Everyday Narcissism. Nancy Van Dyken
parties, so she is crushed and confused at not being invited.
Trish, Amy’s mother, grew up during hard times. She learned to survive by being tough, practical, and thick-skinned. She wants to quickly soothe her daughter’s pain and pass on some of her hard-earned wisdom and skills. So she tells her daughter, “Don’t worry about it, honey. You have lots of friends! Besides, what Megan did says more about her than it does about you.”
Trish thinks she is being helpful and teaching her daughter valuable survival skills.
However, that is not what Amy needs or is asking for right now. What she needs is to be listened to, believed, understood, cared for, and nurtured.
Her mom does none of these. Instead, Amy senses that her mother is dismissing her feelings and doesn’t want her to be sad.
And young Amy is right. Trish is very uncomfortable with her daughter’s sadness. She never learned how to deal with her own sadness, let alone Amy’s.
When Amy doesn’t get the nurturing she asks for, she feels rejected and not permitted to be who she is.
Trish tells her daughter, “You know what you can do, honey? Instead of worrying about Megan, you can think about something else, or go have fun with one of your other friends.”
This is a classic EN move. Because Trish feels uncomfortable with Amy’s pain, she encourages her daughter to distract herself from that pain so that Trish won’t feel so uncomfortable.
However, Amy already feels that pain, and she wants that pain acknowledged and understood. Yet this is what Trish, caught in a moment of EN, refuses to do.
Right now, Amy doesn’t think anyone understands her. She feels alone at school, forced out from her group of friends. Because of her mother’s response, she now also feels alone at home, with a mother who doesn’t seem to fully understand or care.
If this is an isolated incident, Amy will heal from it fairly quickly. However, if Trish continues to teach her to be tough and logical, and to not give her own feelings much credence, she will learn that it’s not okay to be sad, to talk about her sadness, or to let herself get hurt. Amy will fear that she will be rejected once again if she does open up honestly about her feelings. Instead, she may learn to pretend that all is well inside her, even when it isn’t. This will deeply embed EN in her heart.
Trish has put her own feelings ahead of her daughter’s. As Amy grows older, if this becomes a pattern, she will learn that asking to be heard or discussing how she feels will lead quickly to her mother’s disapproval. Eventually Amy may stop trying to talk about her feelings to anyone. She may never learn to take care of her feelings and her emotional life. Myths 1, 3, and 5 may reign within her heart.
Myth 4: Following the Rules Is Also More Important than Addressing Our Needs and Feelings
Rules are necessary for any society to function. We see the value of rules when we drive in rush-hour traffic. Despite all the cars on the highway, rules enable us to get to our destinations without incident.
Contrast this with a big-box store such as Costco, where there are few rules for traffic flow—and where there are often bottlenecks or points of temporary chaos, as well as occasional cart collisions. When reasonable rules are followed, they create safety and predictability and make life easier.
Unfortunately, most of us never challenge the rules we learned as children. We simply accept and live by all of them, regardless of whether they help us or harm us. For example, we may automatically obey anyone in authority—a teacher, a spiritual leader, a coach, our boss—even after we have seen them abuse their authority.
Following rules—and demanding that others follow them—turns out to be one of the most painful, effective, and invisible ways in which we pass our EN to others, and they pass their EN to us. The two are so intertwined that I’ve devoted Chapter 5 to a detailed discussion of the topic.
Myth 5: We Are Not Lovable as We Are; We Can Only Become Lovable through What We Do and Say
As we grow up according to the first four myths, and as everyday narcissism embeds itself ever deeper into our psyche, we eventually begin to intuit Myth 5. Through our parents’ and other adults’ EN, we learn at a young age that we are not inherently lovable just by being ourselves. Only if we do what adults want us to, follow their rules, and please them will we be considered lovable. Yet each time we are valued only for what we do and who we pretend to be, rather than for who we are, a wound is created or deepened.
Almost all of us figure out at a very young age that if we are obedient and compliant, then we’re good and will be rewarded; if we’re disobedient, we’re bad and will be punished. Often the punishment for not being what others want is simple disapproval, or silence, or a sigh, or a look of judgment; sometimes, though, it takes the form of harsh words or violence. This is how adults, often unconsciously, control us and shape us into people who learn to take care of their needs and ignore our own.
ADAM
By age ten, Adam has already faithfully internalized all the myths and principles of EN. He also diligently follows all the rules that adults expect him to follow. He has learned how to behave “perfectly” at all times. He follows directions and always says please and thank you. He is extremely responsible for a ten-year-old. Strangers who meet him praise him for acting like a little adult.
Adam’s teachers love him because he is so easy to have in the classroom. Parents like to have Adam over because he adheres to all their rules and expectations, with no arguments.
Adam gets a lot of positive reinforcement for not being himself—for being a “good boy.” In fact, however, Adam has learned to be a robot. He lives Myths 1, 3, 4, and 5 to perfection.
For the next two years, Adam’s outward behavior doesn’t change. One day, however, his father discovers a sketchbook hidden under his son’s bed. In the sketchbook are many drawings of a boy sitting alone and looking very sad, holding a knife to his wrist, as if to cut himself. Inside the spiral binding of the sketchbook are three joints.
Adam’s parents are shocked. They had no clue about their son’s unhappiness. To them, he seemed like such a happy, well-adjusted boy. They wonder what has suddenly gone so wrong with their son. Adam’s father blames the change on the early stirrings of adolescence.
In fact, something very right is beginning to happen inside Adam. He is starting to challenge the myths of EN and beginning to say to himself, “I’m not a robot. I do have feelings. I’m tired of existing just to make adults happy. I want desperately to matter. Somebody please acknowledge me.”
Here is what makes Myth 5 especially toxic and insidious: the more we work to fulfill adults’ needs, the more we reinforce our own belief that we are not intrinsically lovable. We learn to blame ourselves whenever we feel rejected. We tell ourselves that we must not be sufficiently smart, or lovable, or respectful, or obedient, or helpful; if we were, the people around us would feel happy and love us, rather than reject us.
Human beings are wired to be connected in authentic ways, not false or trivial ones.
Since we’ve come to believe that we are not lovable as we are, we learn to hide our true self from other people. We create a public persona—a false self—who looks, speaks, and acts the way we think other people want us to. We develop a façade to ensure that we will be liked, accepted, and valued. Meanwhile, we live in fear that someone may find out what’s behind that façade. We learn to live a lie.
This false self is then accepted by other false selves. Together, these false selves have created a world of partial, inauthentic connections. These connections are, understandably, less than satisfying. Human beings are wired to be connected