Therapy Duo

Psychotherapy & Counselling for Individuals & Couples

Tag: Narcissism

  • Escaping the Narcissistic Bubble

    Escaping the Narcissistic Bubble

    Narcissistic Wounding

    We spoke in a recent article about Narcissistic Wounding in the couple relationship, and how learning to withstand this wounding can be a powerful way of transforming a relationship.

    The artist Louise Bourgeois had a deep understanding of narcissism, as evidenced by the rich art works she made over many years. In these works she often worked through woundings that had their genesis in her family of origin.

    It’s significant that her drawing shown here is called Fear: it depicts the way fear shuts us down from others, creates a bubble of narcissistic and reflective defence; a closed sense of self (possibly very useful when we were children, but now just an old barrier through which others can only superficially contact us). In an intimate relationship both people lose, the defended one and the one who attempts to break through.

    Narcissistic Defence in Couples Work

    In our couples counselling work we investigate and try to understand how these bubble structures have developed, and inquire into how they no longer serve us nor our relationships. Part of our bubble defence can exhibit as a hardness towards others. To change this situation both people in the relationship need to explore ways they can be more kind to each other.

    Kindness

    Kindness is of course at the heart of many religions, and that’s because kindness works – it takes us towards real peace, rather than towards the pseudo-peace of the defended bubble. As the Dalai Lama says:

    This is my simple religion.
    There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy.
    Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

    Kindness requires real forgiveness, and this, too, is at the heart of most spiritual paths and traditions. We could say its opposite is judgement. And it is often this, judgement, that we see couples focussing on.

    But how would it be to live without judging our intimate partner, to actually make an agreement that there will be no judgement in our relationship? We’ve seen such agreements work powerfully to change the dynamic in couple relationships.

    Foregiveness

    This forgiveness is not “I’ll forgive because it’s good for me”. It’s something much more foundational than this; an agreement to leave our bubble and really meet the other. We’ll have more to say on forgiveness in another post.

    (Image: Louise Bourgeois, Fear, 1999)

  • Are We Sleeping with our Expectations?

    Are We Sleeping with our Expectations?

    Sleeping with our Expectations

    Are we sleeping with our expectations of our partner? Have we made up a day-to-day story of what we need from our partner? Have we made any hidden deals with them, to make ourselves feel safe, to complete or fix an old story?

    (We’re using “sleeping” here as a metaphor for a deal or arrangement that we’ve forgotten we’ve made – it’s become unconscious.)

    And are we willing to investigate this – perhaps even to bring our unconscious expectations into the light in therapy?

    We spoke in our last article of the narcissistic wounding that can drive a relationship. And here we’ll touch on expectations (which is another lens on the same issue).

    Meeting in Diversity

    We often see in relationships that people come together out of a sense of the difference between (rather than the similarity between) the partners. Each person seeks completion in some way. Aspects of the other represent parts of their personality that are (psychologically) in the shadow; to some extent, at least, out of awareness.

    There’s nothing wrong with joining out of a sense of difference as long as this dynamic is seen and acknowledged in the relationship. What doesn’t work is when the joining is driven by an old loss that may pre-date the relationship, that is unseen and that continues to drive one or both of the partners.

    There can be a fantasy of union and a continual fusional grasping to avoid repeating the original loss.

    An Aside – Original Loss

    Much has been written on original loss and its investigation by many of the greatest minds in psychotherapy.

    Original loss is not just a lingering, painful sense of wrong done to us personally (early betrayals by our primary carers – although this can be hugely important) but also has an existential aspect: the loss of being born, of being thrust out of paradise into a world that (even in the best of circumstances) is subject to chance, luck, and sometimes relentless and difficult realities.

    And original loss has deep cultural aspects as well (the loss of paradise) – as talked about by religions since time immemorial.

    Fusional Grasping

    Fusional grasping is an evocative term used by Aldo Carotenuto. In his book To Love To Betray Carotenuto says:

    [An] implication of this fusional grasping is that in the relationship, the partners recognise each other only in proportion to the degree that each fulfils the other’s needs… It is interesting to observe that the causes of rancour and incomprehension between two partners are always the same and remain the same for years – at times an entire lifetime – without a real solution being found.

    Carotenuto goes on to say how a betrayal (such as an affair by one of the partners) can be an angry attempt by the betrayer to recognise the parts that s/he feel have been suffocated by the fusional grasping of the other – and for those parts to get mirrored by a third party.

    Expectations

    To work through the acute pain of an actual betrayal, or to work through fantasies of betrayal, can be a way of revealing the fusional grasping on which the relationship may have been based.

    This work can start with each partner in the relationship attempting to make an inventory of their experiences of the other’s expectations of them; and (sometimes painfully) working through the evidence (real or imagined) together.

    This work is valuable, for if we can be accepted only so far as we fulfil the other’s expectations, we are both imprisoned.

  • Beyond Narcissistic Wounding

    Beyond Narcissistic Wounding

    The Barbs and Wounds of Intimate Relationships

    Often couples come into therapy recounting an argument they’ve had. Each partner valiantly tries to get us to agree that their own position is correct. Well, it won’t work. We’re not there to be adjudicators. Actually, we’re not even there to resolve conflict (which may sound strange, but more on that later).

    What the couple is usually experiencing is repeated bouts of attack and defense, to-ing and fro-ing between the protagonists until exit and/or exhaustion of one or both parties occurs.

    Our approach is to stop the conflict immediately (both in the therapy room and as a strong suggestion for elsewhere). We suggest a number of simple approaches such as:

    • Only using “I” statements (“I feel…”, “I need…”)
    • Staying with feelings and sensations (feelings being characterised by being able to be described using a single word, such as “sad” or “worthless”; sensations being actual data received from the body)
    • Using the microscopic truth about what is going on inside us
    • Looking at the meanings we make in our interactions with our partner: see Staemmler’s model of interactions.

    The World of Feeling and Sensations

    When we encourage couples to enter the world of feelings and sensations, huge changes can occur. This world was usually already there, hidden from them; and it was usually the yearning of both partners to experience it and to interact from this world; but it’s unfortunately been blocked by the “bubble” of each individual’s defenses.

    In the image at the top of this article, the “pool” labelled Feelings and Sensations is shared – indicating that it can potentially belong to the “we” of the relationship, not just to the individuals separately.

    The Narcissistic Wound

    Narcissistic Wound - Detail

    When we’re wounded by our partner and the barb goes deep, it punctures our defenses, our guarded sense of self. This sense of self has been built to a greater or lesser extent in a healthy way, in order to survive the conflicts of normal growing up. The current view is that we all to some extent suffer some level of narcissistic wounding. (And it can be hard sometimes to decide whether it’s healthy.)

    So another powerful approach to working with conflict is for us to begin to get enough resilience to see the way in which our narcissistic wounding is being invoked in our struggles. We wrote in our previous article about the Dark Couple. This couple is fuelled in proportion to the inability of each of the partners in a relationship to see their own wounding.

    In other words, if we are unable to absorb the injury of the wound triggered by our partner’s barb, we give the dark couple energy; an energy that becomes redoubled if our partner fails to absorb our wounding of them in retaliation. It’s a vicious cycle of hurt and retribution (like an Old Testament story).

    Absorbing the Wound

    Absorbing the narcissistic wound comes only by admitting the existence of some vicious and unpleasant qualities in ourselves, without rebelling in defense and accusation. Can we own anything of what our partner is saying they don’t like about us (even 10% or 1%)?

    A gradual process of growth and maturity can occur for both partners as they begin to see the existence of the dark couple, and begin to be able to withstand and absorb their own narcissistic defenses.

    Understanding the Root Issues

    So back to the part about not resolving conflict. Foundational change doesn’t happen in a relationship by learning strategies for resolving conflict. That’s not to say that resolving conflict doesn’t help; it may be an enormously helpful step in soothing the couple, preparing them to do deeper work, and reducing the psychic injuries to others with whom they connect (such as children).

    But change really, deeply happens when both partners get an understanding, at the root level, of the unconscious energies that have driven their relationship. With such deep understanding, external changes (such as reducing conflict) happen by themselves – and sometimes even evaporate!

  • The Perils of Character Development

    Creative Character Development

    In Gestalt we’re often working with the Here and Now, with what’s arising in the present moment. But of course, what’s arising is often affected by our habitual patterns of coping, on our creative adaptations (as they’re termed in Gestalt).

    We call these adaptations “creative” because they have enabled us to accommodate to the social environment as a child.

    Outside the field of Gestalt, several of the character-analytic theorists have described five distinct stages in the development of character. It’s in this process of deleopment that they see the formation of character occurring.

    This post is a short introduction to this approach to understanding character. We can use it as a kind of checklist for ourselves, for how we feel we’ve navigated the perils of the social environment in our past and how they may still inform our lives today. We sometimes use this model in our work with individuals and with couples.

    The Stages of Character Development

    Character Development

    Stage 1: Self-Affirmation

    This is the initial expression of our natural, instinctual needs. Maybe these involve dancing, singing, throwing mud, loving without fear!

    Stage 2: Negative Environmental Response

    The social environment (for example family, school) is often completely unconcerned for the developing individual’s needs and reacts in a way that frustrates or blocks those needs.

    Stage 3: Organismic Reaction

    The bewildered individual responds in sometimes quite extreme and instinctual ways: experiencing and often expressing rage, terror, and grief at the loss of being authentically seen.

    Stage 4: Self-Negation

    Here is where the character-theorists consider the work of character formation to occur. It is the place where neuroses begin: through a sophisticated means of adaptation and denial of authenticity.

    Self-negation involves not only a denial and blocking of the original action of Self-Affirmation (Stage 1), but also a denial and blocking of the unendurable pain of Organismic Reaction (Stage 3).

    So begins what is often a lifetime process of setting the person against him/her self. Much work has been done on how these blocks become held in the body (for example), even causing postural distortions. (Wilhelm Reich did significant work on this.) Deeply held blocks such as these are resistant to change, because they serve to avoid anxieties about being hurt again.

    A significant point here is that these deeply held blocks are often related to the parents; the deeply held blocks are themselves held like “parents” in the unconscious, and hence are relational.

    This is where Gestalt, an inherently relational modality of psychotherapy, can be powerful in bringing these difficult states to consciousness.

    Stage 5: Adjustment

    In the final stage the individual does whatever is necessary to adjust to this difficult ground. (It’s here that the British psychologist D.W. Winnicott talked about the creation of the false self.)

    The individual develops a compromise solution in adapting to the environment, sculpting his/her character using the methods described here: either or both of suppression (Stage 4) and exaggeration (Stage 5); accommodating unnaturally to the environment (to avoid pain) while maintaining some level of contact.

    (Narcissism is an example of such a method.)

    Summary

    The character-analytic approach can give us insight into the myriad ways in which we have modified our natural state (and continue to do so) using neuroses and psychopathologies. This we can call “character“. A relational approach such as Gestalt can offer real healing, because it is a therapy involving a genuine relationship between therapist and client, focusing on adaptation and denial of authenticity.

    For more information on this topic – which is both theoretical and based on research (but not dry) – see Stephen M. Johnson’s book Character Styles.