I used to buy Steven King books and assorted novels about science fiction until noticing that my ex-husband was an honest-to-God alien. Now I buy psychology books to figure out where I came from ‘cuz surely I don’t belong on planet Earth where infidelity, betrayal, abuse, neglect, hatred, vengeance, malice, disregard, poverty, oppression, patriarchy and political fakes are considered to be ‘normal’; and honesty, generosity, fidelity, loyalty, compassion, forgiveness, kindness, religious principles, hope, faith, and integrity are considered to be abnormal flaws requiring modification because otherwise, you won’t fit into society. Well, there are days when if what it takes to fit in to our society is to whittle away at character traits it takes a lifetime to create, then let this misfit remain abnormal. But please don’t call me a narcissist because it reminds me how much work I need to do to educate my accusers about the difference between self-respect and a narcissistic pathology.
Which is why we feel like such dupes when we’re told the reason we were targeted by a narcissist is because we display the attributes our culture taught us were valuable and worthy of effort. When a person has always taken pride in being generous for example, the first reaction I had at least, was to stop being generous.
Like the typical betrayed victim, I flipped a 180 and began attacking myself for being too kind, too generous, too accepting, too forgiving which is only true if you are committed to someone who is mean, stingy, critical, unforgiving, un-accepting and did I mention self-centered? At the time, I could not see that I was rejecting my true self by denigrating every human value formerly held near and dear to my heart. My main concern was protecting myself from further harm because instinctually, I knew this was a fight for my soul’s survival. If that meant reading books that blamed me for being ‘nice’, then that’s what I did. For awhile. Until I felt safe enough in my own skin to start reclaiming character traits formed over a lifetime of moral choices. Moral meaning ‘alleviating the pain of others’ through conscious awareness of my impact and trying, oh so very hard: to do no harm.
I decided eventually that reclaiming Nice was valuable because it IS a part of who I am. A character trait modeled after very nice Aunts who woulda given anybody the shirts off their backs. Those very good-hearted relatives served as role models to lead me out of self-rejection because I wanted to be like them and not like the commercialized nasty people revered on reality TV. Those screaming, yelling, tough-mouthed bullies don’t have friends, I’m sure. They have adversaries and people they hold at arm’s lengths because if they don’t, they’ll stab each other in the back to get a higher rating from frightened people who think bullies are awesome.
I like people who are so NICE they cry when you cry and laugh when you laugh and care about the fact that your cake failed the night before. So what do nice people do when you tell them your sob story? They make you a cake and bring it over the next night and it’s kinda sloppy and it’s sunken in the middle because they know the last thing a woman needs after a failure is a perfect cake on her doorstep.
Fast forward to today's thinking:
Reclaim yourself. Be proud of the attributes you worked hard to develop. Refine your characteristics that mark the best of human nature and continually strive to see through the narcissistic accusation that anything that is “worthy and of good report” is a character flaw or a mistake. Do not reject all that is good and beautiful about yourself simply because someone tried to destroy that which they could not create for themselves.
It is not goodness that ruins relationships. It’s narcissism.
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