know that we’ve lost ourselves. Our own false self then relates to the false selves of others. How precarious is that?
My cat can’t read. Even if I could bear to punish or withdraw from him, or if I used all my best skills to teach him, he still would be unable to read. (And imagine how our relationship would be affected, were I to continue to pressure him to live up to my expectations.)
Yet well-meaning parents routinely try to enforce behavior that is beyond a child’s normal developmental capacity.
What do you imagine this does to a child? What did it do to you, when you were expected to handle a feeling or task that you weren’t old enough for? How did your parents handle it, when you couldn’t?
And if you’re a parent, how can you avoid passing on the same downward spiral of internal neglect? How can you avoid demanding the impossible of others, especially after years of being immersed in myths yourself?
Forced compliance with cultural myths that are contrary to internal integrity, and even common sense, inevitably sets up problems with authority.
We all have a relationship with authority. We can struggle with it every day our whole lives and not be aware of the energy it uses or the cost of the struggle. This struggle can take many forms—love/hate, insist/resist, open compliance hiding secret defiance, open defiance leading to self-sabotage, overt or subtle domination, and/or passive resistance.
We may reward and please others, while simultaneously digging out the ground they are standing on. We can even force ourselves into internal compliance, while losing all awareness of honest reactions. We learn to wear a mask so smoothly that the edges of the mask graft to our skin.
What is your relationship with authority? Is yours healthy and sensible, or an ongoing struggle—at work or in professional situations, in your intimate relationships, and within yourself?
Do you defy your own needs or leanings? Shush inner guidance? Force unreasonable control over natural processes? And does your body resist you, or manifest the resulting tension by attacking itself? Are you sometimes surprised by sudden and impulsive explosions of anger?
Beneath this struggle is your own weeping self.
Through this thoughtful book, you will discover your own automatic behaviors that consume your time and energy. You will track their origins and then free yourself from them. You will uncover attitudes and thoughts that were programmed into you when you were just a tot, and your brain was still being formed, and replace them with messages that are more loving, honest, and effective.
With Everyday Narcissism, you can find your way back.
You will unearth the myths that have sidetracked your life, and reinstate boundaries that help you heal rather than suffer. You will channel yourself toward the life that belongs to you—a life that you create as you discover your own truest focus and deepest resources.
You will emancipate honest feelings that have been trapped in vaults deep inside you. By lifting out of darkness those closeted parts of yourself, you will discover a fuller self, release your own wisdom, and free energy that can fuel travel in your own best direction.
Do you know where that direction goes? Maybe not. And you need not fear your deepest self.
Even if you suspect that a fiery layer of anger lies dormant, you need not fear your deepest self. That anger is like a battery. It is stored energy. As with any energy source, learning how to handle it will empower you.
Everyday Narcissism will raise your awareness of your own layers. It will also give you tools to gently bring those layers into the light, according to your own best timing.
You have the potential to emerge from your cocoon of inauthenticity, to find a peaceful internal grace as you tune into your own profound self-authority that can orchestrate your unique best life.
Anne Katherine
Bestselling author of Boundaries and Where to Draw the Line
“Live outside your comfort zone; there are great discoveries there.”
Caroline Aron
Narcissism is a belief that the world revolves around us, and that what happens in the world happens because of us. This belief is as common, and as pervasive, as it is erroneous.
Most of us live with a garden-variety form of narcissism that’s so embedded we don’t even know we have it. As a result, we suffer deeply and unnecessarily.
I call this everyday narcissism, or EN.
Nearly all of us are everyday narcissists—you, me, our friends, our children, our parents, our other relatives, our coworkers, our partners, and our neighbors. This narcissism comes from a combination of childhood wounds and enduring myths we were taught at a very young age. The more emotionally wounded we are, and the more we buy into these myths, the more narcissistic we tend to become.
These powerful myths get ingrained into our thinking, and we believe them because people we love and trust—our parents—initially teach them to us, while other adults in our lives regularly reinforce them. Let’s begin by looking at the first four of these myths. (We’ll examine the fifth myth in the following chapter.)
Myth 1: We Are Responsible for—and Have the Power to Control—How Other People Feel and Behave
When we live our lives according to this first myth, we are in a constant state of hypervigilance, fearing that we won’t belong or fit in if we don’t make others happy through what we do and say. We spend much of our time trying to figure out what other people want, what they need, and what will make them happy.
Meanwhile, we consistently ignore ourselves—what we want, what we need, and what will make us happy. We neglect ourselves, believing that if others are happy with us, they will love us—and, as a result, we will become happy, too. We may also take credit for other people’s happiness, as if it occurred because we performed so well.
When we believe this, we constantly watch how others react to us. If they are unhappy, we assume it is because we did something wrong. We tell ourselves that if only we had said or done or been something different, they would be happy. We assume we’ve failed and we feel ashamed or burdened or unlovable. Thus we live in fear of rejection and disapproval.
Honesty takes a back seat to pleasing each other when more or less everyone lives according to this myth. Worse, over time, each of us loses our sense of who we are. We no longer know ourselves; we only know what others want.
We imagine that making others happy will bring us happiness. Yet if we live a life of pleasing others and avoiding conflict, of consistently doing things for others at our own expense, we are not happy at all—because without honesty there can be no intimacy, no connection, and no genuine love.
Myth 2: Other People Are Responsible for—and Have the Power to Control—the Way We Feel and Behave
