What is Narcissism?

As a narcissistic abuse survivor, narcissism is bad behavior, repeated, over a prolonged period of time, with no remorse, with no meaningful apology, with no signs that it’s ever going to get better.

Question

Everybody can be an asshole from time to time but I used to find my situation beyond confusing. I couldn’t figure my wife Susan out at all. Let me ask you a question.

Are you dealing with somebody who causes you despair, anguish, pain and mental torture quite a lot of the time, but not always?

If so, you, like me, may well be dealing with narcissism.

The word has been open-sourced

Ask a hundred different people what narcissism is and you’ll likely get a hundred different answers leaving you utterly confused. Or at least that was my experience.

The word narcissism seems to describe a range of things as wide as the universe. In my opinion the word has become a marketing term for anything related to relationship problems. I like to think that the word has been open-sourced. This means that it’s definition is now being redefined in real-time by many different contributors.

This however is a good thing not a bad thing because it helps to popularize and bring mass-awareness to problematic relationships, emotional immaturity, poor parenting practices, and unhealthy attachment styles. From awareness comes corrections and solutions.

A bucket of tangible items

I like to think of narcissism as a bucket for very specific and tangible items. Studying these items has allowed me to understand my toxic relationship(s) and to understand myself and my own life-long behavior patterns much better.

Pitfalls

We live in transitional times. My wife is as unique as the next person. Saying she is narcissistic and then trying to find a unified definition of narcissism that incorporates millions of other unique personalities is bonkers. Therefore any source of information such as…

• Top ten tactics of the covert narcissist…
• All narcissists say this…
• Covert narcissists will say these three things to test you…
• Narcissistic versus narcissist
• Why narcissists will never seek therapy

…are often completely misleading bullshit that cost me literally years of my life trying to reconcile. Ok that was harsh, they can be helpful but I do not take them literally anymore. All people are different, all people are unique. Some are good, some are bad and everything in between. Narcissists are people and people are different. Some narcissists will seek therapy, some won’t, end of. If your tormentor is in therapy, it’s still possible they’re a narcissist. Just because a YouTuber makes a sweeping generalization does not mean it’s true for everybody. Keeping this in mind is the key to truly understanding this.

The “Why?”

I went through quite a lot of turmoil trying to figure out why my wife did the things she did and why she does the things she does and why she says the things she says. I found as my understanding of her behaviors grew, those answers came naturally of their own accord and a degree in psychology wasn’t required.

Not everything she does is narcissism.

Theories (or clinical facts) on the core of narcissism:

• Narcissism is a defense mechanism, a feedback loop that rejects anything that might hurt a vulnerable inner core.
• Narcissism is a measure of how special a person feels.
• Narcissism is a defense against shame and insecurity.
• Narcissism is a distortion field that distorts reality for the person.
• Narcissism is a little dude with horns sitting on a persons shoulder poisoning their mind.

Many of these are true in a clinical sense of course and I’ve found that thinking about the behaviors under those headings has been really helpful. However, I also got caught up in trying to attribute every single solitary thing my wife did to her narcissism. This tore me up from the inside out. For example, my wife tends to make an announcement before she does anything, “I’m just going to fix the cushion” she would announce loudly right before she fixed the cushion. I’d be wondering what part of the feedback loop is causing the announcements? Sigh! That was just her being her and had nothing to do with any defense mechanism.

It was one of many huge wrong-turns I made while trying to get my head around all this stuff.

Reality check

The crap my wife does is just what she does. We all do what we do because we are all human and we all march to the beat of millions of years of human evolution. Narcissistic behavior is just one component of this.

It’s a fine line

Narcissistic people are humans too (I know that’s hard to hear, I get it). I found that looking at my own behavior allowed me to understand my toxic narcissistic wife. She does crap all the time that I can relate to because I’ve lived a normal life and have experienced the full complement of human emotions. I’ve lashed out and made mistakes. I don’t lash out and make such mistakes daily however but the fact that I’ve been there (we all have) I can understand what she’s about.

The reality is this:

• Everybody is different.
• Everybody is unique.
• Everybody is human, even the narcissists. They are not so different to you and I.
• Yes, my wife tortures me, I cannot express in words the magnitude of the despair, anguish and pain she has caused me.

So what the hell is it?

It has been a long journey of learning for me, a hard one, but arriving here at the following simple understanding has set me free.

For any given behavior, or metric, or character-trait, she’s the redder half of the field, I’m the less-red half.

She is the right.
I am the left.

We are similar. I have some red stuff, she has way more of the red stuff and it’s generally redder.

What’s the red stuff?

Anything toxic. It’s that simple. But as we’ll see, spotting the red stuff takes time and practice. The different red things all have names, knowing the names makes them real, distinguishable and observable. Having the vocabulary is the key to getting this. Knowing what you’re looking at, being able to identify it, label it, name it and distinguish it as being something other than confusing white noise is the key to this. This entire website is dedicated to identifying the red stuff.

Summary

• Narcissism is a reddish heat map.
• Why? Just ‘cuz. Deal with.