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Envy: The Narcissist's Unconscious Demon Revealed

In the final chapter on "My Ex-Boyfriend Has Narcissistic Personality Disorder," we come to the blurb in Psychology Today about the topic of envy vs. the narcissist. I witnessed this trait in my ex on numerous occasions, when he'd feel threatened by someone else I knew and admired, whether that was after meeting that person, hearing me talk about someone in a complimentary fashion, or if he feared someone else *might* actually, gasp, have love in his (or her, if it was one of my girlfriends who I loved but who didn't think he was the cat's pajamas) heart for me.

My ex insisted that he never, ever felt the emotion of jealousy with regard to anyone, when in actuality, his behavior was overtly hostile towards those he envied who were in any way close to me. If I had a friend who didn't like him, that friend was automatically toxic in my life in his opinion, and he'd twist words around and mix my emotions in a dizzying way towards the people I loved. Only one of my friends actually liked him, because he turned on all the charms for her and she's just a sweetie who wants to believe the best in people. The rest of my friends (and family, and doctors) all thought he was a scumbag who was stringing me along.

He spent an evening watching a crowd of close to 10,000 people scream and cheer and sing along to my friend's band a couple of winters ago at a local radio station's big holiday bash concert extravaganza. I brought him along as my guest and we had excellent VIP seats in a massive arena my friend said was like playing in "an airplane hanger." The band is relatively famous (2-time Grammy winners) and my friend is widely considered to be the musical genius as the band's multi-instrumentalist. My ex knew that my friend and I understood one another on a level and with an intensity that he couldn't penetrate, us both being recovering addicts and my friend, at the time, was an active alcoholic with a complicated history. Still, I wanted them to meet because they were both important to me. I had my friend's Christmas present in tow, something for he and his family to enjoy. I'd had the stomach flu the whole week before the concert, but there was nothing that was going to stop me from seeing the band play, I remember that vividly.

After the show, backstage, my friend emerged from behind a curtain and the security guards and immediately, enthusiastically approached me and gave me a big hug. It'd been a year since we'd seen each other in person, our time together in person sparse. I introduced my boyfriend to my friend, who was nonplussed meeting him. He wasn't interested in talking to my ex, who tried to interject into our conversation, my friend pretty much ignoring him totally and concentrating on catching up with me, which might have come across as a little rude to my ex, but anyone normal would understand that we were treasuring our brief time together, catching up. My Tatus understood that even before meeting this friend of mine, and said when I took HIM backstage this summer that he didn't mind staying out of the way, understood that we wanted to catch up, and wouldn't intrude. But I told my Tatus, "I WANT you to meet him and talk to him. You're both important to me. That's WHY I BROUGHT you here," I told him.

On the way home from the concert what cold December night, my ex said that my friend was "pathetic" and that he "felt sorry for him." He thought that my friend was intimidated by him for some reason, which my ex thought was weird. The reality is that my friend *could* have a really big ego and be an implied extrovert because he's famous, when in actuality, he's shy, reserved and very humble. My ex had no basis on which to frame my friend as pathetic. My ex felt that my friend was somehow jealous of him and before the concert, had envisioned the two of them getting into a physical fight backstage over God knows what, with no basis for such a delusion. It's just the narcissist's way of reducing someone threatening to the level of an insect that should be stomped on.

Envy, Part of the Definition of Narcisistic Personality Disorder

Narcissists feel contempt for those whom they really envy

Published on December 16, 2011 by Randi Kreger in Stop Walking on Eggshells

Narcissists must be superior to others in every single way. So when someone else has something they don't have that they want: admiration, status, skills, objects, etc.--the narcissist sees it as a major threat. Like so much else in the narcissistic mind, it is unconscious, discounted and denied, which makes it more treacherous for the object of his envy. Sandy Hotchkiss, author of Why Is It Always About You, says, "To admit to envy would be to acknowledge inferiority, which no good narcissist would ever do."

So what does he do? Unless he can take credit for the other person's good fortune (such as "my son must get that great quality from me") he:

• Feels contempt for those he envies and puts them down vociferously--sometimes to their face, sometimes not. This restores his upside down world where he's always on top.
• Can't share in the other person's happiness, which disappoints others or make them doubt themselves. Narcissists even envy others when they're the center of attention for a sad reason (deaths of loved ones, illnesses) and don't support them in their time of crisis.This is often a "light-bulb moment" and the last straw for partners who end the relationship.
• Fantasizes about his own success (another DSM-IV narcissistictrait).
• Indulges in self-soothing activity (gambling drinking, sex) to ward away feelings of defectiveness and shame.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stop-walking-eggshells/201112/envy-part-the-definition-narcisistic-personality-disorder

Shortly before we finally broke up, my ex and I escaped to the Dells for a weekend together, which was supposed to be one last hurrah (hurray?) before he went off and started attempting to seduce anything in Chicago with a vagina, leaving me in the dust after our long relationship.

Ironically, walking down the street, we stumbled upon a group of furries (those people who dress up in furry animal costumes as a lifestyle and prance around like that on a regular basis) who applauded and recognized the t-shirt I was wearing as being one from the band my aforementioned friend plays with.

One night at dinner, we were talking about my Tatus, during a conversation I don't recall really, but where I was probably complimenting him about something. Out of the blue, for no reason, he called my Tatus a "loser." "Don't say that about him!" I said. "He's not a loser. He's an accomplished physician." (At the very least, my Tatus has held down the same job for 25 years, where my ex has been fired from or forced to quit or was laid off from half a dozen jobs in as many years.) No predication, no reasoning, he was just a loser. My ex had violent delusions of beating my Tatus up too when I was in the hospital, in the event he came into my hospital room to examine me and would've requested that my ex leave the room during the examination, which is SOP for how he sees patients. Knowing I saw my Tatus as a father figure, and that I had a "daddy complex" because of losing my father when I was only 11, my ex was completely threatened that there might be another older male figure in my life to whom I looked up and adored.

My ex was big on reminding me of his giant stature, strength and power, especially when it came to men who were slimmer or shorter than he was, and how easy it'd be to beat other guys up.

But no, he insisted he wasn't jealous. Heavens no. Envious? Of what?

The more I learn about narcissism, the more evident and prevalent it is in my ex's personality and the devastating effect it ultimately had on our relationship as a whole.

The "False Self" of the Narcissist: Another Blurb From Psychology Today

As per my last post, I strongly believe my ex-boyfriend suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. This post, taken from Psychology Today, explores the inner thoughts of the NPD patient, who at times isn't even aware of what he's doing. It's been said that NPD and BPD people flock to one another, but I have been studied and evaluated and while I have bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, depression and PTSD, I do not have Borderline Personality Disorder, so give up on that differential.

I used to tag my ex-boyfriend in pictures of the two of us on Facebook. He'd ALWAYS un-tag himself so that there was no evidence on his profile of the two of us together as a couple.

He insisted he did this out of an obsessive need for personal privacy, which is utter and complete bullshit. (He left other photos of himself with friends tagged, and had albums of pictures of himself with his friends, and he had 2 pictures of me in his "friends" file, though no pictures of us together.) Then he claimed he un-tagged himself because he thought he looked fat in the pictures of the two of us together (really, every one, over the course of 3 1/2 years?). That line didn't work either.

He wanted to appear available and single, bottom line, not tied to a girlfriend, even when we were exclusively dating. I tried everything--tagging with captions such as "my boyfriend," "my best buddy," "my old pal," "my friend..." and he'd un-tag himself anyway. This, as many other things in our relationship, made me feel devalued, that he was ashamed of being associated with me, that I wasn't the kind of girl you bring home to Mom & Dad, that he was somehow embarrassed to be seen with me. He'd nitpick any photograph of himself, whether it was of the two of us or of himself alone, retouching and editing photos he was in with meticulous, frightening intensity, which I always found incredibly bizarre. Now, in hindsight, at least I know why....

Behind the Facade: The "False Self" of the Narcissist

Narcissists can't differentiate between their mask and their true self

Published on November 28, 2011 by Randi Kreger in Stop Walking on Eggshells

There's a face that we hide till the nighttime appears,
And what's hiding inside, behind all of our fears,
Is our true self, locked inside the façade!

(From the musical Jekyll and Hyde)

Behind the Facade: The "False Self" of the Narcissist

What is the false self?

First, let's examine the opposite: the authentic self. The authentic self is the core of whom you really are, not what people tell you you should be or the "you" defined by people who do not really know you: the doubters, critics, and others who see the part of you that you choose to show. It's the you that you talk about to the people and know you best and whom you trust to be careful with your vulnerabilities.

On her web site about narcissism, addictions, and abuse, Diane England, Ph.D. writes

The person living as the real self is into creating win-win solutions. Indeed, she wants to do things that serve all parties. She also understands how it is possible to do so. After all, when one is living as the real self, she receives inner guidance that directs her on how to take actions that benefit others as well as the self. This means she doesn't sacrifice her own needs for another, but she doesn't disregard those of others so she might benefit herself, either.

The person operating as an authentic or real self strives to always be aware of her behavior and its impact on others. She strives to take right actions that are both beneficial and non-destructive to others as well as the world in general. The authentic individual realizes that because of the connection between herself and all others, when she harms another or some aspect of the universe, she actually is harming herself as well. This, of course, is so different from the perception of the narcissist who can only see what benefits him, even if it is destroying both others as well as the world.

Narcissists can't afford to be vulnerable at all--especially not to themselves. Remember, they need to believe the lie. So they make up a fictitious false self who is everything the narcissist is not: the entitled, superior, inflated, and grandiose self fed by the narcissist's fantasies and what they can squeeze out of sources of narcissistic supply.

What is the purpose of the false self?

This mask, which the narcissist thinks is real, hides the insecure and damaged part of the NP and chases way feelings of depression, abandonment, and shame. It protects her from painful feelings. Affirmations of the false self keep the mask in good repair. If they're not forthcoming, she demands them in one way or another in the ways that make the relationship a wild ride on a rollercoaster (which no one understands besides other people who have a loved one with NPD). The NP's success in maintaining this illusion makes you continually doubt yourself since you rarely receive validation of what you are going through. Even mental health professionals miss the boat. (Remember, you didn't want to believe it either.)

Sam Vaknin, narcissist and the author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited, says, "The false self serves as a decoy, it attracts the fire. It is a proxy for the true self. It is tough as nails and can absorb any amount of pain, hurt and negative emotions. By inventing it, the child develops immunity to the indifference, manipulation, sadism, smothering, or exploitation--in short: to the abuse--inflicted on him by his parents (or by other primary objects in his life). It is a cloak, protecting him, rendering him invisible and omnipotent at the same time. [The narcissist] thinks, "I am this false self. Therefore, I deserve a better, painless, more considerate treatment." The false self, thus, is a contraption intended to alter other people's behaviour and attitude towards the narcissist.

The problem with the false self

It takes a lot of work to keep the fragile, superficial mask in good enough shape to protect against what NPs see as "attacks" from the outside world, e.g., complaints about their self-absorbed ways--especially those from formerly preminum sources of supply like spouses and children. This destroys the illusion and might force the NP to take a closer look at themselves. That's why they protect the mask so aggressively in ways that make you continually doubt yourself. It's extremely painful to have your feelings rebuffed by someone whom you feel/felt so much love for.

Also, life is dominated by doing, achievement, and performance rather than on intimate connections with others. This is one reason why you see so many narcissists at high levels in organizations or in careers in which they get a lot of attention such as politics, entertainment, and the ministry. The job perk of being important and lauded is irresistible.

New supply sources

If it looks like you're not going to supply your NP in the same way you did in the beginning of the relationship (e.g., by criticizing their self-absorbed ways or asking for some consideration in return), the NP may find new supply sources. Do you remember the first time you met your NP partner: how he dazzled you with his charm, wit and looks and made you feel so special? It's part of the seduction of new supply and the vilification of the old one. Your beautiful or handsome princess/knight (who never met anyone as special as you) may find someone else.

While this may make you furious and angry, keep in mind, again, that the layers of defense and deception are so intense that the narcissist can't tell the difference between the lie and the truth. The narcissist truly believes his formerly reliable sources have given in the old bait and switch. If you find this ironic--even funny--you should.

You can't rip the mask over the NPs face without hurting yourself in the process. Your family member will hold on to the mask and attack back. Part of being in a relationship with a narcissist is accepting that he sees the world the way he does, and you can't change it. You can, however, change yourself and the situation.

People who get intimately involved with narcissists also often have identity issues. So start to think about whom you really are and how you feel about things.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/stop-walking-eggshells/201111/behind-the-facade-the-false-self-the-narcissist

How to Spot a Narcissist: Blurb From Psychology Today

I lived with this for 3 1/2 years myself. This was exactly my ex-boyfriend's mindset. I firmly believe he suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. From Psychology Today:

What Have You Done for Me Lately? Entitlement: A Key Narcissistic Trait

A sense of entitlement is a narcissistic, not borderline, trait

Published on October 13, 2011 by Randi Kreger in Stop Walking on Eggshells

Some of these narcissists are honest about their dealings with others. They will practically tell you that they have an utter disregard for others. Other narcissists are a bit more subtle about the unwritten guidelines for living with someone who becomes irrationally angry when others don't go along with their demands. Here are some of the unwritten rules you may be unintentionally following:

• I have the perfect right to do or say whatever I want and no one should object.
• My needs have priority, and if others don't like it they just don't understand my superiority.
• If you don't do what I want I will become highly offended, make threats, plead with you, or criticize and blame you. If that upsets you, that's your fault. And please don't bother me with your feelings about it. It upsets me when you don't see yourself as inferior to me.
• Relationships aren't about give and take. They are about me taking and you giving. If you give and give with the hope that you will one day get your needs met, I will string you along as long as I can.
• When I turn on the pressure until you do what I want, or confuse you until you don't know what's up or down, it teaches me to try these techniques again.
• I like to mix things up by taking care of you and your needs once and awhile. It keeps you off balance, making you more easily controlled, and convinces you I'm really a good person after all.

A Quote on Love for the Offbeat People Like Me.

"We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness - and call it love - true love." - Robert Fulgham

The rest is just semantics...

I Am Beautiful: Why Famed Artist Kate Carroll Has Had It With Me.

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” ~Marilyn Monroe

Oh, I'm imperfect alright. Just read the posts where I ramble off the lists of everything wrong with me, inside and out. And madness is my trademark and albatross, though it's kinda charming. And I am anything but boring yet frequently ridiculous. So I have to love this quote from Marilyn Monroe, widely considered one of world history's most beautiful women.

After my best friend, Kate, dyed her hair blond and her stylist tried to cut it in a Monroe style which Kate did NOT want, she grew it back out and now it thickly flows around her face like liquid gold. We all consider Monroe to be beautiful but it doesn't mean we all want to be a size 16 with chin-length, bobby curled hair from the mid 1960's. A lot of women hate Kate, because she's not only brilliantly talented and intellectual, but she's also gorgeous and on top of it all, really fucking nice. She commands attention in a room and is extremely self-confident. She set her sights on her handsome, young Russian professor at Harvard and despite having another boyfriend at the time (or fiance, I forget), she's been married to him for 23 years.

Kate doesn't categorically like other women very much. Neither do I, quite frankly. (Most of the moms at Luke's school hate me. Probably because all the dads seem to love me.) She stumbled upon an interesting fact the other day. Any woman she truly respects, and totally gets along with, happens to be a recovering alcoholic. "What does that say about me?" she asked me. I'm not exactly sure, other than being a recovering alcoholic is a mark of strength and fortitude, and being outspoken about it is a sign of courage and self-confidence, characteristics in other women that Kate does admire. It's the self-confidence problem I have with which Kate takes serious issue and isn't afraid to call me out on.

I like this picture of myself on the beach from my trip to Florida in '09 with Chris, though I've lost more weight since it was taken. It was the first time I'd seen the ocean in my whole life. I like the photograph not because it shows off my figure, but because I'm standing in a confident pose, though I still didn't feel beautiful. I'm looking out at all the possibility in the infinite universe and soaking it all in. I was a year sober in that picture, weeks away from being medicated for bipolar disorder properly, and days away from starting my job at the medical practice. Well on my way to becoming a highly functioning adult for the first time in my life.

I was in love with Chris, and finally got the balls at the end of that trip to tell my supposedly exclusive boyfriend that I deserved his love to be mine, and that meant he had to ditch the 19-year old French college student he was romancing, gifting and sexing from a distance on the side via cyber and phone that I hated and felt in constant competition with. I'm no provincial prude, and free love and all that, and I'm the female version of Woody Allen these days in terms of not giving a damn who I choose to love, but I was done competing for his affections with a girl half my age just so he could assert his own manhood and feed his ego and soothe his own insecurities. (Two months later, he would break up with me, though we continued to see one another, though less often, for another year and a half, on his terms and conditions and things were never the same. I would later retaliate by accepting the romantic affections of someone else once Chris decided to date other people while still dating me, which I had every right to do, and that landed me dealing with his violent jealousy. Incidentally, the French girl later decided she was a lesbian, so way to go, Chris!) Looking out at the ocean, I finally decided to stand up for myself. It didn't get me very far.

Kate and I were talking the other night about my supposed resemblance to Ringo Starr, referenced in the blog I wrote about all of my rings. That I wrote that Ringo and I were both so ugly (I edited it and changed it to "unconventionally attractive" after our conversation) that we were downright adorable. Kate was tired of it. Hearing about it. Reading about it. Me insisting I was ugly when she insisted I was gorgeous. I just didn't see it. She made her point on the phone the other night when I was reading to her some of the blog entry paragraphs on how I perceive the way I look and what I thought of myself and about my apparent lack of my sense of physical beauty.

Kate challenged me about it. I honestly couldn't come up with a believable excuse as to why I thought of myself as unattractive. Kate thought I was full of shit. This list I came up with myself later, sans Kate's input: I have huge green eyes with gold flecks in them that radiate in the sunshine. I have an enviable (yet kinda too thin, medically) body for an almost 40-year old still with requisite curves in the right places. I have great hair (as previously mentioned). I have dimples when I smile. I'm starting to get laugh lines and crow's feet, but that just shows that I've smiled and laughed a lot in life. I have long, thin legs (like my mother used to have) and what's left of my butt is decent. I have a natural chest that a lot of women pay $7000 to artificially have implanted. That's on the outside. On the inside, I'm smart. I'm all of those things I list on my profile on the right of my blog. I am Andrea Caroline Miklasz, much more than a half-loony bipolar addict/alcoholic.

I've just always thought of myself as an ugly duckling. I couldn't get a date in high school. The only date I went on was to a Girls' Choice Dance, where I asked this band/drama geek Italian guy on whom I had a crush, only for the evening to go completely flat and for nothing to ever bloom. Another guy I was in love from afar for years told everyone on the bus home sophomore year that I gave him gas and hated me. The senior soccer player I adored as a freshman thought I was nuts for following him around like a puppy. The edgy heavy metal rocker who was really shy and afraid of girls said no when I asked him to Homecoming senior year, only for us to reunite 20 years later in an unlikely situation recently, whereupon he apologized for saying no to the dance, and though he was still single, rejected me again. The Cuban who looked exactly like Al Franken liked me enough after vying for his attention in Spanish class for most of my senior year, but our personalities were like oil and water and we couldn't mesh at all and things fell apart pretty quickly. Thinking back, I had an attraction to shy guys in general, most of whom probably just didn't know what to do with me.

Once I blossomed a little in college, cut my long 80'as hair and developed my own non-Park Ridge, urban non-style, guys started paying more attention to me, though I still wasn't exactly the pick of the litter. I allowed myself to be taken advantage of by a few drunken fraternity guys who at least planted a kiss on me, though they were uniformly all pretty gross, or sleazy, or too drunk to care (remember that line, "Everyone's attractive after 2am?").

College, though, was life-altering. People liked you and based their opinion of you on more than just your physical appearance. It was where people started noticing me for my soul instead of my face, or worse yet, my big rack. Once I finally had a boyfriend, Craig, it seemed, everyone wanted to date me. I couldn't imagine why; I was kinda chunky and had crooked teeth (which I still do, which I can't help but they're part of what make me ME) and acne and my father's chin. Even given that, though, nobody else looked like me (unless you count my mother, who was widely considered stunning as both a young woman and at my age now). That much I recognized. There were plenty of sorority girls who all resembled one another, plenty of preppy, cookie-cutter types floating around, and all the athletic girls looked alike, but the artists/writers/musicians all looked like true originals and didn't conform to any given type of appearance. Knox being a progressive, liberal arts college, one thing you were taught outside the rudimentary requisites of your textbook education, was how to be comfortable being yourself, in whatever form that appeared.

At best, as I told Kate on the phone the other night, I guessed, I was "cute." "Cute?" Kate said. "You're not cute. Crafts are cute. (Kate hates arts & crafts, as a serious artist.) You're not CUTE. You're BEAUTIFUL." She laughed at me. She thought me crazy. She felt compelled to remind me that one of the men who loves me with passion could literally have any woman he chose, is slammingly gorgeous and a genius, and is encountered by literally hundreds of "cute" girls every day, yet he chose me as his muse. (Unfortunately, our situation is sort of pragmatically impossible, though insanely romantic, the kind of situation that follows me around like white on rice, for while his heart is torn into pieces, of which he makes no bones, he belongs to someone else.)

"And that other one?" Kate said. "He's so crazy about you, he'll do literally anything you tell him to. THAT guy's your slave," she said, laughing. (No, he's not my "slave." He's just very accommodating to what I ask of him because he's a nice fella. I sort of hate the word "slave" since it was the identity Chris assigned me when we were together, and I don't want to be associated with it anymore.) I knew who she was talking about. I told her before that I have literally no idea if he finds me physically attractive or not, because I guess he doesn't feel allowed an opinion. He's never said either way, other than to compliment me politely when I look nice. She said he's insecure himself and reminded me of a story I told her months ago where I misheard something he said and I thought he said he was "ugly," not "juggling," and he blurted out that he looked in the mirror and routinely thought he was ugly. "He's very confident professionally," I said. "Yeah but fuck that," Kate said (paraphrasing), "Trust me, he wonders what YOU see in HIM, not the other way around." That may very well be true, I don't know. (This is the guy friend my new therapist blurted out and asked me if I was sleeping with on Friday, to which I replied, "OH GOD NO." To be honest, I don't think of him in that way, though objectively, there's something cute about him. (In this regard, Catholics would blame Vatican II. Progressive intellectuals would blame La Douleur Exquise.)

I got an email on Facebook a long time ago from one of my Knox male admirers, who came out and said "We didn't date in college WHY, exactly?" to which I replied, "Two words. Craig Bechtel." Before Craig and I decided to marry, and we took a very short break to date around a little (well, I dated around anyway. Craig sat and waited patiently for me to come back, which I did in a month or 2.), I became friends with a gorgeous German pre-med student, who I'm still proud to say I deflowered (separate story). Had life turned out differently and I hadn't married Craig, perhaps today I'd be a surgeon's wife in Austria. But frankly, I'm completely glad things turned out the way they did. I'm glad I chose Craig, for if there was no Craig and Annie, there'd be no Luke, and that would be royally sucky.

It'll take a while to look in the mirror and replace what could be labeled as body dysmorphic disorder clinically and see a thin, beautiful woman instead of having visions of myself still weighing 200 lbs and pinching my thighs, thinking they're fat, when they're totally not (just not toned per se) though as I said above, I do recognize some of my attractive physical attributes. But I think I'm ready to release that lifelong label of ugly and start appreciating my outward as well as inward beauty, largely thanks to other strong, confident women like Kate.

Being the Christian Hindu with Buddhist Tendencies that I am, I have to agree with the Buddha on the following, about how you feel about yourself: "You, yourself, as much as anybody in the Universe, deserve your love and affection."

“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.” ~Marilyn Monroe