“A typical narcissist,” I thought, “self-sufficient and confident, charismatic, armor such that you can’t penetrate it with a howitzer. He knows that the only value and ultimate truth, the meaning of his existence and the object of true admiration and love is himself. He will continue to go through life, shuffling people around like a deck of cards, and he will not stumble. He'll take it and not stumble, to spite us all! By the way, in this deck there may be not one psychoanalyst, but a dozen... He will look for his own and will stay with each for exactly as long as the latter can endure from session to session the oppressive atmosphere in his office, which will be filled with the greatness of his narcissistic client... And just try “make a sound” about the fact that perhaps not everything is okay with him! Have you ever been in a long-term relationship with a narcissist? You probably know that this communication can only last long under one condition, if you follow the rule: “shut up and listen”? Or maybe we should really try to all shut up and listen to the narcissist? He will talk, speak beautifully and intricately, perhaps with an expression of universal melancholy and mystery about things that are quite ordinary, but illuminated by his light and the greatness of his existence, even a little critical of himself, but only within the framework allotted to him. He may even enter into polemics with us within the boundaries he has set, however, if we suddenly take it upon ourselves to raise a sensitive issue that will only remotely hint at our right to have our own opinion, or suggest the existence of other centers of the universe besides him, then it’s not like our question, but we ourselves risk being removed from the agenda, as a speaker not included in the program. Behind all his mind-blowingness there is something hidden that makes him “walk” through people and “offices”. And he wants to say a lot, he is ready to tell the world a lot. Let's listen to his words: “What can love for another bring me? Only pain and disappointment, because “this other” will never be able to surpass myself, and his love is just a weak shadow of my true and strongest love for myself. Why should I feed someone else's egoism and satisfy someone else's desires? Are they worth me? Can they lead me to that highest rapture that I can give myself? I don’t need this closeness of yours, because it is followed by pain and disappointment. And I don’t want to feel pain and cold anymore... I won’t let anyone betray me again, ever! The only person who will always remain faithful to me, who will never hurt me, is myself!” True emotional intimacy with another person is perceived by the narcissist as a threat to his secret and selfless love for himself. Once upon a time, as a child, he already experienced the pain and despair of loneliness and insecurity, immersed in the cold of rejection or the fear of losing the only source of warmth, love and intimacy, which is his mother. To survive in this loneliness, unknown forces led him to himself - in his relationship with himself he found peace. He split into two: himself and himself, creating a strong connection between these halves, which replaced the connection with an external object. But this duality remained somewhere deep inside, and moreover, this duality is not two halves, no. Perhaps the narcissist considers himself unique, harmonious, united, integral and self-sufficient, but in reality this is not so, because he is not a unit, he continues to remain just a half divided once again into two. Now do you understand how hard it is to live with these 0.25 who consider themselves one? His other 0.25 are constantly projected into the outside world, so this world is devalued by the narcissist, other people seem to him not as units, but as quarters, unworthy of him. Can you imagine how difficult it is to be close to a person who perceives you not as a unit, but as 0.25? Believe me, this is unbearable. But to the narcissist, such a connection seems flawed. At first, he can sort of “finish” the person himselfto one, perceiving him in the light of his expectations and goals, he can become interesting to him only in connection with his personal plans. Either you are built into his world and serve as a means, supporting his rules of the game, or you are devalued and removed by him as unnecessary. The problem with a narcissist is that you could complement his existence with a full-fledged connection, which, perhaps, would save him from total loneliness and fear of the emptiness inside, but... “I deserve the best, the very best in this world, because I am the only one in in a way, I am the chosen one. Yes, I'm alone, so what? Is it my fault that there are no worthy people around? What can this hostile world give me? These people around me tire me, everyone needs something from me. If only I could create my own world, surrounding it with beauty, in which everything is harmonious and there is no place for wretchedness and primitiveness!” Inside, the narcissist remains extremely vulnerable and vulnerable, there is so much pain inside him that if not for his skillfully built defenses, he would could not exist because his true 0.25 would not withstand this pain and emptiness. He already has in his blood total disappointment with the whole world and its objects, at the same time, the world around him, leveled by himself, is a source of danger that should be kept under control. How can you control, for example, the love of another person? Just keep at a distance, and if this person approaches, then he should be removed. Control and omnipotence are the narcissist's core beliefs about himself and the source of his power. Any threat to this fixed idea is perceived by the narcissist as a threat to his very existence. When a narcissist is interested in us, he gives us strength, perhaps letting us know how dear and valuable we are to him. But one should not be mistaken, because in us he sees only his reflection, only his value. When we are in the field of a successful narcissist, the light of his triumph and brilliance, luck and wealth falls on us, and from this we begin to think that we are worth something, that we are the chosen ones and we are lucky to be next to the star. Any narcissist brings to life our own narcissism, we are filled with fantasies of our own importance and power until one day the wind changes and something icy and rejecting begins to blow from our star. And then we begin to deflate, we begin to seem small, unnecessary and abandoned. This is how the narcissist acts out the plot of his own story of loneliness and pain on us. If he manages to become a close person to us, mainly only in our fantasies, then in a desperate attempt we will rush to find out the truth: what do we mean to him, what is wrong with us, why are we suddenly rejected? We peer into these bottomless eyes, filled with the mystery that has attracted us all this time, but we see nothing but condescension and arrogance. And they will tell us: “I know it will be unpleasant for you to hear this, but you are just a person who was simply given to me in life for something. No more. It seemed to me that you and I are on the same wavelength. Sorry, you're not what I'm looking for. It seems to me that all people are given to us to reflect ourselves, to understand something about ourselves. For a while I let you love me, but really, I got bored of it. Your feelings complicate everything, they have become a burden to me. I know that I am a complex person, and it’s not easy to be with me, so maybe you need to look for a simpler person, then he will love you. Find someone to comfort you. I have my own path, you can’t understand it...” From such words you begin to feel like some kind of insignificant creature, a booger. It feels like you were just fucked in full, without giving anything in return. This causes an emptiness to settle inside you, a cold emptiness that begins, like a black hole, to suck in your value as a person, your dignity and self-respect. Out of despair, you can literally beg the narcissist not to leave you, perhaps you will reproach him for the fact that this relationship was not of equal value. And his answer, his last words will probably finally finish you off: “ButI was you, didn’t I give myself to you? You are lucky that fate brought you together with such a person, even if only for a while. I deserve nothing but gratitude. It was also not easy for me to drag you with me to my heights...” At such moments, you need to remember that this black hole has settled inside you, but it is not yours. It belongs to the narcissist and is inside him. At this moment you are the real him inside, i.e. once destroyed, pathetic and lonely. You yourself have eaten your fill of what is unbearable for him to realize and accept, plunging into the dark side of his personality, where cruelty, coldness and secret envy live. Surely you will run without looking back from such a person, because the instinct of self-preservation will tell you that further stay next to him will destroy you, you will be poisoned by his mistrust, fear and dislike... Left alone with the most beloved person in the world, the narcissist will sigh and think: “Well, here I am alone again. Why? Why do people always betray me? Why are they unfair? If they truly loved me, they would never leave me! God, how I feel sorry for myself! Why am I suffering? How cold and lonely... how painful..." He will stand in front of the mirror and see himself, so beautiful, so unhappy and abandoned by everyone, not understood, not accepted, but not giving up. And only his forever wounded heart will for a moment remind him of the time when he was a little man in whose heart a crystal of ice appeared... I was once asked: “Is it possible to get rid of narcissism? How can you reach the heart of a narcissist?” There are no former narcissists. There is hardly a person on earth who has such a big heart to be able to melt this ice inside in order to patch up his black hole. Unfortunately, this sad story cannot be played out again, but you can still help the narcissist. I want to say right away that this is a long path of gradual transformation, either through creativity, or through therapy, or through sacrificial love. The effect varies, but is never completely successful. Thanks to enormous internal work, the narcissist learns to build real connections with real people, he learns to comprehend the value of another, the value of the “not-I”. To do this, he needs to go a long way through the resistance of his strongest narcissistic defenses, parting, often very painfully, with his illusions of omnipotence, power and perfection, going there to emptiness, fear and loneliness, in order to accept his real self, mourning his unlived life, unexperienced feelings. This is how therapy can be described very schematically and approximately. But the reality of life is that not everyone chooses this path. There is also creativity: among the creative elite there are a lot of narcissists. They support themselves with their often fruitful activities, realizing themselves socially or in narrow circles, but creativity in itself is not capable of helping the narcissist create a full-fledged relationship with another person, and this is exactly what he truly desires most, because only in love can one get warmth, the warmth that he missed so much in childhood. Only a real connection can resist the narcissist’s destructive need for constant reflection, the thirst to see around him not people, but mirrors, which, moreover, as a rule, are always crooked. What about sacrificial love? Yes, to be with a narcissist you need a sacrifice, there must be someone who will love him enough to endure him and not be destroyed, to listen and not close his ears, seeing behind the rigidity, arrogance and coldness, a desperate call for love. This requires truly Promethean work and sacrificial love, because, as a rule, a person who falls in love with a narcissist and stays with him risks losing everything: his goals, the fulfillment of his deepest desires, without ever going through his own path through life... The price for the heart of a narcissist will be high... PS Each of us has our own narcissist, but the situation today is such that there is more and more narcissism both within us and in the world around us. Like any psychological phenomenon, it has many advantages and.