Written August 4, 2021.
A recent conversation with someone has put a new spin on the old record of mental illness...mine, hers, what that means and what it looks like.
It has taken me a few days to be able to sit with this and write since our Tuesday meeting, to be able to
unpack and dissect our conversation and why it has created a sense of sadness, anger, vulnerability and
apprehension that makes me wary of coming back and talking with you. It has opened up a jagged can
of worms.
Narcissist. That word is fucking powerful. It’s used to describe Donald Trump in the same breath that he
is called a fascist. It’s used to describe emotional abusers and dictators, people who take and want love
but cannot give it in return. The concept of narcissism is never associated with empathy, mindfulness, or
kindness.
Is writing about this, thinking about it, wanting to deny it, inherently narcissistic? Does thinking about my
own inner workings and outer life make me self absorbed? Is my willingness to pay thousands of dollars
a year in therapy an indication of a desperate need to have someone validate me? Was then my love and
marrying a selfish grab for attention which I was condemned to reject? Was being a parent a desperate
endeavor to prove my worth? If that is true, then my daughter’s death tears that down.
For years, I cut the bottoms of my feet because the pain when I walked took away the pain in my spirit,
my head, in the murky places that I wanted to exorcise. I have taken dozens of antidepressants and a few
antipsychotics. In times when I was desperate for clear light and breath, I considered electroshock
therapy to take away the darkness, knowing that life might not have the vivid blues and greens and reds,
but neither would it have the greys that sometimes take over. Perhaps life would be less painful and fraught.
I have learned a lot in DBT, from getting older, reading about Buddhism and meditation, though it does
not dissipate the greys that come over me, the periodic thick fog that unfocuses the ability to see beauty
and hope. I’ve worked hard to gain a gentle dominion over the krakens that arise. I continued to see Dr. S,
while in a deeper place I have wondered if by seeing a therapist, I am only paying someone to listen to me,
to talk about myself, that it was elementally narcissistic, staring at myself in the pond looking at my reflection
week after week, month after month, year after year. I tread the line, knowing that it’s not appropriate for me
to ask my therapists about themselves, yet knowing that the “relationship” is inherently selfish. But over
time, I had gotten to a place of calm in my life, and was seeing my last therapist once every 3-6 months.
There was stability at work, I was slowly ending an unhealthy love relationship, and felt that I was beginning
to have friend relationships in daily life. When the cancer diagnosis, the decision to have a bilateral
mastectomy happened, I was okay. Worried, but okay. The isolationism of covid was mitigated by my
ability to see people at work every day.
But when Hannah died, my world was shaken to its roots. I felt like everything I believed was wrong. Every single interaction between her and everyone she interacted with, her moods and actions and my
response to them was worthy of question to try and find the answer to WHY. I wanted to know how a smart,
sassy, beautiful, intense, artistic young woman could have slipped away like a porcelain cup crashing to
the ground. How have I, who am so much less than she, survived and she is gone? I will never know, and
while that’s not what I want, I accept it and will continue on, even when I am in pain.
But back on topic. After Hannah died, I called my talk doctor. She was a great therapist for years, but this
loss was a different thing, and I needed someone who could understand. I came to you to deal with the
trauma of my dead daughter under my hands, pumping her chest, my knees in the fluid that drained from
her body after she expired. The lips glued shut, the memory of that last horrible argument. The recognition
that she must have been afraid of my father’s yelling, of her own anger, and in that last moment when no
one saved her by opening the locked door. She must have been afraid when no one saved her. Was she
still alive when I was knocking on her door, plate in hand? I have accepted that I will never know. It’s been
a year of memory of those last moments, of her childhood, touching the objects that were there with her
in her daily life til the day she died and slowly deciding what to keep, what represented who she was, and
to be able to let go of some of the rest in a world where my family - my sons, my ex husband, my parents
- have not been able to deal with. The only way forward is through. While it’s likely as hard for me as for
them, I am doing it because they say they cannot. This year has had multiple surgeries, T-rex arms, work
grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, living my responsibilities in the world, wishing there was a hand I could
grab onto for. Lacking that, I push the feelings down.
I recognize that my jokes about eating my feelings are the tip of an iceberg, thanks in part to Brene Brown,
which I am about 70% done with. I see that I am numbing when I eat til I am sick to my stomach, watch
tv, listen to silly books on audio, shop, surf the internet for hours, and am only slowly opening to the possibility
that there are other choices. The way forward is through here as well.
I came to you, Laurie, to help me navigate what I could not even accept or comprehend. For a year we
have talked almost every week. I don’t envy you listening to the horrors of the experiences of people like
Craig, Sybil, Rebecca, Walter, Laura and my family. You’ve heard the stories, experience our pain, seen
our tears. You’ve looked at the drawings, walked through the darkest moments of our lives with us while
we trust you and the others in our group with the things we can’t talk to anyone who hasn’t been there.I’ve felt uncomfortable periodically, about focusing some of what happened with Hannah on my own
childhood, my parents. How they have acted is theirs, whether it be from love or hate, control or absence.
Is it not also true that Hannah and I both ultimately have had agency over our decisions and actions
even when those choices were catastrophic?
Narcissist.
When one is wounded, do we not rest and heal? I did not take that action last year, needing to go to work,
to talk with customers and co-workers daily. Is my need to curl up narcissistic, or am I trying to take care
of myself?
Narcissist.
Your use of the word hit hard, and I don’t know if you saw, but my walls went up, the locks began to close.
I was shaken, uncomfortable, offended, shocked, traumatized by the word, the idea, even as you tried to explain.
Not narcissist. Vulnerable narcissist.
Not the same, yet some of the same pathology as grandiose narcissism. The other side of the same coin: arrogance/shame,
extroversion/introversion, superiority/unworthiness, attention seeking behavior/social anxiety. The core elements
are the same in both - Self absorption. Lack of emotional empathy. Sense of superiority. Attention seeking behavior Bizarre.
EntitlementI do feel entitled, I feel guilt and shame for it. I recognize that so many people don’t have access to medical
and mental health, and I do.I recognize the gift of having a home, a car, insurance, family, even when all i
want to do is hide myself away to be alone, to process, to escape. I feel monstrous, ludicrous going to therapy week after week, knowing that I could be taking that time and money and helping the unhoused, the
powerless.
Defining Characteristics of vulnerable narcissism: sense of superiority, hypersensitive, vindictive, resentful, ashamed, neurotic, depressed, anxious, moody, introverted, unworthy and inferior. Personalizing criticism?
I try to learn from constructive criticism Though the anxious part of me says that if that were true, I would be
feeling less like I had been attacked). Vindictive? I don’t believe so. Envious? I do have feelings that there are some others whose lives are easier, in part due to just resilience, which
I am trying to learn. Resentful?Possibly. I resent my weaknesses. I resent the sense that I have had what seems bad - mojo? Karma? luck?
I want to take responsibility for - control of - what happens so that I can have a sense of management of
the uncontrollable incidents that put me where I am. If I eschew this characterisation, does my “arrogant
denial” make the diagnosis more likely? Do narcissists have an incapacity to see their true selves in the
mirror?
DSM-5 traits of narcissism:
Self-esteem dependent on needing others to admire them, and their emotions can go up and down
if they don’t achieve this external recognition.
Goal setting is based on gaining approval from others. They set standards high so they can see themselves
as exceptional – or set standards low based on a sense of entitlement.
Struggling to recognise the feelings or needs of others, unless those feelings relate to themselves.
Not having a clear sense of how they affect others.
Superficial relationships, mostly to boost their self-esteem.
Arrogance and haughtiness, believing themselves to be better than others, and can be condescending.
The problem right now, Laurie, is that this is a lot to process, and in citing your insights from the podcast about
narcissism to me, something in our professional relationship became amiss. Maybe I am a narcissist. Maybe you
are wrong. Maybe you are right. But I need to step away from the hurt and anger that I am experiencing so
that I do not lose my livelihood and my way. Even if the way is not the “best” way right now, it’s the one I
can handle.
