Recently I had a revelation. My three three year old has been chest deep in developmentally appropriate narcissism. That was not the revelation.
When I use the word narcissism, I’m mostly focusing on a sense of grandiosity that can quickly morph into passive-aggressive or outright aggressive victimhood and that is accompanied by little to no empathy. I’ll say more about this in a minute.
Credit to: The Mum’s Group
When my daughter is not demanding that she can have and do whatever she wants, she frequently is telling us, “I already know that!” If we would just get with her program, life would be sweet and peaceful. Until I did a u-turn and inquired into what was happening in my inner world around this parent-child relationship (and the book Parenting from the Inside Out has been my favorite guide for learning how to do this), her behavior was triggering me daily. I had to use all the restraint I could muster not to yell at her or run from the house screaming as each new ultimatum and dictatorial order shot out of her mouth.
Upon going inward, however, I recognized that when I was my child’s age I would have had my ass kicked, literally, if I puffed out my chest like she does. In the significantly more authoritarian and perfectionist household of my youth, I knew well before three that being a compliant, nice, and polite daughter was the way to stay physically and emotionally safe. Not disappointing my father and the other adult authority figures in my life was my number one priority. So my own inner toddler was utterly terrified by my spirited child’s behavior.
This epiphany meant I could reassure the younger parts of me, including the protectors that developed to avoid further wounding (such as my inner critic), that my daughter is being raised very differently than I was. For one thing, my partner and I are doing our best to give her structured nurturance—the structure being boundaries and limits that seek to honor her own and others’ dignity. This form of nurturance is rooted in empathy and compassion, rather than fear, and focuses on unconditional love for who my daughter is, which does not always mean accepting what she does.
The tension in my relationship with her has significantly diminished now that I’ve made explicit the implicit, fear-filled memories of my youth. That growing awareness has allowed me to repeatedly convince those younger parts of me that it is safe to go on letting my daughter be who she is. I seek to connect with her experience first and subsequently redirect her behavior when necessary. If I inadvertently shame her in a given moment for behavior I don’t like, I repair that relational rupture as soon as possible. I am once again feeling confident that this developmental period will morph into something more reasonable and empathic if my daughter’s emotional, physical, and cognitive needs continue to be met.
What does all this have to do with shame, narcissism, and justice? A whole lot I am coming to see. At present, my caseload is teeming with people who have faced severe narcissism within their inner circles. Accordingly, I’ve spent a lot of time studying narcissism and how to heal from it. What I have come to understand from my work with clients as well as resources like Therapist Uncensored, The Covert Passive-Aggressive Narcissist, and Out of the Fog is that adults who are significantly narcissistic have virtually no tolerance for shame. Their immense defenses against feeling shame usually developed in response to early childhood wounds that are related to their relationships with primary caregivers and that often involve trauma of one sort of another. Here, I’m particularly thinking of Juliane Taylor Shore’s definition of trauma: feeling overwhelmed and being alone while experiencing that overwhelm.
As a recovering perfectionist, it’s been a painful and terrifying experience to take in how closely related perfectionism and narcissism are. I’ve come to see that my aversion to narcissism rests on an incisive truth: when we cannot be with shame, we cannot face the harm we have done to others and ourselves. Without an acknowledgment of that harm, we are not able to repair those ruptures, which is necessary to restore trust and justice as well as strengthen connection, both with ourselves and others. Steve Finn beautifully articulates how we learn toxic shame (i.e. “I am a mistake”) while young. I’ll say here that caregivers leaving relational ruptures with children unacknowledged and unrepaired is central to the origins of toxic shame.
Finn says the path to moving from toxic shame to healthy shame (i.e. “I made a reparable mistake”) as adults requires revealing to trusted others that of which we are the most ashamed. As Brene Brown said, “If we can share our story with someone who responds with empathy and understanding, shame can’t survive.” Importantly, if a narcissist is willing to do the gut-wrenching work of acknowledging and feeling their own shame (after all, they usually have a lot of behavior of which to feel ashamed), the audience who can hold their shame with empathy will likely need to be people other than the ones they have harmed, such as a therapist or support group. The harmed ones need reparations that center their experience, not more witnessing of the narcissist’s pain.
Now a benefit that perfectionists can have that extreme narcissists do not is empathy. Empathy is what allows me to contact those younger parts I mentioned above and meet them with understanding and forgiveness. That internal healing process means those younger parts of me, such as my temper-tantruming toddler and adolescent inner critic, do not need to take over as I navigate the external world. My true self—my adult self—who has a greater capacity for compassion, flexibility, calmness, and clarity, can run the show.
Empathy also allows me to step into others’ shoes, such as my daughter’s, and imagine what they’re experiencing. So when I have hurt someone, I have gotten more and more practiced at listening closely to the impact of my actions—without defending my good intentions—and both formally apologizing for that negative impact and then offering a plan of action so that I do not enact that same harm again. I’m certainly not perfect at this process, but perfection is not the goal, effective repair is. I also still struggle not to over apologize, a behavior that indicates the ongoing presence of my own toxic shame (there’s plenty to say about the role of gender in this over-apologizing, too). Growing my tolerance for shame will be a lifelong process, as I certainly did not learn healthy shame as a child.
So what do we do with the narcissists in our lives who are so defended against shame that they disconnect from their adult selves and others to the point of feeling no remorse when they wreak extensive havoc on others’ lives? For one thing, I think we need to shift the focus back to assessing and growing our own tolerance for shame rather than trying to change them. I have sincere compassion for those individuals who are so wounded that they cannot see, hear, or feel how their actions impact others. I also view them as responsible for their own healing. To borrow from Juliane Taylor Shore again, it is respectful and benevolent to ask fellow adults to process their own emotions, including shame.
Too often, I see family systems and additional institutions focus on protecting the narcissist rather than setting firm boundaries that disallow further mistreatment and holding them accountable for their harmful behavior. The narcissist’s abusive bullying and victim stance are much more likely to go unfed when people refuse to be within their self-centered reach and/or do not allow their gaslighting to go uninterrupted (if they have enough power to do so). When people cannot create a lot of distance from a narcissist because, for example, they have to co-parent with one, the gray rock method has been a strategy that several of my clients have successfully used to stay sane and safe while within their proximity. Sadly, children of narcissists by and large learn this method, which essentially involves being as boring as a gray rock, to survive. No one has to teach it to them.
Clearly the interpersonal dynamics I’m describing cannot heal the institutions and nations that are founded on having little to no tolerance for shame (academia and the United States come to mind!). I do, however, believe that if more and more people learn to accept our own imperfections, we will be able to repair mistakes when we make them and so create more humane families and work places. We also will develop a greater and greater capacity to deal with systemic, historic injustices that thus far remain largely unaddressed. In Kiese Laymon’s poignant words, “America seems filled with violent people who like causing people pain but hate when those people tell them that pain hurts.”