Healthy vs. wounded part of self

Recently I was fortunate to work with a wise and sharp-minded therapist.

Among other things, she has drawn my attention to this quality of a human mind/personality:
practically all of us had an experience when we felt perfectly comfortable with ourselves and our actions, and felt strong and competent. The context for this assertion was that most people coming to therapy expect to work on their childhood experiences, wounds and the deep-held believes that were, for the most part, results of those wounds. I, too, came to therapy with that notion, and in all honesty I still believe that a lot of our present problems do depend on our experiences as children. This therapist, however, did not share this believe and in fact she told me that she downright denies her clients' frequent requests to work with their childhood wounds.

And this is the part that picked my interest: she stated that in her view every human being has what she called a 'healthy personality' and also a 'wounded personality', and all of us at one point or another used one of those as a platform for our actions, or, as she put it 'leaned' on it.

Now, I see no need to 'split' out internal world on two separate personalities :) and I would say instead that we all have separate 'sets' of certain states, beliefs, emotional, mental and behavioral patterns that we had accumulated at different stages of our lives, and that sometimes one of those 'sets' gets activated at the 'expense' of the other.

For example: you have agreed to meet your friend, came to a place of a meeting and have waited for her for a long time. She is obviously late and haven't called. You have a couple of different ways to react:
You may get frustrated and angry, feel disrespected by her lack of communication and storm out of that place, promising yourself to ignore any of her future attempts to connect.

Or perhaps you would feel worried, or sad and alone; or may be you would just assume she had her reasons for behaving that way and wait until you have more information to react.

Of course it is not hard to notice that one of these possibilities sounds a lot healthier and more balanced than others. Human beings can react in variety of ways. My therapist asserted that all of us choose healthy behaviors at times. The trick, she said, is to 'lean' on the healthy part as much as you can and put less attention on the wounded part. I liked that idea for its optimism, though, as I said, I personally still believe in the necessity of working with our childhood hurts.

A few days later I had an opportunity to test my therapist's idea in action. A friend of mine who I came to rely on had suddenly proved less trustworthy a few times on the row. The 'offenses' were relatively minor, but I, with my tendency to blow everything that has to do with my persona :) out of proportion, was cycling in my usual "she has betrayed me therefore she must be cut off from my life" mental rut, and then I suddenly 'heard' another part of me say: "Well, she trusted you enough to invite you to her house and let you sleep in her place, and she cared enough to be there when you were sick and lonely, so clearly she loves you and cares about you and deserves your trust and good will as well."

May be it is the usual thing for most people, but let me tell you, nothing of the sort has EVER happened in my mind. Nearly all of my interactions are organized around immediate benefits that I can get out of people, and I manage my connections very tightly exactly from the perspective of the most precise and beneficial gain. It is awful, but this is honestly how my mind operates and my life goes... The time that I do not spend persuading, managing and/or manipulating someone directly, I spend pretending that I care and showing off my good thoughts and deeds in hopes of giving the people enough reasons to give what I need in return. :/

Getting back to the main thought: I guess the idea that there is another, healthier part of my mind, of which I simply haven't made much use, had somehow stayed with me and later got 'highlighted' in such an unusual way. :) I am very pleased with the result and so I share it with you guys on hopes it can be of help.

 I was able to honestly more deeply relate to my friend that night, be genuinely grateful, connect and forgive her meager slip ups.

If I didn't have that little 'breakthrough' I would probably have to talk myself into not cutting off yet another connection because I still might need that person's help in the future or simply going with my darker feelings and ignoring her... :/

Yes, this is how sad and barren NPD-affected individual's interpersonal relationships really are... BUT there is hope, and I invite everyone who is looking for solution and reading this right now to try and imagine, or better yet, connect with a healthier part of their Self. Perhaps it would help to remember times when you felt more real and connected to yourself and others as a result of a different choice of pattern in thought and/or behavior.

From my experience I can tell you that being in your 'healthy' state feels like you are in touch with your body, energized, stronger, more connected to the present moment and your surroundings.
The physical sensation is unmistakable in a sense that you know you are right where you supposed to be.

I hope this can point you to the place where you too can find an authentic and empowering connection with yourself and others.

Beginning of recovery - my own experience.

I've been thinking about a question that most of my viewers/readers ask me : "How did your own recovery begin?" Prior to this moment I haven't been up to discussing that because it opens up another, even more personal layer of my life. However, my desire to find and share the truth has been my saving grace so far and so I am going to continue. I will describe exactly what happened to me and in doing so, hopefully, point to a way out of seemingly never-ending cycle of pain that is Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

The biggest clue I have been able to find is the source of identity and the way it relates to their "true self." Now this must be very confusing for many people (I know it was for me) and dreadful as it is, I am going to tackle explaining this the best I can.

Many people identify with the predominant "voice" in their head  - the constant stream of thoughts, judgments, anticipations, worries and references to the past in an attempt to determine the future - as their main source of knowing who they are. Some go so far as to completely identify with that "voice" and treat it as the only source of credible information about themselves and the world. Everyone is familiar with that part of their existence, but there are people who completely equate themselves with the voice and do not let even the moment of quiet, direct experience of the world to come through unobstructed by their "analysis." In a case of Narcissist, there is a very definite reason for this guarded, inflexible, fear-based attitude, and in my view it lies at the very core of the disorder.

Now, lets examine where does this so-called "voice" come from? Omitting all of the professional jargon that does more to confuse than to explain :) I will venture out and say that it internalized rules, views and ideas of our parents and/or other significant caregivers as well as societal norms and ideas we have been raised to adsorb has much to do with the content of our inner "talk." It looks like we have first grown accustomed to and then "appropriated" the same ideas and underlying emotional tone of the people ans circumstances that had played a significant role during our childhoods. Think that is a little far-fetched? See if you catch yourself unawares when you are running a familiar "script" in your mind when you are reacting to a particular person or situation, or even to your own behavior. Then try and put the last few words you can remember on a piece of paper. Look at the words with as impartial attitude as you can manage - where do they seem to come from? Are they as loving, friendly or even truthful as you would want them to be if they came from your real self? (A little "test" that someone mentioned in a self-help Q&A and that stuck in my mind was to take your typical verbalized criticism of yourself and imagine you were talking to your best friend that way. Are you horrified? Is that kind of talk is absolutely out of the question? Than why are you treating yourself that way?) And more to the point of our earlier hypotheses: "who is talking down to you in those moments?"

For myself, epiphany struck when I finally realized I kept criticizing myself and treating myself exactly the way my abusive Narcissistic mother did, down to seething contempt of my real feelings, and persistent neglect of my physical and emotional needs - and this is decades after I have left my parental family's household. I unconsciously continued the same script to run, perpetuating the abuse and sense of profound sadness and despair that I felt growing up.

Horrifying as it was, this wasn't the main point that struck me in that discovery, although, of course, it was crucial. Even deeper point was "If the voice who is doing the abuse is against me, then WHO IS "ME?" Now, from an intellectual point of view this strange question may seem quite bizarre or even ridiculous, but if you go with the moment and try to imagine what I was going through, then perhaps you will see it - I clearly had completely relinquished a big part of myself, and so completely identified with the punishing voice in my head, taking its view of the world as a total, complete and unwavering reality, that I hadn't even been aware another part of myself existed! Talk about being deformed - I hadn't even been allowing any of my true needs or feelings to surface - so beaten down and unworthy I had been judging that part of myself to be! I was utterly shocked when it first came to me. Then I start feeling so much compassion for a little sweet child that had to go through years of emotional starvation, feeling unacknowledged and lost. No wonder I had been feeling hopelessly depressed and so awkward, ill-fitted for society and for life itself.

I had been wounded, betrayed, stifled in my growth and sacrificed on the altar of my Mother's immense ego, and worse of all I have been perpetuating the abuse by believing in what my mother told me, by still holding her standards and her ideas as basic rules of how to relate to myself and how to live my life. I had to at once acknowledge and apologize to that little trusting, vulnerable part of myself that endured so many years of maltreatment. And at that moment I felt like I had found something worth finding, something very important and real, something that held a key to a better existence.

This story can perhaps illustrate an idea I have been meaning to share: much of our suffering comes from a misidentification- a misalignment with the voice (internalized, perpetuated experience) of our abusive past that we take to be more valid and real than our neglected core self. As long as we are unaware that the other part of us is still suffering, starved for energy and care, we will continue to lash out at ourselves and others, driving hard in a never-ending strive for greater control, more ardent approval, bigger achievements and so on, wondering why does it feel like our life had lost its meaning long ago.

To begin a journey back, we need not add anything to ourselves - we have to take away,  we must tame that abusive voice within us in order to feel who we really are.