An honest and selfaware narcissist would describe his or her inner world this way:

"I want to tell you how much I am afraid of pain. To me, it is a pebble in Indra's Net lift it and the whole net revives. My pains do not come isolated they live in families of anguish, in tribes of hurt, whole races of agony. I cannot experience them insulated from their kin. They rush to drown me through the demolished floodgates of my childhood. These floodgates, my inner dams this is my narcissism, there to contain the ominous onslaught of stale emotions, repressed rage, a child's injuries.

Pathological narcissism is useful this is why it is so resilient and resistant to change. When it is "invented" by the tormented individual it enhances his functionality and makes life bearable for him. Because it is so successful, it attains religious dimensions it become rigid, doctrinaire, automatic and ritualistic. In other words, it becomes a PATTERN of behaviour.

I am a narcissist and I can feel this rigidity as though it were an outer shell. It constrains me. It limits me. It is often prohibitive and inhibitive. I am afraid to do certain things. I am injured or humiliated when forced to engage in certain activities. I react with rage when the mental edifice supporting my disorder is subjected to scrutiny and criticism no matter how benign.

Narcissism is ridiculous. I am pompous, grandiose, repulsive and contradictory. There is a serious mismatch between who I really am and what I really achieved and how I feel myself to be. It is not that I THINK that I am far superior to other humans intellectually. Thought implies volition and willpower is not involved here. My superiority is ingrained in me, it is a part of my every mental cell, an allpervasive sensation, an instinct and a drive. I feel that I am entitled to special treatment and outstanding consideration because I am such a unique specimen. I know this to be true the same way you know that you are surrounded by air. It is an integral part of my identity. More integral to me than my body.

This opens a gap rather, an abyss between me and other humans. Because I consider myself so special, I have no way of knowing how it is to be THEM.

In other words, I cannot empathize. Can you empathize with an ant? Empathy implies identity or equality, both abhorrent to me. And being so inferior, people are reduced to cartoonish, twodimensional representations of functions. They become instrumental or useful or functional or entertaining rather than loving or interacting emotionally. It leads to ruthlessness and exploitativeness. I am not a bad person actually, I am a good person. I have helped people many people all my life. So, I am not evil. What I am is indifferent. I couldn't care less. I help people because it is a way to secure attention, gratitude, adulation and admiration. And because it is the fastest and surest way to get rid of them and their incessant nagging.

I realize these unpleasant truths cognitively but there is no corresponding emotional reaction (emotional correlate) to this realization.

There is no resonance. It is like reading a boring users' manual pertaining to a computer you do not even own. It is like watching a movie about yourself. There is no insight, no assimilation of these truths. When I write this now, I feel like writing the script of a mildly interesting docudrama.

It is not I.

Still, to further insulate myself from the improbable possibility of confronting these facts the gulf between reality and grandiose fantasy (the Grandiosity Gap, in my writings) I came up with the most elaborate mental structure, replete with mechanisms, levers, switches and flickering alarm lights. My narcissism does two things for me it always did:

1. Isolate me from the pain of facing reality;

2. Allow me to inhabit the fantasyland of ideal perfection and brilliance.
These oncevital function are bundled in what is known to psychologists as my 'False Self'."

Find and Buy MOST of my BOOKS and eBOOKS in my Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/60...