What's Going on with Shame and Narcissism?

A deficit in mirroring (the experience of having one’s emotional needs recognised by another) in early life often leads to a lack of capacity to differentiate between primary and secondary narcissism: in the mind of such individuals, feeling proud of one’s achievements and wanting others to share in them (primary narcissism) can easily become falsely equated with grandiosity, or showing off (secondary narcissism); in such cases one acutely feels that there is something unbecoming and vulgar about the need for validation. Here there is a confusion between a self which needs to be reassured, validated, and encouraged by other people, and a dissociated shadow self which was deprived of this in the early years and feels greedy, envious and resentful. It is where the former becomes identified with the latter, and out of the ensuing psychic chaos that a particularly toxic form of shame is born.

Sadly, in later life, this confusion sabotages all possibility for enjoyment of what one has worked so hard for, and it is a bind which plays out time and again, as the individual looks for validation from others, and tends to seek out situations where he/she will feel rejected (and shamed). Importantly, due to the level of distortion created by the original narcissistic wounds, even if one’s emotional needs are met by another in later life (through, for example, a heartily sincere “well done!” or “congratulations, I’m so proud of you!”), this will be internally rejected by the individual, as they do not deem themselves worthy of it. This sincere validation is rejected as the individual feels that they are being “too-much”, “narcissistic”, or simply “pathetic” for having such needs as here, the internalised rejecting parent is boss. People who experience this inner drama are very sensitive indeed, and they know at a deep emotional level that there is a wound which they are trying to heal, yet each time they face these kinds of situations, it is often laced with shame because it is experienced as yet another failed attempt at doing so, and it is particularly humiliating as this shame is experienced interpersonally – in the public eye.

So how does the suffering individual address this issue? It is important, I would suggest, to find compassion for the wounded self, and, most importantly of all, to also find some much needed love for the rejected child who felt (and still feels) greedy for validation and is so resentful and envious to have been deprived of it in the first place. Through finding some emotional space and time for the most rejected aspects of oneself, it will then become easier to appreciate and enjoy the validation of others as they become living, flawed, people in one’s mind; people who can share in the enjoyment of what one feels proud of, rather than being perceived as idealised versions of one’s rejecting parents, who eternally, tantalisingly, offer the promise of making us feel “whole” but always fail us in the end.

On “Empaths” and “Narcissists” (Brief Article)

In depression, in certain cases, it strikes me that there can be a an inner reversion to which we might call something like “oceanic striving”, where the individual unconsciously wishes to return to a state of fusion with the original caregiver(s). One may also look for partners who are seen to have the capacity to fulfill this wish, and who will later become co-conspirators in a particularly destructive union.

In this wished for scenario, there are no problems anymore, and growing up is unnecessary. I suppose this is something like what Michael Balint called “malignant regression”. The partner is recruited to become an idealised lost mother object of yearning, and together the pair then enter a vortex of mutually destructive longing from which it is very hard to escape. The partner has also been chosen as they are wounded in a destructively complementary way; the individual experiences the wounded aspects of his/her partner as a potent “empathic” elixir which he/ she feels will satiate the oceanic striving. You will perhaps have seen plenty online about “empaths” and “narcissists” which often over-simplifies the dynamic I briefly describe, by locating all the “badness” in the other, and encouraging people to continue to oscillate between idealisation and denigration of themselves and other people. This unfortunately continues to bolster an unconscious strategy to avoid mourning, and ensures that the individual remains walled in by depression and self-loathing (melancholia). This can become very destructive as it is a malignant spell, and which prevents mourning of the wounded self.

In order to begin healing from this form of depression, it is therefore important to recognise the hurt in oneself, and the associated feelings of aggression, rather than locating them in others as “narcissists”, or any other terms which limit the spectrum of human experience.