Can You Love the Narcissist and Rescue Him?
Victims of narcissists often resort to fantasies and self-delusions to cope with their pain, believing that they can rescue the narcissist from their misery and misfortune. However, loving a narcissist is difficult, and any attempt to relate to them emotionally is doomed to failure. Narcissists are addicts in pursuit of gratification through the drug known as narcissistic supply, and they hone in on potential suppliers like cruise missiles. Victims of narcissists can become bitter and self-centered, lacking in empathy, and become more like the narcissist over time.
Narcissism Myths: Suicide, Types, Crises
Narcissists come in different types, with cerebral and somatic being the most common. All narcissists share certain traits, such as pathological lying and lack of empathy. Narcissists are not interested in people as such, but they love to have an audience as long as they provide them with narcissistic supply. Narcissists rarely commit suicide, but they react with suicidal ideation and reactive psychosis to severe stress. Narcissists prefer to find alternative sources of supply, and they are creative in doing so.
Victims’ Malignant Optimism and Rescue Fantasies
Victims of narcissistic abuse often exhibit a form of magical thinking, where they refuse to believe that some things are unsolvable or inevitable. They see hope in every fluctuation and are deceived by their need to believe in the ultimate victory of good. This is a defense mechanism against the realization that humans are insignificant in an indifferent universe. Narcissists abuse and leverage this need for order and meaning, using it to maltreat and harass their victims.
Narcissist: Accountable for His Actions?
Narcissists can control their behavior and actions, but they don’t care to. They feel superior and entitled, and others are inferior and there to cater to their needs. Narcissists lack empathy and are insensitive, but they can tell right from wrong and should be held accountable for their actions. They simply don’t care enough about others to refrain from acting abusively.
Narcissist Reacts to Criticism, Disagreement, Disapproval
Narcissists are hypervigilant and perceive every disagreement as criticism and every critical comment as complete and humiliating rejection. They react defensively, becoming indignant, aggressive, and cold. The narcissist minimizes the impact of the disagreement and criticism on himself by holding the critic in contempt, by diminishing the stature of the discordant conversant. When the disagreement or criticism or disapproval or approbation become public, the narcissist tends to regard them as narcissistic supply.
Narcissistic Defences and Personality
Narcissistic personalities are prone to depression, anxiety, shame, self-destructiveness, or rage when their habitual gratifications are threatened. Narcissism is an evolved version of the psychological defense mechanism known as splitting, where the narcissist either idealizes or devalues objects. The narcissist is obsessed with securing a reliable and continuous source of admiration, adulation, affirmation, and attention, and will become an evil person if they cannot secure positive supply. Narcissistic personalities slide the meanings of events to place themselves in a better light and maintain logical consistency while minimizing evil or weakness and exaggerating innocence or control.
Cope with Somatic Narcissist’s Infidelity
Narcissists who are somatic tend to have extramarital affairs as it sustains their grandiose fantasies and unrealistic self-image. It is difficult to alter this behavior, so setting up strict rules of engagement is necessary. If you insist on staying with a somatic narcissist, you must be prepared to serve as a source of narcissistic supply, which is an onerous task. If you find it difficult to confront the fact that your relationship is over, seek help from professionals and friends.
Narcissist’s Constant Midlife Crisis
The midlife crisis is a much-discussed but little understood phenomenon. There is no link between physiological and hormonal developments and the mythical midlife crisis. The narcissist is best equipped to tackle this problem as they suffer from mental progeria and are in a constant mid-life crisis. The narcissist’s personality is rigid, but their life is not. It is changeable, mutable, and tumultuous. The narcissist does not go through a midlife crisis because they are forever the child, forever dreaming and fantasizing, forever enamored with themselves.
Narcissist’s Insignificant Other: Typical Spouse or Intimate Partner
Living with a narcissist can be exhilarating, but it is always onerous and often harrowing. Surviving a relationship with a narcissist, maintaining a relationship, preserving it, insisting on remaining with a narcissist, indicates therefore the parameters of the personality of the victim, of the partner, of the spouse. The partner, the spouse, and the mate of a narcissist who insists on remaining in the relationship and preserving it is molded by it into the typical narcissistic mate, spouse, or partner. The two, the narcissist and his spouse, collaborate in this dance macabre.
Eating Disorders and Personality Disorders
Eating disorders are impulsive behaviors that can exist with cluster B personality disorders, particularly with borderline personality disorders. The key to improving the mental state of patients who have been diagnosed with both a personality disorder and an eating disorder lies in focusing it first upon their eating and sleeping disorders and only then on their personality disorders. The treatment of personality disorders requires enormous, persistent and continuous investment of resources of every kind by everyone involved, especially the patient. Patients with eating disorders may be in mortal danger, and the therapist’s goal is to buy them time.