that are attainable. Keep your goals small enough to be realistic. Remind yourself that narcissism is not built in a day and deconstruction won’t happen in a fortnight. Anticipate ‘therapeutic treatment’ to be a long term commitment, and self-help to take a lifetime.

My thirteenth and most important suggestion is this: None of the work you will do is for you. It’s for others. Do it for others.

Hugs,


Resources

Narcissistic Personality: A Stable Disorder or a State of Mind? by Elsa Ronningstam and John Gunderson, 1996






March 20, 2010

Maybe it's time to call a therapist?


Red Virginia Creeper by Edvard Munch, 1898




You know the story about your house catching on fire, right? (Or in the case of Munch's painting, when your house is overrun with Virginia Creeper). You don't grab a bucket and put out the flames yourself and you don't grab snipping shears to clip climbing vines at a slower pace than they can scale the walls. It's time to give up the pretense of self-sufficiency and call in the professionals. That means calling fire trucks to put out the fire destroying your home and if you have a serious problem with Virginia Creeper, telephoning agricultural specialists with herbicides powerful enough to control this rapacious 'weed'. A smidgen of Virginia Creeper is lovely but too much smothers a house in no time. 

I wrote a little bit about Supportive Friends and how we might withdraw from intimacy by referring suffering friends to therapists rather than struggling within ourselves to empathize with their pain. We might fear saying something wrong--or our own sense of well-being may be threatened when someone is grieving and we aren't sure how to soothe their pain. Most of us fear making other people's pain worse by saying something stupid which we manage to do at some point or another. Like going to a funeral and knowing you're supposed to comfort the bereaved when the only thing coming to mind is: nothing.

Speaking for myself, I don't always know what to say and have made the erroenous assumption that a friend was asking for advice when I didn't have any to give. Feeling as though we're supposed to 'resolve' a friend's pain interrupts listening which is probably all they wanted us to do anyway. No pressure to fix their problems, just show them we care. Anyway, rather than repeat what I’ve already written, this post is about what we need to do when our lives become unmanageable; as in: “The house is on fire, you blessed idiot! A bucket of 12-step is insufficient to put out the flames and Home Depot’s Round-up is an ineffective counter for too many creepers!”

In other words, when nothing you say or do results in a healthier relationship and your life has become unmanageable, even absurdly creepy, it’s time to call in the professionals. (Maybe y’all will give me the liberty of comparing narcissists to ‘creepers’ because a little bit of narcissism is attractive but a whole mass of narcissism blocks out the sunshine and tears holes in your roof.)



Call me the Metaphor Madonna. It’s okay. Someone commented about my writing once, suggesting the Metaphor Police should follow me around the Internet. That hurt, but after reading about writing effective metaphors, she had a valid point. Well, this is a blog not a literary canon so in the words of Steve Martin, “EXCUUUUUUUUUSE MEEEEEEEEE!”


When we’re overwhelmed by the narcissist’s ambush (shocked would be a better word for it), we may not be thinking clearly and in that case, someone might need to gently suggest therapy to keep the creeping crud from taking over our brains and hearts. I didn’t mind people encouraging me to go to therapy when it was clear, even to me, that my thinking was stinking. I appreciated their tender concern. It meant they knew me well enough to realize I was not acting like my ‘normal’ self and they wanted the "old me" back almost as much as I did. There's nothing as quite as scary as feeling like you don't even know who you are anymore. Let me tell this short story:

Just prior to finding out a rapacious vine was clinging to my husband like strangulating ivy on a street lamp, he was creeping around the house like a blind man who could no longer see where he was headed. Then out of the blue, our master bedroom caught on fire while he was out of town. That’s right. The attic caught on fire while I was sitting on the floor rifling through magazines. Suddenly, the overhead lights went out. At first, I thought about going to bed and changing light bulbs in the morning but for some crazy reason I collected a ladder from the garage to check the attic. (Who does that at midnight and why wasn't my psychic intuition telling me to check motel slips for double occupancy???)

To make a short story long, the master bedroom attic was on fire. The pesticide dude had tripped over a canister light that day. When I turned it on so I could thumb though a stack of Architectural Digest piled next to my bed, the broken light arced, smoldering nearby insulation. It only took a couple of hours but eventually ceiling joists caught on fire, leaping joyfully for the roof.

I ran to get my daughter and said, “Hey, my bedroom is on fire. Will you come look at it with me?” Which she did, promptly validating my perception that indeed, flames were licking the timbers. “What should we do?” we asked each other like a couple of dim bulbs ourselves.

“I’ll get the yellow pages”, I suggested. So we walked down to the kitchen to use the phone.

“What should we look up?”

“I dunno”, she said. “Maybe see where the closest fire department is??”

Which of course, took another five minutes scanning pages wondering where fire departments were listed. Government agencies? State departments? Where the hell was the fire department’s telephone number and heaven forbid I should call the wrong one and cause a ruckus. Finally my daughter had an idea that seemed completely genius. She called 911.

“What is your emergency?” the woman asked.

“Well,” she said, “I don’t know if this counts as an emergency but our house is on fire.”

At that point, she handed me the phone. Madame 911 asked, “Is there anyone sleeping in your house right now?”

“Yes. My sister and my nephew are sleeping in the bedroom wing, pretty close to the fire.”

“You need to wake them up and get them out of the house.”

“BUT”, I argued, “my nephew has school in the morning and it’s after midnight.”

She repeated, “I want you to wake up everyone in the house and go outside. NOW. Stand on the grass and do NOT go back in the house. A fire truck is on the way. Do You Understand Me?”

By that point, my brain circuits were lighting up again (not on fire though you might think there was a burnt roast in my cranium or at least a pile of rocks). She kept me on the line while my daughter woke up my sis and nephew. As soon as I told the woman that everyone was headed outside, she let me hang up the phone.

Once we were outside, we could smell and see smoke billowing through the roof, strong enough to make ya cough but get this: inside the house, there was no smoke. No smell. Everything appeared to be safe and normal. Not to write another metaphor about the narcissistic relationship or anything but you can probably make the connection yourself.

Within a couple of minutes, fire trucks were lined up in the front yard and a crew of men with axes had hacked through my beautiful ceiling, burning holes in the wool carpet as embers fell from the attic. It was basically horrifying to tell you the truth. Not only because I loved that dream house with all my heart but because I couldn't trust my brain to know what to do in an emergency. This was a stunning revelation about the relative unimportance of intellect when it comes to a crisis.

“If you had waited only two more minutes,” the fire chief said, “Your whole place would have burned out of control. That’s an old shake roof you've got and there’s no way we coulda salvaged your home. Even with four fire trucks. You’re lucky you caught that fire in the nick of time.”

Yup. I caught that fire in the nick of time---but the creeper destroyed our home anyway.

When you suspect your relationship is narcissistic or finally understand that narcissistic parents raised you as child, 12-step is a good start on getting your life in order. But 12-step is kinda like grabbing a bucket of water to dowse a bonfire.

The point of this post is to let people know from my traumatic reaction (or is it more accurate to say: inaction?) what happens when we’re frightened or stunned by the unexpected. You may not be thinking clearly. In fact, you probably are not. In that case, a professional therapist, familiar with narcissistic relationships, can squelch smoking embers before they grow into destructive flames. A friend who’s known you for a long time and loves you very much will likely suggest calling a therapist---not because she thinks you're crazy, but because she knows you're not.

Once you've gotten your life in order, you’ll wonder why you didn't think about calling the professionals earlier.


Hugs,
CZBZ




March 19, 2010

Papiroflexia


Papiroflexia was created by Joaquin Baldwin at the UCLA Animation Workshop, 2007. Original Score written by Nick Fevola. 

I love this animation. Joaquin Baldwin's theme suggests, “Life is what we make it”. We can change our lives by changing our perceptions. No, we can’t fold up narcissists and turn them into gazelles. We can however, ‘set them free’ if they ignore stop signs and exceed cautionary speed limits. Let narcissists roam the hillsides and leave the safe driving to those who respect other people’s freedom as much as their own. In a cynical view, this film can be dismissed as ‘idealistic’. An unfeasible absurdity. Self-delusion comes to mind, maybe even fantasy. 


Still, Papiroflexia spoke to my heart because transforming my chubby self into a mama bear was far more validating than turning myself into an old cougar. Ha! Show me a good film and I’ll ruin it with personal metaphors.Since this film is sweetly idealistic, it’s the perfect way to explore ideals and values and touch on the topic of shame people feel for falling short of the ideal. It’s one thing to feel guilty about not measuring up to expectations; it’s downright poisonous to be ashamed of your self for falling short of perfection. Who isn’t? Imperfect, I mean.

Ideals are archetypes. There’s the archetype and then there’s the human emulating the archetype. There’s Godlike perfection and there’s mortal imperfection and any human being with a grain of commonsense knows falling-in-love-with-falling-short is mandatory to happiness and peace of mind. There’s no shame in failure if perfection belongs to the Gods and imperfection belongs to you. If you never learned this as a child, watch the Seven Voyages of Sinbad as many times as I did and you’ll forgive yourself for making mistakes. You might even forgive the Gods for sending Harpies to shatter your hubris. I was pretty clear, even as a kid, that people weren’t perfect. My mistaken assumption was that everybody knew they weren’t. Perfect, I mean. That everyone knew there were no Free Passes allowing a human being to Give Up and Stop Trying.

Having Ideals or Being Idealistic?

Being idealistic, on the other hand, is a black-and-white judgment. An idolized perception of the way things should be, or the way people should be. To hardcore idealists, you embody the ideal or you don’t. And if you don’t, you’re clinically diagnosed as defective. That’s the idealistic narcissist’s perception of reality: that people either are or aren’t perfect, which leads to noxious and toxic behavior towards others and even themselves.

Idealism may be as non-pathological as naĂŻve optimism about the inherent goodness of human nature having never encountered a not-so-good predator roaming the earth in human skin; but idealism can also be pathologically destructive. Idealistic narcissists stalk airports. Ruin marriages. Destroy families. Idealistic narcissists are dedicated to the way things should be because they’ve devalued and discarded the way things are.

Being idealistic is not the same thing as having ideals and accepting yourself (and others) as fallible. Good enough, I mean. Idealists are disappointed by reality, so focused are they on perfection being out there somewhere else…anywhere other than where they are, which means they are always chasing a dream, a perfect society, a perfect race, or a perfect relationship with a perfect soulmate. Whatever idealists achieve in their lives will be compromised by comparisons between perfection and reality: what should be, never what is.

Pathological idealists live in a fantasy world, imagining paradise while rejecting reality as inadequate. They have this weird perception that disagreements, differences, anyone refusing to see things their way or follow their plan means the whole of society sucks, any human organization sucks, and the best thing to happen is for the whole damn place to go up in flames. Not only do they pass judgment, they administer punishment themselves. Not that I’d be referencing divorce, the imperfect family, and perfect love. Soulmates, I mean.

“There is a difference between values and ideals. A value is something you recognize as good and worthwhile and that you choose to have in your life now by being willing to sacrifice other things. An ideal, on the other hand, is something you recognize as good that you want in your lives sometimes in the future, but you are not willing to sacrifice for it now. Values and ideals are often confused, but the difference is the level of commitment. Some couples say they value a good marriage, yet they do nothing to make their marriage better. So for them, a good marriage is an ideal, not a value.” ~Link to article

Narcissists may idealize family as an idea but they do not value family as a process. They idealize love as an idea but they do not value love as a process. Narcissists chase rainbows---expecting to find the pot o’ gold. They put more energy in the chase than they’re willing to invest in the families they already have. As if Love and Family are possessions, not hard work for each person falling-in-love-with-falling-short. 

The end of the ideal: divorce 

I was thinking about 1950’s sitcoms like Father Knows Best. Not very long ago, television portrayals of perfect families triggered my cynicism during a long and yea, traumatic divorce. Any hint or suggestion that Family was a safe place for kids to grow up---or that marriage was a safe place for partners to grow together (instead of apart), made me nauseous. My eyes rolled automatically. I smirked and uttered jaded comments like Roseanne Arnold’s famous quip: “Family is the F-word.” If a rerun of Father Knows Best came on television, it took every ounce of willpower to keep from throwing my rolling pin at the flat screen.

Cynicism is disturbingly funny when everything you believed to be true about marriage and family turns into a cosmic joke about naivetĂ©. What a gullible fool, what an idiot! I believed Father Knew Best and Mother Knew Better. So after deconstructing the ideal family from a feminist, Freudian, Christian, and John-Inner-Child-Bradshaw perspective, I started reassembling what it meant to be a family and this time, gleaned a much deeper appreciation for the power of ideals to guide our lives. Especially when we aren't looking.

To me, ‘Home’ is a sanctuary from the fragmentation of work-self and real self: the place where people are soothed by intimate familiarity, where self-protective defenses dissipate and healthy boundaries are respected. I always placed a high value on home-and-family, evidenced by my commitment when times were tough and love was leaner than a pound of Oscar Meyer turkey bacon. Despite the problems (and if you’ve known narcissists, you realize relational problems exceed the average person's comprehension), the ideal of family was embedded deeply enough to keep me focused on the bigger picture. That's the awesome thing about ideals. You don't even know they're there. For some of us, we don't even know what ideals and values are until they’re ‘shattered’.

I found a great article listing 13 basic Ideals most people appreciate as archetypes for human behavior: Beauty, Duty, Freedom, Happiness, Health, Justice, Logic, Maturity, Order, Power, Victory, Virtue, and Wealth.

We don’t place equal value on every ideal, selectively choosing which ideals carry the most weight. For instance, you won’t catch me living in a house that isn’t beautiful…modest maybe, but Beauty will be maximized. I’ve always valued Duty, too; but let me define Duty as ‘responsible’, not martyrdom. That’s because Freedom is on my short list. Power is moving up the ranks having been relegated to the number 13 spot for too many years to call it mentally healthy.

Transforming Obstacles to Wisdom

Divorce meant I could no longer assume the ideal family would naturally result from a literal representation. If you look around my dinner table, you’ll see two divorced women, a single adult daughter, and one male teen-ager, a Motley Crew very unlike Father Knows Best.

My task post-marriage was to balance the ideal of family with pragmatic realism which meant transforming people, porcelain dishes and placemats into a truer construction of ‘family’ based on meaning. Not literal objects. It was a trick of the mind and it probably sounds silly to anyone who didn't define family as an organization headed by a Dad and a Mom with two and a half kids and a couple of stray cats. Reinventing ‘family’ meant transforming what appeared to be an irreconcilable fragmentation into a truer meaning of family. We still call ourselves A Family despite our dissimilarity to the cultural ideal.

Divorce was like being pushed in a bottomless lake with my hand basket laden with values and ideals scattered like garbage across the water. Heavy weights like cynicism, hopelessness, and despair were tied to my feet like giant boulders. A small pebble of self-loathing was bound next to victimization. It’s not easy to swim when your feet are weighted down and you can barely keep your head above the waves. If that happens to you, reach for the closest floating Ideal from your basket and hang on for dear life.

Power: the belief in my ability to save myself from drowning. Duty: no two kids deserved being left in a mess without their mother. Justice was out of reach but Wealth came floating by---support was abundant if I was looking. With enough ideals to hold me steady, treading water eased into a butterfly stroke. Cynicism morphed into optimism, self-trust, and confidence. We can turn heavy weights into life preservers; allow loss to become gain, a failure to become success. We can transform our lives by integrating ideals and values and living true to the person we were, are, and will be in the future.

Ideals, and the value we place on those ideals, inspire us to keep trying to do and be better. Good enough, I mean. Not perfect.

Hugs,

CZ

Resources
Self-Exploration: Identities, Values, Experiences, and Goals. You may enjoy this worksheet I found on the web. In the aftermath of crisis, it's challenging even knowing what your ideals and values might be---so twisted have they become in the N-relationship. Being true to yourself is the healing process but you first need to find out who that self really is. Defining your values, beliefs and ideals is a good way to get started restoring your integrity.

Trans4mind.com: Ideals

Sheri and Bob Stritof, Be True to Yourself in your Values and Ideals




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