Narcissism and the Gift of Resilience

Resilience against all odds

Source: Liz Swan

I’ve recently been obsessed with watching Dr. Ramani’s YouTube videos on narcissists because, like many families, ours has a few, and it’s really fascinating to understand these people and learn how to manage them in your life.

Narcissists typically present a shiny façade to the world but are deeply insecure people who are chronically obsessed with what other people think of them, abhor any form of criticism and, perhaps most tragically in this philosopher’s opinion, suffer from an astounding lack of self-awareness. Know thyself, Socrates famously advised. Understanding your own individual nature and its place in the cosmos has got to be one of the highest goods in our human experience—this wisdom can fill you up and make you feel whole. The narcissist, by contrast, comes up empty.

Narcissists are prone to getting into confrontations with people who challenge them in any way or point out their phoniness, are prone to rage and drama, and never, ever see themselves as being at fault when things go badly with other people.

Narcissists are very childlike in that they can’t see events and situations from other people’s perspectives—in other words, they lack the very foundations of empathy. They can certainly muster up fake empathy—acting sad, for instance, when someone is telling a sad story. But they’re utterly unable to understand why someone would have a different opinion than them and come across as opinionated in a shallow way—they’d be unable to explain with any depth why they believe what they believe (a facet of knowing oneself). The narcissist gives gifts that they want rather than ones the recipient will want.

You can imagine (or remember if you grew up with one) how toxic it would be to grow up in the shadow of a narcissist in your household. They are exhausting to be around, always causing conflict and drama, always demanding everyone’s attention, a complete drag on everyone’s energy. It can be heavy enough to crush you like a little bug under a big rock, or, if you’re fortunate, the stimulus you need to fly away just in time.

Bouncing Back After Disappointment and Rejection

If you grew up with a narcissist, instinctively you know whether you’re the crushed bug or the one who flew away. Our present topic concerns how resilience is related to narcissism. I would suggest that if you grew up with a narcissist family member and weren’t destroyed in the process, you came out pretty darn resilient. Our working definition of resilience (see my last post, “What Is Resilience?”) is the ability to "bounce back" after disappointment or rejection. And the process of growing up with a narcissist is chock-full of disappointment and rejection.

Children need encouragement and unconditional love. But they don’t always get it. Sometimes they get insults and mean words and gaslighting (trying to convince the child that she is the problem). Narcissistic parents will find it difficult if not impossible to recognize and give compliments to their children unless they’re specifically doing something that the parent acknowledges as a “success” in their view. These children may share accomplishments and happy news only to be met with silence or insults borne from the narcissist’s deep-seated insecurity. The narcissist hates other people’s success because these are perceived as a direct threat to their very fragile and childlike self-esteem.

Resilience, again, is the ability to "bounce back" after disappointment or rejection, and if you’re lucky enough to have a healthy and robust family member who is not narcissistic, extended family members who have your back or a group of close friends who support you in healthy and happy ways, chances are you were able to "bounce back" again and again and, against all odds, become a healthy, productive adult.

If you're able to focus on your relationships that are healthy, that feed you in a human way, that add value to your life, then those very dysfunctional relationships with the miserable narcissist come into relief and you see how unhealthy and ultimately unwanted they are in your life.

Leaving a Narcissist Behind

But, how do you rid your life of toxic narcissists? Therapy can help. My main message here is that if the narcissists in your life didn’t destroy you, then they left you with the greatest gift in life: being uber-resilient.

Can you leave the narcissist behind in all their misery and be the kind of person you want to be? Successful in life, happy, surrounded by friends you love and who support you in positive ways, with lots of opportunities to grow and develop further, a hard-earned self-awareness of who you really are in life and what that means for you in the world. The narcissist is cruel to other people because they are deeply, fundamentally unhappy with themselves and utterly unaware of how others truly see them. They’re surprised when people break off friendships with them, unfriend them on Facebook, or tell them to go away. They don’t accept their role in why others steadily jump ship in their lives.

Sadly, you cannot change narcissists; they are that way for life. All you can do is remove yourself from the situation and move on. Be a resilient superhero. Live your life authentically. Resilience is sometimes won the hard way.