Maybe You're the Narcissist: We Are Living With Our Own Narcissistic Wound!

I'm Alan Robarge a relationship coach in the psychotherapist and I like to talk about attachment injuries and healing attachment trauma to improve our relationships and learn better skills of relating and this video is titled maybe you're the narcissist and obviously that's a bit of a provocative title and I want to play with the words here to say maybe you're the narcissist maybe we're the narcissist maybe I'm the narcissist and let's just take the word maybe out of it let's talk about our narcissism collectively and in order to do this I need to create some disclaimers because this is complex information there's a lot of misunderstanding and assumptions and there are a lot of people who come to listening to this information with an agenda of what they think I'm going to talk about and then also to acknowledge a boundary around this content that I have had for three years I set out on day one to create videos three years ago and to explore content around attachment injuries and healing attachment trauma an understanding insecure attachment and all of the symptoms and the behaviors that come out of that and create some core beliefs about our sense of self and how we can very much identifiably in a predictable way see patterns of relating and we know that some of its coming out of attachment trauma and some of it's coming out of a bigger sense of insecure attachment and included in that then has to do with a process of development around our sense of narcissism and I very clearly did not want to be linked or identified with the anti narcissist online communities or that content and very much saw what I was doing is needing to have to think a bit beyond focusing on other and that's one of the greatest problems and challenges is when we begin to try to understand someone else's pathology for a group of people for most of us who come into this information we are struggling to stay focused on ourself and learn about ourself and so therefore when we find messages that explain how other people are messed up or other people are the source of our suffering or other people are treating us partly and actually the their their their abusive that obviously that's a really refreshing message if we need to understand those dynamics and understand abuse dynamics but it still reinforces that we're going to go down the rabbit hole of referencing our own experience of ourselves through what has happened to us or through the lens of abuse so part of the disclaimer here and have to say this really clearly is I'm not talking about abuse I'm not talking about narcissistic abuse as it is commonly known in a bit of a casual way on the internet and online and the way so many untrained misguided people want to talk about it there is a goodness to untrained misguided people wanting to talk about it the goodness is saying let's let's let's continue to educate ourselves and clarify what exactly is going on and so it makes sense that we're doing things in stages and chapters and I by no means have mastered this this is really really complex stuff and also simultaneously I'm also working with my own development of self my own maturing my own insecure attachment my own attachment trauma and how do I create relationships and learn better skills of relating so simultaneously for me to even make a video about this it's really challenging because the content is complex but also I'm simultaneously learning and growing for myself so the disclaimer the boundary the clarity here is I'm not jumping on the bandwagon and talking about abuse emotional abuse manipulation and focusing on other people who are the bad evil narcissists we are not going to talk about you know the 10 ways to disarm a narcissist the the five ways that narcissists try to get under your skin or manipulate are manipulative you know the fie the the the 12 ways that narcissists are toxic and belittle your worth it's it's a particular approach to trying to come at some understanding and hopefully clarify where we need to create some boundaries but by design it inherently has no boundaries because it's still talking about them them them them in this video I want to talk about us I want to talk about you and I'll simultaneously be folding myself into this too because I understand this process the narcissistic wound which is different from narcissistic abuse which is different from trying to pathologically diagnose someone with a personality disorder it's not what I'm talking about but it's important to make the distinction that I want to go in the direction of talking about a narcissistic wound the wound of the development of the self because it's that very wound that all of us experienced all of us suffer two sides of the same coin whether or not you're going to single someone out and say they're the perpetrator narcissist or whether or not you're going to identify yourself as being on the receiving end as a codependent person or if you don't like that label has someone who has been victimized this is all challenging stuff to talk about and to use these words because I'm trying to establish this boundary of these two different areas of focus but even if I reference them I have to validate and honor and acknowledge that all of this is true and real so if I'm trying to say hey wait a minute this group of content and this group of people and these online communities that are trying to to really stoke the the stoke the fire or hit the drum beat around narcissistic abuse I value that's an important area of study and exploration and I acknowledge that it's real there are mean people there are bad people there are evil people there are people who are coming from narcissistic tendencies the actual number of people who nurse who are narcissus is you know from a from a pathological diagnosis Abul standpoint there's a rather small percentage and based upon how people are present you know anyone who many people not anyone but many people who feel cheated and wronged and misunderstood and heard and in some kind of dynamic of a power struggle where they were theirs where their needs were completely dismissed in their sense of self was dismissed it's very easy than to conclude well that other person is a narcissist so we're not moving into the area of diagnosis we're not moving into trying to track with people are aren't narcissist we're going to look at your narcissistic wound we're gonna look at how we all have a narcissistic wound whether or not we call ourselves narcissists whether or not we call ourselves empaths whether or not we call ourselves codependence and I don't like this language I don't think it's helpful and that's the point of this video and that's the point of why I've had a boundary of not talking about this I've created an online presence community and I have a membership community of a eight-week program and very clearly you know after three years of videos and on a lot of content that I've created around articles and conversation prompts and you know asking questions and interacting you know with people that is very important to maintain this boundary that the type of work that I'm doing is not needing to mu-2 to or let me rephrase this the type of work that I value around healing attachment injuries primarily needs to come back to focusing on your sense of self and for some people let's talk about chapters of healing we all are in different stages we are all in different places it is very possible that the message that I'm sharing here is not the right time he's very possible that you're someone who already knows what I'm talking about you've already moved through this chapter and this is really not you know something that you're focusing on anymore we have to realize that we're all coming to this at different levels and we need different things and so it can be very very helpful if you need to go through a phase a stage if you need to go through this chapter of healing where it is important to really focus on the narcissist and abuse and abuse dynamics and really understand how you have been manipulated you having you know participated or been privy to toxic environments that belittle your worth in your sense of self and disconnect you from even knowing how to you know make choices so that you can move forward and get yourself out of that situation and this of course links to all kinds of abuse this is all about you know domestic violence in any kind of you know situation where abuse dynamics and power over dynamics and misuse of power are really seriously hurting people so my message here the disclaimer I mean we haven't even jumped in I'm still just talking about this disclaimers and I'm doing this for a reason I'll explain in a bit there's a lot of aggression and anger in the communities that come together the community communities plural that come together to talk about narcissistic abuse there's a live aggression there's a lot of anger and then if and and a group of people who are very easily defensive and very easily triggered and very easily want to oftentimes direct aggression towards anyone who is not beating the drum in the same way or if in any way they disagree with what is being said it's you know I have witnessed this I've had a small taste of it because I've made sure I had the boundary and didn't didn't want to be a part of it but you know I had a small taste of it personally but I have witnessed it I have I have been in facebook groups I have you know seen online forums conversations that come up and what's underneath all of this is an incredible amount of aggression and rage and anger and that is fueling how the you know narcissistic abuse community is attempting to dissect or distill down to make sense of in the spirit of healing and the goodness of coming into clarity but as part of the process again we talk about chapters is that it actually still simultaneously can be not so skilled place I always love the phrase skilled and unskilled and here we have some people who are very much traumatized and hurt and coming out of abuse scenarios and very sensitive and sometimes express their discomfort being triggered from a place of a unskilled aggression so I'm making this very very clear that I'm not inviting any nasty messages or people coming you know the internet is full of hate speech and hatred and being unkind and if if you know at some point if this information is not helpful or triggering you know please lead from a place of skillfulness and compassion and don't make me the object of the aggression and I am going to continue to talk about how that is an an underlying core theme of this misguided unconscious rage this primal rage that is folded into the narcissistic wound and that is then playing out and part of the communities that want to talk about it and so I've had a boundary I do not want that energy leaking into the community of people who are doing healing work from the perspective of what I am what you know the the drum the the guiding principle that I endorse is called self-directed healing and really looking at healing as a lifestyle and saying you know we need to take ownership for our own maturing our own our own personal growth and we are continuing to water the seeds of better health and water the seeds of better healthy relating so in order to do that it's really important to know how some of this residual toxicity and this unknown anger and rage can leak into when we start talking about healing attachment injuries and healing attachment trauma and the conversation then very quickly can get sucked into or move into talking about narcissism so lastly last time just to repeat here the boundary is we are not talking about abuse dynamics we are not talking about what is referred to as narcissistic abuse we're talking about narcissism as a development a developmental process that gets sorted and in that in that developmental process that gets sorted we experience a wound to our sense of self it is the wound of the development of the self it is a wound around being nurtured to be you that there were some obstacles there are some limitations either you know identifiable consciousness on that you know something going on in your family history and potentially it could have happened you know in other context but for the most part that that you were not really able to be yourself and that you were in an environment with some people who were distracted meaning family and parents and primary caregivers and whoever's there and some of you know many of them did the best that they could do and we're we're distracted for legitimate reasons their own mental health concerns just trying to survive and and work and how challenging it is to raise a family and also they themselves struggled with a not very strong sense of self they themselves have a wound in their own development of self and so it becomes very very challenging for someone who doesn't have a more integrate grounded centered place of self meaning if the parent doesn't have that well then you're just unable to provide that to the child and you know offer the the right type of presence and nurturing and to encourage the child to really encourage the child to come come out to be seen but simultaneously the parent is seeing the child and so the wound of the development of the self is that you fundamentally were not seen for who you are and usually then this was in the context context of some kind of dysfunction or even also abuse in the home or you know some other addiction and addictive environments some mental illness someone's really really depressed stressed out chronic chronic stress and anxiety around money and finances and and poverty and it just creates an environment where the parent is just totally distracted and so your self you are not welcomed to be you the parent just couldn't see it and then in addition to not even being able to see it that there that the environment in some way was potentially hostile to you coming out and being yourself or the environment was so unattentive that you started to question subconsciously your little child mind well there must be something wrong with me I mean these people don't even see me these people don't engage me and this can become really incredibly crazy-making and complex if you had parents who were good caregivers and parents who are fundamentally loving and parents who are fundamentally good people and so in some ways you did receive a foundational nurturing around being loved but in the everyday immediacy of sharing presence and engaging in emotional attunement and being there for each other a kind of harmony and a resonance to know each other to be known to create invitation of vulnerability and intimacy to really share holding space with each other and to share an experience that we both enjoy each other's company and we both see each other we see who we are and many of us did not have this and this can create limitations and obstacles and challenge that have then gotten in the way of moving through our necessary development and maturing into growing into our adulthood and so this wound exists around are immature self and it's a wound where we're still seeing the world through the lens of this younger self and we developed a number of core beliefs where there must be something wrong with me there must be something wrong with you because these people didn't even want to see you I mean these people didn't even want to engage with you and so therefore we conclude or and/or we feel certainly a belief but we feel unlovable with your weed we must not deserve love there must be something wrong with me and all of these core beliefs linked to a really provocative horrible nauseating uncomfortable feeling that there's something fundamentally wrong with Who I am that I am flawed as a human being and I'm talking about shame so all of this whole dynamic the wound of the development of the self we experience a shame around the messaging whether direct or indirect the messaging we received is don't be yourself we don't want to see you we don't even know we don't know who you where we are so fine not knowing you and let's just smile let's just move on let's just enter the next year school let's you know celebrate holidays let's continue to be a family but all the while we don't really want to know who you are everything's fine or maybe everything is not fine but we still don't want to know who you are so this creates this ongoing core messaging and belief system and it belittles your sense of worth or we call it the wound of the development of the of yourself because you never had worth to begin with so it's not only belittling your worth in your sense of self it's like well we never we never nurtured another or developed enough out beyond this through encouragement and and through real presence and someone who wants to know our inner world and our experiences of who we are and where we could reveal ourselves and vulnerability that sort of you know edgy place where it's simultaneously prickly but yet invigorating to open up and many of us never opened up then we just shut down this complete sense of well I'm not you know I'm I guess I can't even be me and we shut down so much we don't even realize we are shut down and we don't even realize there's a skill to opening up where are we shut down so much and here we go here's a big part of this whole thing I'm talking about the narcissistic wound creates a false self and that's how we we all then develop saying well I can't be really myself and when I've attempted to have my attachment needs met and I've attempted to connect with my parents in a certain way and I've attempted to want to share Who I am and be vulnerable and open up emotional that's not working these people are just checked out these people are distracted these people are self-absorbed and remember that word because it's a direction that we're going here that's the sort of the link and the crossover with narcissism that word again not narcissistic abuse but this idea about narcissism is this you know because our development of self was thwarted we then need to enter a state of absorption to be able to make choices about what we do next we can't don't really have a freedom or fluidity to know how to let the self just be its self to let ourselves just to be our self we've manufactured a bit more of a false presentation which subconsciously unconsciously we didn't try you know we didn't sit down with a pad of paper and said hey let's create this but you know maybe some of us did we did things like you know I better you know we coached ourselves they do say this don't say that do act like this don't act like that and for some of us it was very conscious I'm remembering in this moment I actually I can remember in seventh grade I had a I could see myself writing on a piece of paper creating I created a persona and I was looking at a JCPenney cat a clothing catalog and picking out all the clothes I was gonna I was gonna be a whole making up Who I am I'm gonna be this person now at that age what I'm doing is normal I mean everybody does it but it was simultaneously fueled with my my life depended on doing it because if I didn't do that I really had no idea of who I was at all again this is all normal that's how this is an you know to to go through the narcissistic development and we can even say that it's even normal here this that it's really normal to have a narcissistic wound and it's very easy to make the argument to say everyone has it we're at least in modern culture and in modern culture we're living in a very immature psychology and for my self identify you know the my is saying that to be a man to really think of boy psychology you know our culture is steeped in boy psychology we're not a mature masculine culture and if we're also now talking about the feminine where you know where a girl psychology we're not we're not the psychology of you know the the wizened woman we we are very immature and so even collectively in a modern culture were really challenged to know how to move through this stage of development of the necessary self-absorption of needing to manufacture itself in order to try to have it - great and aligned with who we really are the wound is that it never aligned and the wound is that we never had a reference point for really knowing who we really were and as a result we kept reinforcing and believing because the environment around us was unwelcome or maybe even hostile is that we got the sense that we are going to be fundamentally rejected as a human being and this is life or death stuff so therefore the the conclusion the intelligent the really really intelligent conclusion is I cannot be myself I will be rejected and I will be you know die here and so therefore how can I be a self who's false how do I develop this other false self so the wound of the development of the self is about an interruption to our maturing into our more adult knowing our adult psychology and we get stuck there and some people have a different orientation to that wound some people really manufacture unconscious they don't try to do this but they realize you know what my false self my persona self is going to overcompensate I'm gonna be an overachiever and I'm gonna be a little grandiose and I'm really gonna be a lot of jazz hands and bells and whistles and I'm too much for this world and I'm gonna make sure that you notice me and so we have a presentation that's really sophisticated and dynamic and we're even moving do you see the connection Lee we can see how then some people can very easily choose to be manipulative or manipulate environments to get what they want because they mean - because that's what they needed to get their attachment needs mad and say hey notice me I know how to make you notice me now there's also the other Avenue the other direction is the person who implodes into themselves and they disappear so much where they want to stay under the radar and you know I've heard a number of stories of people growing up who would you know had this ongoing relationship with hiding literally you know hiding in parts of the room hiding behind furniture you know a particular closet where they would you know sit next to the shoes and hang out with the the long hanging coats so that when someone opened the door they didn't even see that they were that they were hiding in there and that's literal but also metaphorical or symbolic of we just learned to say you know just hold back and don't reveal who you are all of this is folded into this narcissistic wound and just to repeat we're doing it in a context where the parent themselves are unaware of their own narcissistic wound and the parent is unaware and/or has given up on him or herself needing to mature beyond it so if the parent can't acknowledge their own development of self their own limitations and challenges and how they would have to confront their own wounding their own suffering their own pain and really move into this place of how painful it is to not have a secure sense of self then they're not going to touch that content touch that material engage in it or even know how even know what the child needs or what the child you know as an adult when the adult starts talking to the parent the parent might not even know what you're talking about because the parent to historically never really was able to have an experience of nurturing and encouragement around just being themselves many of us come from histories and legacies and even through history this whole idea of you know the world is not safe to be you so you better figure out how to hide in such a way that keeps you distant and you see that that is the fundamental problem that we have in relationships is that some of us the moment we think there's a possibility to be in relationship with someone who is there and and and and we could practice falling in love and practice building a relationship we are so incredibly hungry for this experience we've been waiting so long we just throw caution to the wind and totally latch on to this person and say oh yes let's just completely be finally someone's here finally someone's here to see me and then again we have the other presentation the other response of saying like hey I'm not gonna trust this you're gonna you're gonna not see me the same way everybody doesn't see me and I'm just gonna I'm just gonna hang back and still continue to be guarded so we're talking about attachment styles preoccupied anxious attachment attachment styles of avoidance and linked to it if we want to use this language as we're talking about this narcissistic wound the wound of the development of the self and there's two sides of the same coin which means it's two sides to this wound the presentation could be you know a bit self you know beyond self-absorbed and manipulative and very out for oneself in a way that disregards others or the other side of the coin is to not have to to diminish one's needs so much and to in a in a very hyper caretaking way want to monitor what everybody else needs and that's what we generally see as the presentation of codependency but what's the glue that's holding all of this together is that all of us have a narcissistic wound so to single out this other group of people you know to then elevate it to you know you know what most of us talk about narcissistic abuse we're not talking about narcissism and we're not talking about abuse we're talking about the narcissistic wound and that's why I've needed to create this boundary because people don't make that distinction and it's very you know for reasons that I'll continue explain it's very easy to get hooked into exaggerating it's due to the other person's fault or the other person who is lacking you know they have behaved inappropriately they have behaved in a way that has been so hurtful to not give us what we need and what we want which is some validation to be ourselves but we pick people who they don't even know how to validate themselves as you see this is this is how it's a bit it's a bit of a setup we set ourselves up as much as we don't want to but we set ourselves up and even even when we're coming from a place of being nice and we're good people we know what good people we two are still leaving from this false self and everyone has a false self that's you know a bit of a common understanding of psychology psychological you know frameworks around the persona you know there in order to operate in this world I need to create a persona you know I have a work persona I have a I have a you know family persona I have a I have a when I'm a pedestrian on the street and I go to a coffee shop and you know I present myself you know that persona and you know for the most part they're all integrated or they have a sense of fluidity and they're they're not too wildly different but we have this persona where we know in certain context we're going to accentuate and lead from certain aspects of our persona and then when we are in other context we're going to lead and exaggerate those there is a genius to that design in our psyche and that it really helps us you know socialize it helps us function and it helps us adapt but when we're moving into this as being problematic and we might even say a bit in the pathological sense how this is you know the the limitation here is that when we over identify with the persona and the persona becomes a crutch or the persona becomes all we know and that now we're scrambling to present to protect our image and protect how we're perceive and it's all about manufacturing ourselves because we are so far away we are miles and miles away from even having access to a foundational truth of well Who am I really but we are so caught up in the presentation of the persona that this gets exaggerated as our false self now at the core of all of this and the reason why we are so attached to this false self persona and our life depends on it is that it is buffering us from our core subconscious shame that I already talked about this shame this sense that if that that you know we concluded at some point in our little mind a little person you usually usually you know a lot a lot of unconscious processes you know it's just not safe to be me in this world and I have a lot of and I've received you know some messaging not only is it not safe to be me people don't want me to be me and that is so painful and confusing and the way that we experience it is the kind of shame and it is that core shame that we then prop up our false self persona to say well I cannot experience the shame because it's too hurtful and painful and I cannot show people the shame and I certainly can't show people who I am so I really need to invest in this false self persona because that's all I got and so it serves a function and a purpose it's like it creates a barrier or boundary or it's a kind of it's it's the dam that holds in the river of shame and then we say well I guess this is how I'm going to operate in the world if we really in this moment this is just you know logical or just your intellectual just what I'm going to say before we even tap into the feeling but it just makes sense logically that anyone who has to endure this kind of dynamic that very quickly you could see how this creates a profound anger and I want to play with the language here to even turn up the volume we're not just talking profound anger we're talking primal rage a rage that transcends our family and transcends our history and transcends the things that did or did not happen transcends being hurt it just taps into this extreme primal rage that's even nonverbal for some of us it happened so early on it's pre verbal and it's this rage around I am not welcome in this world to be myself and as a human being I'm in this environment that's telling me that I am flawed and there is something wrong with me and I have to invest in this false self fake persona in order to function in order to be in a relationship in order to get a job in order to belong to community and this is just deeply unsettling this grows inside of us this is a fire that is burning inside of us and the type of primal rage that I'm referring to is so crushing and so powerful that it creates the sense of well listen these are impossible feelings because now it's not only tapping into our own individual self our own individual life our own individual story of how this got set up we're tapping into a primal primal human nature for survival and you know the the human experience is to go through some kind of transformative life maturing growth process you know these rites of passage where we graduate into new stages of our development and each time we are uncovering who we are and we're discovering who we are well that process gets florida that process gets hijacked by the narcissistic wound and as a result of being hijacked and then stuck in a place of stagnation of only being able to prop up your false self persona this really sets up this impossible riddle of impossible feelings this double bind where you damned if you do and you damned if you don't it says it is a state of paralysis it is it is shame paralysis and the only way to maneuver through this until we really are able in an environment that is supportive and that we have enough insight and aren't quite honestly where our psyche is able to be cracked open do you hear those words you know how violent is that that's something general in general what I'm gonna say is not totally true how the heck do I know everybody's healing process I have no idea but for many of us the only way that this whole thing falls apart is when there's a crack in the persona and usually the explosion that makes the persona the false self blow apart has to do is delivered through suffering and for many of us because our original wound is around attaching it destroy our attachment trauma and an attachment wound it's going to happen in the same way it's that you know we're so fraud fraud in a fragile way holding it all together and it's it's going to take the attempt to love and be loved be in relationship and and and open yourself up to vulnerability and emotional connection and when it doesn't work out and you and you and for and you also have been involved in a toxic dysfunctional dance of pushing each other way then coming back together and pushing each other away and coming back together and it is tapping into a river of grief a river of shame that the relationship it's the suffering the ending the profound grief the crushing grief finally blows this all open and for many of us it is just so wildly painful because we're left with all of these years of the aftermath of the profound ignoring that occurred in our history the profound rejection and that we just conclude you know what people my family even people who I know love me and I love them just did not want to know me as a person and even today still don't want to know me and if I move into that place there's a personal rage but it links me to a deeper primal rage which is also simultaneously laced and swirled with shame and can you just hear the incredible sophistication that we all will need to discern in our mind and to make sense and to paddle through that river of grief it is very hard and challenge is why I say healing work is a lifestyle and this is why I say this is a full-time job and this is why I say you're gonna be doing this for the rest of your life it's an invitation to really participate in paddle paddle you know pick up the oar and let's paddle through the river of shame and sadness and this primal rage and sometimes it tips over and we fall into the river and we are all consumed with it and that's the transition here of this idea of being all consumed in it is that what happens is that we start to think from the point of view of being the hurt child is that we cannot manage when we're in the river we cannot manage our own crushing feelings of shame and this primal rage is so scary and it legitimately is scary you know we are not talking about easy things I mean that in the truest sense of the boogeyman in the truest sense of a perpetrator in the truest sense of a monster in the true sense of a tyrant in the truest sense of oppression this this rage you know the the amount of fear we have around tapping into this rage is legitimate and is is something we all internally notice and it's the place where people often say when they're entering healing work and entering therapy and they're encouraged to feel their feelings many people say oh I can't feel that because once you know that'll that'll let the damn once I open the damn I'm gonna be flooded and I will I will just I will die here I will be so crushed or it'll take me eight months before I could at least you know pop out of the the rushing water of the Damned of grief and shame and primal rage well I just have to keep working to hold it all together and how I'm going to keep working to hold it all together is I just need to keep reinforcing endorsing this kind of false self persona and you realize if you're trying to be and really here this one this one's so important if you're trying to reinforce being the false self persona in relationship you're not really in relationship because you're not there I mean we we we do our best but do you hear how obvious that is if you are overly identified with your false self persona but yet you're you're on dating websites you're dating people you're in a relationship and you're trying to be in relationship by channeling your experience and showing up through your false self persona you know what you're not really there you're not really in relationship you're still manufacturing your experience and that's why we always feel like well not always but many of us feel like we'll ward where where's where our experience is once removed you know it's like living life like you're in a bubble or living like life like you're watching a movie you're not early in the movie because you're channeling things through your false self persona so if we have these this primal rage we have this impossible feelings we've buried them we we've tried to live go on live your life pull yourself up by the bootstraps and just try to you know move on and then something happens in life and we get crushed and we bump up against this sense of utter abandonment and pure isolation that's what we're safeguarding ourselves against utter abandonment and pure isolation I can't feel those feelings and especially we can't feel those feelings when we assume we're going to enter it through our child's psychology through our immature perspective and that we don't even have any resources and this is how many of us then very quickly implode into a childlike state and we we can't even maneuver because in those moments where eight years old if I touch if I move in the direction of trying to even consciously hold my utter abandonment and pure isolation I automatically enter that through my child self and that is just frightening when some of us live through that view our view of the world then becomes don't feel that and let's just try to try to be good don't feel the bad feelings just feel the good feelings don't let in the shame because that's bad we just have to you know move out there there's this drumbeat there's this real survival mechanism that says let's not feel that but from the point of view as we all know for when many of us are activated in suffering when we are not in our higher self when we're not tapped into our wisdom selves and we're really operating from a lower level of consciousness because we're suffering because life is hard and we start to view the world simplistically as just good or bad this is where black and white thinking comes from and what has happened in this dynamic and this is really important in this moment the narcissistic wound is the wound of the development of the self and we have created and adopted this point of view that these shame feelings are so bad that it links to concluding that we are bad and we link the belief that we are bad this course shame to this primal rage and so therefore I cannot feel to hear this this is how it gets set up we cannot feel the primal rage or address the shame because the way to get there the way this psychological dynamic has been set up is that we have to walk through the door or what we believe we enter the only way to enter it is we have to believe where the bad person to feel the shame I must to move into the place where I believe I'm fundamentally flawed as a human being and to feel the primal range the primal rage of having been taught that it means I'm the bad person I can't I cannot feel these feelings I can't be the bad one I and and if and and I must be bad if I have these feelings then there must be something wrong with me if you notice I keep repeating this point and because there's a cross over here there's a link the idea is that if we disown this in our self we are going to see it in the world around us let me repeat that this is so important if we disown our own delusional assumption that we are bad at the core and we will do everything in our power to develop a false self persona to protect ourselves from ever feeling those difficult feelings yet we still are living with this belief and this feeling that you know deep down I might be the bad one or am bad I therefore have to cover it up and be the good one we are gonna project this out into the world and we're gonna look for other people who are gonna be the ones who are bad we will have a repulsion of version a we have we have a revulsion to feeling those feelings I don't want to be that because then I would be different and so we protect this false self image of the good person and some of us call this the end path some of us call this the loving caretaker some of us call this the codependent some of us can call this you know the big-hearted person who just puts everybody else's needs first and really wants to help out but we are we are so invested in making sure we are the good person because we can't feel the shame feelings that falsely delusionally tell us that we're the bad person and because we haven't made peace with those really difficult feelings of this black and white thinking of good and bad we then project that out onto the world and we're going to look for other people who are the ones who are bad those people and you see the connection then how this is so super ripe and super easy then to say I wonder where there's a group of people where we could all collectively judge them and give them a hard time and make their make them the source of all of our primal range and make them the source of illuminating the shame and our false sense false self persona that we're already living with and the fact that the false self persona cracked and we got crushed in our own grief and now we're left with this complete aftermath of extreme pain of not knowing who we are we want to point to the person who was responsible and participated in the process and we need to find the bad people who did this to us and usually we our brain our mind goes to our partner because we can't take any responsibility for our own feelings because to take responsibility for those feelings will push us deeper into the thing we're trying to avoid oh my this is a riddle isn't it you see how complex this is and so then we project this on to others to keep continuously proving hey were the good ones and they're the bad ones and I'm referring to this is not you know complaint is easily captured in this idea of dualistic mind dualistic thinking good bad black-and-white thinking and it's all around us this is how you know remember earlier I said we're in a very immature culture we are not a very advanced around the world globally we are not leading from a strong foundational wisdom tradition or grounded in you know mature wisdom mind we're very immature wounded you know we can make the argument that the world is collectively in trauma mind we are all operating from trauma mind and this creates a lack of resource and we see things in this black and white thinking and what dualistic black and white thinking coming from trauma mind means somebody is good and somebody's bad it means somebody is chosen and somebody's unchosen you can't have a chosen without the unchosen and if you you can see this rampant this very immature approach to life and thinking that everything is somehow outside of ourselves and and it's all because of those other people you know tap into politics any type of politics you know where you know who whatever side you're on you're on the good side and whoever's not on your side obviously they're on the wrong side and they're bad you're good and they're bad and this is the source of war you know this is the source of genocide this is the source of oppression and and it's a lot of this projecting from this immature wounded place that none of us know who we are and it is very easy to make the argument culturally that we all are suffering from this huge giant extreme enormous narcissistically of the collective narcissistic wound the wound of the development of the self we are all walking around blind not knowing who we are and then we get angry at other people because we don't know who we are and it's their fault now I have to repeat a bit of the disclaimer that I set up earlier just in case I'm pushing your buttons and you're noticing some you know challenging feelings around this when I say earlier you might adopt you know a person approach of needing to reinforce that you're a good person and that's how you might overly identify with being the caretaker and you have a big heart you very you present as a big-hearted person who really wants to help people I am NOT challenging that like this is how this stuff is so complex and hard to talk about because it's not denying that that is still coming from an altruistic place there's still some fundamental goodness and the fact that you're a nice person that's great but we're not taught we're not create using black and white thinking and saying well that you know we're we're concluding that actually it's all faking you're not a nice person well the part that is fake is the over-identification that you're using that to substitute knowing who you are that you are in relationship to that solidified identity that false self identity of needing to be the nice caretaker helpful person and you do it to ignore actually knowing who you are and that that in and of itself has a self-absorption quality it has an agenda quality it has a very subtle manipulative quality and this is how people are so dumbfounded and so confused that they don't understand well why why didn't he love me why don't you why doesn't he see what a good wonderful person I am because even though yes legitimately you're a nice person and all the things you're doing are still nice but you're still not there you're actually a fake / sin and oh I have to join you in this moment cuz I'm not you know I'm in a glass house and I'm not throwing any stones I'm a fake person we are all fake people that is the narcissistic wound and when you start tapping into online communities that want to talk about narcissistic abuse and people who are untrained and people who they're doing their bad you know they're trying to make sense of this material I mean just me making this recording now for this video for you to listen to it is very challenging to map out this dynamic and so understandably that it makes sense the you know online communities are going to at times fall short and really understanding what's going on but we're really at the core all suffering from the same thing and so to get on the bandwagon to beat the drumbeat to say let's call out this one group of people and let's tag them with everything that we want to disown within ourselves and let's direct our primal rage at this group of people and now let's identify them as being broken human people who have personality disorders who are failing as human beings we are channeling our own rage our primal rage our toxic shame and we're channeling it on to these other people who very legitimately might be nasty [ __ ] nobody's challenging that I mean they still you know still yep they're still manipulative yep they still crushed your dreams yep they still took advantage of you yep they stole your credit card and you know ruin ruined your financial situation we know that that you know we're not just arguing that that's true but that doesn't mean that that gives us permission or it does not absolve us from doing the real hard challenging healing work of saying at the end of going through this chapter of needing to understand how the other people were hurtful and toxic and manipulative and employing a use dynamics to try to get their needs met and in a way that it completely you know that we are all under the influence of our own unconscious our own lack of awareness that we would want to get in relationship with a person who we would identify as being the narcissist or narcissistic because it's it's you know they present this group of people they you know you realize that we're talking about ourselves you know we might not all get on board with abusing each other we might all not be nasty toxic abusers perpetrators that's the word that I'm looking for you know we all might not be you know engaging in the victim perpetrator dynamic but you know we're all looking in the mirror each other and so here we have you know for people who fall outside of not really being the narcissist if we're going back to you know the the way that a lot of the online communities are talking about it what this means is we're feeding off of our own fear in our own aggression and these online communities that are beating the drum of the narcissist the narcissist narcissistic abuse narcissistic abuse is tapping into a core fear that's already there and I mean how how incredibly what a perfect audience if that's your messaging Appert you know it's it's it's a collect in general everything I've said is that we are group of people who are frightened of our own self reflection we are a group of people who are frightened of our own feeling States and dropping into a deep sense of knowing who we are because we never had proper mirroring of anyone holding our hand to look to shine the flashlight into who we are with a witness with an observer and were left to do it by herself or we had someone who they're mirroring back to us of who we are the mirror was cracked and that what the image the messaging that we're getting and what we're learning about ourselves is a kind of false false messaging that says well gosh well if the mirror is cracked and screwed up and you know I'm not getting clear messages I guess that just concludes that I'm screwed up and I don't you know really I'm not really a good person so how how really amazing how ripe and perfect that there's this group of people us who have this extreme aversion to self-reflection and needing to hide behind the presentation as if we're self reflective do you hear how this is incredibly complex I mean this is so confusing at this point we in general don't want to be self reflective but we want to present ourselves like we're self reflective it is it is so smoking mirrors this is trickster energy this is this is the power of denial do you see how insightful I am do you see how I've done all my work do you see how I'm conscious do you see how you know I meditate because you know I'm really aware do you see how I'm you know I'm really practicing presence and I want to and and and that even and of itself for people who manufacture a persona of false false presentation of who they are we then also adopt saying well look how spiritual we are I'm so evolved look at all the therapy I've done you know I've really been doing a lot of healing work and we even then start to you and it's all folded into the original system we're still using thinking computer terms of like the operating system we're still using the same operating system of denial and self delusion we're still using the OP were use instead of Windows 10 or whatever the heck windows is that now instead of using windows you know we're using we're using manufactured false self programming and we're even going to at some point you know I too come off like look at how insightful and aware we are and look at all this healing work that we've done and just quick tangent you know if you're familiar with what I'm talking about it gets you know we're really talking about what's called spiritual materialism and the weekend there's also the same idea of you know a healing materialism or personal growth materialism and it's this whole idea you know that we're just feeding this false self persona well because we got to make sure that were the Evolve one were the better one were the good one and in a number of these communities were not addressing well in fact you are the good one but you don't believe it and you actually have this some residual painful wounded feelings that come with this river of shame and primal rage that you are working so hard to never have to feel and the all in it and it comes out when your relationships fail or it comes out an attachment distress when there's tension and you're not getting your attachment needs met and it provokes being ignored it provokes being rejected it provokes being abandoned and so therefore we project this our own delusion onto other people now let me share an idea with you which has to do with family systems and family therapy or anything related to systems theory is that a system likes the status quo and the system will always keep trying to return to equilibrium and we are only as good as the lowest common denominator if we have a group of people and we're sharing a certain level of intelligence a certain level of consciousness a certain level of awareness just even intellectual understanding we can't go to the higher levels we can only collectively stay at the lower level and the this is the result of a group of wounded people who have insecure attachment wounds and who have this nor statistic wound which is the the wound of the development of the self so we're all getting together and say hey do you have do you have a narcissistic one yeah the narcissistic one do you have one yeah I have one too let's all get together and let's begin to talk about what's going on here and we're only going to be as good as the lowest common denominator of our collective knowing and we have to understand then when we're talking about a big group of people like we have online there is going to be a limitation on what we can actually really present these ideas in these dynamics because if the group of people who have yet to really come into some of these more complex ideas about the core shame and the primal rage that is fueling all of this and they're they have yet to really be able to own any or tap into hey this is really about me and my rage this isn't about the narcissist this isn't about the other person this isn't about how I was you know taking advantage of this isn't about all the ways that the other person is working really hard to manipulate me and take advantage of me this provokes my rage this provokes this profound shame that linked to a sense of self that has never fully developed and I when I tap into it I continually implode into myself and this other person the narcissist keeps reminding me of how impossible these feelings are and the way I am going to meet it is I'm going to fuel them I'm going to feed it more aggression and I'm going to direct the aggression at the other person and if we are in a collective group of people we're gonna start doing this together and we're going to endorse and support each other in doing this we're going to create a culture of aggression and we're going to create a culture of blame and we're going to create a culture of righteousness and we're going to create a culture that reinforces let's make sure we don't actually talk about what's going on let's talk about them let's keep watching videos that are constantly going to describe what they are doing and how their mind is working and how they're trying to get one over on you now let me repeat I think this is the third or fourth time I said it it still means that all that is true yes these people still are trying to get one over on you and it still means that hey well isn't that intelligent of you that you would want to understand those dynamics and that you would track them and educate yourself to make it hey let's not let's make sure this doesn't happen again so this is there still incredible amount of goodness and and and it's necessary to look at the other people but here's the thing when insecure attachment if you have an insecure attachment that that you're very easily and you don't have a secure sense of self you're always you're so quick to look to other to define your reality and so even in our healing work if we're constantly referencing how the other person is flawed and how they failed us and how they have a personality disorder we're still channeling our own knowing of ourselves through linking it to how they have failed and then we're fueling the original course shame and we're fueling the primal rage and if anyone points this out this is what I said earlier anyone who wants to send me a nasty message or nasty email or you know get angry at me the way that we protect ourselves from having to you know look you know in the spirit of The Wizard of Oz look at the man behind the curtain or look look at our you know how we're propping up our own false sense of self the way that the way that we safeguard against having to do that is we we protect aggression at other people and we make sure that we keep returning to the status quo and this system wants to return to equilibrium and in this case this community what we're talking the equilibrium is not really to grow beyond these dynamics but to protect ourselves from having to see them fully that's why I have had the boundary around this content in the community of people that come together and we do healing work and that's why I've been very specific about saying hey we're not really going we're not going to talk about this we're not really going to go into these dynamics because the the toxicity of the primal rage and the shame leaks in and we are not in an online capacity really able to handle the fact that everyone is in a different stage and different chapter of their development and their healing work and so the way to manage this that I have you know decided for how I want to present a program of self-directed healing and build a community and the hundred and ninety videos that I've created is I'm not going to tap into this I'm not going to invite it because it is ripe with unconsciousness and the type of work that we need to do is really really challenging and is a little bit much to think you know to to handle within you know providing some educational psycho-educational information and and being to have online chats and conversations I mean the the amount of work that it takes to project to protect us from this primal rage and core shame is we need a really strong boundary and that is why very clearly for three years I have not wanted to court this community or court this group this this content that would invite members of the anti narcissist community that would still be coming from and leading from their aggression and making sure they needed to prove that the narcissist really are you know the demon and evil and in making sure that we all know that we're good and they're bad and explaining this as you can tell how complex it is we're not always at you know if you're at a place where you're coming out of narcissistic abuse and you're coming you're coming into understanding the the dynamics of the wound of the development of the self you need to do some you know everything happens in Chapter so you need to do some healing work first before you're even able to take this on I mean this is this is advanced stuff this is these this is a certain chapter after you have if you think in terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs I mean it's the same concept as far as you know your healing needs are concerned you need a basic found it you need to begin to develop and nurture a stronger sense of self before you can come into being able to even you know you need a self in order to look at the non-self you need a self in order to look at the creation of the false self persona and as I say this it's all so esoteric and conceptual and it sounds like a bunch of you know double speak because we're talking about you know conceptualizing psychological processes and we're just trying to make sense you know all of this boils down to trying to make sense how do I live with the suffering how do I live with this crushing pain of not of not feeling like I belong in this world of not feeling like you know so someone knows me or many people know me and to live life day after day feeling like you're invisible disconnected abandoned rejected neglected not know not seen not affirmed not valued that takes its toll and what happens is that when we connect to a group of people who also feel the same way we start exaggerating and magnifying our own delusional thinking and we start exaggerating our own disconnect from reality and we're reinforcing the thing that we're trying to heal from and that's why this is a lot of smoke and mirrors it's very complex and it's and quite honestly it's scary because there are some people who they have they have really taken completely swallowed the messaging of the anti narcissist community and they're so far gone down that rabbit hole that all they see the world they only view the world as in the context of extreme danger of perpetrators who are out to get you and that the world is toxic and again I'm not challenging that that is still true but we don't link it to our identity and we don't link it as the only way that we it's it's not it's not the lens in which we see the world and it's not the only vehicle from which we operate from and oftentimes for those who have really gone down the rabbit hole and gets stuck there it's it's then that and of itself becomes rewinding and this is why it's very dangerous and and I've had you know hundreds of email messages and conversations with people who've said you know there's they find it so refreshing that I have very clear boundaries around we're not going in the struction we're not going to talk about how you know you know how it's because the narcissist is so screwed up that your life is now you know a mess and again I think this is nothing the sixth time I've said it I'm not denying that it did impact your life and yes it did result in feeling life is screwed up but we're not talking about whether it did or didn't happen I agree that it happened we're talking about how we are so proud for people who don't have a sense of self we latch on to external experience to define us we don't know how to define ourself so if you to really put this into perspective I want to talk about this idea of parallel processes which means parallel processes are really fascinating is that like if you're working in an addiction rehab center um the staff the therapy the people who work there start the management start operating from addictive mind and you start seeing the staff starts thinking like they're addicts and I don't mean thinking like an addict in the sense to you know to create an intervention to to interrupt the how the otic thinks it's that they themselves come under the influence of their own addictive mind and so here you have a rehab center who the purpose is to help addicts get out of addictive thinking but now you have the administration and the staff also simultaneously contributing to addictive mind in operating from their own addictive mind so this is called parallel process it's the same thing with any kind of extreme states facility any type of you know extreme mental illness and a group of people who are really struggling to have some grounded sense of reality and you'll find even in the you know administration and the staff that works there including the therapists that they too also are acting you know they have some extreme state and an outsider will come in and go wow I really have a hard time discerning who actually are the patients here and that in some ways the staff seems you know like they they're behaving in the same what they seem to collectively make decisions and treat each other from the same state of mind of the people who are in the Far get entreat miss you know for their extreme states of mind and so this is called parallel process so I'm applying this idea so the group of people who come together who want to talk about narcissistic abuse you're also simultaneously have a parallel process where you're thinking from the place of trauma mind and you're reinforcing it and you know it's the same thing with the community that I work with I mean I have an attachment injury I have attachment trauma I have been it has taken me 25 years to come you know in two hundred some videos to come into like this real clarity like oh that's what's going on then simultaneously you know like when I'm in my online community when I'm making videos when I'm engaging this content I - and participating in a kind of parallel process where sometimes my approach is codependent sometimes my approach is coming from a wounded place I'm noticing and in this from a therapy standpoint a psychotherapy idea or you know this is what's referred to as transference countertransference it's all of this back and forth triggers and projections and and how we are like engaging in the same kind of you know the very thing that we're trying to tackle and heal from and work with we're also simultaneously reinforcing it by leading in that place and it takes a lot a lot of work to take time to debrief and to make sure that you have some clarity about you know where you're coming from and in an online community meaning websites and videos and and this anti narcissist community there is not enough safety or our boundaries built into the container there's not a container to be able to reflect back it's a heads up everybody you just need to make sure that simultaneously why we [ __ ] why we're directing aggression and all these quote-unquote bad people we are actually coming from our own trauma mind we are actually coming from our own narcissism we are actually coming from our narcissistic wound of course not all the time but it is simultaneously folded in and we need to understand that this is true of the particular people who are making videos of the particular people who are tapping into you know promoting this kind of content and for some of these people they're actually literally untrained and it's a very it's a very hot topic to talk about and it's important to on to to to question where you know what is the intention behind those who are fueling the fear because everyone including me in this moment of why making this video people are doing this for content marketing and building an online business people are doing this to build an audience to sell you a product and it's very well it's very thought-out crafted messages to tap into a mish market to say well now by my course or now by my book or now don't you want to sign up and follow me and I am doing the exact same thing in this moment I have a membership community I am in the process of writing a book I have discovered that this whole idea that you can build a business online because quite frankly after you know years and years of sitting in a chair individually with psychotherapy clients and doing one-on-one individual work I needed something else to supplement and to move beyond that kind of format because it is a very very stressful intense work and so I stumbled upon well hey why don't you know what's this online marketing thing but you realize or please realize that the people that you're following the community that you're tapping into there is a clear agenda to fuel the fear and to tap into the group of people who don't have a strong sense of self in order to get collectively a community so that they can have their own business and again I have to repeat there's no you know I'm not in a glass house there's no stones here but the reason why that I'm sharing this is that it is very important to understand the intention behind where this messaging is coming from and I very purposefully for all these reasons of the fragility of this type of community or the people that it's going to attract I had a very strong clear boundary of saying I don't want to invite that I don't want to create that additional layer of confusion I don't want to you know potentially feed the same fear-based thinking around someone thinking now you know now Allen has the answer the whole point of all of this is no one has the answer that this is about you being able to come into the conscious choice to evolve and to mature and to grow and to finally let your sense of self have some corrective experiences and evolve into being who you never were able to be sometimes that will be helpful to go through a chapter of really needing to look at how other people have hurt you and sometimes it will be necessary to go through a chapter to have a strong boundary to put that on hold and say I just need to focus on myself I need to focus on self-directed healing I need to look at how do we enhance the quality of bonding and how do we we have corrective experiences how do we enter enter a meaningful process of grieving that continually keeps reinforcing focus on my own process not what they're doing not how they treated me not what they're not doing not what they're thinking we're not focusing on them we have to come back and say let's focus on ourselves this is a very powerful strong fundamental approach to addressing attachment injuries and attachment wounds I hope that all of this is helpful here at the end of acknowledging that we're coming to a close that I very clearly acknowledge you know that the work that I'm doing is about creating this community the point of this video also really clarifies for the community members people who I do engage in regular conversations with about what we're doing in the community I've created called improve your relationships and also I'm sharing this information because some people listening to this it is resonating with some people their ears are perking up and I have already received many many emails that I know people need this message and that there that that I have shared this message before in written format and received a lot of positive feedback of saying you know oh how refreshing yes I definitely want you know know innately know we need to have that boundary around this content and we need to take a break from the drumbeat of blaming other people and focusing on what's going on with other people and how the nasty narcissists are out to get us this is the eighth time I'm saying it's still legitimate there are people out there who are out to get us and for our healing work and for the sake of discovering and strengthening a sense of our own I we need to be able to soften that put that on hold a bit in order to look at some other areas to shore up getting some resources so that we consciously participate in our own maturing in our own growth if you would like to join us in the community please do I would love to have you it's Alan Robarge comm forge / community it's an eight-week program that doesn't end it recycles each week as a topic of discussion a suggested activity monthly activities daily prompts it's a process it's not a course it's not sequential you can join at any time it's a willingness for you to say you're gonna you know openly through self accountability identify what you want to work on and then you share it and you share your self reflections and through an online forum or format is that it hopefully you know really helps create a sense of belonging community obviously that won't happen for everybody but the feedback that I've received for some people it really has delivered and it is really you know provided that necessary encouragement so that we can see how we are evolving and growing so this is why I have not spoken about narcissistic abuse and narcissism for the last three years and to be honest with you after this particular video I anticipate I'm not really going to talk about it for another three years for all the reasons I said it's just not it's not it I don't value going in my direction I value the going in the direction of the program that I have mapped out and the book that I'm writing and the community conversations that I'm having with many people right now and so that's everything thank you for listening I know it was a long video and if you got this far to the end I mean good for you that you stuck with it I hope that it was helpful more videos to come let's keep talking about relationships

Channel: Alan Robarge / Attachment Trauma Therapist

Views: 61,563

Rating: 4.8358531 out of 5

Keywords: relationships, healing abandonment, emotional trauma, acoa, adult children of alcoholics expert, relationship coach, alan robarge, narcissistic injury, alan robarge attachment trauma, narcissistic wound, am i the narcissist, attachment trauma, adult children of alcoholics, love addiction recovery, inner child healing, inner child, anxious attachment style, gaslighting emotional abuse, how to stop obsessing over someone, #selfhealers, selfhealers, psychologist, psychology, holistic

Id: bZhgMrwL4q4

Length: 86min 30sec (5190 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 17 2017