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David McElroy

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What if narcissistic vampire bit me but he never finished the job?

By David McElroy · September 5, 2018

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.

When it comes to narcissism, we all tend to focus on the abuse itself. (That’s understandable.) Few people comprehend what’s underneath the abuse, and I suspect that’s because many hurting victims are too angry at the pain — and too eager to find a way to escape a pattern they’re locked into — to care about the narcissist’s internal pain. The idea that the narcissist is in pain and suffers immensely is almost insulting, because it can be seen as justifying the narcissistic abuse.

But narcissists become what they are because of the intense shame they feel inside. They don’t feel good enough. They hate themselves on some deep level. Their real selves are so fragile and damaged that they construct a false self to project to the world. I used to assume that a narcissist’s projection of a false self was mostly a matter of trying to get others to accept that false self — to hide what they really are from the world.

But I now understand that narcissists are mostly trying to convince themselves. They are terrified of what they believe they are. They’re afraid they have no worth. They’re afraid they’re not worthy of being loved. They’re afraid if anybody really knows them, that person will reject them.

I’m not trying to create sympathy for the narcissist by understanding this. I’m trying to understand the mechanism by which the abusive situation is created. All the victims see is the abuse. The victims and others who watch the narcissist just want to get away from this terrible person (as they should). They don’t understand that there’s a hurting person lurking beneath the abusive exterior. For the most part, it wouldn’t help to understand it, though, because the narcissist is typically so disconnected from reality (and his own true self) that he couldn’t become vulnerable enough to understand his own pain and start to heal.

Social work researcher Brené Brown has done a lot of work about shame and what it really means in humans. She says, “Shame is the intensely painful feeling that we are unworthy of love.”

When you understand that — that a narcissist is someone in incredible pain about his own self-worth — it becomes easier to understand why he becomes a person who lashes out at others. It doesn’t justify any of the abuse, but it starts to make sense why it happens.

Here’s something I’ve started to understand more clearly about myself. My father’s abuse took me through the first stage of learning to be a narcissist. He taught me that I wasn’t good enough. He taught me that I wasn’t worthy of being loved for what I was. He taught me that there was something fundamentally wrong with me.

In other words, the narcissistic vampire bit me. I was infected with shame — but something went wrong with the dysfunctional process of becoming a narcissist. Something in me wouldn’t move on to becoming an abuser.

I’ve talked with you before about the painful period about 10 years ago when I first started learning about narcissism and I had to be brutally honest with myself about the ways in which I had learned some unconscious behavior patterns from my father. There’s no way I can explain how hurtful that was — to see that I was acting in some ways that made me fear I could be like him.

It would have been even more painful — in a way that was unthinkable — to realize what I’ve seen now. I had already numbed myself to the shame I had been taught to feel. By doing this, I was halfway down the narcissist road. The only thing that saved me was becoming conscious of what it was and then becoming intentionally vulnerable with others.

You might recall that I wrote last spring about why I have to be so vulnerable about my flaws. I was trying then to explain this process — in terms remarkably similar to what I’m saying now — but I think I’ve come to understand it even better today. You see, being open with you about my flaws and failures prevents me from having to have a false self which could lead me into narcissism.

If I’m open with you about what I am — my fears, my failures, my shame — I can’t have a false self to defend. The downside, of course, is that I feel shame about admitting to the things most people hide. I feel shame about not projecting that I’m perfect. I feel shame about showing myself to be someone who you might not love. But this stops me from deceiving either one of us — and that self-honesty short-circuits the mechanism which could make me act like a narcissist.

This has been on my mind constantly for the last few days because of something I got angry about Sunday afternoon. The specifics don’t matter. I was rightly annoyed about something, but I felt irrational anger that made me want to strike out at someone — and I’ve come to realize that this sort of irrational anger is always a sign that I’m accessing an emotionally unhealthy part of myself.

When I feel that way, I disengage from the situation and think about what I’m feeling. It never fails that I feel as though someone else has control. It never fails that I feel small and vulnerable and worthless. When I feel those ways, I feel as though I’m under attack. When that happens, my defensive instinct is to strike out in anger — verbally, not physically — and that’s when I have to disengage and get a handle on what I’m feeling.

When I’m in the midst of such feelings, I feel terrible about myself. I feel worthless. I feel unloved (and feel as though nobody will ever love me). I feel as though I’ll never be good enough to do or be what I want to do and be. It’s a very destructive place to be — and I absolutely must deal with it.

The psychiatrist Carl Jung said, “Shame is a soul-eating emotion,” and I know that to be true. Shame can be so damaging that you feel you have nothing left and nothing to live for. It’s a terrible place where I sometimes find myself.

I don’t know why I never turned into the abuser that my father was. I’d like to think I’m just a better or smarter or wiser person than he, but I doubt that’s true. Whatever the reason, I now see the pattern that started working its way through me when the narcissistic vampire bit me. He kept injecting me with his poison, but it somehow never completely “took.” I never became what he was — and the more I understood the process that was going on, the easier it was to avoid it entirely.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get away from the shame entirely. I might live the rest of my life constantly afraid that I’m not worth being loved and that anything which goes wrong for me emotionally is because I’m fundamentally flawed. I hope not, but that might be my reality. I know that I’m intensely sensitive about some things which a lot of people would find to be “harmless kidding.” The people in my life have to understand that — and I have to constantly work to stop defensive reactions which would otherwise have me lashing out.

The one thing I know for certain is that I will never be an abuser. I know too much about this process — and I’ve worked too hard to be open about who my real self is. I have to keep working hard to be more and more honest — with those few who care to see — to avoid having the need to build a false self to protect.

I suspect the only thing that’s ever going to change the shame is long-term consistent love of being part of an emotionally healthy family — having a wife and psychologically healthy children. Right now, I fear that I’ll never be loved by the sort of woman I need. That’s my biggest terror, because it would “prove” my worst fear — that I’m not worthy of being loved.

It’s all complicated. I still have a lot to learn. I’m just grateful that I started down this long path of self-discovery 10 years ago. I’m very thankful that the narcissistic vampire who raised me didn’t finally turn me into the clone who he always desired me to be.

I might share some of his shame, but I will never share his abusive ways. I will love instead — and I will try to be someone who is worthy of being loved.

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On a live awards show Sunday night, one man made a joke about a female celebrity. The husband of the celebrity was offended and hit the man who made the joke. Or maybe it was staged for entertainment. Who knows? Who cares? Social media is full of discussion — and even arguments — about this idiocy today. This baffles me. Let’s assume for a moment that the event happened as reported. People have been having such idiotic fights ever since there have been humans. Half the bars in the world see such brief dustups regularly. It simply doesn’t matter. The fact that so many people believe they need to talk about this — or even need to have opinions about it — is more evidence of the bizarre media brainwashing that convinces many to care passionately about brain-dead trivia. Your life will be happier and saner if you focus on yourself, your family and your friends, not on whatever scripted (or spontaneous) bilge that the media wants to pipe into your home.

I’m in the middle of migrating this website to new servers this week. This means you might encounter some unexpected behavior until I get all the bugs worked out. Clicking on my links (including this one) might cause your browser to give you the message that it’s a site without a current security certificate. It’s not actually unsafe, but there’s something which isn’t yet set up for the security certificate. I apologize for any such errors you might encounter while the process is going on. If you notice any problems with content which didn’t migrate properly, I would appreciate you letting me know the details at davidmcelroy@mac.com. Thanks for your patience.

I often wonder what animals think when they look at us and consider the society we’ve created. Yes, I know this is fanciful and unrealistic, but what if they could? Would they be astounded at how we treat each other? Would they be disgusted by the ugliness and pettiness which fill so many of our daily interactions? The truth is that I’m feeling pretty disgusted with humanity tonight. I made the mistake of reading some online interactions that I should have avoided — and it sickened me. The people involved appeared to be vile and stupid and arrogant. I wish I could pretend they’re a tiny minority, but I know better. It’s times such as this when I most need to escape much of “civilization” and disconnect from their world. If humans are going to be worthy of “ruling this planet,” we have a lot of growth to do. And I fear that growth is nowhere in sight. So my buddy Thomas, above, and all of his friends would be right to judge us harshly — and to think, “Why do you folks get to be in charge?”

I should have expected this, but I honestly didn’t. The article I wrote last week about disagreements over treatment for autistic children brought me angry emails. You could almost call it “hate mail.” Of the five emails about it so far, two have been to tell me that I’m wrong to even listen to critics of the most popular therapy for autistic children — and the other three tell me I’m wrong for not condemning the treatment as the “obvious” abuse it is. If you read the article, you know I didn’t take a position on the issue, because I simply don’t know enough to have an opinion. But by talking about the issue, I stepped into a heated controversy. The emails from the two sides convinced me of nothing. But they did give me even more empathy for the unfortunate parents who have to figure out for themselves where the truth lies for their children.

Have you ever had what you thought was a new idea — and then discovered that “old you” had the same idea years ago? I had that experience tonight. And it’s been wonderful. I came up with an idea tonight for a very short satirical film that would be a promotion for a fictitious college. The point is to make the college promote — as good things — everything which is actually terrible about most modern colleges. Then I remembered a fake college that I invented back when I was in college. I had created student recruitment brochures and various newsletters back then, so I decided to call my “new” college by the same name I’d invented years ago: Ochita College. As I searched my computer for any old material I might still have about Ochita from the past, I discovered an email I sent to someone in 2009 — outlining essentially the same idea which I came up with tonight. Since I didn’t remember writing that, it felt like magic. So my next film project just might be this one instead. If all goes well, you might soon see “Ochita College: Your Future Starts Here.” This should be fun.

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