The Rise of Cultural Narcissism

Riding the wave of ever-increasing technology there is a noticeable and on-going rise in cultural narcissism. This can be evidenced by shifts in cultural and societal values. Real life has, in many ways, meshed with television making household names out of the newly famous or infamous getting attention and importance without actual corresponding achievement. That people feel entitled to this money, attention, and fame, without actual achievement is in and of itself narcissisitc because it is a false sense of entitlement mixing with delusions of grandeur.

People, whether they are on reality tv shows, or in viral videos on the internet, for example, are seeking the validation of the masses as a remedy to their own low self-esteem, low self-worth, and inability to validate themselves for who they really are. There is such an excessive focus on materialism that also accompanies this over-compensation and strong desire for attention.

What is Narcissistic About This?

Expecting to be famous for essentially nothing other than glorifying one’s personal dysfuntion and then feeling special about that indicates an out of focus self-focus. Indicates an out of balance perspective that has at its centre one’s over-compensating for what one lacks from within.

There is a growing cultural belief exhibited by many people that what they are doing or who they are should warrant an excessive amount of attention and admiration. This stems from an over-focus on self. What could be termed actually a lack of healthy focus on self and described rather as a self-indulgent and out-of-touch with reality mindset. A mindset driven by the reality that people in the narcissistic pursuit of fame, attention, and money, are focusing excessively on a self that they do not even know. Essentially they are living in and through a pseudo-self of a false self. This adds to the evidence that narcissism is indeed palable.

Narcissism is the life-blood of the false self of any human being. This is more apparent in those who have unresolved abandonment issues from childhood, whether they meet the criteria to be diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Histrionic Personality Disorder, or other forms of mental illness or not.

Is There A Difference Between Self-Absorption and Narcissism?

It may depend upon how one defines self-absorption. I think it is fair to say that self-absorption is a fairly narcissistic way of being. That said, there are degrees of self-absorption. Some would argue that some degree of self-focus or self-absorption has all to do with the expression of individuality. At what point does one’s own individual expression or perception become too inner-focused, or inner-directed enough for it to meet the criteria of being narcissisitic?

Anything that leans to the extreme, at the very least, encroaches upon narcissistic territory. It is in the median, the middle, from a healthy balance of inner and out-directed focus that narcissism is not prevalent. Balance and the middle-ground of healthy reasonable paradox in culture is not as common as one could argue it has been in the past. We see evidenced the absence of said in front of our very eyes on televsion and computer screens with alarming regularity. So much so, that for growing numbers of people, deeply endoctrinated now in the narcissism of a dominant technology driven pop culture there is now a conditioned response which sees this prevalence of narcissism as “normal”.

Could this be why it seems easier and easier to identify narcissism as being practically everywhere these days?

 © A.J. Mahari, November 13, 2009 – All rights reserved.

Most people when they realize they are in a toxic relationship, at some point or other, come to the conclusion they have made a mistake. A mistake that is likely a series of mistakes in reality.

This is a crucial fork in the road of your understanding actually. This point of painful realization is a blessing. It won’t feel like a blessing at first, that’s for sure. But, in time, as you seek to make the changes that you will discover it will benefit you to make, it will be your very mistakes that will teach you what it is that you need to to change.

Toxic relating can be referred to, or defined, as many things. But one thing that is central to all toxic relating is the wounded brokenness of the human condition. This coupled with unmet needs and unrealistic expectations and untreated personality disorders (in one or both people in these relationships) is a large part of the foundation for why people get into toxic relating. You get hooked in first, and then trapped by what you get addicted to. Are you addicted to trying to fix others? Do you have a need to be taken care of? Do you feel you need to be in control? Are you addicted to thinking that you are right and having someone agree with you even when you are wrong? Is it more important to you to be right than it is to actually get along? Are you addicted to the fight for justice and/or validation?

They are traps.

When we seek anything that we need to provide for ourselves form the inside out from the outside in instead what follows is a toxic bond, an unhealthy painful and often abusive connection that will suck the life right out of you, if it hasn’t already.

If you want to free yourself from what you are addicted to, from what it is that you want, need, and/or desire that gets you hooked and re-hooked into all that a toxic relationship is and means, you must turn inward to face the precious mistakes that you’ve made.

Your mistakes are your growth opportunities.

You must not only turn inward to face your precious mistakes but you must also stop blaming someone else for your choices. Choices that you may well have made in less than aware ways, but choices that were yours nonetheless. You must take personal responsibility for meeting your own needs.

Getting out of a toxic relationship, its pain and endless suffering requires your choosing to make changes based upon what you will learn from over time that were the precious mistakes that you needed to make to come to the place where your need to understand yourself better outweighs your fear of facing your own unresolved issues from the past.

Learn more about how to become more fully aware of just what your precious mistakes have been so that you can learn from them once and for all and find the love, peace, and happiness that you so long for and deserve.

© A.J. Mahari – 2009 – All rights reserved.

Be willing and prepared to wait for what you most want and need. Trust that the winds that blow in your life today have purpose. Learn to wait.

You can and will save yourself from so much unnecessary pain if you learn to wait and to proceed more slowly with caution in life. Trust your instincts always. Do not be fooled by what feels familiar. Often what is most familiar beckons you back to unfinished painful past issues and is not the love you seek at all.

Wait out those impulses to jump into things or relationships with people when it all feels so familiar. Wait.

Waiting is a sacred time of unfolding preparation for what is to come. Waiting is an important part of the process of change, healing, recovery and the increased awareness that will gift you with the enlightenment that you most need in your life today. Trust that.

Learn to be okay with being alone. Learn to value your precious sacred self. Unlearn the negative associations society has taught us all about what it means to be alone. Sometimes, being alone, is the only way to heal, to recover, to learn the lessons that help us to not continue to make the same painful mistakes. Learn to wait. Learn to be alone.

Waiting is not a passive reality. As we wait for some things to become more clear, as we wait to find our way through loss, pain, grief, anger, or remorse, we must take healing and life-changing action. The first step on this ladder of growth is taking responsibility for wherever you are today. If you hurt – hurt. If you are in pain – radically accept that pain. If you are grieving – grieve. If you are angry – allow yourself to have healthy constructive anger. Wherever you are in your life today, right this minute, radically accept it and surrender to all it is that you cannot control. Control yourself. Tend to your own emotions. Go within and find out who you are as you wait for the lessons to teach you what you need to know to take you to where you are meant to go.

Wait.

Be patient. Trust the process. Have faith. Sit with the reality that is your unfolding life right now. Sit with the heartache, sit with the sadness, sit with the insecurity, sit with the fear, sit with the anxiety. Be one with all you feel in true acceptance of it all. For this  is the gateway to the change that you know you need. This is the gateway to the enlightenment you so seek.

Wait.

Relief comes when you tend to the lessons contained within the vortex of your pain and discontent. You will only find pain in rushing into things with others. You will be wide-open and vulnerable to toxic people, toxic relationships, and toxic relating if you do not take your time, heed and assess any red flags, and sit with what your instincts warn you about what you feel. Wait. Heed your instincts.

Wait.

Do what you can today with what you have. Let go of all of your yesterdays and grieve their pain and loss but then turn to today, to this very moment and all that it seeks to offer you as you wait for more understanding and clarity.

In my waiting I will continue to seek. I will take the action that I can to effect the change that is being revealed to me in my life. I will take personal responsibility for where I am today. I am responsible for how I feel. I am responsible for any and all choices I have made or failed to make.

If you are in a toxic relationship and you want to create change and healing in your life begin by taking necessary action to free yourself and then by being nurturing and gentle to and with yourself as you wait for your lessons and as you grieve. Do not judge yourself. You are doing the very best that you can with what you know.

Today, in the action of radical acceptance, I surrender to all that it is that life asks me to wait for.

© A.J. Mahari – All rights reserved.

In the audio program, “Coping With Difficult Toxic and/or Abusive People” A.J. Mahari talks about the reality of coping with difficult, toxic and/or abusive people generally with a focus on the reality that holidays bring out the worst of the worst in toxic relating. However, it is not only holidays that create the painful reality of lack of mutuality and of emotional unavailability. These are just two staples of a toxic relationship.

Mahari shares her insight as to why people end up stuck in these types of relational patterns and how you can know someone is difficult toxic and/or abusive. What if you have doubts? What if you think this person will change?

Can you help this person be who you want them to be? Can you create intimacy with a difficult, toxic and/or abusive person? How can you cope with them, especially during the stressful times associated with holidays. Holidays and often most days. Toxic relationships with difficult to toxic people aren’t just painful they are the vehicles of toxic love. Toxic love hurts.

READ MORE …

© Phoenix Rising Publications 2009 – all rights reserved.

What is often not thought about in the arena of human life is that for all of the ability we have to think, feel, and perceive that may set us apart from other animals, we are after all still animals. We, like other animals do, have instincts. We all-too-often think our way out of what we know so well and so quickly and refer to as gut instincts that we can, if we are not careful, leave ourselves wide open to falling prey to the predatory toxic and personality-disordered.

Instincts and knowing are the sacred salve that can and will protect us from toxic people. We need to cultivate a mindful awareness that gets us and keeps us in touch with our instincts and our spiritual knowing. We are not really ever duped. We choose to allow others to manipulate and use us. We need to take personal responsibility for not taking precious care of ourselves when we fall victim to a toxic person. What’s more, we need to detach and disengage, not try to rescue them. Trying to rescue them is how we can lose ourselves. It is the very compassion that we do have that the narcissist or borderline, or sociopath, uses as currency to control.

Instincts are trustworthy. Instincts are the way that we really do have genuine knowing. Yet we continue to distrust our own instincts often in favour of believing others when they are lying to us or telling us what we want to hear or buttering us up because they want something. Why?

Why is that we throw aside all or most of our knowing, our gut instincts, to cast our precious selves to the winds of chance? If you have been ensnared by a toxic person, ask yourself why you chose to let what you wanted or needed over-ride what you actually knew somewhere inside from the get-go. Often we surrender all that we know because we are lonely or we are afraid to say no or we simply see a soul in pain and we mistakenly believe we can change them and/or help them heal.

The truth is that what we reach out to try to rescue or heal in the toxic narcissist, borderline, or even sociopath, is really the way that we avoid reaching in to heal what we, ourselves, need to tend to and nurture within ourselves. We let low self-esteem and fear motivate our jump off the end of the peer into the shallow waters of relating to a toxic person.

Life lessons have a way of reminding us that we have these instincts that we need to stop ignoring. Do you wonder how and why you either remain entangled with a toxic person or a series of toxic people?Are you listening? Are you paying attention? Are you open to the lessons that can set you free?

What leads too many people into toxic and unhealthy relationships isn’t a lack of ability to make wise choices, it is rather a decision (often made subconsciously) to ignore all that is truly known. We tend to want to ignore what we know when it might feel like the thing we least want to know. We often ignore and push away this instinctual knowing because it seems easier at the time to get what we think we want and need.

The truth is though, that often what we actually need and will benefit from is worth the wait. What we actually need cannot always be fulfilled quickly just because we really want it to be. This is one place where so many painfully wrong turns are taken that fly in the face of our instincts and all that we truly do know.

It is not the fault or responsibility of the toxic person if we choose to hand over our personal power to them. It is not their responsibility if we continue to engage what we know doesn’t work and isn’t good for us. If we choose to allow ourselves to be abused and treated poorly – victimized – we can feel as if we’ve been rendered helpless. We can undo those feelings of helplessness the second we are ready to make an active choice to empower ourselves by acting on the awareness, instinct, and knowing that awaits our attention to it. Attentive action through choice is empowering. Letting go and accepting loss is crucial. It is only through the pain, anger, and grief that we can learn what it is that we need to be much more mindful about.

Toxic people have a way of hiding their truth. Toxic people can be manipulative and seem way too good to be true which of course means we need to hear that siren in our soul go off that reminds that anything and anyone that seems too good to be true – really is too good to be true – period. Toxic people lay in wait for us. They know exactly which buttons to lean on in skilled efforts to confuse us and tempt us to go beyond our limits, common sense, instincts and knowing.

In the world of the toxic, what they count on is our kindness and our goodness. They twist it and use it against us and then they call that love. It is not love. Toxic people usually have one glaring warning that we must heed – the dance of mixed-messages. Mixed-messages are a huge warning sign – toxic person sitting in front of me telling me that they love me. The toxic person really just wants to control and use his or her victims to get what he or she wants. Toxic people do not love – they use, abuse, and control.

It is not what people say that matters most. It is what people do and how they act that matters most. It is the actions of toxic people that will give them away. Their actions cannot consistently and congruently match their words. This is how they tell us who they really are.

Toxic people tell us who they are by the way they act and react. When a toxic person’s actions show who they are, believe them.

I once had a person I thought might turn out to be friend, sit in my apartment, in my office, in front of one of my computers, and when I remarked about all that he knew and the responsibility and authority he had through his work, (work he wanted to involve me in) as I complemented him, he leaned back in the chair, put his hands on his head, and so dispassionately and calmly said, as he temporarily vacated his grandiose and narcissistic false persona, in response to my observations based upon who I thought he was, “Nah, not really, I am just full of shit.” He then laughed. That was supposed to be the cover. That was where he (like any narcissist) thought he’d trap me in my own self-doubt about what had just really taken place. It is where he would assume he would pull the wool over my eyes. No way. I had already learned a lot in the school of mistakes and hard-knocks. I got it. I was determined to honour my knowing even though in the moment its awareness rose from the centre of my soul, I could feel such a disappointing let down at the loss of what had, at first, appeared to be a newly-forming friendship.

I admit that I had some self-doubt. I did feel conflicted. However, I was determined to trust what I felt. We have to be brave enough to not be able to have what we may well want. We have to brave enough to leave it alone.

Would you risk the object of your desire, a ring, a wallet full of money, if you knew it was strapped to a ticking time-bomb?

In that moment my instinct and my knowing rose up like high tide pounding the ocean’s shore. I felt a tingle up my spine. My mind was shouting in the thoughts in my head, ‘he just told you who he really is’. I had not doubt about that. I trusted that. That was the last time I ever invited him into my apartment or shared time with him. He was a neighbour. Later he showed me his outright toxic abusive side because I wouldn’t give him what he wanted and because I didn’t fall for his duplicitous act. Things escalated over time with him and his efforts to capture my attention to the point that one day he threatened me with physical violence. It turned out he was among many other things an alcoholic and quite an impostor even to the extent that he was even who’d he’d said was in terms of what he told me his vocation was.

Any self-doubt I had had was washed away by his proving my knowing to have been right on.

Spotting the toxic person when feelings of physical and sexual attraction and intimate relationship are involved I would come to find out one more time are much more complicated and difficult and demand a lot more self-discipline. The experience with the man I thought could be a friend did not save me from going on and ending up in a relationship some years later with a borderline-narcissist. I still had some important and life-changing lesson to learn.

If you are in a toxic relationship now and you have not heeded your instincts or knowing so far, the good news is you can turn your focus and attention to this awareness that awaits your attention to it the minute that you are ready to trust yourself enough to take action on what it is that you actually do know. You likely know right now what “your” toxic person is really telling you that is his or her truth. And in case you are having some conflict as to what that is – it can usually be found in anything and everything that the toxic person is accusing you of being, doing, and saying.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them. When you get that inkling that something is wrong, trust yourself. Trust your instincts. You are in touch with a powerful knowing that is in your best interests to heed.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them.

© A.J. Mahari – All rights reserved.

Toxic relationships seem to be pervasive to the point where healthy relationships are in the minority. Toxic relationships are proliferating and have been doing so for the better part of the last few decades.

Toxic relationships are the coming together of adults, who carry wounded children deep inside of them, and who were raised in dysfunctional families that by their very nature are also toxic.

Toxic relationships are battle-grounds mistaken for what is thought of as “love” in which the personality-disordered and the non-personality disordered come together, intersect, interconnect and increase each other’s pain and suffering no matter how hard they try to make things work. (sometimes both parties in a toxic relationship are in fact personality-disordered)

The dynamic is such that it is engulfing and pervasive in its ritualistic patterned familiarity. Each person involved in a toxic relationship is an individual, of course, and yet to the observer of the foundational schemas of these relationships the twists and turns are so predictable that they could well appear as if they’d been scripted and everyone had read the same book kind of thing.

What I think most people don’t realize when they get wrapped up in the painful chaos of these kinds of relationships is that it is the very familiarity of that pain and chaos that paradoxically attracts and repels you, enlivens you and exhausts you, that pulls you in and pushes you out.

For the personality-disordered it is the only way that they know how to relate. For those who do not have personality disorders, but who do, more often than not have codependence issues that are tip of the iceberg of what are deeper unresolved issues from childhood the fit between them and the personality-disorders is a pre-cast psychological mold that merely awaits your jumping right in to it.

And jump people do. There is fit between those who were raised in toxic dysfunctional and abusive homes who do not develop personality disorders and those who are raised in toxic dysfunctional families and do develop and get diagnosed with a personality disorder. After all, what in my last sentence is the essential difference between the personality-disordered and those who get involved in the toxic and often trauma bonded dysfunctional relationships that are more the norm these days?

The only difference in the arena of toxic relating between the personality-disordered and their partners is the personality disorder itself. The backgrounds, the home lives, the unresolved past issues often have many common themes and common manifestations of woundedness in varying degrees.

This is why the dance is such that many people with or without  a personality disorder will go through series of these type of toxic dysfunctional and chaotic relationships.

It is the familiarity that truly breeds the contempt. The contempt that the personality-disordered and the non-personality-disordered develop for each other as each regresses to past unresolved issues “at” each other (which really has all to do with issues that each partner has with a parent and the reality that they are relating to that parent and not even seeing each other) to the point that the past is so prevalent in the present that the “now” gets totally lost. Who each partner is in a toxic relationship is lost to the partner being related to as if he or she was that parent-figure. While this is very central in Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and Narcissistic Personality Disorder variations to lessor degrees do play out from non-personality-disordered as well. For the non-personality-disordered person involved with someone with BPD they are referred to as non borderlines.

The legacy of toxic relationships starts before we even realize that there is a devastating problem or untold emotional pain and further abuse and psychological woundedness. The legacy of toxic relating is carried from the past by so many people now that what is seen when they meet each other and begin to “fall in love” is really not about “love” it is really about that familiarity to a parent whose “love” one was never able to attain. That’s what the chase is about. That’s why it all feels so compelling and the rush to “love” (really it’s love/hate) is on to get into a relationship (that is really going to be an emotional war).

The other facet of the legacy of toxic relationships, of course, is the damage done and the untold pain suffered in these relationships as adults. If you are in a toxic relationship now, or have been recently, and you are still hurting, angry, or grieving, ask yourself what it was that was so familiar that it hooked you so totally that you ignored your own instincts, your own intellectual reasoning, your own spiritual knowing – what was so compelling?

What is it from your own past that led you to enmesh with someone in a situation in which you simultaneously handed your self over to someone else and threw your self away?

When you find the answer to that question you will discover the true nature of the legacy of toxic relating from your past. You will also discover how and why you made the choices that you did. You will then know better.

When you know better you will do better. Your understanding will have been hard-fought for and you will learn what you need to learn, in time.

The reality for those who are the non-personality-disordered side of toxic relationships is that there is something about your experience in life that led you to make what you now know were self-defeating, self-destructive choices.

The legacy of toxic relationships is all-too-often wrapped up in what becomes a blame game. The dilemma of escape is really what should be of paramount importance. It is only after these kinds of relationships have been ended that each person can go their own way and really get their own healing work done.

The legacy of toxic relationships is one that compounds what is already unresolved pain from your past whether you are aware of this or its roots in your life or not. The reality of this compounded legacy is that as you try to escape the relationship and its pain you seek relief while paradoxically needing to get in touch with the source of your unresolved pain.

The legacy of these relationships is very painful. The legacy of these relationships over and above the pain, the drama, and the endless and equally compelling chaos is the reality of the lessons that you need to seek after by living your questions so that you can find the answers you need to heal what you need to heal so that you can find healthier relationships and so that you can truly come to a reasonable working-definition of what love is versus all that it is not.

The legacy of any and all toxic relating is deep, profound, and can be lasting if it is not actively healed and recovered from. To heal and to recover both the personality-disordered and the non-personality-disordered must look within and stop laying blame with each other.

The legacy of toxic relationships is that the “love” perceived and sought after, wasn’t healthy love at all – it was toxic love. This toxic “love” speaks loudly to the intra-psychic woundedness of the young inner child in both the personality disordered and the non-personality-disordered.

Each must do their own work to heal and recover. Each has issues that while similar are not exactly the same but then when mixed surely make for an intensity that is by its very chaotic and dramatic nature toxic, compelling to the point of all-consuming, and extremely dangerous.

Toxic “love” is abusive and is about control, not healthy love. It is painful. It can become addictive. It erodes the self, of both the non-personality-disordered and to whatever degree, if at all the personality disordered have an intact self, those with personality disorders as well.

© A.J. Mahari – All rights reserved.

In the audio program, "Inside the Borderline Mind" Part Two – Lack of Object Constancy and Narcissism in BPD – The Difference Between BPD and NPD.  – A.J. Mahari, as only one who has been there can and made it back can, shares her insight and experience with and and about a lack of object constancy and narcissism of BPD – A.J. also outlines the difference between BPD and Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

READ MORE or PURCHASE …

© A.J. Mahari, 2008 – All rights reserved.

Before getting into an explanation of the narcissism that is often a part of the Borderline Experience, a little background about the myth that is the origin of the term, narcissism.

• Purchase all 3 of ebooks for NON BORDERLINES
• Non Borderlines – You can purchase 6 ebooks packaged together with or without audio.
• Those with BPD and/or Non Borderlines can purchase A.J. Mahari's 3 "Core Wound of Abandonment" series ebooks packaged together with or without audio.

"Narcissus is another example among several of a beautiful young man who spurned sex and died as a result. As such, his myth has much in common with those of Adonis and Hippolytus. In the Roman poet Ovid's retelling of the myth, Narcissus is the son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope. Tiresias, the seer, told his parents that the child "would live to an old age if it did not look at itself."

READ MORE …

© A.J. Mahari, 2007 – All rights reserved.

Having compassion for anyone who is narcissistic, whether they have Narcissistic Personality Disorder and/or Borderline Personality Disorder does not negate the reality of the fact that relating to these personality disordered people means you are having to deal with a Difficult and/or toxic person in what might well be an abusive relationship. Narcissist are in pain. Their humanity must be recognized.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) has become synonymous with pejorative vilifying stereotypes that paint everyone diagnosed with it as monstrous. No one is the sum total of any diagnosis.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder has become synonymous with pejorative vilifying stereotypes that paint everyone diagnosed with it along with others with varying degrees of narcissism as monstrous people without worth. Rarely, in life, is the sum total of any human being with a personality disorder or not that simple or that black and white.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is isolating, disenfranchising, painful, and formidable for those diagnosed with it and often those who know them. Distinctions need to be made between those who have NPD because not each and every person with NPD is the same. Even with similar core issues the way in which one's individual narcissism manifests itself in his or her relationships varies.

There is an irrefutable truth that many who have NPD are abusive. However, not all with NPD are abusive. Among those with NPD who are abusive the form and severity that their abuse takes will vary from individual to individual.

Chief among the traits that define Narcissistic Personality Disorder are what is described as a lack of empathy and a lack of compassion – not to be confused with the lack of conscience seen in the most severe form of narcissism within NPD – The Malignant Narcissism Syndrome (Kernberg 1992 – according to "The Handbook of Personality Disorders – Theory and Practice," edited by Jeffery J. Magnavita – Pg 100) and that is most notably a feature in those diagnosed as having a psychopathic personality known as Antisocial Personality Disorder(APD). NPD and APD are not one in the same.

According to Wikipedia "Otto Kernberg described malignant narcissism as a syndrome characterized by a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), antisocial features, paranoid traits, and ego-syntonic aggression. Some also may find an absence of conscience, a psychological need for power, and a sense of importance (grandiosity). … Malignant narcissism is considered part of the spectrum of pathological narcissism, which ranges from the Cleckley's antisocial character (today's psychopath) at the high end of severity, to malignant narcissism, to NPD at the low end."

Most with NPD struggle to understand the experience of others because they are too involved in their own inner experience. An inner experience that is then projected out onto others in ways that leave others being treated as mere extensions of the narcissist who needs to have reflected back his or her own image of self. When this image of self is reflected back in ways that enhance how the narcissist feels about him/herself, all is well. This, for the narcissist is the experience of the gratification of narcissistic supply.

The person with NPD cannot really see others separately from the way he/she experiences the world from his or her point of view only. Most everything is experienced as being about them, some extension of them, or as thwarting their wants and/or needs.

What is the difference between Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder? What does the false self mean? To read more in answer to these two questions please check out my Ebook, The Shadows and Echoes of Self- The False Self Born Out of the Core Wound of Abandonment in Borderline Personality Disorder.

Those with NPD are blinded to the external unfolding experience of others in relation to them. They are lacking in self-awareness, often, of how others experience them. Narcissists live their lives from the inside and do not have a very flexible or evident insight into what the difference is between their image of themselves versus who they really are (as seen and defined by others) and who they hold themselves out to be.

Narcissists, often, tremendously lack insight and awareness into themselves because they cannot see past this created, exaggerated and aggrandized image of self that is incongruent with who they really are and how others experience them. Trying to feedback to those with NPD about their actions, or behavior and so forth can be very frustrating because it is too painful for the narcissist to look behind the reflection of aggrandized self that they must have mirrored back to them in order to psychologically survive. The narcissist's grandiosity is a defense against profound psychological pain.

The narcissist's self-focus, along with his or her constant taking as they reel in this much-needed supply that buffs up and sustains their, albeit illusionary, image of grandiose and special self, interferes in this or her ability to share in the mutuality and/or reciprocity needed for healthier relating.

Those with NPD, while often described as stuck on themselves, or as full of themselves, truly are lost to themselves. Unlike those with BPD who have no sense of an actual known self and whose core wound of abandonment results in a lost self– those with NPD experience an emotional arrest at an earlier stage of early childhood development than do those with BPD (Masterson) that results in an image of a self that is held to perfection in a way that excludes the reality of the narcissist's pain. Anything that contradicts the image of perfection threatens his or her psychological survival and is much too painful and threatening to even acknowledge.

Being on the other side of a narcissist or someone with BPD with considerable narcissismcan be very painful and frustrating. Relationships with most with NPD are usually not very satisfying or rewarding, emotionally, for those who are non-personality disordered.

Most people, who have been in, or are in, a relationship with someone with NPD feel very lonely and often invisible. Being in a relationship with someone with NPD or the combination of BPD/NPD often makes for a toxic and/or abusive relationshipThose who have NPD are not emotionally available and this is one of the most difficult things to come to terms with for others.

The reality that someone has Narcissistic Personality Disorder or Borderline Personality Disorder or in some cases, both personality disorders, does not and should not excuse their abusive behavior in any way. The challenge for the personality disordered is to learn how to take personal responsibility. Often those with NPD and/or BPD will put the responsibility for their poor, disrespectful, or abusive behavior onto those they are relating to. Do not accept this responsibility. To do so is painful and crazy-making and only gives permission to the personality-disordered to continue to treat you the way they do and to blame you for it or try to have you believe that their behavior results from what you do or don't do – this is not true.

It is important to have compassion for those who have NPD. They are not all monsters, nor do they all behave in monstrous ways. If you are in tremendous emotional pain you may need to find ways to emotionally detach whether you stay in the relationship or not.

With healthy emotional detachment, and even when we have to remove ourselves from the abuse of a narcissist, how can we say that we are any different from a narcissist if we do not have empathy and compassion for those diagnosed with NPD?

How can we criticize what those with NPD are not able to share or do, if we ourselves aren't prepared to share what we are actually capable of?

Having compassion for a narcissist doesn't mean, however, sadly enough in many cases, that we can stay connected to the narcissist or actively share that compassion with the person with NPD. The best we can do is to recognize that not all things that those with NPD do, are done with malice. Those in relationships with those with NPD and/or who have been abused by someone with NPD need to take care of themselves. Having compassion for the narcissist doesn't mean staying in the relationship.

Compassion, like forgiveness, are gifts that you truly give to yourself as much as to anyone with NPD. Actively being aware of both will help you heal and will set you free from any and all painful entanglement with someone with NPD.

© A.J. Mahari 2007 –  All rights reserved. Originally written for Borderline Personality Inside Out