Let’s be honest, we are all human. We all come equipped into this world with some sort of disorder. From addictions, character defects to mental disorders, this is the reality of what it is to be human. Recently a close friend indicated to me that I exhibit highly narcissistic personality traits. Now whether this is true or not isn’t that important. What’s important is that someone is perceiving you as being narcissistic. The truth is subjective and is a matter of perception most of the time. Now what can we do with this information? We could discredit what someone has personally observed about us, or we could use it as a chance to reflect on our own actions, thoughts and intentions.
Lately I’ve been listening to Dr. Gabor Mate on YouTube and he talks about how much our daily living, relationship with ourselves and interpersonal relationships are shaped by our childhoods. How our unconscious/subconscious actions include patterns of behavior that have been shaped by traumatic events in our childhoods. What led me to start listening to Dr. Mate’s work on YouTube is my own reflection of my own childhood. Looking back into my own childhood I realized that there were a lot of things that happened that were very traumatic to me as a little girl whose mind was just developing. I won’t get into details but early in childhood, I was taught that you couldn’t trust those closest to you and that people would abandon you. Upon reflecting on my past, I realized that this dramatically affected my life regarding relationships and with myself. I realized that my inner child was still traumatized by the fear of abandonment and still felt as though she couldn’t trust people, especially those “closest” to her.
Dissecting more into my past, I realized that I tended to self-sabotage every single good thing in my life because I felt that I didn’t deserve them. Every time something good was going for me, I would unconsciously do something to sabotage it. I realized that I was attracting people and situations to me unconsciously that were not good for me. I was scared to be happy, mainly because I felt I didn’t deserve happiness.
Going back to that someone close to me that observed narcissistic traits and patterns in my behavior. Reflecting on their words, I realized that they indeed had a valid point. I indeed was acting selfishly and maliciously even though it was unconscious. That fear of abandonment deep down was causing me to sabotage a good relationship so that this person wouldn’t be able to hurt me first. I could clearly tie this behavioral pattern back to my childhood. It was ingrained in my subconscious and in my nervous system that I could not trust anyone, and that people were going to eventually abandon me. It doesn’t excuse my toxic behavior. We are all responsible for what we say and do.
What I could do though, is bring the subconscious to the conscious, and work on my negative patterns so that I didn’t cause further damage in my life, due to unconscious behavior stemming from unhealed childhood trauma.
Carl Jung speaks of the “shadow self” or your “darker half”. He says that the only way to fully be alive is to do shadow work. Bring your subconscious into the light, into awareness. That way you can acknowledge it, integrate it and use it as a superpower. In doing therapy, I hope to do just this.
Afterall, as they say in 12 step, “You can never obtain a peace of mind at the expense of others.”