3/5/2023 0 Comments Warped reality picture![]() It becomes a feature of the narcissist's life. This dissonance, these negative emotions, these nagging anxieties, transform the narcissist's "motion picture" solution into a permanent one. He feels threatened, very sad, suicidal - but there seems to be no outside cause of all this and it makes it even more mysteriously menacing. The narcissist is only dimly aware of the decisive battle, which rages inside him. People reflect to him this mask of his creation, until even he believes its very existence and acknowledges its dominance, until he forgets the truth and knows no better. Only this time he hides behind another self, a false one. He prefers to run away and hide, as he did when he was a child. He knows that something is wrong but there is no correlation between his cognition and his emotions. He is subjected to a constant barrage of social criticism and condemnation. He actually experiences his life as belonging to someone else, his body as dead weight (or as an instrument in the service of some entity), his deeds as a-moral and not immoral (he cannot be judged for something he didn't do now, can he?).Īs time passes, the narcissist accumulates a mountain of mishaps, conflicts unresolved, pains well hidden, abrupt separations and bitter disappointments. ![]() The crux of the problem is that the narcissist really FEELS this way. But this is only the external, superficial, facet of the disorder. Cavemen narcissists have, probably, done the same. The metaphor of "life as a movie", gaining control by "writing a scenario" or by "inventing a narrative" is, therefore, not a modern invention. He describes his life, its events, ups and downs, pains, elation and disappointments in the most remote, "professional" and coldly analytical voice, as though describing (though with a modicum of involvement) the life of some exotic insect (echoes of Kafka's "Metamorphosis"). Sometimes he calls his "other", narcissistic, self by a different name. Sometimes, he talks about himself in the third person singular. It also sits well with his grandiosity and fantasies. Since this is the case most of the time, the narcissist gets used to seeing himself in the role of the protagonist (usually the hero) of a motion picture or of a novel. This detachment continues for as long as the narcissist's ego-dystonic behaviour persists, for as long as the crisis goes on, for as long as the narcissist cannot face who he is, what he is doing and the consequences of his actions. It is akin to watching a movie, the illusion is not complete, neither is it precise. It is just that he assumes, involuntarily, the position of a spectator, a polite observer mildly interested in the whereabouts of one, Mr. The narcissist does not really "exit" his body. At times of crisis, of danger, of depression, of failure, and of narcissistic injury - the narcissist feels that he is watching himself from the outside. In his efforts to exorcise this devil from his soul, he dissociates.Īn eerie sensation sets in and pervades the psyche of the narcissist. He resents this feeling, he wants to rebel, he is repelled by this part in him with which he is not acquainted. Gradually, he is estranged from himself, possessed by some kind of demon, a puppet on invisible, mental strings. He knows that he is in the wrong and feels ill at ease on the rare moments that he does feel. The narcissist hurts people around him, or breaks the law, or violates accepted morality. He says things, acts and behaves in ways, which, he knows, endanger him and put him in line for punishment. He does things and he knows not why or wherefrom. Anxiety ensues and the narcissist finds himself constantly ready for the next blow. This inner battle is so fierce that the True Self experiences it as a diffuse, though imminent and eminently ominous, threat. Yet, it is fully the master of the psychodynamic processes which rage within the narcissist's psyche. It is incapable of feeling, or experiencing. The False Self is nothing but a concoction, a figment of the narcissist's disorder, a reflection in the narcissist's hall of mirrors. The latter - the fossilised ashes of the original, immature, personality - is the one that does the experiencing. This is a result of the functional dichotomy - fostered by the narcissist himself - between his False Self and his True Self. How does a narcissist experience his own life? Answer:Īs a prolonged, incomprehensible, unpredictable, frequently terrifying and deeply saddening nightmare. Watch the video on The Narcissist's Life, a Prolonged Nightmare.
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