There are lots in the collective about entanglements with narcissists, and not so many from the side of those owning the narcissist within, and considering we all hold narcissistic traits little exploration is given to this in our own psyche.
The Narcissist complex is not narcissist personality disorder! The narcissist complex is a part of all of our personalities, it is the part of us that likes to feel superior to others, the part of us thatās all about us , the part of us that seeks recognition and praise. The adaptive narcissist within has bivalence in that it can be helpful and detrimental. Adaptive narcissism is helpful in that it can support our self-confidence, selfāreliance, and the ability to celebrate ourselves. However Maladaptive narcissism can negatively impact us relating to others, aggression ( which can be displayed in many ways) taking advantage of others, looking down on and blaming others. Making everything about you, and being the victim or the perpetrator. Narcissism Is displayed in many ways in our own psyche: overt, covert, antagonistic, communal, and malignant. We all so coin narcissism on the Malignant variant we see as the full-blown personality disorder but there are many more subtle ways in which this complex plays out In our lives, wreaking havoc on our relationships and the complexity of our own happiness.
I was asked to work on the narcissistic complex by my analyst after working on my inferiority complex and I instantly felt the resistance. I guessed I already knew about parts of it ( though I know the deeper work sits in delving into what you donāt know- the unconscious) so I sat with some applications that I created ( I do this for others in sessions and my groups), some explorative material that would allow myself to feel into what this complex was inside of meā¦ and like all of this deeper psychological work it began to take a life of its own. I felt this complex in me as a tiny , teeny tiny, shriveled up part of me that felt so little that there had been many ways in which I could blow him up and inflate him through my psyche ( I call him Nigel Narc as it helps to give these complexes life in order for the psyche to grasp them better, I also feel this complex as masculine energy in me) I feel him rise whenever I feel less than, I feel him blow himself up when he feels challenged. I had previously tangled Nigel with my animus, because there is a similarity, but by making him conscious I feel he is very different.
I will tell you a bit about Nigel Narc, now I have sussed him outā¦. He feels very small in this world in fact totally insignificant, he knows how in the big grand scheme of things he is a mere grain of sand on the beach, and can't stand that. He wants to be on the beach, he wants to be that significant. What use is a grain of sand? It's pathetic, useless, it creates nothing. He will absolutely not want to feel that if he combined himself with the other grains he would make up the beachā¦no he wants that all to himself. He wants the glory, he wants people to say āwhat a wonderful beach you areā So he is always looking for ways he can be the beachā¦ even though thatās impossible.
Another thing that Nigel just canāt deal with is his mortality. That he will die and Capooooosh! thatās it. Gone. People will grieve for a while, and he will be missed but then the hole will fill up and only the faint memory of his existence will be left and even that will eventually go. So what was that all about? What was his life about at all if he wonāt be remembered and spoken about like Shakespeare, Jung, or Marilyn Monroe? If he didnāt achieve anything significant at all
He
Will
Just
Disappear
Into
Nothing.
He is so obsessed with purpose, about achieving that he misses real life, itās all about him and his work, itās all about what he wants to achieve because heās so afraid of his insignificance. He misses out on life, he doesnāt see that every day is full of wonder and love and blessings. He cannot for one minute feel his achievements because he is so caught up in feeling where he isnāt achieving, where he is failing.
Nigel Once got Collette to add her āsoulā name into her name as a way of elating her from the inferiority of her real name, even though Collette Loves her name, he Convinced her alongside another fellow narc that this name should be her name now because it proved who she was and what she had achieved in finding her soul. Luckily Collette didnāt give Nigel the full reign of that and instead compromised on adding it to her middle name. Collette won that battle eventually and reclaimed her birth name. I believe this was a psychological battle I had in reclaiming Collette Corcoran from a malignant narcissistic āGuruā who insisted on the name change.
There is much more of Nigel that is coming into the light for ownership, and integration in my psyche, and I can already feel the dawning of a new way inside of me. I donāt hate on Nigel, I see him as the outcast, the shadow the part of me that was waiting for my reflection and connection. I am learning to be kinder. In the moments that the monsters have a light on them, I am learning to embrace the illumination without wanting to kill the monster under my bed, without blaming the monster under my bed as someone else. I claim my power back in all these moments.
If you wish to join me in an hour-long workshop to work through your own Narcissist complex, I will share with you the applications I created in order to take myself into the unconscious parts of this. This workshop will cover the types of subtle narcissism that live within us and how to work with it. You will come out with more awareness of yourself, how it causes you issues, and the power to be aware of it and change it.
