Narcissists get a lot of press these days. It seems that almost everybody is accusing someone else (rightly or wrongly, but rarely objectively) of being a ‘narcissist.’ These accusations are levelled, seemingly without much thought or precision of terms.
But the clinical meaning of narcissistic personality disorder is actually quite specific, and extreme. And relatively rare; community sample estimates range from 0% to 6.2% (DSM-5-TR). Clinical narcissism describes a small minority of people.
But the everyday notion of narcissism – someone who is self-centred and selfish – is probably a lot more common. It seems that a ton of people are pretty narcissistic in the colloquial sense: feeling entitled, holding expectations of unearned pleasure and comfort, and, above all, thinking perpetually about themselves.
You know them. I know them.
More than that, as a psychologist I know that they are often disappointed and distressed by their own unmet expectations, because, at the end of the day, the world won’t often accommodate their whims and wants.
Not everyone falls in that category of the ‘everyday narcissist,’ though. There is another, rather large, proportion of the population who are kind of the opposite: they are self-effacing and overly care-giving.
They may shy away from conflict, fail to set boundaries, and fall into dependency and codependency. Many of these individuals have porous self-boundaries and a tendency to unreasonable self-sacrifice. You’ve met the type–the type to apologize when no apology is due (at times it seems like they’re apologizing for the very act of being).
One of my clients aptly described a pattern of ‘toxic care-giving,’ in which the individual subordinates their own needs, their own wants, their own wellbeing, to the wants and desires of the other person. So how do we make sense of these self-deprecating individuals, these toxic caregivers?
Well, the concept of narcissism originated with the ancient Greeks (Ovid specifically). It was transmitted down through Freud into the field of psychology, and into the common language we use to make sense of our social world. But something, or rather someone, was lost along the way: Echo. In Ovid’s Metamorphosis, Echo was a nymph who fell in love with Narcissus (while he was busy falling in love with himself). Narcissus was self-obsessed, and Echo was other-obsessed, chasing Narcissus, willing to subordinate her own needs and wants to him.
I believe that the world is full of everyday-narcissists and everyday-Echoes. Because it’s hard to find a place of balance, or composure.
One of my colleagues put it well. She said: it’s like we’re all just stuck to the wall, trying to peel ourselves off, and get to a place in the middle. What she meant, is that some of us are stuck to one wall, in a place of self-effacement, devaluing ourselves and discounting our own worth. While others are stuck on the opposite wall, on the side of selfishness, self-importance, egocentrism. One is the wall where the Echoes live, in their fog of self-disparagement and self-sacrifice. The other is the wall of grandiosity, where the narcissists bask in their own, shamelessly exaggerated, self-importance.
It’s a bleak picture, no? So what’s the point?
The point is to try, to strive away from the thing that keeps you trapped, and wounded, and in pain. Because it’s painful to be selfish; it leaves you perpetually angry (at its extreme, this anger becomes ‘narcissistic rage’). It’s also painful to diminish yourself and feel that the centre of importance lies somewhere outside yourself; it leaves you feeling hurt, hopeless and unimportant.
So those of us who are narcissistic should strive to place less importance on ourselves, and more importance on others, and those of us who are Echoes should strive to place less importance on others, and more importance on ourselves. We should all peel ourselves, painfully and effortfully off the wall.
With this in mind, I ask you:
What is the centre of your universe?
If it's yourself, you should try to make it something else. If it's something else, you should try to make it yourself.