Narcissistic Trauma As A Catalyst For Personal Growth

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

In the wonderful work of Mark Ageev, "A Romance with Cocaine", one interesting collision of life is described that occurs with a minor character and subsequently drastically changes his fate. Someone Burkevitz, an unremarkable schoolboy, while answering his homework, finds himself in a shameful situation - snot of impressive size flies out of his nose. The reaction of the class followed immediately - the snot was characterized in the most detailed way and this physiological oversight entered the register of the most significant events of the current time. Soon after that, Mr. Burkevitz, and before this event was not very sociable, became even more closed, but this expected characteristic was added to the functionality that surprised everyone. Burkevitz began to slowly but inexorably move forward to the top of the class hierarchy and at the end of the course of study already demonstrated an exceptional aptitude for science. Later he made a brilliant career as an official. A portrait of his personality would be incomplete without mentioning an important feature that determined the fate of the novel's protagonist - Burkevitz lost his ability to compassion and empathy. As if some part of his personality turned out to be amputated, and perhaps thanks to this loss, he managed to acquire perseverance and dedication, what the author calls "a lonely, stubborn and steel force."

Let's continue with some examples of customer stories. For example, a young person is faced with a situation of bullying and suffers in this regard quite understandable physical and mental suffering. Without sufficient support from the environment, for example, in the form of parents, he is forced to transform himself in accordance with the requirements of the environment. This mechanism of identification with the aggressor, described by Freud, is that for survival it is necessary to acquire the qualities of what is threatening. Since this process is forced and impetuous, the personality often lacks the resources for the full integration of acquired and already existing traits. As a result, in order to avoid internal conflict, there is a splitting off of what does not fit well with new identifications. In other words, the personality gains a tactical gain, but loses a strategic component, because after the need for survival becomes less acute, the split-off parts do not return on their own.

The intensity of this need to survive can be quite different, and then we can see more severe cases of narcissistic trauma. In the next story, the teenager was forced not only to be responsible for his own well-being, but in fact, for the survival of his own parents, who led an asocial lifestyle. The horror associated with their possible loss led to the development of fierce control, which turned out to be incompatible with other forms of orientation in the surrounding reality. A personality formed under such conditions turns out to be a hostage of its own style of survival, it is merged with this experience and an attempt to interrupt this merger in some way leads to the actualization of the filling horror and regression to a helpless state. We can say that narcissistic trauma prevents anything new from appearing in life, despite the fact that there is a lot of suffering from endless repetition in it.

Narcissistic experience creates a kind of traumatic conjuncture, within which reality continues to be threatening. Despite the fact that the situation around has changed many times, the narcissistic client does not have the opportunity to revise and reconsider his idea of it. On the one hand, the narcissistic person acquires functionality, but on the other hand, he pays a very high price for it. The price of this choice is the inability to trust one's feelings, since introjected partial objects are responsible for safety, which are not integrated into the personality, but are, metaphorically speaking, its semantic exoskeleton. In other words, the narcissistic personality, emerging from a merger with his experience, which both scares and makes him stronger, is faced with the need to rebuild security, with his own resources, of which there are not so many. This largely determines the difficulty of working with a narcissistic client, for whom therapeutic discourse means the inevitability of re-traumatization and destruction of a painful but stable scheme of life.

Narcissistic trauma occurs when, in order to continue living, it is necessary to change greatly and the vector of these changes is dictated not by the natural logic of development, but by the forced one, forcing one to make a kind of leap from one state to another. Development ceases to be consistent, in the personal history some interruption is found, dividing life into a state before and after, and these passages of the text are poorly connected with each other. Narcissistic trauma is a forced identification with an image that guarantees safety, but this image is not completely filled with personal content and voids are constantly found in it. Thus, narcissistic trauma is a trade-off between calmness and authenticity.

The term "personal growth" used in the title of the article can be safely bracketed, since in this form of implementation it rather turns out to be a personal deformation. The development of qualities that improve adaptation to the environment at the expense of others that provide "internal ecology" - such as awareness, sensitivity, the ability to symbolize and assimilate - leads to a mosaic structure of the personality and, in general, impairs its adaptive abilities, since narcissistic adaptation occurs as if once and forever, without the ability to get out of the merger with your past experience and thus change it according to the current life situation.

Narcissistic identity strikes the imagination in that the request for change arises from the part that in every possible way defends its method of organizing life and, in fact, conflicts with itself. The way in which the narcissistic client establishes a therapeutic relationship is symbolically in conflict with the values of the therapy, since in his work he substitutes demand for sensitivity and control for self-confidence. At some point, therapy with such a client comes to an impasse, since at this point either the rejection of the narcissistic distortion of reality, or of the therapy itself, is assumed.

In conclusion, we can say that narcissistic trauma occurs in a situation where safety is built not through attitude, but through introjection, which supports splitting. Symbolic exchange in relationships allows one to appropriate the required qualities and integrate them into the structure of one's own personality, while introjection remains an unitegrated element and turns out to be connected with external objects. What the narcissistic client cannot appropriate for himself, he is forced to conform. It can be said that the tragedy of narcissistic identity is that he invests in existence without being able to appropriate it and all the time remains dependent on the bearer of the required quality. For example, it requires approval or needs confirmation of the correctness of its choice. Roughly speaking, in this case, the approving figure never becomes an internal object.

Thus, the main challenge for the narcissistic client is that he needs to enter into a relationship, and this is exactly what he does worst. Relationships scare him because they have to relinquish control and enter a zone of uncertainty. However, this path guarantees a more reliable foundation for building security, as it turns out to be focused on the relevance and authenticity of the here-and-now moment.