Chapter 8 Shame: The Outcome of Everyday Narcissism
Chapter 9 Distracting Ourselves and Each Other
Chapter 10 How Everyday Narcissism Diminishes Our Relationships
Chapter 11 When Others Touch Our Wounds
Chapter 12 Creating a Healing Environment
Chapter 13 Everyday Forgiveness
The False Principles Behind Everyday Narcissism
The Five Myths of Everyday Narcissism
Healing Activities
Become Aware of the Five Myths
Notice the Five Myths as You Go About Your Day
Notice When You Start to Fall Into the Five Myths of EN
Pay Attention to Your Body
Let Yourself Make Mistakes—and Apologize When Appropriate
Listen to and Name Your Feelings
Notice and Investigate Your Anger
Explore Your Personal Desires
Speak Your Truth
Clarify Your Truth
Step Out of Victim Energy
Notice and Let Go of Shame
Recognize Your Defenses and Heal Your Shame
Love the Child inside You
Name Your Distractors
Address Your Needs
Prepare Your Heart to Forgive
Integrate What You Have Learned into Your Life
Healing Tools
List of Feelings
List of Angry Feelings
List of Needs
List of Common Distractors
Author’s Note
Most of the stories in this book are either true or based on living people and actual situations. However, I have changed names and details to protect people’s privacy. In a small number of cases, I have created composite characters based on multiple living people. In a few other cases—Isabel and her son Sam, for instance—each story is a hypothetical illustration of a key point. The fictional origins of such stories will be clear in context.
I would like to acknowledge and thank my greatest teacher and lesson giver, my daughter Kelsey. As I made mistakes in my own parenting, my love for her kept me looking inward, seeking my own healing to improve my parenting. It is here that I discovered my own narcissism—how I’d been hurt by narcissism and how I had unintentionally hurt my lovely daughter with it as well.
I wish to thank my clients, who elected to trust me and believe that I could help them on their healing journeys. I am grateful for their willingness to walk into their own wounds and emotions, their strength in sharing them with me, and their courage to change.
I want to thank my first editor, Scott Edelstein, who was able to work magic with what I wrote. I appreciate his undying belief in the importance of this book; his confidence that I had something important to share; his continuous challenges to have me think things through and explore key topics more thoroughly; and his help in getting clear about what I was trying to say. He did all this with kindness, gentleness, acceptance, and encouragement. Scott, I am deeply grateful.
My thanks to everyone at Central Recovery Press—especially Valerie Killeen, Eliza Tutellier, and Patrick Hughes—who helped this book become everything I hoped it would be.
And to my family and friends who never left my side as I struggled with my ideas and my weariness of writing; all of you consistently believed that what I was doing mattered. Thank you.
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
Mohandas Gandhi
“In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Carrying the well-being of others on your own shoulders? Heavy, isn’t it?
Meanwhile a very important life is being neglected. Yours.
We humans take extraordinary measures to feel safe, even sacrificing awareness of our truest selves in order to follow explicit and implicit rules. On that path, we can stray so far from our authentic center that we don’t know that we’ve lost ourselves. Our own false self then relates to the false selves of others. How precarious is that?
My cat can’t read. Even if I could bear to punish or withdraw from him, or if I used all my best skills to teach him, he still would be unable to read. (And imagine how our relationship would be affected, were I to continue to pressure him to live up to my expectations.)
Yet well-meaning parents routinely try to enforce behavior that is beyond a child’s normal developmental capacity.
What do you imagine this does to a child? What did it do to you, when you were expected to handle a feeling or task that you weren’t old enough for? How did your parents handle it, when you couldn’t?
And if you’re a parent, how can you avoid passing on the same downward spiral of internal neglect? How can you avoid demanding the impossible of others, especially after years of being immersed in myths yourself?
Forced compliance with cultural myths that are contrary to internal integrity, and even common sense, inevitably sets up problems with authority.
We all have a relationship with authority. We can struggle with it every day our whole lives and not be aware of the energy it uses or the cost of the struggle. This struggle can take many forms—love/hate, insist/resist, open compliance hiding secret defiance, open defiance leading to self-sabotage, overt or subtle domination, and/or passive resistance.
We may reward and please others, while simultaneously digging out the ground they are standing on. We can even force ourselves into internal compliance, while losing all awareness of honest reactions. We learn to wear a mask so smoothly that the edges of the mask graft to our skin.
What is your relationship with authority? Is yours healthy and sensible, or an ongoing struggle—at work or in professional situations, in your intimate relationships, and within yourself?