JOHN LAWRENCE MAERZ

At some point in our interrelations with others we have all come across that insufferable person who insists on dominating the conversation with how “great I am” and what they have accomplished as being far better than anyone to whom they’re speaking. For those of us who are comfortable with who we are, this exchange becomes very old very fast and we end up not wanting to interact with and even avoiding these people. But as the numbers of these people increase, we find that there are fewer and fewer people we can or want to interact with who are able to refrain from proffering “how great I am.” This is a classic symptom of narcissism. What is happening? Where did they all come from? Are they all the same? The answer is no, they’re not. The development of narcissism originates from two types of experiences.

 

First, let me define my understanding of what it is which is somewhat different from the technical definition in the DSM-5-TR (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Narcissism is an unending push asserting superior personal worth to oneself and others. This sounds easy to comprehend, however, we need to understand that there are two types of narcissism; overt and compensative. They each come from a different type of childhood experience. They originate from where they are either deprived of the development of their personal self-worth (compensative) or are overindulged resulting in an exaggeration of their personal self-worth (overt). These are both imbalances. Establishing a balanced self-worth in a child is very difficult requiring a parent’s observant attention to their perspectives of and resulting children’s reactions to the methods used in their upbringing. Let’s look at each scenario one at a time.  

 

An old adage says to “spare the rod, spoils the child.” For those of you who might not be old enough to recognize this saying or the implications of it, the “rod” equates to spankings and corporal punishment. But what if that “rod” or corporal punishment goes too far? And what if it is absent? What will be the outcome? That depends on the strength and resilience of the child.

 

In horse training it is a common practice to confront and dominate a horse until their behavior comes into line with the behavior that the trainer wants from them. In well-seasoned trainers there is a sense in them as to how far to go with their discipline and dominance. They know that they can only go so far until they reach a point where their “overdo” will kill the spirit of the horse. Inexperienced trainers haven’t developed this sense yet and often push a horse past the horse’s resilience killing its spirit. They may also not apply enough discipline leaving them partially wild and thereby never achieving the desired behavior. Human parents are the same. Either they have this sense with their children or they don’t. Some kill their spirit. Some are unable to bring them into line and some even create balanced children.

 

As a general rule, most parents have been able to raise reasonably balanced children in the past with a few quirks and hiccups. Everyone had a few issues but not to the point that pushed them to deviant behavior. With the more recent dissolution of the family and gender role “confusion,” child rearing has gone a little further off the rails. With less emotional support or encouragement coming from a dwindling family structure and the increasingly dominant media telling us that we can only be “somebody” if we buy their products while putting the needs of others before our own well-being, our self-worth has taken a serious nosedive. Compensative narcissism is slowly taking a priority seat in our social behavior.

 

For the child whose discipline has become excessive and gone over the top, their spirit has gotten crushed. This means they don’t feel that they are allowed to trust their own judgment or confront an adversary let alone an overreaching authority. This child has two choices: they can either admit their low self-worth and play the victim or hide their low self-worth and commit to behaviors convincing others of their worthiness. In doing either of these they become compensative narcissists.

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First, the victim approach can be tied to abuse or neglect. Both abuse and neglect are admitted and viewed by the victim as a handicap to any of their future performances. They are also portrayed as a “badge of honor” requiring exceptionally compassionate treatment and deference from others. This behavior has also been quoted as “the tyranny of the weak.” This then essentially shows itself in a behavior of believed entitlement. The inner dialogue might be “since I was treated so badly and are so badly off, it’s only proper that you should give me favorable treatment and deference to what I want and need since I was so badly abused. If you don’t, you are selfish and lacking compassion.” Inducing pity and guilt are major components of what the “abused” uses to manipulate others. In their heart, they honestly believe that they are unworthy, that they don’t deserve what it is that they are asking for and that their only alternative is to manipulate for it. This behavior emanates from a low sense of self-worth. The resulting assumption of entitlement shows itself through being compensatively narcissistic.  

 

The second choice of behavior for an over-disciplined or abused child is to hide their perceived low self-worth by using a behavior geared toward propping up and “positivizing” their social image or knocking down that of others. This is probably the more common type of compensative narcissism as many who are in this headspace buried the consciousness of their low self-worth many years ago as they grew up past childhood. They are usually unaware of how insufferably they now behave toward others.     

 

The scenarios go like this. When the person sees someone observing what they are doing, they become self-conscious about how they look and what others are thinking about them. If impelled by feelings of low self-worth whether conscious or not, they assume that they are viewed as less than others. In order to keep that low self-worth hidden, they begin a campaign of convincing those who are observing them how valuable and commendable they are. If their feelings of low self-worth are moderate or less, the aggrandizement of themselves will be sufficient enough to allow them to feel secure that their inadequacies will not be discovered. However, if these feelings are more intense, there will be something in their sensing that tells them they can’t get away with aggrandizing themselves and they will opt for putting others down instead making them defensive. They believe that this will prevent others from paying attention to and observing their inadequacies. Depending on what they are feeling inadequate about, these two scenarios, augment themselves or putting others down, may alternate or appear in combination.

 

What is sad is that these two behaviors never accomplish what they are set out to do because the root cause of the low self-worth is never addressed. These behaviors are only effective to the extent that they prevent our feelings of low self-worth from being discovered by others. The feelings still remain within us despite our attempts to eradicate them. The only way that they can be diminished or even eliminated is to participate in new experiences that actually build new trust and confidence in ourselves. These will very slowly replace the old feelings with an increased sense of self-worth over time. Conventional therapy will only wear a deeper rut in our emotional patterns while intensifying their effects by forcing us to over and over relive and analyze the early experiences that produced them in the first place. As intense as they might become, they are “curable” but not by any conventional means.   

 

In light of recent social and political initiatives and because family support has been diminishing, we have been led to feel more lonely, helpless, ineffective and at our root, unworthy. As a result of our diminishing self-worth, compensative narcissism has exploded in our current social behavior. However, low self-worth is not the only creator of narcissism. There is another version of narcissism called overt narcissism. This develops by means that are radically different from the created helplessness and ineffectiveness that produce compensative narcissism. This one incorporates entitlement on steroids and is eminently less “curable.”

 

The overt narcissist was raised receiving everything that they asked for: love, money, food, approval, accolades and more. Generally, parents and caretakers over-indulge them to the point that they could have want of nothing. They grow up believing and expecting that everything should be freely given to them regardless of any circumstances. The word “earn” has been consequently trained out of their vocabulary. Their exaggerated self-worth is now completely off the charts. Their expectation that we will defer everything to them unconditionally is at the core of their feelings of entitlement. Short of being psychotic or schizophrenic, I believe that the overt narcissist is the most self-deluded of all the syndromes.

 

The overt version of the syndrome is the hardest to attempt to bring back into balance. To begin with, they have no idea that there is anything wrong with them. The road home will be very long and extremely painful. The “cure” to them will feel like a diminishment of their self-worth even though it, in reality, is overly exaggerated. The next question would be who would care enough to lead them through it?

 

Being an overt narcissist is probably its least common form as our culture has evolved into a more disciplinarian if not control centered style of child rearing. When we feel that we must make up for what we lack on top of the feeling that we lack any control over our world, we become compensative narcissists. However, when we’ve received everything that we could want or need and learn to believe that the rest of the world should comply, we become overt narcissists. Many of the causes of compensative narcissism now come from neglect due to the excessive pressure our parents now feel in surviving contemporary conditions. Even our religions have evolved into being fear based.

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Narcissism is simply the behavior that results from growing an imbalance in our self-worth regardless of whether it’s diminished or exaggerated. What’s not commonly understood is that we are groomed that way, usually unconsciously, by our parents and caretakers because they have an imbalance themselves. This is one of the dysfunctional parts that is characteristic of specific types of lineage.

 

What also needs to be understood is that this imbalance can range from being virtually insignificant all the way to being raging and overbearing. It is also one of the many components in our incarnating lineages that are used by the universe to comprise the experiences that propel us into and through our chosen life lessons. Different degrees and directions of self-worth contribute monumentally toward the degree of our encouragement toward even addressing the lessons that we must ultimately incorporate into our spiritual awareness and its maturity. It’s all part of a process that is much larger than what we might be able to comprehend.

 

For those of us who are minimally afflicted with the causes of narcissism or essentially having a balanced self-worth, how do we handle someone who is afflicted to any great extent? Well, that depends on who we encounter, the overt narcissist or the compensative narcissist. For the overt narcissist, my advice would be to just walk away and not buy in to anything that comes back at you. Nothing we can do or say will influence them short of acquiescing to whatever they “request” of us. Arguing with be futile because they truly believe that they deserve whatever it is they want from us. For us, it is an exercise in self-control, sticking up for our values, defining and keeping our boundaries and trusting our own judgment.

 

For dealing with the compensative narcissist of either the victim or obscuring variety, things are a little different. There is potential for making headway. We can get their attention. Unlike the overt narcissist, they do know that something is off in their character, won’t admit it and are more likely to listen to the responses we give them to the inflating of their character, their demands or their insults. They possibly may become defensive but will more likely ignore our observations all together. Even so, what we say will sink in. Our statements will be seeds that sink below their consciousness. However, our phrases must be carefully framed and we must not respond to challenges about their veracity. In responding to their challenges our focus will often be reduced to semantics that divert away from their behavior. We must make our statements and let them stand as they are given.

 

So, what could our potential statements be? They can be simple observations based on our own perception. If a depreciating insult is levied against us, or response should be along the lines of, “If you need to insult me in order to feel better about yourself, it’s ok. I’m strong enough to let it pass.” The defense that will return will likely be either, “I didn’t insult you” or “I don’t need anything from you to feel better about myself” or “Why do you think I need something from you to feel better?” DO NOT RESPOND. If we must respond it should be along the lines of, “That’s what I feel.” Stand your ground. You are defending your right to feel and believe as you wish. Your boundaries and resolve must be strong and impenetrable. This will work best with the obscuring variety of compensative narcissists. Responding to the victim variety will be a little more slippery since it will play on our pity and compassion to which our culture has become highly sensitized and eminently engulfing due to cancel culture “guidelines.”

 

Based on the fact that the victim variety knows and accepts that they have an issue, they will lean more heavily into playing on our pity and compassion rather than any type of confrontation. There will be an implication that because they have been mistreated or abused that it will be our obligation to make up for what others “have done to them.” The rider on top of that will be the insinuation that if we don’t comply with deferring to them, we will be considered selfish and lacking compassion.

 

Our response might be in two stages. First, we can deal with the “potential diminishing” of our status as being selfish or lacking compassion in their eyes and that of others. Usually, this is just an insinuation and often not outspoken. If so, just ignore it. If it is outspoken like, “What will others think if they know you won’t ‘help’ me?” You can always choose to say, “I’ll be comfortable with whatever they choose to think” and regardless of their retort, stick to your guns, keep your boundaries intact and stay silent. Second and beyond the insinuation, our overall response might be, “I’m sure you’ll be able to take care of…” and “I have complete confidence in you,” and simply move on. Our objective is to allow and direct anyone utilizing this type of emotional blackmail to be self-accountable for their own circumstances. Everyone has their own lessons to work through and although assistance might be helpful from their perspective, they will learn much more from cleaning up their own messes.

 

Any kind of entitlement, real or fabricated, is a component of the narcissism issue. When we encounter this in others, we must remember that it is their assumption of our obligation and their perceived sense of being owed to that must be short circuited. We must keep our boundaries strong and never allow ourselves to feel coerced into taking care of someone else’s “problems.” Unless we take a loan or borrow something, we owe nothing to anyone else.     

 

So why am I giving so much information about narcissism and where it comes from? It’s not that we must help or fix anyone else with the condition. That is not our responsibility. Our responsibility is to become aware of the reactions that they produce within ourselves. We must recognize them, deal with them and overcome them if we are to achieve a natural balance in ourselves and fulfill our chosen life missions. We all know in our hearts what must be done. It’s just that many of us are too afraid to do what’s best for our own growth. We’ve just allowed our need for belonging and approval to become too strong…but we can change that…if we choose to…so, are you strong enough?