David McElroy

making sense of a dysfunctional culture

narcissism

Social media can be dangerous for those of us raised by narcissists

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The scariest thing I’ve ever done is confronting the parts of myself which could have turned me into a malignant narcissist.

I’ve talked about this before. It wasn’t until about 10 years ago that I even understood what clinical narcissism is. I had no idea the term applied to my father. I had no idea that growing up with a narcissistic parent damages children in predictable ways. I had no idea that many of those children turn into narcissists. And I had absolutely no idea that I was in danger of going down the same path.

Confronting that truth was painful and terrifying — and working my way through making changes was even scarier — but seeing the dysfunctional parts of yourself is always painful and terrifying.

I found that social media is the place that exposes many destructive narcissists — and I also found that social media is a dangerous minefield for those of us who are dealing with the fallout from having been raised by narcissists.

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I can’t help wanting to replay life with emotionally healthy parents

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When I was born, babies were kept away from families for awhile. Even the mother didn’t have a lot of time with the baby right after birth. For the most part, the babies spent their time in a nursery, separated from visitors by a huge sheet of glass.

I’m one of those babies in the nursery above. I’ve been told that I was the one on the front left, but I can’t be sure of that. The man you see reflected in the glass — the one in the short-sleeve dress shirt and tie — was my father. For days, he couldn’t hold his first-born child — and I’m told that he spent hours watching me, just like this.

My father could be a very loving man at times. Because I had to go so many years without being able to talk about his terrifying narcissistic side, you’ve heard me speak quite a bit this year — since he died in April — about the awful side of growing up with him.

But when I look at a picture like this from my baby book — with him longing to hold and love his new son — it breaks my heart, because it reminds me how much he wanted to love me and how much he wanted me to love him.

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

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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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