PicoBlog

As my Father declined gradually towards his death, the conversations between my sisters and I were increasingly punctuated by a series of medical reports chronicling his many ailments.

He was morbidly obese, pathologically sedentary, and riddled with cancers that all seemed like they were in some kind of slow motion competition to see which could kill him first.

But the one medical conditions that concerned me the most was scrawled by my Dad’s doctor at the bottom of his medical report:

Narcissist.

I didn’t believe it at first, although my sisters were already convinced. It wasn’t until I had a phone call with my cousin that I really began to understand to the importance of that brief diagnosis.

My cousin said, “You should call my Mother. Ask her about your Dad.”

So I called my Aunt—my Father’s older sister by almost two years— and Holy Shit.

How much of what I thought I knew about my Father’s childhood just a pack of lies?

I began to educate myself on narcissism and examine my own behavior from the perspective of a child with a narcissist parent. I started talking with others about their experiences with malignant narcissism and discovered that most of what they say isn’t helpful.

It has become fashionable — particularly with middle-class Amercian white women — to declare themselves the unwitting victim of a narcissistic man in some past relationship. The beautiful thing about that defensive diagnosis is that it absolves these women of any responsibility for their romantic status, experiences, or failures.

I think it’s probably possible to make a decent living selling such feel-good absolution at the going rate of about $17.38 per paperback book. As a result, there’s a plethora of popular literature reinforcing the fantasy that whatever the heartbreak, the unfulfilled ambitions, the loneliness, or dissatisfaction with their own romantic circumstances, the reason is the narcissism of their Ex.

Rarely do the self-described victims ever ask themselves, “What is it about me that drew me into this relationship? How do I change it?”

I didn’t get to choose my Father, and I had few points of comparison in my life from which to evaluate his personality disorders. Nonetheless, my experiences of him shaped me. They unconsciously directed me towards certain vulnerabilities and needs that I came to realize I would have to figure out and resolve on my own, lest I keep repeating the miserable patterns of my life.

This article is about what I’ve discovered.

Narcissism is under-studied and difficult to diagnose. Because it has several different complex and overlapping presentations, few mental health professionals can identify a malignant narcissist without also interviewing their families or close associates.

Diagnostic confusion surrounding narcissistic personality disorder reflects the disorder’s highly variable presentation and the wide range of severity that can characterize narcissistic pathology. Individuals with narcissistic personality disorder may be grandiose or self-loathing, extraverted or socially isolated, captains of industry or unable to maintain steady employment, model citizens or prone to antisocial activities. Given this heterogeneity, it is far from self-evident what such individuals could have in common to justify a shared diagnosis.

— Caligor et al. 2015

Thus, the clinical focus of research into narcissism has been its identification, description, consequences, and treatment… to the neglect of its origins. Partly because narcissists are rarely motivated to seek resolution of their disorder, guidelines for clinical practice and treatment are unreliable and remain uninvestigated. The profession of psychiatry has little to offer the narcissist or their victims, except perhaps the sweet succor of moral superiority that comes from demonizing and degrading others.

What now makes sense to me is that malignant narcissism is the result of early childhood experiences that failed to complete the challenging developmental stage sometimes called “The Terrible Twos.”

Every normal human child goes through a developmental stage as a toddler that would look like malignant narcissism at any older age, because the only perspective the toddler brain is capable of maintaining is that they are the center of the Universe.

At an age somewhere between 2–3 years, children come to the slow realization that there are other people in the world. At this developmental stage, they begin to develop empathy — i.e., an awareness that their parents, siblings, or playmates have experiences, thoughts, feelings, and motives that are independent of the child.

As their brains mature, they become increasingly aware of their own dependence on others to meet their most basic needs and they begin to resent that dependence. At the beginning of this developmental awareness, some part of the toddler can’t help but believe that these people are put in this universe exclusively to serve the child. As the toddler develops a stronger sense of self that is apart from others, their natural inclination to think of themselves as the Center of the Universe is challenged, and they are likely to protest.

That’s not the toddler’s fault. It’s the developmental stage they’re in.

Toddlers need to explore and fail and come to understand they have their own capabilities and limits. They also need to learn what they can expect from their parents and how to respect the needs and expectations of others.

It is at the toddler stage that children first develop a need for boundaries.

The toddler will seek to discover what separates their own sense of self from others by throwing tantrums, making unreasonable requests, experimenting with manipulations, and conjuring up emotions in an attempt to solve problems by controlling their caregivers.

That’s why this stage of development is called The Terrible Two’s, and toddlers who suffer either neglect or indulgence during this critical developmental stage will fail to complete it. When parents make the mistake of discouraging the development of a separate, independent self-awareness in their toddler, the child will become an adult with a toddler’s sense of self entitlement. For example, an emotionally incestuous parent may be manipulating the child into a co-dependent relationship that serves some emotional agenda for the parent. In that case, the child will fail to discover the boundaries that are essential to an independent, functional sense of self and emerge from this critical developmental stage as malignant narcissist, rather than grow out of the child-like narcissism that is natural for the toddler.

When childhood development is misdirected at this stage, the toddler may come to expect that the world really does organize around them, and that they are entitled to their indulgences, because that’s what they’ve been taught by the experiences of their parents who failed to establish boundaries. Nevertheless, something in that child’s psyche will know that this critical developmental work remains unfinished, even into adulthood. So they will unconsciously continue to seek out what their personal development really needs — the boundaries their parents never provided.

The principal difficulty with narcissistic adults is that a toddler having a tantrum is a much less dangerous prospect than a full grown adult behaving like a toddler. The toddler is a nuisance. The adult is scary. And the narcissistic patterns of behavior that were natural at the age of two have now been carved deep into the adult personality, meaning that establishing a healthy boundary requires much more than an occasional time out.

The narcissist thrives on the same attention that the toddler requires.

They don’t just crave it.

They NEED it.

All people need attention. However, he malignant narcissist experiences this need as an existential crisis, because they failed to complete the developmental work required to emerge from the stage of their early childhood at which their lives really did depend on others to meet their needs.

Therefore, a loss of attention, particularly from the people onto whom the narcissist projects the role of surrogate parent, will catalyze an existential crisis in the malignant narcissist, just as it would in a toddler. Lacking confidence in their own capacities, the malignant narcissist behaves as if they will die without manipulating others into providing for them.

Part of the narcissist’s outrageous behavior comes from trying to meet the toddler-like need for attention, and part comes from experimental testing — even unconsciously wishing — for the boundaries that would constitute the parental leadership they never got in early childhood.

It is important to remember that although the narcissist seeks attention with the same zeal that an addict seeks dope, the narcissist really needs boundaries to finish the job of development they never completed as a toddler.

This makes it very difficult for the narcissist to move on from a failing relationship. They may pursue the relationship hardest when attention is withdrawn, because they feel the existential crisis of losing attention from the surrogate parent. In these moments, they will say or do anything to secure the attention they need. However, their expression of need is not love. It is an attempt to reorganize a relationship around their need for attention. At best, it is a negotiation, but ultimately, it will become just another exploitation.

The usual advice in a relationship with a narcissist is to go No Contact (if not to run away). However, there may be several reasons to maintain a relationship with a narcissist:

• You have children together, which means negotiating visitations, custody, and co-parenting issues.

• You have a real parental or pseudo-parental responsibility to the narcissist (such as a step-parent/child relationship, or a therapist/client relationship).

• You have a pattern of creating relationships with narcissists, because of your own childhood experiences with a narcissistic parent and to go “no contact” with one narcissist will only postpone resolution of your trauma until you recreate a new relationship with a new narcissist.

With the exception of a therapist, who has the professional responsibility and training to understand that the narcissist craves attention and has a real, unmet need for boundaries, those of us in relationships with narcissists could probably use some guidance. The most important thing to understand, if you have children with a narcissist, or you have a pattern of creating pair-bonded relationships with narcissistic partners, is that there are reasons that you choose to pair-bond with narcissists.

When I, as the child of a narcissist, grew into an adult and sought my own romantic relationships, something unconscious in my brain said, “By proving my worth to a narcissistic romantic partner, I will be redeemed, and my childhood wounds healed.” Subtle conversational or behavioral cues signaled to that unconscious part of my mind when I noticed a new love interest that fits what Dr. Harville Hendrix calls my imago — the reconstruction in my imagination of the childhood caretakers who traumatized me.

When the child of a narcissist and a narcissist meet, the two might experience tremendous relationship chemistry. The attraction of this chemistry is the thrilling residue of childhood trauma. In that case, it seems like each has met the partner of their dreams, although they are sure to become a nightmare.

In my case, I sought out partners whom I hoped to please by becoming a better person, so that they would come to see what a “good boy” I was, and how deserving of their love. For example, my wife was not a narcissist, but her addiction to alcohol made her self-centered in a way that probably felt normal to me.

It may seem counter-productive to select a romantic partner that reminds me of the ways my parents traumatized me, but in several respects I didn’t have as much choice as I’d like to believe. Because it is normal for a narcissistic parent to reverse blame, the child of a narcissist has a way of internalizing their own abuse by holding themselves responsible for their parent’s abuse or neglect. We are all driven by our traumas, and our need to release the negative emotions from our memories by replaying them to more satisfactory outcomes.

So, in an attempt to relive the childhood trauma of growing up as the instrument of my narcissistic parent’s ego, I projected my own imago onto my potential partners.

If you are the child of a narcissist like me, then you are the ideal partner for a narcissist in some perverse respect, because you have already been programmed by your narcissistic parent to meet the attention-seeking cravings of your narcissistic partner.

Because the adult child of a narcissist lacked for the selfless love that all children require from parents, they will be seeking from their narcissistic partner the apology and reform that they will never get from their narcissistic parent. They will enter adulthood with a craving for a sense of belonging, for a team, or for a partnership in which each partner has the best interests of their other at heart. The child of a narcissist may believe that, if only they were a better person, then the narcissist would finally see their true worth as a human being, and love them as they deserve to be loved by acting with their best interests in mind.

When the child of a narcissist seeks to get their unmet need for self-sacrificing love in a relationship with a narcissist, the relationship will enter a spiraling feedback loop of frustration. The difficulty for many people who enter adulthood as the children of narcissists, is that they will intuitively reject those partners that treat them well, because their imago projection is seeking a narcissist that allows them to replay their childhood trauma from a position of control.

The narcissist will no doubt criticize their partner for failing to anticipate or provide for some real or imagined interest harbored by the narcissist. The partner, trained by their narcissistic parent, will listen, empathize, and seek to improve their performance of provisioning, thinking that the narcissist might finally recognize the partner’s heroic efforts, offer an apology (after coming to their senses) and provide selfless love. But the narcissist, despite the glee and sense of security they feel in discovering how to control and manipulate their partner, will ultimately be disappointed by the fact that they failed to secure the boundary that is their unmet developmental need.

The narcissist will soon do something all the more outrageous, in search of more attention and secretly hoping that they will finally provoke their partner to establish the boundary that the narcissist must have, if ever they are to complete the unfinished developmental stage of the spoiled pre-schooler.

The partner of the narcissist cannot resolve the trauma of the narcissist’s unmet childhood needs by enforcing boundaries on their narcissistic partner. So they double down on behaving as an even better, more generous, more understanding, more patient, more hardworking partner, in the hope that the narcissist will see these virtues, apologize, change their behavior, and choose selfless love.

As the cycle repeats, the narcissist will blame the partner for “driving” them or “making” them behave in increasingly outrageous ways. Of course, these accusations are false. But they do reveal a truth, which is that the narcissist is exhibiting such increasingly obnoxious and self-centered behaviors because they can’t believe they’ve been allowed to get away with it. Eventually, they will do something SO ridiculous that it can’t be ignored any longer. At that point, the partner may finally say, “Enough is enough,” and walk away from the relationship.

Ironically, that’s also the point at which the narcissist will finally begin to think that their partner might love them. That’s the point at which they may idealize their partner, claim contrition, offer the apology that their partner so desperately needs, and say “I need you. I can’t live without you.” At this moment, the narcissist is replaying the existential crisis of the toddler, who was so dependent on parents they resented.

In a way, their claims are true—for a fleeting moment.

However, the partner of the narcissist is left with a serious problem. If they continue to provide boundaries for the narcissist, they will have to continue to weather abuse and tantrums. That might be tolerable for therapists, but it is very difficult for spouses or ex-spouses. And they will have to continue to set boundaries and demonstrate patience, despite the fact that their own needs remain unmet, because the narcissist may never be capable of selfless love. At best, a narcissist on the rare road to recovery will be years away from being able to provide love, and that’s a long time to wait to have your own relationship needs met.

Of the two in this tragic pair-bonding, only the non-narcissistic partner can break the spiral. The narcissist is incapable, because they are stuck in the role of the toddler. The partner can help the narcissist by acting as the parent to the toddler, but eventually the partner will have to confront their own unmet needs and find a relationship with someone who will love them as their narcissistic parent never could.

When you cannot go “no contact” with the narcissist in your life, as your friends, family, or therapist is no doubt advising you to do, it will be essential that you learn to set boundaries with your narcissist. You will be faced with the challenge of being the parent to their toddler. It will require you to put them on time out (e.g., block their phone number, or delay responses to their emails by at least 24hrs). It will require you to practice the kinds of phrases that you only hear parents use with children, such as “I’m very disappointed in you.” And it will require you to form new relationships with people capable of meeting your need for selfless love.

The fortunate thing for those who have divorced a narcissist with whom they must continue some kind of contact is that they no longer need to seek a new narcissist. They’re still bonded to their old one! That might free them to offer their generosity, empathy, and willingness to work hard to a partner that is more likely to reciprocate. If their confidence is not irreparably damaged, they might be a good match for a pair-bonded relationship with another former partner of a narcissist — i.e., another adult child of a narcissist. In this case, the new pair-bonding might be able to feed off of the willingness of both partner’s to advance the interests of the other, creating a different kind of upwards spiral, rather than down.

The challenge will be whether the new partners have the confidence to share and compare their experiences in their old relationships. The embarrassment of having been taken advantage of for so long can become a source of shame — especially when well-meaning friends and family are saying, “I told you so!” For the new partnership to last, those recovering from relationships with narcissists must be willing to forgive their former partners, understand the role they played in the downward spiral of the old relationships, and release one another from moral judgement.

Everyone exhibits narcissistic characteristics, but few are malignant narcissists. In my case, my expectations of what constitutes a healthy self-interest were distorted by the manipulation and expectations of my parents.

Given those distortions, how would I know if I’m in a relationship with a malignant narcissist? Or worse yet, how would I know if I’m a malignant narcissist?

One way is an official diagnosis from a medical professional, but those are rare.

Another (ironically) is that the narcissist will often be the person who makes the first accusations of narcissism towards their partners. One of the ways that a narcissist will gaslight their partners is to make false accusations of gaslighting and narcissism.

While everyone has moments or examples in their history of behavior that was selfish or inconsiderate, in my experience these are not examples of deep narcissism. The behaviors that should concern you are exhibited over longer time periods, construct a pattern of exploitation, are lacking in remorse, will be evidenced by a victim mentality, accusations against others to escape blame, and sometimes they will be SO outrageous that your friends and family members will be shocked in ways that you can’t fully appreciate. These are not ambiguous misunderstandings. They are willful, deliberate, and extraordinary actions that only make sense if you see them as toddler-like tantrums, albeit with adult-like vengeance.

When the emotional explosion you’re witnessing from an adult is more like that of a 3-year old acting out against the gross injustice of bedtime, then you might have a narcissist on your hands.

If that’s the case, the regardless of whether you choose to go no contact or attempt reparenting of your narcissistic partner, your going to have to reparent yourself.

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