← The Little Shaman: On Narcissists & Toxic Personalities
The Little Shaman: On Narcissists & Toxic Personalities
Episode 270: Narcissists Cannot See You | THIS Is What They See Instead
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Hey everybody, it's Shaman Sister Sin, and you are listening to the Meditations and More podcast here on thelittleshaman.com brought to you by shamanspiritcenter.com ilivedwithamonster.com and littleshaman.org that's me, the little shaman. Today, I wanted to talk to you about something that is absolutely crucial to understand when dealing with pathologically narcissistic personalities, and that is that narcissists cannot see you. When people meet each other or when they have interactions, they carry an image of the other person in their mind. Depending on the relationship or how well people know each other, this image is usually incomplete and somewhat fantasized, either positively or negatively. Even when we get to know people pretty well, our image of them remains incomplete. Just because you can never truly know another person. However, it is usually informed by what we have seen this person do, what we have heard them say, this kind of thing. Because of that, our image of them will evolve over time as we get to know them better and see more of who they are. For example, we might have thought one thing about someone when we first met them and then changed our opinion over time, or when we first met a romantic partner. We might idealize them as perfect at first, but then we gain a more realistic understanding of who they really are over time. This is normal in relationships and is a natural part of them. Narcissists are not like other people in many regards, but especially in this one. The images that they hold of other people tend not to be informed by what they have seen and heard from the other person in any rational or realistic way. And the image is generally static in the sense that it doesn't grow or evolve with new information and understanding. Information that they receive which does not fit into this image is either seen as unimportant and ignored, or it's seen as completely incompatible and incongruent, which results in a completely new image being created. This happens because narcissistic personalities have enormous difficulty with whole object relations. Whole object relations are what it's called when we can see contradictory qualities about something, but we still understand it as a whole thing. For example, Amelia is a kind, loving person, but she has a temper. Or Bob is a great guy, but he can be kind of obnoxious, or, you know, that job is really fulfilling. But man, it takes a lot of my time. When someone understands whole object relations, they understand that something can have contradictory qualities or characteristics. Narcissists do not understand that. They view the world through a Very black and white binary lens. Something's either good or it's bad. And if it's good, then it has no bad qualities whatsoever. And if it's bad, it has no good qualities whatsoever. Good people never do bad things. Bad people never do good things, ever. Bad is bad, good is good. That's it. If you do something that narcissists see as bad, and their definition of bad is extremely broad, then you're no longer good at all. You are now bad, all bad. And you would do any other bad thing under the sun that people can think of. If you would make a light hearted joke, you would try to kill them. You are now the worst sort of person who has ever lived. Because of the idealized fantasy image they had of you in the first place, which was not based in any way on who you actually are. They now feel tricked and lied to by you. You don't match this fantasy image they have. You're fake, you're a liar, you're evil, you tricked them. You were so good, but it was all an act. And now you've been revealed for who you really are. Their idealized good image is now erased. It is replaced by one that depicts you as bad, as an enemy, as the devil. You are now the bad guy. This happens because they never had a realistic image of you in the first place. Because they cannot understand whole object relations. Because they are intensely self loathing, they're paranoid. And because they have an extreme negativity bias, this means they give more weight to things that are perceived as negative. They give those things more importance. Their perspective is extremely distorted anyway and this distorts it even more, making normal things you do appear to be harmful or dangerous or threatening in some way. The relationship, no matter what kind of relationship it is, is actually doomed from the start because of this. Because no matter how kind and nice and caring you are, they will eventually take something wrong and automatically assume that you were intending to hurt, offend, upset, embarrass or otherwise harm them. After that, this perception tends to grow in scope and intensity and it can reach a point where literally everything you do is seen as harmful and threatening and upsetting and off. The narcissist is reacting to their own perception of what's happening, and their perception is dark and scary. They tend to view the world as a place that is predatory and dangerous, and their mental armor against this imagined world is formidable. They convinced themselves years ago that they're never safe and nobody can be trusted. Narcissists who try to entertain different perspectives, such as maybe this person could be trusted, or maybe this person was not actually trying to hurt me, tend to fear that they're being safe, up and manipulated by that, or that they would be lying to themselves if they believed it. This is a person who is pathologically terrified by any intimacy of any kind, even just getting to know them on a superficial social basis, and fervently believes down to their bones that everyone is attempting to harm each other and take advantage. Their only defense against that is suspect everybody. If you never trust or believe in anybody, then you're never going to be caught off guard and hurt by them. Right? Problem solved. Except that this actually doesn't work because it causes continuous conflict and issues with other people. The narcissist's only real defense against the shame that this provokes seems to be convincing themselves that they just saw through everybody and nobody can take that. So then they all left, or everybody's jealous of the narcissist and that's why nobody likes them. It could never be that like, hey man, you're causing problems constantly for no reason and people are tired of that, or hey man, you are horrifically abusive to people who never did anything to you at all. It's always somebody else's fault and it is always somebody else's responsibility. As you can see, there is almost no chance that someone whose perception is this affected can see you or anybody realistically. But there's another reason that narcissists cannot see you. They don't have a stable identity. And because of that, they cannot define themselves for themselves as a separate and sovereign individual. They create an identity narrative for themselves, an image, same as they create one of you and the one they create for themselves is not any more reality based than the images that they create of anybody else. It's all based on these stereotypical binaries of what people are supposed to be like, according to a childish mind that really doesn't understand other people at all. If you think of how fairy tales present human beings to children, the villains are very, very bad and the heroes are very, very good. There are not usually any nuanced characters in fairy tales because this is how children can understand both the story and the wider world. It's how pathologically narcissistic personalities understand it too. This is why you cannot escape, change, or subvert their identity narrative. They define themselves in comparison or opposition to you or to whoever is the main person. That's because of that whatever they think they are, whatever they want to be, you have to become the opposite if they're good, you're bad. If they are up, you are down. If they are vegan, you're a carnivore. That's another reason the relationship is doomed from the beginning. Not only do they do this, they tend to believe that everybody else is doing it too. That's why they accuse people of arguing with something just because the narcissist said it, or of disliking things just because the narcissist likes the things. This is not only projection, it's a tell. They believe that you are defining yourself in opposition to them. That's why their only side in an argument might be no, this is what you really said and this is what you really mean. It's not even a side. They're just taking what you said and flipping it around. They do not have a side or a position at all in these situations. It's just you said this and this is why you're wrong. If they do have a side, it is often one based on some extreme form of your opinion or your position that you don't actually hold. They try to force you into defending these extreme positions because it's the complete opposite of whatever theirs is. And you have to be forced to take that position because it's the only one that they can understand or defend against. This is the way they understand the world. Everything is black and white, up and down, right or left. That's it. There's no nuance or gray area at all, ever. This is really important to understand because it helps us to understand that there's no point in trying to make this person see who you really are. This comparison narrative cannot change, because if it did, it would change their identity. It would change their identity narrative. Black is only black because white is white and it's only black in comparison and contrast to too white. That is very important to grasp because not only does it convey a better understanding of how this works, it also conveys how unlikely any change really is. You see, this is not about you at all. To you. It's about you because it's about you. To you. But to the narcissist, it's about them. You don't even exist as an individual human being. They genuinely and legitimately cannot see you for who and what you really are. And if you look at your interactions with them, you will see that you are a living construct that they can identify themselves against. And that's it. Their understanding of people is extremely binary and stereotypical. Like in the movie the Breakfast Club, when Brian wrote that essay to Mr. Vernon, you see us as you want to see us in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. This is that on steroids and through a genuinely childish, genuinely delusional lens. This is not getting to know another person. This is the creation of a character in their mind that looks like you and has your name. That's it. It may very well not resemble you at all in any other way. That's why these relationships are so damaging. You're living in a reality that does not match your lived experience or what you know about, like literally anything. It's like you're a puppy, but you're being interacted with and treated as if you're a crocodile. And this happens every of every day, no matter what you do. That messes with people's heads after a while, even if they know it's bogus, it really does. No one can live in an alternate reality without it affecting them somehow. And the effects of this can be extreme. People can start to legitimately lose their perspective of reality because they are constantly confronted with a reality that makes no sense and nothing changes about it, no matter what they do. If they're nice, if they're mean, if they're chill, if they're intense, if they're loud, if they're silent, if they are honest, if they lie, if they try to get along, if they don't try to get along, if they do what they're asked, if they do whatever they want, literally nothing they do matters. It changes nothing. In the end, the narcissist in their lives still sees them the same way, no matter what happens. This is an upsetting, painful, but ultimately liberating realization. If it doesn't matter what you do, that means you can stop killing yourself to try to meet this person's demands, because it's not going to matter anyway. You can stop walking on eggshells to try to prevent upsetting them, because it doesn't work. It's not going to work. It's their problem and there's nothing you can do about it. Them blaming you or trying to hold you responsible for it does not change that. It doesn't make you to blame. It doesn't make you responsible. If I insist that you are to blame for an earthquake and you should have prevented that somehow, that doesn't make you responsible. It makes me wrong and possibly crazy. It's the same thing with this. Someone saying that you're responsible for their emotions and or their emotional reactions is wrong. We have a responsibility to the emotions of other people, but we are not responsible for them. That means we have an obligation to consider them reasonably and fairly in the things we do and say. You know, you're not supposed to go around intentionally hurting people's feelings or being mean to them. We are not responsible for how they feel or for how they react to how they feel. This is especially true in situations where how someone reacts could not have been predicted, such as them getting offended over things that are normal or basic or harmless. We can hear them out and we can take responsibility for our own actions, such as explaining that we didn't mean something to be offensive or that we were unaware of their feelings on the topic and things like that. We can express regret or be apologetic that our words hurt them. We cannot, however, take responsibility for their emotions, and we are not responsible for how they react to those emotions. That is what narcissists want you to do, and they want to punish you. We each have a choice regarding our reactions, and whatever we choose is up to us. It's not someone else's decision, therefore, it's not their responsibility either. If someone hits you, for example, and you hit them back, that was your choice. They're not responsible for your decision to do that, and you don't want them to be because that would mean they're controlling you. You're a grown adult. You control yourself. We could argue they should have expected that was going to happen, but it's still your choice to do it. They didn't make you hit them, just like you didn't make them hit you. This is something abusers cannot understand. For example, they insist that the things they do were all caused by other people, and therefore these things are not their responsibility. This is false. They provoked me. Is not a defense in court and it never will be, because we are all responsible for the reactions that we choose. Thinking you have a good reason for doing something or thinking that someone deserves it to happen to them doesn't make it not a choice or somehow not your responsibility. Now, the realization that anything you do in an interaction with a narcissist ultimately doesn't matter because it won't change anything also forces us to confront the uncomfortable but ultimately liberating truth that what other people think of us does not define us. Because, look, this person believes that you are something completely outside of what you actually are, and it has not changed you into that thing. It never will. Belief has no impact on reality. It can impact how people perceive reality, but not reality itself. Believing a $1 bill is a $100 bill is not going to change it into one. Now, people sometimes say things like, well, if they're going to keep accusing me, or if they're going to keep saying that I'm this or I'm that, then I might as well do that, or I might as well be that. And that's usually understandable, but it's also still a choice. It's important to keep this in mind when dealing with narcissists because it reminds us that they only have power we give them as adults. We alone dictate what we will do. They have no power over that at all unless we give it to them, and we shouldn't. The reality is, the pathologically narcissistic personality does not see you as a human being. They don't see you at all. They see a character they created to look like you that they can define themselves and spin their identity narrative against, and this is how they interact with you Forever. Love Bombing, for example, is often the first indication of this. Where a narcissist's proclaimed overly positive, idealized image of you does not resonate with who you really are. You might like it, it might feel good, but it doesn't feel real. And that's because it's not. It can also turn negative very quickly because it's not real. And as unrealistically positive as the image was of you, it will be just as unrealistically negative when it turns out there is no understanding of how this might impact you, nor any understanding of you as a living, feeling person at all. If you look at your interactions with narcissists, what you spend the majority of the time doing is trying to somehow make a convincing case to them that you deserve to be treated as a human being. Think about that. Really think about it. Does that sound okay to you? Does that sound like anything anybody should ever have to do? Now think about the fact that it doesn't even work, that you never succeed at convincing them that you deserve even basic human decency or consideration. What does that sound like to you? You know the answer. If you continue to interact with this person, you will continue to be treated as if you are a character in a cartoon. No feelings, no story of your own, no identity at all. Just our good guy. Can't be a good guy without a bad guy. So here we'll draw one. You're worth more than that. You are more than that. If you can't exit the situation just yet, at least stop trying to convince someone to see you who can't even see their own hand in front of their face. You will never get something from someone who cannot even give that thing to themselves. I hope that clears a few things up for you. As always, I look forward to your comments, questions and suggestions, so please keep those coming. I take appointments online, over the phone, via text, via messenger, via email and through Skype worldwide. So if you are interested in speaking with me one on one about this or anything else, you can visit littleshaman.org to do that. If you are interested in telling your story on our new series I Lived With a Monster, you can visit ilivedwithamonster.com to do that. I have several books and publications so if you are interested in picking up a copy of any or all of those, you can visit littleshaman.org to do that. Or find them on Amazon.com I teach workshops, seminars and clinics, so if you are interested in seeing what we are running this month, you can visit littleshaman.org to do that. And if you are interested in joining our support group with weekly support meetings, access to exclusive content and more, you can visit littleshaman.org to do that as well. You have been listening to the meditations am more podcasts brought to you by shamanspiritcenter.com ilived with a monster.com and littleshaman.org that's me, the Little Shaman. May the Great Spirit bless you. Have a beautiful day.