Defenses

Kimera wrote:I have a similar reaction when someone I don't trust launches criticism at me - not petty $#%^, but things that really matter to me. It feels like they're trying to destroy me. It's really hard not to see my therapist in the same light if his goal is to dismantle my defenses.

My understanding is that the lack of the allegiance between therapist and client is one of the larger issues in the treatment of PDs. I suspect this is one of those times when you have to cognitively override the emotional impetus, though Akuma or eight would know better than I.

I think this is an apt description. You're not the cause, Quoth, just a catalyst. It's really awareness that's the cause. A year ago I would've dismissed what you said about the emptiness and put you on my enemy radar for trying to downgrade my experience. I'm learning how awareness is not a binary beast. Insights drip in slowly over time, presumably when I'm ready to manage them.

Very true. For myself of course it’s the need to deny victimisation, or to quote chu:

The elements of “denial, repression, dissociation, self-anesthesia, self-hypnosis” are all psychological defenses to distance oneself from the overwhelming emotions and sensations of traumatic experiences.

Obviously the term victim is not particularly PC, we use the term ‘survivor’ but victim is closer to the reality. I’ve got to the stage where I can just about handle it individual elements in a purely cognitive way. Grasping or processing the thing as a whole or the emotional aspect is still a ways off.

I will say that awareness can also swing back in the opposite direction. In my own case I often used to short circuit the feeling like a victim problem by convincing myself that me now was not the 12 year old me pleading for his existence. That I have enough clout and enough value so that it can never happen again, then of course the same illness which made me vulnerable in the first place demolishes a 16 year career and rips my life to shreds and I start convincing myself that I’m a psychopath/malignant narcissist.

Just cowardice on my part I’m afraid. For someone desperately trying to deny there own emotional response it’s fairly obvious the attraction those kind of constructs have.

Thank you for saying so. That means a lot to me. I've had my dark moments, I'm sure I'm not alone in that. I compartmentalize really well and am pretty busy with work, so I use that as my escape from dark places.

Quite alright.

I would have thought that in many ways your career is an asset here. From what I know of you the impression I get is that your a fairly formidable business person in your own right. I mean it’s not like you’ve spent the last twenty years nurturing a napoleon complex from your mums basement or are some youngster full of grandiose fantasies but lacking either experience or ability. The only way you know if you can do a thing is to get on and do it, and you have. My point really is that whatever the disparity between reality and grandiosity is for you, it’s not going to be as large as it will be for many.

I suspect, though I don’t know, that there is an element of “If I lose this perception of myself, I become nothing” in play. But both positions are unrealistic. It’s not that the person you’re going to discover underneath the defences isn’t going to turn out to be valuable in their own right it’s just not going to be who you thought you were. Like the bit about the ability to connect, it isn’t gone just smothered.

Hopefully that doesn’t come across as too patronising.

Quoth gives hugs?

Maybe....

I guess I do if I genuinely mean it and I’m confident that it’ll be received in the spirit it was intended.

If you were whinging about mommy not buying you the right sneakers or your boyfriend leaving you’d have got my usual “get a grip, would you please” attitude, complete with eye rolling and snide remarks.

From my point of view you’re trying to tackle one of the more difficult disorders out there, in spite of the fact that doing so causes you some not inconsiderable psychological distress. I don’t really see that as being anything other than admirable and I’m actually more than a little impressed.

Quoth wrote:

Kimera wrote:I have a similar reaction when someone I don't trust launches criticism at me - not petty $#%^, but things that really matter to me. It feels like they're trying to destroy me. It's really hard not to see my therapist in the same light if his goal is to dismantle my defenses.

My understanding is that the lack of the allegiance between therapist and client is one of the larger issues in the treatment of PDs. I suspect this is one of those times when you have to cognitively override the emotional impetus, though Akuma or eight would know better than I.

It's called 'therapeutic alliance'. It's the connection and trust that is necessary for therapist/client to go towards the harder elements of the work they do together. It's the primary component that was missing in what I offered to a member in the AsPD subforum, and why doing therapy remotely is, in my view, risky if not unethical if it's via text.
Pacing also is imperative, as well as therapeutic alliance. Perhaps your therapist, Kimera, is pacing too quickly? Or trying to take too big a bite and needs to take smaller bites? How long have you been with your therapist? Is s/he effective with you - does s/he seem skilled sufficiently to put you at ease while also challenging you? Do you feel s/he has a good grasp on how NPD feels on the inside?

Kimera wrote: It's really awareness that's the cause. A year ago I would've dismissed what you said about the emptiness and put you on my enemy radar for trying to downgrade my experience. I'm learning how awareness is not a binary beast. Insights drip in slowly over time, presumably when I'm ready to manage them.

Awareness feels awful, until it begins to feel better. But first it is awful.. for a very long time.

Let me tell you a story about myself for whatever it is worth to you:

I was raised by a mother who is diagnosed NPD with AsPD features. My entire function as a child was to reflect well onto her, and to be used for a sadistic outlet. I did my assigned job well but there was an awful price to pay. I feared her, but I also admired her - she's pretty, successful in career, has power in her spheres, plays her role effectively outside so few know of her truer nature, etc. As I grew into young adulthood, I declared my independence from her (at great risk to myself), moved far away, and began to try to grow an identity of my own. That was a very long process, as all I knew was to be a replica of her. She had the markings of success in her life -- I had those as well so life too was shouting at me to not give up my appearance, my career, my ways of making it work for myself both on the outside in what others saw of me, and on the inside of how I saw myself. I knew enough about identity, however, that I knew I didn't actually have one, not in a healthy way. What I had was the scaffolding that surrounded and supported the fragile me inside that never had a chance to grow, and I called that scaffolding 'me'. Those are the defenses of the personality that are built as a child to survive what we must survive and that become so egosyntonic that they become the only 'me' we know.

I put myself into therapy. More than once. With differing psychologists. As part of my training, and outside my training. I gradually, drip by drip as you say Kimera, began to dismantle the scaffolding. It was by fits and starts. I walked out on group therapy once because they were all idiots and I couldn't see why I was allowing myself to associate with silly idiotic people . I dropped a therapist or two, one who really wasn't up to the task of me, and one who threatened to show me myself too quickly.
I vacillated between denying that there was any problem - especially because my exterior life had the markings of success - and knowing that I lacked some fundamental things inside of me that I wanted and increasingly had come to believe were there if I could only get to them. I had to overcome 'me' in order to get to me -- that is no small feat. I gave up many times.

For me, having a child was the turning point, the thing that made me willing to go all in. I wanted to be a good mother and I knew that meant being emotionally soft and real and connective. I got the best psych in our location, and went to work. I was scared to death - and I mean that literally. Therapy, with this intention, felt like death to me. It was. I felt like something core, inside of me, was dying. [ I'm tempted to make a joke here, and I just did - typed it out then deleted it - because this death experience was so horrific for me that, even now, I want to make light of it. ]
I call this experience process 'the shattering'. That is what it felt like to me, that I was being shattered into a million pieces. A death process, yes. Next to one other thing, it is the worst experience I've ever had.

In this process, I had a waking dream, a vision of sorts, an imaginary image that felt like a dream but I was conscious - probably an unloading of my unconscious due to the type of therapeutic work I was in:

I was doing grand rounds in our inpatient mental facility, with a group of medical residents, going from bed-to-bed, with a differing resident stopping at the foot of each bed and giving a clinical summary of each patient. I was some sort of supervisor as I listened and questioned and evaluated each summarization. We moved on to the next bed. A resident, who was a bit of a shining star, began to give this report. As I listened, I marveled at how well he seemed to grasp the severity of the mental state of this patient, and I became curious as to what this patient, who likely was to have such a poor outcome, looked like, so I glanced more closely at the face nearly hiding under the sheets. To my horror, I saw myself, lying in Bed #10 in the very mental health facility that I supervised.

This waking dream became the embodiment of the level of fear I had in engaging in this work to dismantle my own scaffolding, and the image came to me over and over - I feared that I'd have a lasting psychotic break from finding that, without my constructs, I was nothing, I had nothing, there was nothing and no one there.

I shared it with my psychologist. She said there was someone there. I often thought she was lying.
Or, when I believed her, I feared that, if there was someone there, I would not like her. What if I, without my defenses, was one of those 'silly group idiots'? Oh gawd.

Quoth wrote:Just cowardice on my part I’m afraid. For someone desperately trying to deny there own emotional response it’s fairly obvious the attraction those kind of constructs have.

Yes. The fear is real. It's a survival fear. It feels more real than anything else. It takes great courage, amazing courage really, to go and face yourself, the inside you, if that 'you' has become defended for its life.

I would have thought that in many ways your career is an asset here. From what I know of you the impression I get is that your a fairly formidable business person in your own right. I mean it’s not like you’ve spent the last twenty years nurturing a napoleon complex from your mums basement or are some youngster full of grandiose fantasies but lacking either experience or ability. The only way you know if you can do a thing is to get on and do it, and you have. My point really is that whatever the disparity between reality and grandiosity is for you, it’s not going to be as large as it will be for many.

This is true, Quoth, and not true. Both.
It is true that the actual doing, the success of achieving in the real world, speaks to one's ability to do it, get the job done, and done well. What is done is not pipedreams, it is real. That feels validating.
But... but... what if you can only do it out of a certain mindset? what if you need your narcissism to push forward? what if it feels really good to be potent? what if you actually lose your edge when you change? That feels like a petit death if it means letting go of what feels like the essence of yourself.

I suspect, though I don’t know, that there is an element of “If I lose this perception of myself, I become nothing” in play. But both positions are unrealistic. It’s not that the person you’re going to discover underneath the defences isn’t going to turn out to be valuable in their own right it’s just not going to be who you thought you were. Like the bit about the ability to connect, it isn’t gone just smothered.

Easy for you to say.
This is true, but it does not feel true when in the process. This sounds like a platitude for those 'silly idiots'. To me, back then, it felt insulting. "You mean, I should willingly become less than I am, for what?"
I've often wondered if I'd have been willing to go through that immense pain and fear if I hadn't had my child and my strong compelling desire to be more of a mother than my 'scaffolding' would allow me to be. I know I wouldn't have done it just for the idea of connecting more in romance... nah. That would not have been enough for me. Not back then with that mindset, and heartset.

It took me a long time. My reactions to love had to be rewiring. Love didn't feel good to me. Love felt like pain. Literal pain. I flinched from it in pain. The psychic pain had become physical pain and all-encompassing. I could do 'fake love' or 'nice' or 'sexy hot woman' or 'cooly attractive intellectual challenge' or whatever, but to actually let love come close, and touch me? To be that vulnerable?
That's another piece to the story for later.

Kimera, you are courageous. Whatever else you are, you have courage.

Thanks, both, for sharing your personal experiences. You've given me a lot to reflect on.

Eight, if you don't mind my asking, were you dx'ed with a PD?

Regarding my therapist, I've known him for many years but I've been a tough patient. First time I went to see him I only lasted a few sessions. A few years later, same thing. This time I lasted a whole year, but unfortunately it's been via Facetime as I moved away. I think the physical distance plays a role.

I won't go see anyone else, he's the only person I trust. His pacing would probably be fine if I let him set the pace, but I don't. So many sessions are me just prattling on about nothing. When I was going through a particularly rough period a few months ago, I wasn't even totally sober when I'd speak to him (this would never happen if we were face to face). I don't think he knew, but I should ask him. I've since stopped drinking completely unless I'm out with friends.

If I move back (which I might), I'll go see him again. I think. I genuinely enjoy talking to him, I just don't want to be broken.

Eight wrote:Kimera, you are courageous. Whatever else you are, you have courage.

I would not say this about myself. Resilient, yes. Courageous, not so much.

Kimera wrote:It feels like death, is about all I’ve been able to tell him. Total obliteration.

That's because you don't have other defenses lined up to replace the narcissistic one. So the feeling of death is all that can be there.

Kimera wrote:He swears that won’t happen, but I think he’s wrong. I know he’s wrong.

He's right. The feeling you're having is so overwhelming that there's no way that you can rationalize that he's right. But you know that physically you aren't going to die.

Kimera wrote:At an impasse, I’ve ditched therapy for the present. And in anticipation of someone saying that’s what therapy is supposed to feel like and there will be rainbows, unicorns and a choir singing on the other side – seriously, piss off. It’s not helpful.

I wish that's what was on the other side of therapy.

Kimera wrote:But for me there is nothing to replace it – that glorified behavior was all I had. I don’t have the non-disordered alternative to fill in this new hole. There’s just emptiness and glaring evidence of my own shortcomings. Loss. Obliteration. If you wonder why pwNPD defend their beliefs so violently, this is why.

BINGO!!

Your therapist should have been helping you to replace the defense, not obliterate it completely leaving you fully vulnerable. It's only natural to feel grief and sadness. Perhaps he wants you to learn on your own to handle this feeling but I would say that's irresponsible of him.

Kimera wrote:Now I know that the thing I try to keep from others is that I can’t connect like a non. I can manufacture connection (it works, at least in the short term), and I can fake empathy (although sometimes it’s real).

That's an important insight that you should feel good about learning and understanding.

Kimera wrote:My therapist tells me that my ability to connect is there – it’s just being too heavily guarded.

He's right.

Kimera wrote:The potential to exit out the wrong side has been, and continues to be, very real to me. Not so much into psychosis, but darkness, depression and suicidal ideation. The other door....that one is less clear to me.

This is why you need replacement defenses. You don't just take on a completely overwhelming feeling with nothing to help you with it. The therapist should be helping to ease you through it, perhaps acting as a defense in and of themselves. But they should also be teaching techniques to manage when that feeling comes up other than narcissism.

Kimera wrote:Eight, if you don't mind my asking, were you dx'ed with a PD?

No. If I'd seen a less-skilled therapist in my 20's, I might have been diagnosed NPD. But that would have been based on a rather flat application of the diagnostic criteria, which plenty of therapists do. Someone with more skill at that time would have been able to delve deeper and would have seen that my traits were more mimicry and strategy than disorder. Still my constructed personality was tight and inflexible, and I was skilled at ignoring anything that suggested that I was other than what I presented to myself and to others. As far as I knew, it had always been this way, and I would have sworn that I'd been that way from birth - that was the extent to which I believed how I presented was who I was.

This time I lasted a whole year, but unfortunately it's been via Facetime as I moved away. I think the physical distance plays a role.

I think so too. When working on deeply ingrained personality traits, I think physical presence is essential. Your therapist sees your face, but not your body so he's more limited in the clues that physical presence offers. Plus, there's a bit of unrealness about interacting via a flat screen - probably why it is preferred when someone is getting to know someone else but not yet wanting to meet in person - there's some detachment via pixels.

I won't go see anyone else, he's the only person I trust. His pacing would probably be fine if I let him set the pace, but I don't. So many sessions are me just prattling on about nothing. When I was going through a particularly rough period a few months ago, I wasn't even totally sober when I'd speak to him (this would never happen if we were face to face). I don't think he knew, but I should ask him. I've since stopped drinking completely unless I'm out with friends.

I felt the same way about someone I saw; she headed the psych dept and had a german toughness to her that worked well for me at the time - plus the sensible shoes always killed me everytime I walked in with my heels in suited business attire. She really was tough but in a kind way that I could accept without fighting her too much - lol.

Re the being slightly drunk while in session: Ya, another reason why in-person is preferred. You might be reticent to go if not sober, and he might be able to detect that you're not sober and bring that up.
I can't say that I ever went to a session high, but I can say that there were sessions made me run right out and do something to alter myself afterwards.

If I move back (which I might), I'll go see him again. I think. I genuinely enjoy talking to him, I just don't want to be broken.

Being broken is the only way. The construction is too tight for anything else. But chipping away is good as preliminary steps.

I would not say this about myself. Resilient, yes. Courageous, not so much.

Courage:

the ability to do something that frightens one
strength in the face of pain or grief
the power or quality of dealing with or facing danger, fear, pain

In my view, it takes courage to willingly go into therapy to address your inner workings seriously.

My understanding is that we work from pain. When we're in pain (not too much pain obviously), this is when we are motivated to change.

By building up a person too much, you risk taking their pain away and also their opportunity for growth. That's what children of pwNPD sometimes do, the enabling behavior, the compulsive need to be helpful and alleviate a parent's pain is so ingrained that it gets confused with doing what's right.

I'm afraid that's what you're doing sometimes Whichway & Eight.

ShowJumpingRabbit wrote:I'm afraid that's what you're doing sometimes Whichway & Eight.

Thanks for the reflection, SJR, but it strikes me that Kimera isn't one to be flattered easily by a few words.
Nor are my statements to her codependent. Neither are whichway's nor Quoth's (I think you forgot to include Quoth in your remark).

What my statements do show is respect for her struggle, and encouragement to keep on.

Pain is a great motivator. Life will bring pain. It always does. I don't have to contribute to that pain for her to see.

There is something I don't understand. And I'm not trying to pick a fight but genuinely applying myself to understand.

I've been told I make assumptions. Allegedly the wrong kind.

Eight wrote:but it strikes me that Kimera isn't one to be flattered easily by a few words.

How is this not an assumption? How do you know for sure? If in doubt, are you willing to take the risk?

I promise I am not trying to put you on the spot with this post. I'm genuinely trying to understand what's you guys' reasoning process when you write posts based on such assumptions and why is it that some assumptions are harmless and some other "bad"?

Eight wrote:I don't have to contribute to that pain for her to see.

Of course not, but it seems to me that between contributing to someone's pain and taking away their pain there is room for something else. And let us be very clear, I am not affirming I have found the perfect equilibrium, but that's why it seems to me like a matter of conversation: it's anything but self-evident.

Just figured out why I find the behavior upsetting. Feel free to carry on ...

Eight wrote:Re the being slightly drunk while in session: Ya, another reason why in-person is preferred. You might be reticent to go if not sober, and he might be able to detect that you're not sober and bring that up.
I can't say that I ever went to a session high, but I can say that there were sessions made me run right out and do something to alter myself afterwards.

I'm not sure why I did this, it's out of character for me. I'm way more responsible than this. Something about those sessions was making me feel like a rebellious teen. When the session was over, I'd feel more agitated and hyper and pour another glass of wine.

I used to post here after a few glasses of wine, too. When I read back on old posts, I know which ones I wrote while under the influence. Makes me cringe, to be honest. I consider it beneath me to not be in control - a standard I set for myself (that I sometimes fail to deliver on).

whichway wrote:This is why you need replacement defenses. You don't just take on a completely overwhelming feeling with nothing to help you with it. The therapist should be helping to ease you through it, perhaps acting as a defense in and of themselves. But they should also be teaching techniques to manage when that feeling comes up other than narcissism.

Makes good sense.