David McElroy

I live at the intersection of Shame and Humiliation.

This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. I’ve talked over and over about the effects of growing up with a narcissistic father and an unstable mother who left us. The more I studied narcissistic personality disorder over the last decade, the more sense my childhood made — and the more I understood my father’s continuing patterns.

Until he died — almost five months ago — I was always trying to understand more about narcissism as a way to defend myself against him. That was always the context. Now that he’s gone, though, my thinking has changed in a very uncomfortable way. More than ever, I’m having to confront the question of what his abuse did to me — and how it affects the person I am today.

Imagine a vampire story in which the vampire bites his victim — starting the process of turning him into another vampire — but then something happens and the vampire is killed. The would-be victim is rescued and he goes back to the normal world. But the victim carries an unseen poison within, even though nobody can see that and he never becomes an actual vampire.

That’s where I am. There are two stages of becoming a narcissist. The first is being taught to feel deep shame and the second is learning to strike out against others as an abuser — as a defense mechanism against the shame. I escaped becoming an abuser — but I struggle with the shame.

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