Kitabı oku: «Fragile connections. How wounded narcissism prevents us from living in peace with ourselves and others», sayfa 4
Cases from Practice
These are very common stories we often discuss with clients. For example, they talk about difficulties in relationships, assuming that they are afraid of intimacy, unable to trust, unable to come close, keeping their distance. It seems to them that this stems from a lack of love and an inability to freely express their attraction to people.
Of course, that is possible too. But do you know what we discover after some time? What actually suspends their need for closeness is not so much the fear of expressing love but the impossibility of later expressing aggression toward the one they have made “good” for themselves.
We remain caught in this childlike splitting, according to which you cannot be angry at someone you love, and you cannot love someone you are angry at. Behind the inability to resolve conflicts, there is also the fear of losing your Self in the storm of feelings. “The scary part is not that I come closer, but that then I won't be able to resist you.” Our little anger, arising in moments of dissatisfaction and frustration, became such a threat to connection precisely because it always was supposed to lead to a rupture. You cannot stay with someone you are angry at. If he or she is bad, you must break the connection. And if it is inevitably going to happen, then why even begin?
This is the logic by which we live, protecting our Self from the internal conflict we do not know how to resolve. Because if you cannot both be angry and love at the same time, then it is safer to avoid closeness altogether. And for now, it is the only solution we can find to protect ourselves from the tension of unbearable feelings.
Tasks and Functions of the Supports of the Self
Each subsequent stage requires different qualities from our parents, so that they remain loving, reliable, and empathetic for us, that is, attuned to our real needs – so that they can serve as the Supports of the Self.
● Sleep time. The function of the Supports of the Self is to sustain the infant's hallucination that they are still inside, by providing yourself “at their disposal”, timely and sufficiently. Thus, the feeling of discomfort or tension will not overwhelm the little psyche.
● Symbiosis time. The task of the Supports of the Self is to submit to the will of the baby, maintaining their fantasy of omnipotence and continuing to be stable for their whims and needs. To be the face that joyfully responds to their smile. A rupture of symbiosis due to strong frustrations or growing tension without the mother's ability to soothe the child may negatively affect development.
● Hatching time. The task of the Supports of the Self is to remain stable during moments of presence and absence. It means seeing the child's anxiety, containing it, not collapsing under one's own anxiety about separateness. It means to comfort and encourage the child to grow and become themselves. This stage implies constant reflection and containment of emotions.
● Time for the boundary between “I” and “You”. The task of the Supports of the Self is to continue staying around without disappearing abruptly, so that the child does not lose the feeling of omnipotent control. At this stage, it is necessary to encourage exploration of the surrounding world. To find transitional objects that prepare the psyche for separation. This way the child will be able to endure situations where the mother disappears from view.
● Romance with the world. The task of the Supports of the Self is to be a guide into the big world where the child has abilities and capabilities. To reflect and support them. To rejoice and actively be present when the child shares their first victories. Healthy support of the child's exhibitionist manifestations: “Look at me! I can do it!”
● Awareness of one's own separateness. The task of the Supports of the Self is to endure the growing and constantly changing emotions of the child connected with their own successes and failures. To contain and return their fears, anger, sometimes even hatred over the mother not being there as much as they needed – all in “processed” form through parental reactions and consolation.
The tasks and functions of the Supports of the Self in each period are diverse. Sometimes they must support the child's fantasy of grandiosity, and at other times, they must confront him or her with the fact that their mother is not their possession. Sometimes, it is necessary to sustain fusion, and then to create quite the opposite conditions for experiencing separateness by both sides. During some time, there is only the child's feelings and desires, and then, gradually, the inner world of the other appears.
All this is necessary for the child to gradually become more independent and autonomous by accumulating psychic resources – not through abrupt cutting of ties, which leaves him or her feeling abandoned, lonely, and unwanted.
Case from Life
One morning, as my son and I were getting ready for school, I hurried him along in irritation and hurt him with something I said. Later, in the car, he was angry and pushed my hand away when I tried to pat his head. I had already apologized, but he sat turned away. We rode to school like that: he sulking, and I silent, not touching him. I respected his unwillingness to engage and his right not to return to contact with me right away.
Another time, after sports practice, he was irritated and upset because something had not worked out. I tried to ask him about it to support him. But it turned out that he needed me to be silent and leave him alone. And that is what I did.
These examples are not about me being a supermom. The first one illustrates an important aspect of growth, where a person forms the right to manage contact independently. He chooses when to come closer if he is hurt or angry, and he comes because he wants to, not because he has to. The second one shows that parents must sometimes step back in good time and not give what they think is needed, even if they believe it is for the child's good. Otherwise, they calm only themselves, turning the child into an extension of their own needs.
I want to show that we often think of parental tasks only as providing presence and support. But there is another category of functions that serve the development of the child's Self. Not giving when it is excessive. Not supporting when there is no request. Not chasing with kindness when there is no desire to receive it.
Mirrors, Heroes, and the Circle of Belonging
Of course, when we are little, our parents do almost everything for us and INSTEAD of us. Independently, we can only breathe, swallow, cling, and uncontrollably soil our diapers. But the Little Self also needs parents to perform a special kind of psychic work for us. They are to meet three of our major narcissistic needs. And how these needs are satisfied, determines whether we will emerge alive and real to ourselves or whether our Self will remain cut off and alienated from us.
Thus, for the Self to develop and, having been born, move toward its true embodiment, and for us to feel more and more ourselves, we need to use our parents in three roles: a mirror, a hero/magician, and a unity to which we can belong.
When we began to crawl, take our first steps, and say our first words, and as our abilities to control our body and reveal our potential increased, each of us wanted to see delight and joy in others. Such a response to our first scribbles or a memorized poem strengthened our faith in ourselves. We had no doubts about our accomplishments if we managed to see positive reactions from our loved ones. This is not just a desire for attention for its own sake but the first and most important need of the Self. A child needs a “mirror” – a person who reflects their achievements and emotions, saying, “Yes, I see you. You are wonderful!”
Similarly, each of us sought an example to follow in our parents. Think, for instance, about some recent course you took. You needed someone who was smarter, more experienced, more professional than you. It is true that we can grow and develop only by becoming similar to someone. And so, a child always seeks a powerful figure who inspires a sense of security, strength, and confidence. A father can be a hero, fair and steady, and a mother a magician, kind and wise. For the child, they are beacons whose light says, “I am strong, I can cope with life in this world, and so will you,” “I am wise and just. And you are too.” The hero helps the child to feel that they are not alone, that there is someone reliable nearby to emulate.
There is another important task that parents perform – they give the child a sense of belonging. This is the feeling that you are not alone, that your emotions and experiences are shared by someone close. If the mirror says to the child, “You are wonderful,” and the hero inspires, “You can handle it,” then belonging says, “We will go through all difficulties together.” This is the very unity, the sense of connection, the invisible thread that binds.
Belonging gives a sense of similarity and unity. The parent says to the child through their presence: “I understand you. What you feel is normal. We will get through this together”. Thus, the child gets a foundation for later building deep connections, trusting, and being part of something greater – a family, a team, a world. When a child grows up with such a sense of belonging, they know that their Self is not isolated. They understand that the world is not a foreign, cold space but a territory where there is a place for them, where they are needed and accepted as they are. Without a sense of belonging, a child may grow up feeling disconnected, as if their inner world matters to no one, as if they are always alone. It is precisely belonging that teaches the child to be connected with others without losing themselves.
These needs – to be seen, accepted, and to receive confirmation of one's significance – are not mere whims or signs of weakness, not caprices or indicators of selfishness. They are natural and the only possible desire to be yourself in a world where initially you do not even have yourself and where later you are forced to adapt and erase your individuality for the sake of important connections.
Our narcissism is to illuminate the path for the Self, reminding it why it came and who we can become if its potential is realized.
So that our Self does not lose its path, along which it learns and masters itself better and better, narcissistic needs stay with us for life. They do not disappear with age but are transformed. The adult Self still wants to be seen but no longer seeks endless validation. It seeks connection with idealized figures to continue growing and developing. It strives for belonging to groups of people with whom we have similarity and mutual understanding.
Case from Practice
One day, with one of my clients, we were discussing what had been happening in our work over the past years.
“In the beginning, I couldn't even see you. Honestly, I couldn't even see myself. I kept getting lost trying to understand what was happening to me. And if I ever did understand, I didn't trust myself. It was like being lost in the dark without any landmarks. A very heavy feeling.”
“I understand. And how was it for you to work with me while in that state?”
“I just wanted to please you all the time. This desire simply took me over, and I didn't even notice what was happening around me.”
“That is natural. It happens when one's own Self hasn't yet been firmly established inside. Do you remember what you wanted from me then?”
“Just for you not to abandon me, to stay close.”
“Why was that important?”
“I needed external evaluation. I had none of my own.”
“Yes, that is common. At the very beginning of our development, we need supports and mirrors. We are not yet thinking about who is in front of us or what kind of relationship we have. We are simply clinging to someone so that something inside can begin to emerge, so that our Self can start taking shape.”
The client quickly added,
“But back then, I didn't trust you at all.”
I smiled.
“That is normal. How can you trust anyone when you have only the experience of distrust? It works like a filter through which we perceive all new significant people. But I stayed around anyway. And even if you didn't trust me, you still took my stability and reliability, and tucked them inside yourself.”
The Emergence of the Inner World
Perhaps, you already understand that our narcissistic needs – to be seen, noticed, and valued, are not about grandiosity or a desire for importance for its own sake. They run much deeper than the wish to prove our exceptionalism or superiority, and are much closer to the essence of our Self. It is precisely through the satisfaction of these needs that we become real to ourselves.
The better the functions of the Supports of the Self work, the greater our potential connection with ourselves: with our desires, feelings, needs, and so on.
Imagine a tiny newborn baby boy who has just entered the world. His eyes are still adjusting to the light, his body learning to breathe and feel. He lifts his little hand, accidentally bringing it into his field of vision. Tiny fingers move, but the baby looks at them and sees something utterly foreign and unfamiliar. “What is this? Where did it come from? Why is it moving?” asks his psyche, which is still unformed, though he is not yet aware of these questions.
The baby might look at his hand like at something external, unrelated to him. For him, it is not yet “mine”. It is simply a part of the world that happened to appear before his eyes. Sometimes, it moves, sometimes, it is still, but the baby does not yet know that he is the one moving it. His natural, instinctive Self makes itself known through the first impulses: to move, to grasp, to reach. But there is not yet a connection between these impulses and the world.
The same thing happens with feelings. Hunger is not an internal sensation; it is a storm that overtakes him like a real natural disaster. Crying is not his own sound; it is just a scream that suddenly appears nearby. Joy, fear, and pain are like fleeting flashes of light, which the baby experiences without understanding that they originate from within himself. His psyche is like a kaleidoscope: colors and shapes shift chaotically, but there is no one to hold them together into a coherent picture.
And then his mother comes into this chaos. Her smile, her soft hands, her voice saying, “You are my little one. Look, it is your hand; see how you are moving it.” She helps him see that the waving hand is his own. She says, “You're crying because you're hungry. I will feed you now.” She gives the chaotic bursts of discomfort in his inner world their first meanings.
When the mother says, “I know you're angry right now, and that is okay,” she is doing something very important: not only noticing the child's anger but showing that anger is a temporary state that can be understood and endured. As if she says, “Your anger does not make you bad. It is just a feeling, and we can handle it together.” The child sees that his emotions do not frighten his mother, and thus, feels safe: “My natural feelings can be named, understood, and they will not destroy me.”
The mother helps the child take the first step in realizing: his anger is his own feeling, not chaos crashing down from outside. It is as if she takes this feeling, processes it through her adult psyche, and returns it to the child in the form of a clear message: “These are your emotions, and that is okay.” Gradually, such moments teach the child that his inner world can be understood and that emotions are connected with certain situations and have a beginning and an end.
The mother becomes the voice that says, “This is yours. This is you”. Through her, the child begins to see that his feelings are not chaos but his own inner world. His hands, body, and voice are not something foreign but a part of himself. Gradually, the child's psyche starts forming its first connections with reality. These connections are still fragile, like fine threads, but they are already beginning to weave his inner world into something whole. And there is something touchingly magical in this process.
But the formation of connections with reality is not just about awareness. It is also about the emergence of a Self. The child wants to be significant to someone so that they can mean something to themselves. They want to be seen by others in order to see themselves. Without a sense of significance, their inner world will remain inaccessible to them and will feel empty. We would lose ourselves within ourselves…
Deep Connections – A Space for the Self
But parents, acting as reflectors or ideal figures for emulation, cannot clear the path for the creation of our healthy psychic structures by this alone. We need deep emotional connections with the environment.
It is not about the desire to be accepted unconditionally, no matter who we are. It is about having someone nearby who can endure our uncertainty and stay with us while we are still searching for ourselves, confronting different parts of who we are: fear, anger, joy, tenderness. A child does not need the world to always say “yes” to them. What matters is the feeling that even when they are faced with a “no”, it does not make their existence impossible.
We learned to be ourselves through the way our parents helped us endure our states. When we cried, it was not necessary for them to soothe us immediately. What mattered was that they stayed with us, bore our crying, sadness, and tiredness without trying to fix them.
This does not mean it is necessary to allow “everything” to the child; rather, it means giving them the opportunity to encounter their real self without feeling rejected.
Here I will make a first remark about rejection. Today, in the era of mass fascination with psychology, the word “rejection” is almost demonized, much like “narcissism”. It has come to the point where any unfavorable reaction to our actions is perceived as rejection of our very being. As if the task of growing up is not to learn to cope with people's feelings and behavior directed at us but to ensure that we never provoke any emotions or reactions in them. Since otherwise, their real and unaffected reaction is already a rejection of our very essence. For instance, one of my clients told me that her husband completely refuses to accept her right to freedom and distance. When I asked to clarify it, it turned out that he… gets upset when she says she wants to go on vacation alone.
“Perhaps, it would be very strange if he rejoiced or sighed with relief in response to such words? Even if for you that would be total and unconditional acceptance of your freedom to decide what to do with your vacation.”
So, the point is this: initially, a child does not perceive as rejection the ordinary attempts of a mother to correct their behavior or her emotional responses to what they have done. If there is no humiliation, mockery, or abandonment, then the emotional exchange is perfectly natural and normal. “I see that you're angry, but it upsets me that you want to hit me.” “I understand that you want a candy, but I cannot give it to you because you're allergic. Come, I'll comfort you, let's find something else.”
True emotional connection is not a promise that everything we do will be accepted. It is the confidence that our mistakes will not destroy the relationship.
We can act wrongly, be in a bad mood, get angry – and it does not mean we will stop being loved. Not for a particular incident, but in general. It also does not mean we will never be stopped or told, “You cannot do that.” A parent who can set boundaries without rejecting the child shows them the main thing: your actions do not define you, they can be corrected, and your existence is never in question, nor is our relationship.
Such connections are complex, because they involve two people: the child, who is just searching for themselves, and the parent, who also does not always know how to act. A parent can just as easily be angry, tired, or make mistakes. Deep connection arises not out of their flawlessness but out of their willingness to stay in the relationship even when things are hard. To be with the child in their confusion, instead of demanding immediate clarity. To stay even if one wants to run from the child's tantrum or one's own helplessness.
Children do not seek boundless acceptance. They seek someone who will be with them while they figure themselves out. Someone who will not be afraid of their weaknesses and at the same time will not let these weaknesses completely overtake them. Someone who can say: “You made a mistake, but it is not the end of the world. You're upset, but we'll get through it.” Deep connections do not lead to permissiveness but create space for mistakes, explorations, and failures – without paying a terrible price.
When we are little, we do not know who we are, but it is precisely through relationships that we begin to feel: “I can explore something inside myself. And this something will not destroy my connection with others”. It is precisely where the foundation for the Self is formed – not as a static image that must always be accepted, but as a living process in which we grow and change, trying ourselves out in the presence of someone who can endure it.
