IT'S HARD TO BE GOD. DRAMA OF NARCISSA

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Helen Thornycroft, Narcissus. 1876 g.

My last note "" caused a great resonance. There were many reviews, letters, comments. Among them, and about the "one-sidedness of judgment."

This, my essay, is about the drama of Narcissus. Try to talk about what is happening to him. About looking at this world through his eyes.

I was born. Born to be special. No, I didn't feel it right away. Then, when I learned to feel and understand.

What family was I born into? I had a choice. I could have been born into a family where my parents decided it was “time to have a child” - like everyone else. Or, for example, that my mother determined that “now he will definitely not leave me” - this is about my father. Or, let's say that "age is running out." Or the second marriage was "consolidated" by me. I had a choice about where to be born, but almost no choice about how to be born. And I was born special.

What is my peculiarity - I am not a child, I am a function. This is how I was conceived. This is my functionality - it puts me on the same level with an object or a machine - with something soulless. And in the place where people have a soul - I have a hole - a bottomless well.

No, everything could be corrected, of course, even there - in early childhood. Even with all the conditioning of my birth. If my parents loved me just because I am me. They would be interested in my feelings and experiences. We were glad that they have me - the way I am. But that didn't happen.

Painting by Ekaterina Pyatakova "Spring smile"

I always felt that I was not good enough: "It could have been better." And not good enough in comparison with others: "They have only fives, and you …". And there was anxiety that the people closest to me might reject me because of this. I also felt that the burden of expectations was laid on me, and I could not cope: "I am at your age already, and you …". And it was a shame. I also felt guilty: "I refused in connection with your appearance.."

Anxiety has become a background in my life - that I cannot cope, I cannot, I do not correspond. Anxiety in seeking evaluation from others: "What am I?" And the fear of this assessment. Anxiety, shame, guilt, envy, fear, jealousy, powerlessness, contempt, emptiness, disappointment - the main feelings that were held in the emptiness of the bottomless well of my soul - settled as mucus on its walls.

Sometimes I felt at the TOP OF THE WORLD. That's it - with all the big letters, of course. Joy, happiness, fun, excitement, inspiration, pleasure, inspiration - such moments of triumph echoed with these feelings.

When did this happen? When I managed to get this very five, for example, or tell a rhyme on a chair, or play a violin for guests, or win a competition - in general, I did something successfully. Then I was loved and praised. And they admired me. And the parents looked with love and pride: "This is OUR child!".

This, however, did not last long at all. For tomorrow or in a week it was no longer important and not valuable for those for whom all this is - for whose love it is all. And the bottomless emptiness of the well inside me was devoured by these short flashes of light.

I grew up and studied with my parents. The first thing I learned was to evaluate and devalue. And I did it even better than they did. Because it extended not only to your achievements, your qualities, yourself, but also to others and to the world as a whole.

My life is like a roller coaster. The euphoria of what has been achieved - the feeling of being God, the Master of the World, Bruce the Almighty - and again a collapse into the abyss of the emptiness of one's own insufficiency, one's own insignificance.

Bright life? Yes, bright. I am the Prince - sometimes the Beggar, now on the airplane - now in the cesspool (thanks to Anna Paulsen and Yulia Rubleva for the metaphors - author's note) And these swings are pretty exhausting. I have insomnia and other psychosomatic manifestations. Sometimes, when the limit of my inner anxiety exceeds the limit of my strength, I fall into depression.

“I am only when I..” - this is the condition of my existence.

I am just an elusive reflection in the mirror of others.

Will H. Low Narcissus

I grew up. I have learned to survive with my emptiness in my chest.

I fill it with anything: status, things, apartments, cars. Sometimes food and alcohol. It also happens that through work and active participation in the lives of other people - I try to prove to others how good I am, in order to somehow reduce the fear of appearing worthless.

It seems to me that in such short periods - I am. But this is only a temporary sensation. And my suffering, when I achieve something I want, only intensifies. It’s as if that all-consuming emptiness inside me sucks in all the good - my experience and achievements - I cannot appropriate it, my sense of self-sufficiency is so short-lived that it seems that it’s not it at all.

I seek closeness with myself, trying to find it in closeness with others. Therefore, my life is filled with relationships. But my problem is that I don't know what real intimacy is. When I reach out to another in search of love, then at the very beginning I have two fears - to be rejected and to be absorbed. Rejected because of their own insignificance - "after all, sooner or later it will be exposed and the other will see what I really am." And the fear of being absorbed, dissolved in another - "my gilding, my grandeur, my perfection will fade from the fact that the other will touch me."

My relationship with others is like the Colossus with feet of clay - shiny but precarious and eventually destroyed. Sometimes the partner leaves on his own - unable to withstand either “being put on a pedestal” or “falling” from there with a crash. Or when he gets tired of giving endlessly, receiving in return only crumbs of my gratitude, tenderness and recognition. Sometimes out of fear that I will be rejected - I make a “proactive move”, accusing my partner of all imaginable and inconceivable sins - and then the relationship also collapses.

I never find in another what I seek - mother's love. I have no idea that in a healthy partnership she is not there and cannot be. And when I get tired of looking for love, I agree to admiration. It is important for me to hear about who I am. Without this, I am not. And not even admiration for external beauty - but recognition of my depth, uniqueness, intelligence, originality - this is what for a short time can bring me closer to my I.

It's hard for me to decide on something new. I experience it as "I'm not ready." I'm scared to be inconsistent, inappropriate. Therefore, I am still in the job that doesn’t suit me, with the person that doesn’t suit me and in the place that I don’t like. I decide to change only when what is - no longer fills my inner emptiness.

More than evaluations of internal or external - I got used to it for all my years of life - this is how I look at the world and at myself in the world - I am afraid of meeting with the experience of evaluation - the experience of shame. This feeling is so intolerable that I repress it - I do not realize it - I am ashamed to experience shame. And at the same time, it is always with me - like a total feeling of my own inadequacy.

It is the shame and fear of contact with him that prevent me from deciding to go to psychotherapy. And if I go, then, of course, to the "best psychotherapist" and rather to improve myself. And I will ask him for the "recipe" for this very perfection. And I will act according to the scheme proven over the years: idealization - "my case is special", "only you can help me" and devaluation - "this is not for me, it does not help me" - devaluation of myself in the process of psychotherapy, "and for what I actually I pay money "- devaluation of the psychotherapist," psychotherapy is a pseudoscience and it is for fools "- devaluation of psychotherapy in general.

I am infinitely tired of living this way. Sometimes, in especially critical periods, the thought even comes to me "to rid the world of its own insignificance."

What would I like, what is my dream and what have I been looking for all my life?

I would like inner peace. I would like to feel confident that "I am good, even if not..". I would like not to chase all my life for elusive goals and an elusive image of myself. I would like to feel support, fullness, and not a gaping hole inside me. I would like to feel myself. I would like to reunite with myself. Find yourself.

Oleg Anatolyevich Akulshin Narcissus (study) 2006

If you measure your success with the measure of others' praise and censure, your anxiety will be endless.

- Lao Tzu

What did I want to say to my essays?

First of all, it is addressed to the Narcissists, of course.

I wanted to say that I understand you. I also have a narcissistic part.

I also wanted to invite you to therapy.

Not for a meeting with me - Irina Stukaneva), therefore, not only and not so much to myself as to a psychotherapist,

and in therapy for Your meeting with you.

The path will not be short, but believe me - it's worth it!