The core of the target

 

 

Redemption is not perfection. The redeemed must realise their imperfections.

- John Piper

 

 

On the true self

 

At the core of every person is the true self. This true self is emotion, creativity, spontaneity, energy, curiosity, love, peace, intuition and of course; grandeur. It doesn’t know logic, and it doesn’t have eyes in the world; it leaves that to the thinking mind. Instead, the true self can sense the world in ways the mind cannot. The mind has the ability to learn, store, process and use the information given to it. The true self has the capacity to generate new knowledge from thin air. Where the mind analyses and compares, the true self intuits and feels, and through that feeling, integrates the world around it into its core. It’s a very sensitive part of us, and without protection, can be damaged and negatively affected in countless ways. We’ve all seen the wonder and vigour of a child. This is the child’s true self on display; before their mind develops fully and begins to filter their experience.

 

Being connected with your true self creates an abundance of energy and inspiration. Although it is sensitive, it’s also the most powerful part of us. It’s our life force. When integrated, it gives us access to our humanity as well as our creative power. It connects all human beings. Although the mind can rehash many facts, the true self can empathise with another person and help us build a connection. Facts can only take us so far. It’s the intuitive power of the true self which makes us effective as human beings and allows us to live up to our potential. Your true self is numinous; having it there all the time is like having a good friend at your side as you take on life’s challenges. It is life itself acting through us. It’s adaptable and evolutionary.

 

This true self can be disowned. Humans have a natural need to be seen, understood, respected and loved. When these four needs are met, the true self thrives. The person feels integrated, whole and has a sense of direction. When a person is shamed without redemption, they become stagnant, powerless, and fragmented, and their self-esteem drops. The strength of your relationship with your true self and your self-esteem are directly correlated.

 

For the true self to thrive, we need resonance from the world. We need those around us to understand, accept and support our current state. Resonance means being allowed to express our emotions, good or bad. If we express sadness about something, the other person may reject our expression with a backhanded ‘Just cheer up, everything will be fine’. If, on the other hand, the other person relates to and feels our sadness, then resonance is achieved, which is two people sharing an emotional state or ‘mood’, regardless of what it is. It is two people connected through their feelings.

 

The more resonance we receive, the stronger our life force becomes and the more momentum the true self has. Can you think back to times when you felt supported and loved, and as a result, you felt incredibly energetic and excited to embrace life? This doesn’t just come from romantic relationships, but from any figure in our lives who truly understands us. Love and support are life affirming. It makes our world go round. Being shamed and having your core self rejected or attacked, on the other hand, puts a halt to this process. The beauty of the true self is instead doused with doubt and subjected to strict and critical introspection. When excessively shamed, the true self is analysed, questioned, judged and then ultimately rejected.

 

On the ego

 

The ego is based in the mind. It’s our representative in the world; a collection of thoughts, beliefs and ideas about how the world is and how we should interact with it. It also holds the idea of who we are in the world. That is, it controls how we relate to people and what elements of our personality we show to (or hide from) others. Intuition, energy and love are what truly make us human, but we still need to know how to pay our bills, read maps, follow social norms, communicate and of course, understand when we are being manipulated.

 

On the false self

 

The false self is a construct of the ego. It is a repertoire of behaviours which make up a personality. What makes it ‘false’ is that it’s not based on the true self. It doesn’t take its cues from a person’s emotions. Recall that the true self needs safety, love, respect and understanding to thrive. For the target, when genuine emotional connection does not exist, or worse, when they are being abused, it can be extremely painful to experience the true self. For the narcissist, experiencing the true self means experiencing their shame. The solution for either situation is to create a false self which can take over and act on behalf of the true self, manipulating reality to make it more bearable.

 

The false self serves two purposes:

 

-It keeps a person from directly experiencing their true self and therefore from being influenced by the outside world, which in turn reduces the amount of shame and pain felt.

-It allows a person to manipulate their environment in the hope of getting their needs met.

 

Both narcissists and targets have a false self. It is a prerequisite for the target to have one before they can actually interact with a narcissist. In the case of the narcissist, their intended use of the false self is to dominate others, which they hope can achieve them control and garner them narcissistic supply. In the case of the target, they use the false self to keep them from being abandoned.

 

Over their lifetime, the narcissist creates a set of behaviours which combine potently to form their false self. This creates a fog screen which keeps people from reaching the narcissist’s true self. The narcissist’s false self is usually very compelling to the uninitiated. It takes a while to realise that you’re not dealing directly with a real person. The narcissist is extremely skilled at distracting you from ever seeing through it.

 

Some basic examples of a false self which narcissists create are:

 

-The Storyteller: Tells story after story, painting themselves as the person in power. They also tell victim stories, but then explain how they overcame the situation and gained the upper hand.

-The Victim: Things never go right for them. They feed people stories of their misfortune and then reject any suggestions for fixing the situation. Their only intention is to keep others emotionally invested in their problems for as long as possible.

-The Strong Silent Type: Shows no emotion, excitement or weakness. They have a stoic demeanour and invest little in their relationships. This gives them an air of superiority in the eyes of their target.

-The Clown: Makes light of every situation, makes witty remarks that put down what other people say, plays pranks and sucks up your attention by showing you funny videos online.

-The Intellectual: Uses monologues as a way to entrap another person or even a group of people, sucking up the energy and the focus of a group with their words.

-The Matriarch/Patriarch: The parent or the manager traditionally play this role. They use their position as an excuse to act shameless while coercing the child or the employee to worship them and subject themselves to them.

 

All of the above roles are tools for control. Which tool gets used depends on the narcissist but also on the power and self-esteem of their target. For example, the narcissist will enforce their matriarch/patriarch role on their child, who has minimal power, barking orders and ridiculing them, then switch to playing the victim with their empathic sister and then play storyteller or clown with their friend. If a friend has low self-esteem, then the matriarch/patriarch role can still be used. They will simply probe until they find a way to control their target. To the narcissist, it doesn’t matter how they control their target, as long as they can achieve it. If they cannot manipulate their target overtly, then having the target’s attention is control enough for them. As long as it’s under their terms, the narcissist is getting their narcissistic supply.

 

When interacting with the false self of a narcissist, it’s like watching a stage show or reading a novel. The act is elaborate and compelling. It’s intended to draw you in on the narcissist’s terms and keep you under their influence. They never break character. The narcissist’s false self is both compelling and absolute. Once you’re drawn in, you stay there. There is no going any further. It’s all head and no heart, and feels somehow empty and leaves you with a sense of despair. A lot is said and done, but deep down no genuine connection is achieved, and no growth is experienced. It’s like binge watching television or being trapped in a washing machine cycle that never ends.

 

Looking in the wrong place

 

To some degree, we all have a false self. It’s a handy tool for negotiating with the world. Eventually, we take it off like a business suit and revert to a more genuine, feeling based dialogue with our loved ones. Narcissists, however, have their false self on 24/7 and use it on everyone, no matter how close that person is to them. Their intention is to control, not to experience genuine connection and internal growth. Vulnerability for them is a no-go zone. As a result, they cannot offer resonance since they aren’t in touch with their feelings. Furthermore, the narcissist has a very specific reality which must be enforced; their target must stay fixated and orbit them like a star. When in a relationship with a narcissist, the target is clearly not accepted for who they are, no matter how badly they need it. Instead, they are cornered into playing a specific role which helps bolster the narcissist’s grandiosity. To achieve acceptance, the target works on creating their own false self which is compatible with that of the narcissist. This false self is a set of behaviours put on by the target in the hope of avoiding abandonment, since showing their true self is clearly a cause for rejection.

 

The most common role is the nice person persona. When playing this role, the target is extremely well behaved and cooperative. This kind of persona tends to be reinforced and rewarded by the narcissist, for obvious reasons. Even if the target is angry, or frustrated, or feels hurt, they will have to keep playing nice because they cannot threaten the narcissist’s strict arrangement. This is what makes such a self false. It’s not congruent with how the target really feels and what they really need in the current moment. Rather than identifying and connecting with their true self, the target identifies with a construct in their mind, which is conditioned by the narcissist. Through this conditioning, they become a strict set of behaviours and beliefs.

 

The target is coerced into mirroring the narcissist as follows:

 

-The Storyteller: The target becomes a good listener, and can only contribute to the relationship by telling stories of their own. The most despairing part is that every story the target tells will be topped by the narcissist. It becomes a competition which the narcissist must always win.

-The Victim: The target adapts by investing their emotions into the narcissist’s endless problems. If the target tries to express their own misfortune, the narcissist switches off.

-The Strong Silent Type: The target invests the emotion and vulnerability into the relationship, and relies on the narcissist to be predictable and a person of strength. The target feels both reassured and frustrated by the narcissist’s rigidity.

-The Clown: The target becomes a willing audience to the narcissist, laughing at or even being the butt of their jokes.

-The Incessant Talker: The target listens with a feeling of despair, unable to break out. The imbalance takes its toll over time and shame arises.

-The Matriarch/Patriarch: The target will be infantilised. All decisions are made by the narcissist, and the target is not given a voice. The target is only recognised when they behave as the narcissist expects them to.

 

When relating in such a way, the target is fooled into believing they have succeeded in securing the narcissist’s love. However, the narcissist is only in love with their own false self. Love is impossible, since effectively what the target has is a false self ‘relating’ to the false self of the narcissist, who cares only for their own self image. The emotional distance here is obvious.

 

Figure 4: The interplay between a narcissist and a target. The narcissist is identified with a false self image. The target in turn identifies with their own false self image, which worships the false self image of the narcissist. True connection is impossible.

 

This arrangement keeps the target from being abandoned by the narcissist but does not cater to their needs. Something further must be done. The true self will not be denied. It craves connection and an outlet for its grandeur. The result is dissociation.

 

Goodbye world

 

Having a false self worshipping another false self is a lonely experience. The true self of the target feels neglected and, as a result, shameful. The target tries seeking the approval of the narcissist but is met with emotional distance, shaming, distractive behaviour and, when the narcissist deems it necessary, rage. The narcissist abhors the target’s needs. Hence the target’s sense of grandeur is given no outlet to express itself. The target needs desperately to stop feeling the pain of loneliness, shame and neglect. If they don’t have anybody in their life to offer them resonance, they resort to dissociation, viewing the world and themselves through their imagination instead. In doing so, they gain an outlet for their true self and control over their self image.

 

Just like the narcissist, this imagined self is omnipotent in comparison to the real, shame-based true self. By this definition, the target is also being narcissistic, since they are rejecting their humanity and identifying with a self that’s flawless. The key difference, however, is how they go about it. The narcissist expresses their grandiosity by engaging the world, albeit by subjecting, objectifying and controlling others. The target of a narcissist will instead disengage from the world and dwell in fantasy i.e. their grandiose self exists in their imagination.

 

Living in dissociation is a coping mechanism, which creates a new reality, away from the true self, away from the real world and away from the painful experience of toxic shame. When a narcissist is forced to face their shame, their tactic is to lie, deflect, manipulate and, if necessary, react with rage. In the case of a target, they simply drift away into their safe fantasy world. In this fantasy world, the target can be anybody they want to be. They are never less than anybody, they are never put down, and they do not have to feel the friction of the real world. When dissociated, the target loses touch with their thinking mind and their true self; they go somewhere else entirely. In their imagination, they can snatch back power and love. They can win that argument with the narcissist and feel a sense of power. They can conjure up resonance, imagining interactions where people hear them and understand them, and with that feel a sense of love. The imagination becomes a tool of release for the very real needs of the true self.

 

An integrated ego

 

In an ideal world, a person in the early stages of life is led by the hand through the jarring experience of being human. As they start to feel their emotions and begin to get a sense of their true self, they are met with internal limits and external obstacles with which they are taught strategies to find their way through. Shame is felt as a mild pressure, but it doesn’t overwhelm the person, and the person doesn’t lose heart. Emotions will generally not overwhelm; the person is taught to manage them, step by step, as they come up. The person continues to feel their internal strength and grandeur regardless. Their expressions of emotion, good or bad, are mostly accepted by their loved ones. There is no role to be played. Further to this, the primary figures in their life will adapt and occasionally manipulate reality, not to make the person feel less than, but to make them feel special and equal. When this balance is reached, a person feels special and human, all at the same time. On the shame/grandiosity continuum, they are somewhere in the middle. Their journey through life is a flat field, where obstacles can be managed, and support is at hand. The result of such an upbringing is a well-trained ego. The person is conscious of all of their emotions. They can identify them, withstand them and then make the right choices. They have high self-esteem and are socially confident, rather than socially anxious. The true self is integrated. The mind becomes aware of social norms and behaviours, and can accommodate the emotional world of the true self when making decisions, as well as the emotional world of others. When emotions become overwhelming, the person has resources for self-care and feels worthy enough to ask for help. They understand themselves enough to know what kind of help they need. They become well versed on mediating between their true self and the world. A healthy ego is created.

 

The word ego is typically associated with narcissism, in that whoever has an ego is stuck-up and self-absorbed. In fact, the definition of ego in psychology is “the part of the mind that mediates between the conscious and the unconscious and is responsible for reality testing and a sense of personal identity”.

 

A healthy ego is a mediator, making logical decisions based on what it sees in the world and what the true self is telling it. It is the eyes of our true self. It’s also a construct of the mind - it’s not real. Zen Buddhism describes the ego as an obstacle to knowing your true self. This can be true, since a false self can cut a person off from their core experience. But the ego is also necessary for navigating the world. The ego is the gatekeeper who decides what is good and what is bad for the true self.

 

The consequences of dissociation

 

For the target of narcissism, life is a treacherous, never-ending climb and support is simply not there. When engaging the world, they crash and burn, over and over again. Their emotions are overwhelming, and they feel like they are constantly under attack. They don’t have a safe space to develop their healthy ego. They search frantically for a way out until they discover that magical place in their mind, above the clouds, where there’s no turbulence and where they don’t have to deal with the pain and friction of daily life.

 

This dissociated state has many dire consequences, however:

 

-Stunted learning: We learn about the world when we feel safe. Our emotions are managed, and we can focus enough to absorb whatever concepts we need for our daily life. From a dissociated state, however, facts are overlooked. Important concepts are glossed over and become abstractions. The details aren’t filled in. For example, a person viewing the world from a dissociated state will talk about that street they visited, with all those trees. A well-trained ego will know the name of the street, where it was located, that it is popular with tourists, remember some of the stores and vividly recall how it felt to be there. With a healthy ego, knowledge and experience are integrated.

-Inability to handle feelings: When forced to engage with the world, the target is also forced to engage their emotions. Living in fantasy means the target has little practice in understanding and processing their feelings. Managing your life requires a strong, well-trained ego, which sets limits and boundaries so that emotions can roam without getting out of hand. For example, a well-trained ego will know that a certain friend, while fun, is also emotionally exhausting to spend time with, and will make a decision to either limit time spent or limit the topics discussed so that energy is conserved. A well-trained ego will support a friend in need, then know when to have alone time to recharge. In a dissociated state, a person will hardly be aware of why they are exhausted.

-Deferred control: A person must be engaged with the world to have control over their life. But targets are not engaged and will leave a lot of their life decisions up to other people; people who are more engaged and supposedly know better. They will relinquish control to a narcissist.

-Susceptibility to manipulation: This deferral of control leaves a target open to manipulation. Because the target doesn’t have a well-informed ego to mediate and set boundaries, the narcissist gets easy access to manipulate.

-Poor memory: A person who dissociates will have gaps in their memory. It’s not uncommon for children of narcissism to forget the details of most of their childhood. They can be forgetful in general.

-Increased anxiety: Trying to maintain a perfect world is difficult because the target has to interact with the imperfect environment around them. Social anxiety is common, since exposing oneself to others means having to face your true self and be engaged. This shatters the illusion and brings the true self screaming into the real world like a baby snatched from the womb. The target is not accustomed to exposing their true self to the world. The narcissist made sure of that.

-Alienation from self: When dissociated, nobody is home to take care of things. Emotional needs are ignored, anxiety runs rampant, and self-development and growth is stunted since the person is not in touch with their true self and its wants and needs. It is a very lonely experience.

-Weak relationships: Being friends or in a relationship with someone who dissociates is difficult, for obvious reasons. A relationship needs engagement, intimacy, integrity and strength. To remain dissociated requires a rigid environment, where nothing is too challenging. Life by nature is challenging, and this flows into relationships. Others need to sense a person has a backbone. When dissociated, long term relationships are usually based on a set of rigid roles and behaviours, rather than genuine emotion and flexibility.

 

The target, while dissociated, lives in constant fear. This will continue until they become conscious of the fact and then create a safe, nurturing environment that allows them to come out of hiding. The process of dropping the fantasy and re-entering the world is a jarring and difficult process, but nonetheless a journey which the target will have to take as they establish a life outside of the narcissist regime.

 

The solution to dissociation involves a safe environment, resonance from others, dissolving the false self i.e. identifying which submissive behaviours were created due to fear of abandonment, and simultaneously integrating the true self into the ego i.e. becoming self-reliant and learning to cater to the needs of the true self. This process will be explored later when the seven practices are introduced.