a fifth post will follow on the connection between shame and rage in narcissism
OF SHAME
Narcissists typically walk around with a lot more shame than the rest of us do. And so they are constantly trying to run away from shame when it comes to their own behaviors. They also refuse to self reflect, which tends to mean that the shame within them is unaddressed. They learned in childhood that if they have faults, they are going to receive severe consequences for not being perfect, including being ostracized and condemned. It is likely their experience as a child was that an adult in their world over-shamed children, and under-shamed themselves (and often for the same wrongs).
Shame eventually, as they become narcissistic adults, tends to be expressed outwardly at other people, rather than dealing with it inwardly. It contributes greatly to their false self, their blame-shifting, their arrogance and grandiosity (with the thought: "If I can convince people that I'm better, more intelligent, more successful, more liked than others are, then they will never shame me") and why they are so rebellious but expect others to conform and submit to codes of conduct. And they have also learned in childhood that the person who shames is the dominant person, the one who punishes, and they take that and model that in their own life, and take it to absolutes and extremes.
In terms of "absolutes" it means statements like "You were always worthless", "You never really meant anything to me", "You were always a pain, and will always be that way".
In terms of "extremes" it means statements like these: "You are ostracized forever", "You can never be part of this group again", "I'll never listen to another word you have to say".
For the research on this, see the "further reading" section below.
Shaming for narcissists is not used for personal growth and understanding.
When they use it, it is mostly for punishment only, to hurt the other person. I tell why this backfires further in the post.
If they aren't feeling shame (shame for them means attacking you emotionally via projection or blame-shifting when you have a grievance about how they treat you or others), consider that they may have the Malignant brand of narcissism instead (i.e. mixed with psychopathy - these people are marked by their lack of remorse for anything illegal they do, and any hurting of other people they do, no matter how erroneous or made up their reasons are). If you are dealing with malignant narcissists, they can be quite dangerous, and they won't care how they have effected you, and some of them even prefer that you are hurt by them (this is also the sign of the dark tetrad, known for their sadism).
But to get back to narcissists who aren't the malignant brand of narcissism and those who do not have comorbidities of other personality disorders, they walk around with quite a bit of shame inside. They have remorse for hurting other people, not for empathetic reasons, but more because it might put a "monkey wrench" in their ambition for more power and control, degrade their image, their false self, and clout, and diminish their ability to talk others into thinking they deserve more than other people do, that they are hierarchically superior (superiority complex).
Some of the things that cause them shame:
- lack of empathy. Narcissists may be born with a proclivity for a lack of empathy, but they are usually also modeled or taught to have a lack of empathy in their early environment (usually by a caretaker). In other words, their empathy was damaged in early childhood (being abused, or being around abuse can cause brain damage, something I will be discussing at a later time, or it can be the result of intergenerational trauma). Narcissists are generally faking empathy so that they won't appear heartless to others. For some narcissists, their empathy was so damaged in childhood that feeling empathy is inaccessible to them; in other words, they can't help it. But appearing empathetic supersedes telling others that they don't feel empathy, so later on, they feel remorse for having faked or lied about having empathy.
- dysregulated emotions like rage. For narcissists, rage is usually "off the charts", and they are aware that they hurt others in the process, often to the point of violating boundaries of respect and decency, and often to the point of traumatizing individuals too. In other words, ethics and reasonableness have been sacrificed in their expression of rage, and they worry that it has sullied their reputation, and put a damaging light on their reputation. If their reasons for rage are not accepted by the other person, they can have a lot of shame to the point where they don't want to see the other person, or where they have a narcissistic collapse where the impulse to attack is even greater than before. And then those further attacks cause them shame too.
- lying, faking, spreading false narratives, and gaslighting. They worry that doing this will cause them to sully their reputation, to appear fraudulent. When these actions do sully their reputation, they worry that they will no longer feel hierarchically superior to other people, that other people will no longer respect them, or want to be around them. They get a sense of their personality from others, and without a more definitive positive personality, they often feel empty, angry and depressed. When they lash out at others for what they perceive as putting them in a place of unjust accountability (they feel that others should overlook their sins because they feel they aren't in control of themselves, that other people control their reactions instead), then they can walk around with an incredible amount of shame and feelings of annihilation of purpose and emptiness. This is when they try to get sympathy by playing the victim, which most narcissists do.
- their superiority complex. Narcissists tend to think in hierarchical terms, putting themselves in the #1 spot in the ranking of superiority. They do sometimes have serious doubts as to whether they are as superior as they think they are. In fact, some narcissists have admitted to "splitting on themselves" (here's one instance), i.e. seeing themselves as all superior, or all inferior, and changing back and forth between the two. They wonder if their feelings of superiority are a defensive delusion (yes, they are), that they contemplate that maybe they are even "bottom feeders" (the "I am nothing" is a defensive delusion too, just as much as they are when they tell other people they are nothing). This doesn't happen often for a lot of them because they are constantly reaching for more grandiosity, but enough to cause some shame. Not being in a "winning position" shakes them up, and becomes the point where holes in their pervasive feelings and thinking that they are superior to others starts to shatter.
- discards of other people. The discards of others usually happen during fits of rage. For some of them, they didn't mean it, or mean it to last, and now they feel they have to make up stories for why they did it because to tell the truth might put them in a more shameful position. The lying and being afraid their secret will be uncovered causes more shame. It is also why narcissists try to hide themselves (i.e. don't share, but expect you to share), why they commit so many thoughtless, hurtful acts (because they figure they can always lie, deflect and counter blame someone else for what they did), but in the end, it still causes shame. Many narcissists cannot apologize because they feel to do so would be to show too much weakness or vulnerability, and they also feel that they have superiority and dominance over you that they must maintain, so they do not apologize, and their relationships languish without satisfying resolutions.
Shame can feel like a terrible burden to them. And what do they attempt to do when they are saddled with a lot of shame?
They try to give it to other people so that they will feel better, in comparison, about themselves. They vilify others:
- "They should be ashamed for the way they treated me! I've never been treated so badly in my life!." - when they instigated it. We hear this from a lot of politicians these days too. It's a deflection strategy. It's about playing the victim too (and it is unethical), so it can cause more shame - they are always feeling on edge that their victim stance won't work with people they are trying to influence - thus they acquire more shame.
- "These people should not be listened to!" - they are afraid of people telling the truth, so they have to blacken their reputations so that no one listens to them, which causes more shame.
- "I'm perfectly aware of what went on and they are 100 percent at fault!" - shows black and white thinking, something they tend to feel ashamed about too (since they will do anything not to be 100 percent, or even 50 percent at fault for anything).
- "You are not to talk to me that way! You're a pig!" - shows hypocrisy, and therefor lack of ethics right away. This can cause shame in them too, but of course, they don't want to show you that. They want to keep giving shame to you instead.
- "You're no better than I am!" - shows that they are not a good person, even if they think others lower themselves as much as they do, thus it breeds more shame, self-contempt, and contempt of others.
And so on.
TO BEGIN WITH?
The shaming statements are the "You are - " statements that describe a person, or a child, in many disparaging ways. This is one reason why narcissists don't know who they are, that their sense of self is shaky at best. They hear or are the recipients of the "You are - " statements.
Those statements can run the gamut:
"You are disgusting!"
"You wolf down your food like you are a pig!"
"Your body is disgusting! You couldn't attract anyone if you tried!"
"You are so crazy! No one will ever love you except me."
"You should hear yourself! As if anyone would listen to you!"
"You were at fault! And stop trying to convince me otherwise!"
"I know what you feel and think! And it's not good! I can tell you that!" - and this is where they get into perspecticide, even labeling what the child might be thinking. Horrible.
I got many of these kind of statements from survivors of child abuse and they are listed in this post.
Or they will be disparaging a child in front of another child (and on some level, the child listening will know it is not true):
"I've got the most hair-brained, crazy child! What am I to do!?"
"I can't stand to hear her talk! Who cares what little girls think! They should be talking to other little girls about make-up and hair, not their father!"
"Sometimes I just want to put my child back from where they came from!"
"Sometimes I just hate your sister! Don't you sometimes hate her too?"
In healthy families, children get to describe who they are (not the family members - they stay out of describing). Children figure out for themselves what their interests are, what they might want to do in life, what they are proud of about themselves and what needs work, and so on. The parent may model some things with their own behavior, but there is not this constant attacking of "You are - " statements.
And it hollows out any prospective personality that the child has. The generational curse here might be one hollowed out personality tries to hollow out another personality from another generation.
And this can create narcissism, especially since the black and white thinking does not always go internally about themselves, but goes externally towards their own children.
The golden child doesn't get overtly hollowed out all that much by the parent - unless he strays from mirroring the parent, that is - which is how he gets hollowed out: he has to be a close version of his parent to be accepted.
Most golden children are amply aware that their scapegoat siblings are given labels that show unkindness, unfairness, erroneous punishments, and untrue labels. It is why golden children tend to be so compliant and mirroring, to protect themselves from the scapegoat's fate.
Anyway, let's say the golden child turns into a narcissist (which happens to more than half of them - a significant unfortunate fact). All of the trash-talking gets internalized and normalized. They can even trash-talk about themselves for going along willingly with the lies of a narcissistic parent. They learn not to trust what anyone says about anyone because the judgements can be so off the wall and full of lies - and to go for power, control and dominance instead to keep from being a victim of narcissistic abuse (the thinking goes: "If I victimize like my caretaker did, I won't be the victim; someone else will instead.")
But it also means adopting the bully's or parent's personality, disorder and all, not their own. And just like their bully or parent, they can present a surface of being totally compliant and charming, but horrifically abusive, negative and cruel behind the bully's or parent's back. So parroting can have awful consequences. This is where narcissists often get stuck - they haven't developed a personality, and may go without one for an entire life time. They have Jekyll and Hyde splitting - that is not a true personality; it is a compulsion, a way of dealing with situations when they feel frustration and rage building up inside them.
They are aware of what they are doing when they go "Mr. Hyde" on you, but since narcissists are known for their dysregulated emotions, particularly rage, and their compulsions to "be bad" or "go evil" on others, they will feel remorse for what they did, even if they don't try to make amends.
And how did the narcissist not make amends, and what did they do with the anger turned inward? They shamed the most vulnerable people they knew. And the mirroring child of the narcissist will do the same.
Which brings me to the next chapter:
AND DOES IT WORK FOR THEM?
At some point in your relationship with a narcissist, they will try to elicit regret and shame from you. They will usually say things like:
"You shouldn't have said that."
"You shouldn't have done that."
"You should have done it this way."
"You should have said ______________ this way if you had wanted _____________."
"You shouldn't have done it that way."
"I can't believe that you did this! How could you think this would be okay?"
"You made a mistake. And there are consequences for every mistake you make."
Most of this is said with foreboding, as though the consequences will be severe.
And in the beginning, assuming we are talking about a close personal relationship, it works because you probably think their intentions towards you are benevolent. So you try to shift and change how you do things, and how you say things, and to some extent, you may even change how you think about things.
The problem is that relationships with narcissists aren't like other relationships. What they will glean from you making big overtures based on their wishes of "how you should behave" and "how you should do things" is that they are in charge of you. As long as you do what they tell you to do, and behave the way they want, then they either feel temporarily pleased, and some of them might even say they love you or reward you as a way of giving you positive reinforcement.
But unlike other relationships where you make adjustments, and the other person makes adjustments too, so that you can get along and understand one another, and keep from hurting or irritating each other, narcissists expect people in their lives to do all of the bending, all of the overtures, all of the compromising, all of the "behaving", all of the changing (even when it comes to personality, dress, your interests, how you express yourself, the expressions on your face - not possible).
They don't think they should have to do any of this themselves, of course. Part of this has to do with their lust for power, control and domination in their close personal relationships, and their feeling of entitlement. They will always be going for more power, which is not what you find in healthy relationships.
Arrogance has incredible blind spots, and besides getting in the way of understanding and wisdom, it gets shattered more often than they would like - it has to do with their false self, the grandiose self that they prefer to show to the world, but which in reality, is hiding their shadow self and their fragile ego. It is one reason why they rage so much when you point out things like (using one from the list at the beginning of this post):
Said to the narcissist: "You have no trouble shaming me and trying to teach me, but you can't be shamed or taught anything yourself? What is going on with that? Where is this 'I'm prefect and you are not' mindset coming from? Because it isn't serving either of us very well at this point. I was okay with changing a few things for you, but you've gone too far. You want a sycophant? Because you are not going to get one out of me. I have my own personality and my own interests and you're not going to meddle or change that any more than you have." - their rage is likely to be extreme because you are challenging their false self, the mask and actor they have adopted to hide their shadow self and their dilapidated ego, who thinks they can just run rough-shod over others in this way to get more power and control, i.e. to get sycophants. They don't like strength of character and they don't like type A personalities in the long run (another link and another link and another link).
In fact, if you said anything on that list back to them, they'd probably run away like a coward and end the relationship.
But assuming it's a one-sided relationship where they are trying to make you run through hoops to meet their perfection standards, this, in fact, incentivizes them to do more perfection standards that you must meet. I think I have demonstrated how it can get to the point where how you do simple minded chores and facial expressions will be met with impossible rage-filled standards and ridicule.
So, what happens when you get to this point in your relationship with them? What happens when you fail to meet one of their super small perfection standards? Do they realize they are pushing for something miniscule compared to things in life which should really be attended to? And what if you laugh at the tiny issue they want you to put your attention to, and refuse to do it?
They will most likely rage, and not kidding. They will, in the end, be seething at you with contempt if you refuse to meet perfection standards on absurdly tiny issues, especially if you have done that for them many times before. They become entitled to get what ever changes they want out of you.
Once you have gotten to a point where your relationship is about meeting demands on super tiny issues, the relationship is in danger of ending. And they will certainly let you know, one way or another, that the relationship is very provisional and uncertain.
Here are some of instances of things they say when they get to this stage (in purple):
"You never did learn how to talk to me. Now I'm going to teach you in a way that you'll regret." - and the teaching lesson will invariably be about administering pain to you.
"You are SO inept! Just look at you!" - about trying to break your self confidence that you can do things without them, and about breaking your self esteem.
"I feel like you are wasting my time! Here I thought you really cared about me, that you wanted to please me, but now you don't?! What is the matter with you!? Get with the program NOW!!" - this about seeing if they can get their needs met by showing aggression, that "you have to" or there will be a lot of trouble or consequences between you (micro-managing is a bad sign in close personal adult relationships and is likely to escalate to abuse).
"If you can't do what I want, you are useless to me!" - watch out for the "useless phrase" when it comes to narcissists.
"You couldn't please a pig!"
"I hate you when you're like this! And apparently that's who you really are! A complete and utter disappointment! What's the matter with you? You used to be so nice before! You used to do so much for me? And now you can't? You're going to be recalcitrant? It's time for a separation until you can do better!" - a separation is supposed to make you think about how to keep pleasing them in a better and better way, but instead it tends to enliven the trauma response of "fight or flight", and the longer the separation goes on, most of us put up boundaries with narcissists, even when we don't know they are narcissists, so that we don't get traumatized further.
"You think it is okay to talk to others about me?" - when you are trying to get help in understanding what happened, why it happened, and in general, what happened to your relationship (narcissists use the silent treatment and discarding relationships an awful lot when they are disappointed, and so you can't talk to them and understand anything if they go silent on you, and if you do try to talk to them you'll get head games, and lots of blaming, shaming and contempt rather than a real conversation where they'll try to understand where each of you is coming from, and try to build a bridge or resolution to issues). Instead, they infantilize you and punish you to teach you a lesson, as though you are a naughty child, rather than an adult. It doesn't work.
If they really wanted to teach you a lesson, putting you in pain tends not to work unless they are inclined to break the law to do so. As long as you have a free will, you will not be going towards pain; you will be going away from it.
"You never could please me! Now look at you! You're just a shriveled up piece of meat! I could care less about you!" - this shows they have a lack of empathy.
"So you think you are irreplaceable. You aren't. Let's clear that up now!" - to narcissists, everyone is replaceable in their lives including spouse, friends, children, parents, and siblings. And that says more about their character than it does about you. If you look at their history, they've been replacing and ghosting other people quite a bit before they did the same thing to you.
So in other words, this "You've got to please me, but I never have to please you" attitude that they have is not going to change and it is likely to get worse. They will keep hammering you with how you must talk, how you must do things, how you must be a perfect sycophant for them. That becomes really obvious at some point. And in the meantime, they will be trying to teach you lessons by introducing painful situations in your life. And it isn't benevolent (that will become clear too). Infantilizing you becomes the terrible and extremely unhealthy go-to tactic and rut they put you and others through time and time again. Most of them don't know how to do anything else because it is the personality disorder at work: they feel they must always go for superiority, and what better way to do it than to insist that you act like an inept child who doesn't know how to behave.
I'm sure if you're reading this, most of your other relationships don't look like this at all. Since no one likes to be treated that way, including them (it is disrespectful), they often lose relationships over it.
If they really wanted to teach you a lesson, putting you in pain tends not to work unless they are inclined to break the law to do so. As long as you have a free will, you will not be going towards pain; you will be going away from it.
If this is a partnership, they may be having affairs on you to teach you more lessons, but unbeknownst to them, it actually creates more separation and trauma for most of us. It doesn't work all that well either unless you are the type of person who competes with their lover. But competing with a lover will cause most narcissists to have more affairs, to get more competitions going, attempts to get you to be more of a pleaser puppet, and their ethics tend to spiral down pretty far as well. What this shows is a lack of empathy for both parties, assuming their lover wants them, and is willing to compete with their latest partner. But at some point, the competition ends, and either one person "gets" the narcissist, or they both decide that the narcissist is not for them.
The reality is that neither of them may be with the narcissist because narcissists often compete with their ex-partners or partner once they have one of them. Again, they stop running a competition between two people who want them, and instead focus on competing with their ex-partner or present partner instead - whether it is who gets the attention of their joint children, or the attention of their stepchildren, who wins the dominance game once they set up house together.
Most people do not like being in constant competitions in their relationships unless there is nothing better to do with their time. So a lot of the people who won them, walk away from them too. There are exceptions, but not many.
The exceptions tend to be that the partner is another narcissist.
For children, narcissists set up competitions too, because they are not capable of caring, compassion, and love. So they make their kids compete for small morsels of affection and attention. But, as we know, narcissists usually have a golden child, and they will make sure that child wins all of the competitions. And they also have a scapegoat child, who they will make sure loses all of their competitions.
What happens is that scapegoats begin to wince at competitions, and they don't believe the parent loves them anyway, even when the parent says they do. Most scapegoats who have become adults will say that their parent never loved them, or understood them, but that the parent put them in competitions with their siblings instead, to constantly humiliate them, destroy their self esteem, and that the narcissistic parent eventually wanted to destroy them altogether (i.e. they resent scapegoats who continue to live). I'm not sure all narcissistic parents resent their scapegoats living, but I would have to agree with most of this perspective because it's the overwhelming scapegoat experience - there aren't good endings for scapegoats in terms of parental love or compassion, as there were never really any "winning" moments for them in childhood either.
In studies, narcissists will usually choose the child they see as dominant and/or male to win the competitions, as though it is still tough-it-out cave-man days, and you needed the one with the most imposing physique, the lowest voice, to deal with the Wooly Mammoths and the saber-toothed tigers, lest the narcissist not survive. This is probably how it is even when they have set up one child to fail, to be less dominant. So the competition, as you can see, is just a farce, just as most of the narcissist's relationships are. It is to see what children will do to each other to get the attention of the parent, and so that the narcissist can get ego strokes - tears mean a child cares that they are losing the narcissistic parent's game (ego stroke for the narcissist), and winning, flexing muscles, laughing and being grandiose means the child likes playing the game (ego stroke for the narcissist too).
It is why domestic violence therapists and psychologists who specialize in the Cluster B Personality Disorders heavily suggest not taking what any narcissist does and says personally, or seriously. If you look at what narcissists say and do it is usually a mind game, a manipulation, an attack, a love bombing episode to get you to give up your personal power to their control and domination. They may ask lots of questions to get an idea of where your vulnerabilities are (so that they can attack you with those things later), or attack others behind their back, but conversations with narcissists usually do not deviate from these motivations and topics most of the time (that's also been my personal experience with narcissists too).
Which is why, when scapegoats are still alive, but rejected by the narcissist in favor of the golden child, the narcissist will constantly be checking up on the scapegoat ("tragedy hunting" is a term my friend and fellow writer, Peep, used in one of her blog posts, and I like that fitting term for when the narcissist is constantly checking on how well or how miserable a scapegoat is). If the scapegoat is succeeding, the narcissistic parent has a crisis, a melt-down; if the scapegoat isn't doing all that well, the parent breathes a sigh of relief (and some of them get happy - it shows sadism).
And by the way, all of this shows they are much worse and unlearned in the "behavior department" than you probably are. Most narcissists have very few ethics and morals, and they care very little about other people beyond how much power, control and domination they have over others. That's why discards are so rapid and easy for them: "They aren't going to let me dominate them? Okay, then, I will have nothing to do with them again!"
So here is something to take away from this: Haven't they been busy trying to change you since the beginning of your relationship to mold you into who they want you to be, rather than trying to understand who you are?
If you are so imperfect for them, then they don't want to take the time to know who you are beyond you twisting like a pretzel to please them, right? The more imperfect you seem to be to them, they are never going to accept who you are: your strengths, weaknesses, your happiness. If you can't please them, you are allowed to stop trying to please them. Most of us do (especially those of us who have been scapegoated by them and who get more negative feedback from them than positive feedback).
Most relationships aren't that much work and aren't fraught with that much pain, sadness, grief, denying of your needs to fulfill someone else's exclusive needs, dealing with crazy-making punishments, and all of the rest of what goes into dealing with narcissists. You are allowed to be happy, to be in relationships where people care about you, to be experiencing joy without someone nipping at it to take it down, and to forsake being close to people that live in idealize, devalue, discard cycles over and over again in their relationships.
If they sleep well at night when they put you into an idealize, devalue, discard cycle, while you are traumatized, and they don't care about that trauma when you tell them that your symptoms are through the roof, then they are showing you they have no empathy. Do you really want to be in an intimate relationship with someone that devoid of empathy? Think what would happen if you were sick, had an accident, were diagnosed with a serious or terminal disease. They aren't just going to "grow some empathy" in those situations; they are going to be relating to you in ways they have done all along. It's not going to get better, it's going to get worse because narcissists are generally only going to want parentified or infantilized relationships where their needs always come first.
If they can't care about you in these kinds of situations, and when they are so one-sided in their ambition to have "pleasing behaviors" go to them only, and to be so calloused about causing you and others pain, they are pretty much capable of anything in terms of how they hurt others, and how much they are willing to go in hurting others. Empathy keeps most of us from going as far as they are willing to go in terms of causing pain.
Trying to harvest regrets and shame from you basically means that they are trying to turn you into a "pleaser puppet", devoid of your own needs, personality and ambitions. If they are at a stage where they are screaming at you about the smallest things, they are just testing to try and see how far they can go with their power, control and domination agendas. And if part of that test includes any kind of threat or abuse, you know that they are willing to take their agenda much farther than you will ever be comfortable with. You will likely suffer and develop a host of symptoms.
Eventually what you will find is that the narcissist will be like this rigid unmovable, unchangeable, immoral person screaming at you to keep changing. Most people can't handle it when the narcissist gets to that point, and most people either leave the narcissist or work hard to get out of the relationship.
In the end, the narcissist may make it clear that it doesn't make any difference to them whether you stay or leave: "So you think you are irreplaceable. You aren't. Let's clear that up now."
So does trying to harvest regrets and shame from you work? For awhile, but only if you believe they are truly benevolent and have better ethics than you do. Once they turn on you, you see that they aren't benevolent as they punish you, and put you through cycles of love bombing you then more punishments, that they are downright hypocrites with way fewer ethics than most people. Then when we are fully aware that they severely lack empathy too, it becomes a way out: and this is our chance to heal.
What are we healing from?
A love bomber that came in disguise (under the disguise was a shame-based, shaming, "destroyer").
Can we ever trust a person who tried to destroy us again? And who tried to do so at the most vulnerable time of our life?
Not likely.
Regret Is Painful. Here’s How to Harness It. You might even find it leads to some new insights. - by Jancee Dunn for The New York Times
THE NARCISSIST’S SHAME AS A “PREMIER SOCIAL EMOTION” - by the administrator of NarcissisticBehavior.net
excerpt:
The narcissist’s excessive self-worth does a great job of chasing off their inferiority complex and replacing it with an outer veneer of superiority through their False Self. This goes a long way to disguising their inner sense of vulnerability that is far too shameful to be seen by others.
This, to a large extent, creates the narcissist’s typical arrogance that is all too apparent. Narcissists are plagued with feelings of envy that are born out of their deep, emotional insecurities and poor sense of self-worth. It is important to know that their shame and envy are inextricably intertwined.
Unable to form their own ideas and ideals for themselves, the narcissist latches onto others out of envy, especially those who they respect as being superior so that they can get that same sense of self from them. Unfortunately, those who are superior to the narcissist will eventually unintentionally trigger the narcissist’s feelings of lacking, causing them to feel shame. They just cannot abide or tolerate feeling less than anybody else, so when someone possesses something that they do not have, it provokes feelings of inadequacy and triggers their shame and resentful longing.
It is the narcissist’s envy that causes their constant denigration of others. ...
Narcissism and Shame Treatment in Philadelphia, Ocean City, Mechanicsville - by The Center for Growth (a therapy service in a number of states in the USA - the premise here is that they can help narcissists deal with their shame in order to have more fulfilling relationships)
excerpt:
Narcissism and shame go hand in hand in so many ways. Narcissists carry a LOT of shame. From mistakes made in the past, fear of not being enough, to fear of criticism in the present and future. For many narcissists their lives are rather shame-based but, they will never admit it. Facing shame is something incredible uncomfortable and difficult for most narcissistic individuals. To admit to shame means to become vulnerable, to let go of control, and to face the fear head on. These 3 tasks are not in a narcissist’s skill set. Shame is an essential emotion, we all have it, and it is often misunderstood. Facing one’s shame is necessary in creating meaningful and intimate relationships. Narcissist’s issues with shame is a major reason narcissists struggle to maintain friendships, experience true intimacy, and struggle with self-esteem.
Narcissists fear and despise facing their shame so much so, that their way to survive is to project their own shame on to those around them. As they continue to blame, shame, and criticize those around him/her, they are able to distance from their own shame as well as feel better about themselves now that they can view those around him/her as flawed. ...
11 Ways Narcissists Use Shame To Control You (Narcissists are unable to deal with their shame, so they project it onto you.) - by Christine Hammond, LMHC, NCC for Your Tango
excerpt:
A weakness of a narcissist is their extreme hatred of being embarrassed. There is nothing worse for them than having someone point out even the slightest fault. Ironically, they have no problem openly doing this to others.
Narcissists often have a complex relationship with shame, as they strive to maintain a grandiose and perfect image of themselves. They are highly sensitive to criticism or any perceived threat to their self-esteem, which triggers deep feelings of shame.
However, instead of confronting and processing their shame, they tend to project it onto others by belittling or shaming them, in an attempt to protect their fragile ego. Paradoxically, this avoidance of shame can further isolate narcissists and perpetuate a cycle of unhealthy behaviors and relationships.
The Role of Shame in Narcissistic Abuse (The narcissist’s projections and intentional infliction of shame) - Stardust Musings for Medium.com
WHO HAVE COME FORWARD TO TALK ABOUT NARCISSISTIC SHAME
Professor Sam Vaknin (diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, studied psychology, particularly the Cluster B personality disorders, earned his doctorate in psychology). Videos:
- Narcissist's Shame and Guilt - by Professor Sam Vaknin (2010)
- Shame, Guilt, Codependents, Narcissists, and Normal Folks - by Professor Sam Vaknin (2015)
- Narcissistic Mortification: From Shame to Healing via Trauma, Fear, and Guilt - by Professor Sam Vaknin (2020)
- Shameful Core of Covert Narcissist: Inferior Vulnerability Compensated - by Professor Sam Vaknin (2023)
- Narcissist's Never-ending Vengeance (Redemption: A True Story) - by Professor Sam Vaknin (2023)
Jason Skidmore, of The Nameless Narcissist channel (diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and in therapy to learn about the disorder). Videos:
- How shame RULES the Narcissist - by Jason Skidmore
- Jason talks about living with a lot of shame in this video: Talk at Northeastern University about Narcissism by Jacob Skidmore (The nameless narcissist) - by Jason Skidmore
- Do narcissists really hate themselves? - by Jason Skidmore
Lee Hammock, aka MentalHealness - diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, also in therapy
- Compounding Shame as a Narcissist - by Lee Hammock
- Some narcissists are ashamed of the younger versions of themselves - by Lee Hammock
- How to deal with shame as a narcissist | Self Aware Narcissist Sundays Ep 15 - by Lee Hammock
PSYCHOLOGISTS TALK ABOUT SHAME AND THE NARCISSIST TOO
A Narcissist's Profound Struggle With Core Shame - by Dr. Les Carter
Rethinking A Narcissist's Shame Messages - by Dr. Les Carter
3 Reasons Narcissists Develop Authoritarian Patterns - by Dr. Les Carter
How shame molds the narcissist - by Dr. Ramani
This video is about how not to raise a narcissist.
Excerpts from the video:
... if you're the parent, and you're saying I do not want to raise a narcissistic child, what can you do?
Number one: Never, ever use shame as a means of addressing behavior or communication with your child. It is not good for them; it is not good for you. And to shame a child will never result in any kind of sustainable or meaningful change or improvement. If a child's behavior is an issue, address the behavior. Shaming or humiliating a child has no place in parenting.
Number two: You don't want to compare your child to other children. Not your own, not others. Because, as you can imagine, that is certainly going to foster a sense of shame or inadequacy about not measuring up. It's a set-up for the child to always feel that they need to look outside of themselves, and to compare themselves, instead of learning to internally manage who they are.
Number three: Never mock, or ridicule, or belittle, or use any form of defamatory language against a child. Now this should be "Human Being 101", but so many parents do it, and so many people grew up with it happening to them. Ironically having this happen to you as a child, hearing these kinds of things said to you, may be more likely to make you become vulnerable to a narcissist than to become a narcissistic person. But I would be willing to bet that for a child to be on the receiving end of really defamatory cruel language, is either going to end them up as a narcissist, or as an experiencer of narcissistic abuse. There really isn't a healthy path forward from that.
Number four: Remain aware of how your child's school manages comparisons between children. And how your child's school is able to talk about both strengths and deficits. A child who regularly feels shamed and ridiculed and humiliated at school, can be really rendered quite vulnerable to those exposures even if things are supportive at home. ...
... The childhood risk factors for a child developing a narcissistic personality are interestingly quite similar to the risk factors for being vulnerable to narcissistic abuse ...
THE VICTIMS OF NARCISSISTIC ABUSE TOO
ESPECIALLY CHILDREN
OTHERWISE THEIR BUDDING PERSONALITY WOULD NOT BE
CONTINUALLY CHALLENGED
AT EVERY STEP WITH "YOU ARE -" STATEMENTS
(and if you are the child, you will eventually realize the "you are-" statements are holding you back from a fulfilling life and self discovery)
By working on your own ethics and morality, their shaming sessions won't work.
It is easy to lie to and for narcissists when you are a child, because there are incredible consequences when you don't lie for them (even children know that the narcissist "has to" present a false front in public and with their friends). And a child knows they too are pressured to be invested in propping up the parent's false front too ... or else ...
In high school, some children become disgusted by the front, the phoniness, the false love, especially if there is openness and real love being expressed in peer relationships. Whether they rebel against their parent's false self has to do with how safe they feel in rebelling. If they don't feel safe, they feel there is no other choice than to lie for the parent, or to keep the relationship very, very superficial. But if you choose to lie for them to save them from themselves, parents also can tell pretty easily that you are lying for them out of fear. Lying is unethical, so it catches you, and makes you feel ashamed.
Parents know that they can scare the living daylights out of their children, and if they are narcissists, they abuse that power over and over again.
In adulthood, if they give you the silent treatment, that is their decision, and they have excuses for their decisions, or ways that they try to make those decisions your fault, always, no matter how much it hurts others or themselves.
But most of us who receive the silent treatment from a narcissistic parent are scapegoats. Let's be real about that. We've never been liked, otherwise they wouldn't have tried to change us so much, or disparaged us so much over all the little things they tend to do. Most likely they didn't even like our appearance, looks, or style of dress either, or it challenged them too much in terms of what they thought we should be for them.
A lot of scapegoats don't know who they are either, even if they have a greater sense than other children in the household. They've been listening to so many disparaging "you are -" statements since they were toddlers, and they never try to correct the parent because they can get pretty badly punished for that too. Arguing with narcissists is often pointless, unless there are, again, safe ways to say, "Stop defining me. I don't prescribe to your opinions." "Leave me alone, please. I am not who you think I am."
Narcissists are likely to rage if you say that, and unless you don't care whether they rage or not, you are likely not going to challenge them in that way.
And many scapegoats can struggle with an identity too. The disparaging "You are -" statements don't ring true to most scapegoats (they are often the first child to notice the coldness, the lack of empathy in their parent), but scapegoats also get so used to the "You are -" statements that they stop defending themselves to anyone who uses them, and life can become like Chauncy Gardner's in the novel by Jerzy Kosinski, "Being There" (link takes you to the movie version). You are an echoist, letting everyone you meet describe you, whether good, bad or indifferent. And you don't try correcting them - and that can, and does attract, other kinds of narcissists, and even psychopaths.
So it is important to find out who you are, and what your strengths are, how you need to protect yourself and how you don't. And in many ways, that journey never gets a full launch unless you go completely "no contact" with the narcissistic parent.
You might be attracted to people who describe you in better terms than your parent did (which most people probably will be doing because most healthy people don't need a scapegoat, and they don't feel compelled to be constantly negative about others either).
In my own life, I was much more of an echoist than I wanted to admit to myself. I was in a college art class one day, and my teacher asked me what I wanted to do with my life, and I said, "Write. Write books. Fiction and non-fiction." And he said, "That's interesting! A really talented visual artist like you wants to be a writer instead of an artist!" I changed my major to visual arts that day, and made him my career advisor.
And then I spent more than a decade afterward trying to decide whether I did it for him or did it for me.
So anyway, to get back to the narcissist going silent on you ... you take their silent treatment and you break the trauma bond. Unless they are an awfully aware narcissist, the relationship will always be a trauma bond. You grieve, you pound the desk, you do what you need to do to stop living your life to feed the narcissist's grandiosity fantasies.
And then you live life in the truth. You do not tie yourself to the narcissist's opinions of you (because they are just projection any way, and you are just being used because they can't deal with their own shame). You live in peace, because after living with a narcissist, you need peace, lots of it, way more than you have ever had in your life. You surround yourself with truth-tellers and empaths, and you speak and act authentically - always going towards the light of understanding and wisdom.
You figure out where your true interests lie, without input from others, at least for a couple of years or more, and you put your effort towards reaching those goals.
You give up on listening to them.
You discover who you really are without someone "shorting" you at every moment, keeping you from pushing forward into your true identity.
Hopefully somewhere along the line, you get domestic violence therapy or police interventions for the smear campaigns, or stalking, or continued attacks from the narcissist, and trauma therapy for all of the symptoms you experience from being in a narcissistic relationship.
But first you must heal:
Healing from Narcissistic Abuse is Possible! Narcissistic Abuse Survivor Story Podcast - by Lisa Romano
Effects of Narcissistic Abuse - by Arlin Cuncic, MA, reviewed by David Susman, PhD for Very Well Mind
Signs of a Trauma Bond; The Things You Say that Proves You are Defending a Narcissist - by Lisa Romano
Validation and Approval: Stop Looking Outside Yourself - by Lisa Romano
Childhood Abandonment Issues: Healing Feeling Like Everyone Will Abandon You/Life Coaching Tips - by Lisa Romano interviewing one of her patrons, Holly
Codependency Recovery with the Help of Brain Exercises - by Lisa Romano
NEVER BE NEEDY AGAIN/CO-DEPENDENCY CURE - by Lisa Romano
How To MOVE ON From A NARCISSIST & Get Over The End Of A CRAZYMAKING RELATIONSHIP - by Lisa Romano
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