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About 18 months ago, I made a post that turned into this thread where I laid out some problems I was having from a mental standpoint. I described some major issues that I had unsuccessfully tried to overcome going back into my early teenage years that had always caused me a lot of trouble to say the least.
I originally made the post in the first place because I had started to get an inkling of what the root of the problem was, something I'd never had before, and I wanted different input to see what all I could uncover. Some of the responses I received combined with other things I was reading at the time to help me find the actual source of what was going on.
I had no idea how much that one thing would change my life. I'm not exaggerating when I say that virtually every single aspect of my life has improved dramatically since I figured this out. It has been a year and a half since then, and because I still regularly think about some of the responses I received in that thread to this day, I want to contribute what I can out of appreciation for what I have gotten out of this place by describing what the problem was and how I solved it.
Roughly speaking, the process of becoming this type of narcissist appears to follow this pattern:
And this is exactly what was happening to me. However, it was almost impossible to figure out because of the knee-jerk reaction of, "I'm not a narcissist!," which was based on a misunderstanding of what that even meant.
When I would do things (or something would happen to me or around me) that would challenge this image, my brain would bring back the feeling and threat that I was going to die that led me to develop and identify with that image as a child to try to get me to knock it off or change the circumstances. As I mentioned in my original post:
In short, my mind was doing everything that it could to protect that image since it believed that I would die if it did not. While the example I give above might seem pretty extreme, it was a regular thing for me for more than 20 years before I figured this stuff out and put the work in to change it. It played out in a lot of smaller ways as well.
One hint was in my own description of how I felt:
Another hint came from something @CCarter mentioned in his main reply to my original post:
While these types of things poked me into the right direction, the first major breakthrough I had was when I realized how much of my behavior was on pure auto-pilot focused around trying to manipulate how people perceived me. What made this difficult to realize is that I wasn't trying to make people think something of me that was necessarily good or better than how I actually think I am.
Instead, it was simply the maintenance of the image that was created when I was a child: I needed to feel that I appeared as if I was essentially an incredibly capable but lazy perpetual victim (how my child self perceived the parent in question), or my entire body and mind would absolutely freak out until I did because my brain thought I was about to die. This image is objectively worse than how I naturally am, but that didn't stop this process.
The big light bulb moment when I knew I was on the right track actually happened in a Walmart of all places, and it was something like six months after I made that original post. I did something to deliberately provoke this "brain freaking out over maintenance of the image" response in public, not even in front of anyone in particular, and had a panic attack. I can count on one hand the number of panic attacks I've had in my life, but when I was sitting in the parking lot afterward, I went back over each of them I could remember and realized that they were all happening for the same reason.
The University of Michigan's Medical School has a good PDF about exposure therapy, another topic that it seems most people misunderstand (myself at the time included), which helped me to put together an initial plan. I made a list that was about two pages long of different things I could think of that would trigger this response, and then I rated them in anticipated intensity from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest). From there, I sorted them in order and started from the lowest, essentially practicing until the response went away. Once I went through a few of the items rated 1, I would proceed to those rated 2 and so on.
I also started observing myself a lot more and paying attention to the types of things that I would do to maintain the image, most of which was talking. I essentially decided to STFU for a while and be careful about what I did say, especially if it was a knee-jerk reaction to something. While doing this, I discovered that I had almost non-stop urges with my brain trying to get me to say things that it believed would help to maintain this particular image (the irony being that, in reality, no one probably even noticed or cared, or worse, it made me look like an overtalkative idiot).
Looking back on it, I think that the STFU portion and observing my urges in that way was actually about 80-90% of the solution once I understood what was going on, but I wouldn't have discovered that if I didn't try the more systematic approach with my self-administered exposure therapy adventure.
Mentally and emotionally, I wake up every morning without an alarm between 4 am and 5 am, and I'm happy and excited to get to work on what I have planned for the day. Physically, I'm putting in more consistent work on myself than I have since I was in high school. Financially, I've had days in the past month where I've made more than I was making in a month just a few years ago, and my writing work became almost more of a side contract gig compared to the amount of work I've been putting into what I actually want to be doing. Socially, my relationships are better than they have ever been.
That's all that I really have to say on the topic. I hope that this might be helpful to someone. Best wishes.
I originally made the post in the first place because I had started to get an inkling of what the root of the problem was, something I'd never had before, and I wanted different input to see what all I could uncover. Some of the responses I received combined with other things I was reading at the time to help me find the actual source of what was going on.
I had no idea how much that one thing would change my life. I'm not exaggerating when I say that virtually every single aspect of my life has improved dramatically since I figured this out. It has been a year and a half since then, and because I still regularly think about some of the responses I received in that thread to this day, I want to contribute what I can out of appreciation for what I have gotten out of this place by describing what the problem was and how I solved it.
Narcissism
Decades ago, narcissism had a very specific definition that was nothing like how we use the word today. I won't get too much into detail on how that changed, but I think that the best place to start if you're interested is Freud's paper On Narcissism (PDF from UPenn). In short, what I mean by narcissism and narcissist in the following is when someone primarily identifies with and over-invests in the image (how you perceive that you are seen) instead of the self.Roughly speaking, the process of becoming this type of narcissist appears to follow this pattern:
- The child has a parent or guardian who is regularly absent and/or abusive.
- The child has a survival mechanism that makes this feel like he or she is going to die (since being left alone as a child in the wild essentially means death) to motivate the child to do something about it.
- The child also feels like he or she is both the cause of the absence/abuse and the only person who can change it.
- The child manages this situation by adopting an image meant to appease the parent to prevent the absence and/or abuse, and this image usually mirrors what the child perceives the abusive/absent parent's personality traits to be since that's the most natural way that a child would think to appease someone.
And this is exactly what was happening to me. However, it was almost impossible to figure out because of the knee-jerk reaction of, "I'm not a narcissist!," which was based on a misunderstanding of what that even meant.
Self-sabotage
Long story short, I went though this exact process listed out above as a child, and without going into detail, I dealt with some pretty horrific things at a very young age. Out of that, the image that I adopted was based largely around being smart and capable but lazy and a perpetual victim, which is how I perceived that parent as a child.When I would do things (or something would happen to me or around me) that would challenge this image, my brain would bring back the feeling and threat that I was going to die that led me to develop and identify with that image as a child to try to get me to knock it off or change the circumstances. As I mentioned in my original post:
In short, my mind was doing everything that it could to protect that image since it believed that I would die if it did not. While the example I give above might seem pretty extreme, it was a regular thing for me for more than 20 years before I figured this stuff out and put the work in to change it. It played out in a lot of smaller ways as well.
How I Figured It Out
I first read about narcissism a few months before I made that original post, and I rejected it out of hand (ie: "I'm not a narcissist" as a knee-jerk reaction). However, I kept getting hints that brought me back to that idea over and over until I finally just accepted it as a possibility. Once I accepted it as a possibilty and investigated it, I made a whole lot of progress in a relatively short period of time.One hint was in my own description of how I felt:
Another hint came from something @CCarter mentioned in his main reply to my original post:
While these types of things poked me into the right direction, the first major breakthrough I had was when I realized how much of my behavior was on pure auto-pilot focused around trying to manipulate how people perceived me. What made this difficult to realize is that I wasn't trying to make people think something of me that was necessarily good or better than how I actually think I am.
Instead, it was simply the maintenance of the image that was created when I was a child: I needed to feel that I appeared as if I was essentially an incredibly capable but lazy perpetual victim (how my child self perceived the parent in question), or my entire body and mind would absolutely freak out until I did because my brain thought I was about to die. This image is objectively worse than how I naturally am, but that didn't stop this process.
The big light bulb moment when I knew I was on the right track actually happened in a Walmart of all places, and it was something like six months after I made that original post. I did something to deliberately provoke this "brain freaking out over maintenance of the image" response in public, not even in front of anyone in particular, and had a panic attack. I can count on one hand the number of panic attacks I've had in my life, but when I was sitting in the parking lot afterward, I went back over each of them I could remember and realized that they were all happening for the same reason.
How I Fixed It
I was pretty ham-fisted with it at first, essentially "playing with" the response in myself that I had discovered (see above). I started working on things that I had been putting off for five minutes at a time, and by the end of those five minutes, I would essentially feel like I was going to die. Identifying and verifying that this response was the issue was great and all, but I needed a method to change the response instead of just torturing myself with it for fun over and over.The University of Michigan's Medical School has a good PDF about exposure therapy, another topic that it seems most people misunderstand (myself at the time included), which helped me to put together an initial plan. I made a list that was about two pages long of different things I could think of that would trigger this response, and then I rated them in anticipated intensity from 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest). From there, I sorted them in order and started from the lowest, essentially practicing until the response went away. Once I went through a few of the items rated 1, I would proceed to those rated 2 and so on.
I also started observing myself a lot more and paying attention to the types of things that I would do to maintain the image, most of which was talking. I essentially decided to STFU for a while and be careful about what I did say, especially if it was a knee-jerk reaction to something. While doing this, I discovered that I had almost non-stop urges with my brain trying to get me to say things that it believed would help to maintain this particular image (the irony being that, in reality, no one probably even noticed or cared, or worse, it made me look like an overtalkative idiot).
Looking back on it, I think that the STFU portion and observing my urges in that way was actually about 80-90% of the solution once I understood what was going on, but I wouldn't have discovered that if I didn't try the more systematic approach with my self-administered exposure therapy adventure.
Where I'm at Now
It sounds corny and cliche, but my life changed completely over the past year now that these urges have died down to the point that I can easily identify them and manage them when they do pop up.Mentally and emotionally, I wake up every morning without an alarm between 4 am and 5 am, and I'm happy and excited to get to work on what I have planned for the day. Physically, I'm putting in more consistent work on myself than I have since I was in high school. Financially, I've had days in the past month where I've made more than I was making in a month just a few years ago, and my writing work became almost more of a side contract gig compared to the amount of work I've been putting into what I actually want to be doing. Socially, my relationships are better than they have ever been.
That's all that I really have to say on the topic. I hope that this might be helpful to someone. Best wishes.
