Narcissism as a product of loneliness and a defense mechanism against acknowledging what your feelings really are

[Xocoyotziin]

Anyone else like this? Not necessarily selfish, but self-centered because you never learned how to properly be around others, and you've escaped into yourself instead, the only thing you have some insight into?

 

[catalepsy]

I'm more schizotypal. I get these weird delusions, or blurry conceptualizations that make me think people know what's going on in my head without ever talking about it. So I might be upset about what someone's doing, but rather than talk to them about it like a normal human being, I'll act nonplussed for a while and then randomly blow up at them. As a crappy bad example. On the flip side, I much less often feel like I know what's going on in other people's heads when I absolutely do not, due to the aforementioned lack of actually communicating anything. Takes a lot of work to keep that shit from causing problems. I don't know how people put up with me sometimes.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

I can see it as a defense mechanism. My mom went into rages for poking at her narcissistic wound by daring to question her. She can't face that she came from a home of domestic violence and abuse. She believes a revisionist narrative that she had a happy, even idyllic childhood, in spite of the fact that she experienced and witnessed repeated traumatic events. If she can't face and deal with her history, then she can't face and deal with reality, she has to change reality into a different narrative even as it's happening.

 

[GrumpyFrog]

I'm not sure about the loneliness part, but the whole thing with not wanting to acknowledge your feelings sounds very plausible.

Although what you describe doesn't really sound like narcissism much. There isn't much detail, but the key feature of narcissism is the need for constant outside validation/praise/positive attention. Withdrawing from others doesn't sound like a narcissistic behavior, unless it is just another tactic to get attention by giving others a sudden "silent treatment". Please correct me if I misunderstood.

 

[Xocoyotziin]

@GoodPersonEffed
Yeah the lack of acceptance of both the present and the past is something I can empathize with. I hope she breaks through it without too much suffering.

@Nessie
I crave acceptance of who I'm trying to be as affirmation that I'm behaving correctly, but I keep my real tendencies sequestered to the point where I look in the mirror and I'm not sure what I see, because I'm that afraid of being rejected again. My solution? Be louder. Gain more acceptance. Drown yourself out. And if I'm rejected, at least it's because I was being an obnoxious asshole and I was misrepresenting myself, and can even flip the tables on them for being shitty to an obviously fake persona. It wasn't really me. If I'm not, mission accomplished. Either way, I'm not good enough to be anything without faking it, and I don't seek acceptance for the sake of community because I've already forgone that as a possibility, only to bolster my fake ego instead.

I sound like a terrible person but that's because i am one.

 

[GoodPersonEffed]

Yeah the lack of acceptance of both the present and the past is something I can

She has no desire to.

 

[Xocoyotziin]

Sorry. That was probably insensitive.

 

[woxihuanni]

I sound like a terrible person but that's because i am one.

Don't know why, but the plot twist in this sentence was lovely and cracked me up (not laughing at you or your pain).