Narcissistic self-loathing

[Anarchy]

:hug:
Not wanting to derail
The psychological side of your abuse specifically portrayed you as having a unique role, supernatural even.

 

[ladee]

I need to clarify that never did I intend for any thing I said to you to imply you had a narc vein in your body.... @shimmerz explained what I was thinking and not able to put it into words... I was too busy telling you, in essence , that I was an adult who make my own choices of who i wanted in my life. and you are most definitely one of them.... thank goodness for shimmy putting it together in words that made that stadium light come on... Onward my friend.... the path is lit, now go for it !!!

 

[Sideways]

@Anarchy - yes, it absolutely did. And I know that's definitely been a significant factor, and a complicated one. Combined with the trauma bonding issues that I've had with the perp, I've spent a lot of my life convinced that even though it's evil, it's still incredibly important that I stick to the belief, out of obligation to the perp.

 

[Scarlet13]

Hi, just wanting to chime in here. I am a survivor of narcissistic abuse from my mother who has NPD. First of all, you do not strike me at all as having anything close to NPD at all. I think doctors like to sometimes throw out diagnoses.
A narcissists thinks they are perfect and perfectly healthy. In fact most N's don't ever even get an NPD diagnosis because they are not even talking about it, they can't talk about it, they can't even see it. They have a steadfast belief in the inherent goodness and perfect health of their false self. You do not have this because you would not even be in therapy at all, on this thread and you would not be looking at yourself and talking about these things at all. You would be too busy having a narc rage to be doing any self introspection.

As far as parts, I do not really understand DID, but my therapist says essentially all children are narcissistic and its healthy, they grow out of it. So if you have a younger part engaging in narcissistic traits then that is actually developmentally normal for the part and not a disorder. I hate the disorder and deficit language that gets thrown around in mental healthcare. Not good for when you have a core belief of being toxic (my core belief is that I am a monster who invites abuse).

My other thought is that do you have a narc parent? I do not have NPD but I was raised by an NPD mother. I have complex PTSD as a result (emotional and physical abuse.) The tricky thing is that N mothers see their children as extensions of themselves so I was raised literally to be my mother, who is a narcissist. So in addition to my CPTSD I have N traits. We call these 'fleas'.

I don't think this a flea, but I have extreme self hate (from my mother's constant blaming and put downs.) I believe that there is something so defective and so ugly and disgusting in me that people can sense it and so they want to hurt/destroy/reject me. I even think this extensively about my beloved therapist. I can see this as narcissistic because it is so skewed and self focused. But it really is the result of trauma, I was sexually abused as well as bullied and it all adds together. I often worry about what if I have NPD and I do not because I can see the self hate and disgust. Trust me narcs think they are perfect. They have no idea about their deep shame and they are incapable of looking at themselves and even seeing a problem and owning it.

 

[Sideways]

@Applesunflower13 - thank you for your post. My current pdoc likes to place things in the context of my cptsd & did, rather than just add extra diagnoses and I much prefer that approach. I don't have narcissistic parents fortunately - I got lucky there:)

 

[Libratarian]

I can suggest one thing... doing ayahuasca in a shamanic setting. It is a hallucenogenic plant medicine from Peru, and must be done in a carefully monitored, sacred way, in a group, with a good person and their supportive group leading it. It is considered that this plant medicine has a spirit in it which is called "Mother Ayahusaca", it comes from a vine, and it is also called "the purge". It purges you of these extremely negative, hard-to-get-rid of things by taking you back to the root, and showing you things, and often you either throw up, cry, have diorrhea, or all of the above... night-time ceremony usually, and it kind of takes you on a trip to hell and back... but when you come back so much has been released and is healed. The first time I did it in a daytime ceremony in Hawaii, I had been wondering about the cruel glint in my grandfather's eye, and had pointed at the picture and blamed him for my family's disfunction, which passed to my dad and his siblings, and through my dad to me. The medicine showed me and had me feel exactly how my dad and grandpa felt all their life... unbelievably unworthy... which was a total lie, and so, so sad... and I sobbed my heart out and filled a bucket with kleenexes, and eventually did throw up. I saw so, so many things, and felt such compassion for both my dad and grandpa... and it filled in so much of what I hadn't been able to understand in ordinary, waking life... and I also realized for the first time to what degree I had my own sense of unworthiness, which to me was like water for the fish... I was just born into it, just took it for granted that I was the least worthy person in any group, despite good grades, apparent success... seeing all of this was so, so incredible, and to unlock it out of my heart, the sobs literally expelling the stuck pain... my grandpa had been orphaned at 11, and felt abandoned by God, and blamed himself... and it was passed on via reactions to those feelings, onto the kids, through the generations, and now some of my kids fight it too. It is not legal in most places, but hopefully one could find a shaman and a ceremony if one prays and/or is lucky. Tapping is also a good technique that gets stuck emotions and attitudes like this out of the body... google "The Tapping Solution", or EFT, "Emotional Freedom Technique". Good luck!

 

[Sideways]

@Libratarian - no more junk about hallucinogenic plants thank you. Start your own thread.

 

[Friday]

One thing to keep in mind is that :

I'm the worst, most, best, least, etc.? Black & white extremism/ over generalization/ labeling & mislabeling/ etc? Some of the cognitive distortions & core beliefs that you see a whole lot in PTSD? (Just scroll through threads lists ;))... Yeah. Does border on narcissistic.

Learning to right-size and scale down, to see the shades of grey in a situation, in ourselves and the situations around us is a useful tool. For soooooo many reasons. If seeing them (most, best, worst, least, etc.) as bordering on / heading towards narcissism is what helps polish the mirror? Hell yeah. Go for it.

 

[Sideways]

@Friday - loooove the black & white thinking. Love it. How much clearer is the picture if you can just keep everything black and white!?

So if I'm evil? I'm like, super-power, going to destroy humankind evil. Not just the Diet Coke evil - I take it to the max. Easy, that's something I can draw a nice line around. And obsess about. And I can systematically get everyone out of my life (for their own good), because relationships of any kind are so messy and gray and uncertain. Which is Too. Friggin. Confusing.

 

[ninja]

Here's what I'm thinking. We are human beings. We influence both consciously and unconsciously other people around us and also are influenced by others both consciously and unconsciously. I think this means we are all quite powerful individuals. And we are all quite vulnerable. I think when a person experiences difficult and painful events, the knowledge of how harmful interaction with others can be becomes an undeniable reality. Further, if you are able to separate from yourself slightly and see in each person the capacity we all have for evil, without the compassion to see the good in yourself and in everyone else as well, it can become literally terrifying ('why would I want to cause others the same degree of pain I feel, I don't, not at all').

I'm not sure it is helpful to put a label on what you're experiencing, but I want to say I see a great capacity for empathy. Others might experience it (being pushed away) as narcissistic if only because they do not know what is going on inside for you. But you don't have to tell them, and their views do not define you. Maybe the empathy just needs a bit more guidance. Like others have said, I do think it is very important to believe in others' strength and our own strength as well. We can each take care of ourselves, whether we do.. well that's another story, but the opportunity is there when we have the space to figure out how to do that, which often initially doesn't always feel so nice.
Take really good care. :)

 

[Scarlet13]

I think seeing yourself as toxic and evil and then cutting people out of your life sounds to me like really just CPTSD. You have a core of shame (feeling bad/evil) and you want to avoid intimacy. Those are two aspects combined. I can see how having deep shame could result in feelings of being evil. I always feel inherently bad or defective because of how my mom made me feel. I am beginning to realize how verbal abuse can create major distortions in thought patterns and perspectives. For example, my mother blamed my father's drug use on me stating that I was such a 'bad' hard to controll baby that I took away all her attention thus resulting in my dad using drugs and sleeping around. So now in my cptsd mindset I think often that I am bad and capable of ruining everything and tainting things basically. I dont think this is narcissistic of me or even a flea. It is the result of psychological abuse from a mother feeding me lies. I once read someone said she had been diagnosed with some sort of paranoid personality disorder and believed that until she realized her beliefs came from simply being so severely gas lighted. Is it possible that you were psychologically abused, gas lighted and fed lies that you internalized to mean you are so evil? If so this would be a natural response to feel this way and not a p disorder aspect. If this were npd then you would think that you are the most evil and that you are the best most perfect evil. You would not push people away but would instead seek enmeshment for your narcissistic supply. Honestly, I dont think the doc that gave that diagnosis understands narcissism. I think it is so common for docs to not understand/recognize trauma.

 

[Sideways]

If this were npd then you would think that you are the most evil and that you are the best most perfect evil.

@shimmerz talked about internal and external narcissism above, which offers a different way of looking at it, and which I relate to a lot. I was brainwashed (urgh, really dislike that word for some reason) into believing that I was, indeed, a very unique and special kind of toxic evil, which may be what shot this beyond ordinary morbid self-concept stuff. Idk.

But you're right, a lot of it is shame. Big yuk shame. And I've got a session with my pdoc today and I'm going to try and dig a little deeper into that... I'll see where it goes:(