Kitabı oku: «Fragile connections. How wounded narcissism prevents us from living in peace with ourselves and others», sayfa 3
Case from Practice
Once, with a client, we were examining why she had absolutely no free time. She worked, studied, managed the house, raised children – she was always busy. Of course, she got tired, but allowing herself to rest was impossible for her.
I explained that no matter how unbearable the symptoms may seem, they are still easier to endure than to face what we are not ready to face.
At some point, I said, “It seems that even now you are rushing. As if you need to find the right answer.”
“Otherwise, why are we here?” she replied.
“What if you allowed yourself to slow down a little and not hurry?”
She thought for a moment and then said quietly, “Then I would feel too anxious.”
“I understand. But what would happen if you didn't try to fill our contact with quick words or actions? If you simply stayed in this state?”
“I don't know…” She fell silent, then added, “Maybe I would see the emptiness.”
This emptiness frightened her. She confessed, “I've worked so hard on myself, only to find this? How horrible!”
“I want to remind you that right now you continue to exist. You are here – confused and thoughtful. That is still you. What would happen if you allowed yourself to be like this and let me see you like this?”
“You would think I'm boring and stupid. And then you'd say it is not interesting to work with me and we would end therapy.”
We started to explore this fear. I asked, “It must be hard to always try to look like a 'proper' client?”
“Honestly, I don't even notice it anymore. It's become habitual for me.”
Then I clarified, “So, you fear that I won't be able to handle seeing you thoughtful, without ready answers?”
“Yes.”
“And if you could honestly tell me what you need, what would it be?”
“Probably, that I need more time. I'm not one of those who instantly grasp everything.”
Gradually, she began to remember, “When I was different, not like everyone else, I was mocked at. It hurt so much. I learned that it is better not to show anything of my own. 'Stay silent, and they'll think you're smart.' But now it feels like I not only don't speak but don't even feel anything of my own.”
“I understand. If every expression of individuality results in pain, risking being yourself becomes too dangerous,” I said.
“Yes,” she agreed. “It is sad: I was afraid of my feelings for so long that I stopped noticing them.”
“It is very sad. But I want to point out that of course you are always filled with something. But since you broke the connection with yourself for the sake of external contacts, it feels like emptiness.”
These words seemed to touch her. For the first time in our sessions, she dared to linger in this feeling, not running away, not filling it with something external.
Afterword to Chapter One
Remember the terrifying creatures in the Harry Potter books – the Dementors? Their presence made people feel as if all the light had disappeared from the world. It was not just a gloomy feeling but an unbearable, all-consuming cold that seeped into the very soul. As if it sucked not only joy but also hope itself, leaving only painful memories and fear.
People felt utterly powerless, defenseless, as if all the good moments of their lives had turned out to be a lie. The most terrible episodes, the most frightening losses, and forgotten grievances would surface in their minds. Dementors seemed to draw a person's past out of them, forcing them to relive the pain over and over again.
Physically, it resembled falling into icy water: the body would become heavy, breathing labored, and a sticky horror would spread all around. Moreover, with each passing moment, it seemed more and more that the cold would never end, that there was no way out, and that the darkness would last forever. Dementors robbed people not only of happiness but of the very sense that happiness was even possible. It felt like the awareness of absolute abandonment when it seems that no one will come to help and that salvation is just an illusion. And the scariest part – this feeling did not quickly fade. Even when the Dementors left, their imprint remained in human souls for a long time. People could sense emptiness, as if a part of them had been irrevocably lost.
Many of us, to a greater or lesser extent, carry both the mentioned symptoms and these deeper experiences. This does not make us narcissists. Such states can be caused by traumatic events where the psyche, trying to protect itself, walls itself off from both the inner and outer worlds.
But for those who have survived narcissistic trauma, these sensations are especially familiar: inside – darkness, silence, and emptiness, as if the connection with the living, life-seeking center has been severed. Moreover, the emergence of the warm, vulnerable part that could reach out to the world and to people becomes forbidden and aggressively suppressed. All this creates a feeling of disconnection from others, leaving a sense of isolation and unrealness of what is happening.
Let us set out on a journey of exploration and understanding of what exactly was lost in the process of the formation and development of our Self. And how narcissism, out of a normal defensive mechanism, turned into an instrument for halting our vitality and spontaneity. The goal of our journey is to feel again the connection with ourselves, with others, with the world. Because behind the outer armor, there is still light that is waiting to be noticed.
Chapter Two
Conditions for the Emergence of the Self
Getting to Know the Self
When we are born, we do not yet have a Self as a stable psychic structure capable of performing different functions. It will be formed later. But imagine that inside each of us, there is initially a “seed” or some kind of a prototype of our Self – a tiny but incredibly powerful core. It is like a bright little flame hidden deep inside, and whatever happens, it must remain untouched. This core is our essence, our true nature, what makes us unique. Let us call it the Self. It becomes the foundation of our personality and defines who we are and where our authenticity lies.
Born together with our body, the Self goes through a long journey to one day fully unfold its potential. At the beginning of life, it exists as chaotic energy that needs contact with parents. And not just any contact, but warmth, care, love. Like a little star born somewhere in a cold cosmic valley, it reaches out to the great suns to be nourished by their light. Receiving this parental “nourishment”, the Self acquires its own psyche, and we begin to form as personalities.
At first, we are completely dependent on our parents, and there is no question yet of individuality. We learn to feel ourselves as part of something steadier and more stable, identifying with our parents as examples of what we could become.
And only based on belonging and similarity with someone, our individuality begins to form.
A little star must first orbit a great Sun to learn how to shine on its own someday.
The Journey of the Little Self
Having been born, the Little Self travels its own path, moving from one developmental stage to another, becoming stronger at each step. When it grows up, it will no longer be just potential. Each day, month, and year, it gathers more resources and capabilities through the investments made by its environment. In this way, it builds our psyche around itself. And it gains the ability to appear in reality, to manifest as our unique, incomparable Self.
At the very start of its journey, the Self goes through several essential stages.
The Time of Sleep (up to one month of age). In the first weeks of life, the baby hardly wakes up. His world can be cozy, quiet, and blurry, as if he is still floating in warm waters, just as before birth. When he feels hunger or discomfort, he calls for help. But, living in the hallucination of his own grandeur, he feels that nourishment comes by itself. He believes he possesses such mighty power that it compels other people to obey him and provide nourishment, comfort, and calm. As if the infant lives in his own world so far, where there are no others. His main task is to get used to the world, to the sounds and smells of this new space. His Self does not yet exist, just as his mother “does not yet exist”.
The Time of Symbiosis (1–5 months of age). After a month, the baby begins to notice that there is another figure in his world. And she completely obeys his magical power: always ready to embrace, feed, and comfort. This is the mother. Together they create a symbiosis, like two travelers walking hand in hand. The mother becomes for the infant an extension of himself. It is during this period that a magical moment occurs – a smile. The baby smiles at his mother, and she, seeing it, feels like the happiest person in the world. Their bond becomes stronger. This is the time when the little one's impulses are perceived by the adult and returned with a smile, joy, and mutual pleasure. There is no separate Self yet; there is only a shared psyche, where all regulation occurs through the adult.
The Time of “Hatching” (5–8 months of age). Around six months of age, the baby “hatches” from his psychic cocoon. He stays awake longer, actively explores the world, and gradually distances himself from his mother. But each separation still causes anxiety. He may cry even if his mother leaves for just a minute. Yet he learns, and gradually the awareness strengthens within: if the mother leaves, it does not mean she will not return. And during this absence, he finds the strength to be himself. The encounter with separateness is a very delicate moment. On the one hand, it is important for the mother to withstand and encourage the baby's attempts to separate and become more independent. On the other hand, it is important that the mother's disappearances are not too abrupt or prolonged and that the anxiety from her absence is somehow soothed.
The Time for the Boundary between “I” and “You” (8–16 months of age). As the baby grows, he starts to notice that he has hands and feet he can control. He also realizes that his mother is not entirely him but a separate person. This discovery, of course, brings joy, but anxiety also increases. Sometimes, it rightly seems to the child that his mother can disappear, and his powerful control over her is lost. At the same time, his interest in the world around him grows. The child learns to crawl, tastes toys, and even finds his first “treasures”, like a favorite toy or the edge of a blanket, which help him cope with separation when his mother is not around. Pressing his beloved white teddy bear to himself, for example, my one-year-old son would calm down and fall asleep. This was his first transitional object, as psychologists say. Such object plays a key role in the transitional period between experiencing fusion with mother and the understanding that she might temporarily get out of sight.
If one finds a suitable transitional object, one can safely exit the state of shared psyche without experiencing the terror of psychic collapse.
After all, the mother used to be a part of the child himself. Therefore, when she disappears traumatically and prematurely from the psyche, the infant feels as if he has lost part of himself, thus, losing the ability to function as well as he did before with the help of an adult.
Romance with the World (16–24 months of age). Once the child has learned to walk, the most exciting part of his early journey begins. He feels like the king of the world, an explorer of uncharted lands. Every step is a victory. Every dropped and found object – a new mystery. The child runs, laughs, and rejoices in his independence. The mother is nearby, but now not as a part of him but as a faithful friend and protector.
Some researchers, and quite justly, in my opinion, say that it is during this period that an active and self-affirming Self is formed. Encountering the joyful reactions of adults to the emergence of new abilities, which radically change the previous direction of development, the child's individuality can receive a ticket into life. Or, conversely, it may be faced with the adults' indifference and the unimportance of his first achievements. Then the normal and healthy childhood exhibitionism will be interrupted, and the child will begin to turn all the impulses to share what he can do inward.
Realizing One's Separateness (2–5 years old). Each day, the child better and better understands that: his mother is not him. She can leave, she has other things to do. This discovery first stirs a storm of emotions: anger, sadness, resentment. But gradually, the child learns to endure such moments. He begins to understand: even when his mother is far away, she still remains in his heart. And that he can cope on his own, be independent, and find joy in it.
Thus, step by step, the little one grows, getting to know the world, people, and himself. His journey is full of complexities, and each step strengthens his psyche. At any stage, certain disturbances and breakdowns are possible, which, though they may not destroy the psyche, activate those very defenses that later block natural and free development. We will talk about this later. For now, let us look at what allows the Little Self to initially embody what we came into this world with.
How Parents Become the Supports of Our Self
Even though we come into the world with a body that already knows how to breathe, cry, and demand, our psyche is just a barely functioning mechanism, merely ready for development but still made up of entirely scattered fragments. We do not know how to manage ourselves, regulate our emotions, calm ourselves, or understand ourselves. All we know at this stage is how to cling and to need.
In such fragility, our parents become something greater than just adults who feed, cradle, or change diapers. They become the Supports of the Self – those who help us not only survive but also begin to form our Self. They are the bridge leading us out of chaos into a world where we can understand who we are, what we want, and how to cope with what we feel. At the same time, parents are our guides not only into the real external world. It is through their reactions and reflections that our inner world becomes ours. It gathers itself from chaos and transforms into our own reality.
To illustrate that, I will share a story: once, my almost twelve-year-old son needed a minor, yet nonetheless, real surgery. General anesthesia, rehabilitation, pain. He kept himself together, was brave, and handled everything wonderfully that day. But the next day, it “caught up with him”. There was an emotional outburst. The inner “hysteria” as manifestation of the restrained tension that could not be shown became external. He directed all his feelings at me, needing someone understanding and accepting to share them with. They ceased to be just his fear and pain; they were met, reflected as normal and natural emotions, processed by my psyche, and returned to him as comfort and reassurance.
We initially “borrow” the parental psyche so that it performs various functions for us while our own cannot. Parents at first perform important functions on our behalf: they help regulate emotions, make decisions, and feel safe.
You could say that our psyche structures itself around the Self through our parents, placing them inside.
Gradually, these functions are supposed to become our own.
Ideally, the parents' role weakens, leaving behind stable structures within us to lean on: the ability to care for ourselves, cope with difficulties, and find inner balance.
This process can be imagined as the “embedding” of parental images (their behaviors, values, reactions) into our psyche. They become figures around which it forms. If the parents fulfilled their role well enough, the necessary structures become strong and help us live. If not, “holes” might remain, which we try to patch up through relationships or defense mechanisms.
But here is something that is important to understand right now. All these ideal models of psychic development that I have written about and will continue to write about further exist only to provide a reference for “relative norms”. And we, ordinary people, always carry a whole “bunch” of our own deviations and disruptions that are an integral part of our story and personal uniqueness. In our psyche, there will always be “holes”, and thus, a need for defenses and compensations. It is normal, it is not some personalized punishment for our unworthiness.
Thus, our task is not to sprinkle ashes on our heads over the impossibility of erasing the consequences of our upbringing forever but only to make sure they do not severely affect the quality of our lives. As they say, psychology does not guarantee you happiness, since its purpose is to free you from excess suffering.
Becoming completely healed and independent from your past is impossible.
But it is quite realistic to learn to perceive it adequately and to use your own potential to achieve adult goals, like love, creativity, money, and sex.
Love as the Foundation of Wholeness
At the very beginning of life, love seems and feels absolute: you are me, I am you, and the whole world exists only for us. Merging with the parent is not just pleasant (although it is pleasant too); it is vitally necessary. Without it, we simply could not cope with the chaos of early experiences.
But let us not idealize it. Infant love is not about emotional experiences; it is need-love, dependency-love, demanding-love. In essence, a love that screams: “You must be here, or I simply don't exist!” And that is normal. At the beginning of our journey, we are all like that: little, demanding, incredibly vulnerable, and at the same time absolutely egocentric.
It would be wonderful if all people consisted only of love. Just imagine: our parents – pure love, tenderness, and acceptance. And we ourselves, would be made only of pure love the moment we were born. But, unfortunately, that would be an evolutionary dead end. Fusion, attraction, appeal, connection, bond – all this is indeed powered by the force of love. But along with it, its sister – aggression – is born. And without it, there would be no chance for our separation, withdrawal from fusion, autonomy, individuality, and finally, adulthood.
Thus, to become a human being, we need a lot of love and reliance on connection, and to become a personality, we need a lot of aggression.
Do you remember Akhmatova's lines?
“If only you knew from what rubbish,
Poetry grows, knowing no shame…”
Similarly, our Self grows not only out of beautiful feelings and emotions. It is formed from traces of love and aggression born in all important relationships in our lives. And today it continues to develop at that same intersection, believe me. Only sometimes, instead of exchanging with the world, we direct aggression solely at ourselves. That is the root of all the disorders that ruin our lives. But we will return to this a little later.
Our need-love, dependency-love, and so forth have many “faces”. We want to be fed, cleaned, freed from pain and tension. We want attention, reflection, consolation, belonging, warmth, closeness, acceptance of our feelings and their processing. We need control and supports, examples and ideals.
All these are the needs of our infant psyche, which may be satisfied – or may not. When we get what we want and need, we feel an exchange of love: our requests are accepted by the adult, who finds a way to fulfill them and returns that to us. When acceptance does not happen, there is only one conclusion: our love is not needed. This inevitably leads to: “I am not needed”, “I am not valuable”, “I am not important”.
In such cases, aggression follows love to erase all its previous contributions. In the infant world, any anger crosses out the value of what was previously received. And love is devalued by every new deprivation we must endure. It easily evaporates under the first rays of disappointment, the first shadows of frustration.
Love overcomes aggression not by force but by endurance. It accepts anger, pain, and disappointment without retreating. This is precisely what we are taught in the first years of life. When our anger encounters the parent's softness and acceptance, when our frustration does not break the connection but becomes part of the dialogue, we begin to understand: love can endure. It does not dissolve from anger, does not disappear if we are imperfect. On the contrary: it becomes larger, deeper, more stable.
Maybe it sounds silly, but I will now give an example… of my dog. When she (sorry for the details) is in heat, it becomes very noticeable that she wants love and closeness. At least, that is what I tell my son when he asks me why she whines. I am sure that what emotions do in the human psyche, instincts do in a dog.
And every time during such periods, when we leave the house, she immediately drags one of my slippers onto her bed. As if saying, “You left, but I need a piece of you to miss you less. You stay with me even if you aren't around. I comfort myself and maintain the connection.”
My son says, “Mom, I feel so sorry for her.” And I answer, “Oh, don't worry, son, she found a way to feel less lonely and to better endure our absence.”
But the most interesting thing happens when we come home. I take slippers away from her and put them back on my feet. Guess what the dog does? She starts biting my feet in those slippers, as if playing but obviously “scolding” me for leaving her.
This incredibly accurately reflects the inner dynamic of a child who, even finding comfort in something, still feels anger at the mother for leaving them for something else. At such moments, they lose a lot: safety, the certainty that they are still loved, the sense that they are valuable enough to be chosen over something else. Can they remain emotionless? The emotions are there – but sometimes, there is no one to share them with, or showing them to the parent feels too dangerous. I, for instance, stroke the dog, showing her that I am not angry and that I understand her desire to “punish” me. But few of us, when we were children, were comforted this way, few had our fears and feelings shared during such moments. And even fewer parents could endure our anger about it.
In a healthy version, it is precisely through parental acceptance that our infantile aggression begins to transform. It ceases to be the enemy that attacks love. And only then, over time, do we develop a whole image of the parent: one who loves but sets boundaries, leaves but always returns and continues to love. One who can be angry at us but can also be gentle and respectful.
For example, my son often sulks at me and says I am mean or bad. Once, as an experiment, I asked him, “Tell me, isn't it normal that I'm the bad one and you are not?”
“Yeah.”
“Great. So, you're okay, right?”
“Yeah.”
“But to be honest, we should also admit that I'm not always bad and often do nice things for you, right?”
“Yeah.”
That is how we live. A child does not naturally have the option, “I'm fine; it is just my mom who's losing it”. Everything that happens in the relationship is attributed to itself by their narcissism: “I did something wrong”, or “I'm not good enough”. Not “Mom cannot love, see, or notice me”, but “I'm not worthy of her attention and interest”.
At such moments, I help my child not only to maintain a normal image of himself (“I am okay”) but also to see me as a whole: not only bad but also good. If we do not do this for our children, the world divides into black and white. We risk constantly being either on the white side – ideal, completely good – or on the black side, when we make a mistake or fail to meet expectations.
And yes, love in this story is not just tenderness. It is endurance, the parent's willingness to return, even when they themselves would prefer to hide for a while (or a long time). It is the strength to stay around and thus build the foundation for a whole and resilient Self. Because love is not about everything being perfect – it is about the ability to stay in the relationship despite its complexity. And even if childhood love sometimes sounds like a cry for help, it is out of this very cry that our capacity to love and accept, both ourselves and others, is born.
Only in the union of these forces, love and aggression, does an integral psyche appear.
It contains not only belonging and resemblance to others but also the separateness of our Self, which asserts itself through standing up for itself in relationships. If aggression remains forbidden, then our Self will constantly stumble over the impossibility of resisting others, saying “no”, and defending itself.
