NARCISSISTS ARE TRAUMA PERSONALITIES Trauma research and neuroscience advances are now uncovering more about what shapes human beings in bodily form and personality. We now understand broadly from Polyvagal theory that evolution has provided us with an organizing principle to understand how the brain regulates the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) to enable social behavior and bonding in humans. An infant or child will employ certain instinctive survival responses and strategies to create safety so that they can adapt and again seek contact, social engagement and bonding, but with some compromise. In general the child will utilize some basic defenses in order to cope with any form of abusive treatment or unsafeness that it is exposed to in its early life with caregivers. The concept of “splitting” is a deep psychological truth for both the Borderline and the Narcissistic personality. Psycho-analyst Melanie Klein is credited with the evolution of this concept as a primary truth in developing infants. These splits will appear as polarities or extremes in the personalities and also between these two types of trauma personalities. For instance as a broad distinction between the Borderline and the Narcissistic personality we find two extremes. On one level the Borderline personality is extremely into self-control moment to moment. They have a shaky containing personality that is quite hyper-vigilant, either hyper or hypo-aroused, and quite into self-control. They are more commonly women who were wounded by their mothers. The Borderline is paranoid and fearful of the outside world and so fixates on it, but primarily from a survival perspective. They are trying to be completely truthful with themselves and others, and their trauma leads to involuntary “acting out”, abusive or explosive emotional behaviors. They are in survival mode much of the time. Compare this to the Narcissistic personality which is also basically from a trauma background. On one level the Narcissistic personality is extremely into self-control moment to moment. The difference is they have a strongly contained personality that is quite hyper-vigilant, hyper-aroused, and quite into self-control, but also complete control of their environments and others. They are more commonly men who were wounded by their mothers, and sometimes fathers. The Narcissistic personality is also paranoid but aggressive towards the outside world from a place of mistrust, and so fixates on it, but primarily from a controlling and predatory perspective. They are not concerned with truth but with being “right” and so routinely lie to themselves and others. The Narcissistic personality has well developed manipulation techniques leads to both voluntary and pre-meditated acts of aggression against others. Only when exposed or betrayed will one see a loss of complete control and the involuntary “acting out”, abusive or explosive emotional behaviors leak out. They are in predatory or self-promotion mode much of the time.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Jun 2013 22:47:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015