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A narcissistic mother sees her daughter, more than her son, as a reflection and extension of herself rather than as a separate person with her own identity. She puts pressure on her daughter to act and react to the world and her surroundings in the exact manner that Mom would, rather than in a way that feels right for the daughter. Thus, the daughter is always scrambling to find the “right” way to respond to
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Karyl McBride (Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers)
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But that’s the magic of alone time! You are completely and 100 percent in control of your own happiness. You can imagine anything you want, transforming a bad mood into a good one. Or maybe you want to feel the bad mood fully, in which case you can cry all you want, and nobody can judge you. When you’re alone, there’s no pressure to be someone you’re not. For a while I actually used to need time alone in order to remember who I was. When we’re constantly surrounded by people—especially toxic influences—it becomes really easy to forget ourselves. We get caught up in drama, gossip, and negativity.
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Jackson MacKenzie (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Other Toxic People)
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As you recover, you will feel more conscious of your surroundings. Freed from the ‘fog’ of your pain, fear, and confusion, you will awaken and see the world revealed as never before. You will begin to observe things, especially yourself. You will be aware of what you do and why you do it. You will begin to observe your own behavior and attitudes.
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Beverly Engel (The Right to Innocence: Healing the Trauma of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Therapeutic 7-Step Self-Help Program for Men and Women, Including How to Choose a Therapist and Find a Support Group)
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2 Tears of terror came at night. (תִבְכֶּ֜ה בַּלַּ֗יְלָה) literally; “she-weeps at-night”.
The word “terror” was chosen to demonstrate she has no control over her surroundings. In the Hebrew—not in the English—the word “tears” was doubled, literally: “to-weep she-weeps”.
Note she is no longer in Israel. She is a slave in Babylon. Her day does not belong to her. She must slave for her new master by day, but the night is when she cries for her ex-Husband. In the night, she has time to tally her terrible losses.
Lamentations, pg 5
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Michael Ben Zehabe (Lamentations: how narcissistic leaders torment church and family (The Hidden Series))
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When your light is gone, you can no longer use it to fix all of the broken things around you. So in its place, you begin to surround yourself with people who actually share and appreciate your most wonderful qualities.
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Peace (Psychopath Free: Recovering from Emotionally Abusive Relationships With Narcissists, Sociopaths, & Other Toxic People)
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The mass media, with their cult of celebrity and their attempt to surround it with glamour and excitement, have made Americans a nation of fans, moviegoers. The media give substance to and thus intensify narcissistic dreams of fame and glory, encourage the common man to identify himself with the stars and to hate the “herd,” and make it more and more difficult for him to accept the banality of everyday existence.
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Christopher Lasch (The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations)
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Failure to act in a crisis is tantamount to accepting a dreadful outcome. I must try to save myself before a rash personal act stubs me out reminiscent of a sucked dry cigarette. I lack a disciplined mind to engage in rigorous study. I am an accidental psychologist, an unreliable philosopher, an unscrupulous self-ethnographer, a crackpot cultural anthropologist, an untrustworthy historian, and a deceitful reporter whom surrounded himself with a facade of untruths, delusions, and illusions. I need to gather personal willpower and attempt my level best to tackle my greatest obstacle – a personal penchant to parley with self-destructive behavior. I seek to penetrate the barriers of constructed falsehoods and reveal the brutal truth of why my soul is so tarnished, engage in many acts of contrition, and atone for a wasteful life. My goal is to construct a living philosophy that will sustain me through all stages of life. I shall use whatever resources are available to me including an intuitive belief in free will to design a self-rescue plan. I must obliterate all vestiges of narcissistic and selfish persona by slaying the ego and dissolving a grotesque sense of self that is preoccupied with the past and fearful of the future.
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Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
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I must confess that I am not at all partial to the fabrication of Weltanschauungen. Such activities may be left to philosophers, who avowedly find it impossible to make their journey through life without a Baedeker of that kind to give them information on every subject. Let us humbly accept the contempt with which they look down on us from the vatnage-ground of their superior needs. But since we cannot forgot our narcissistic pride either, we will draw comfort from the reflection that such 'Handbooks to Life' soon grow out of date and that it is precisely our short-sighted, narrow, and finicky work which obliges them to appear in new editions, and that even the most up-to-date of them are nothing but attempts to find a substitute for the ancient, useful and all-sufficient Church Catechism. We know well enough how little light science has so far been able to throw on the problems that surround us. But however much ado the philosophers may make, they cannot alter the situation. Only patient, persevering research, in which everything is subordinated to the one requirement of certainty, can gradually bring about a change. The benighted traveller may sing aloud in the dark to deny his own fears; but, for all that, he will not see an inch further beyond his nose.
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Sigmund Freud
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We react constantly through life. Breathing, noticing, thinking, swallowing, feeling, and moving are all reactions. Most reactions are not really observed because they are commensurate with their stimuli, but a triggered reaction stands out because it is out of sync with what is actually taking place. When we are triggered, we have unresolved pain from the past that is expressed in the present. The present is not seen on its own terms. The real experience of the present is denied. Although reacting to the past in the present may make sense within the triggered person’s logic system, it can have detrimental effects on those around them who are not the source of the pain being expressed, but are being punished nonetheless. They are acting in the present, but are being made accountable for past events they did not cause and cannot heal. The one being falsely blamed is also a person, and this burden may hurt their life. The person being triggered is suffering, but they often make other people suffer as well. There is narcissism to Supremacy, but there is also a narcissism to Trauma, when a person cannot see how others are being affected. Although the triggered person may be made narcissistic and self-involved by the enormity of their pain, both parties are in fact equally important. And it is the job of the surrounding communities to insist on this.
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Sarah Schulman (Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair)
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All of us, actors and spectators alike, live surrounded by mirrors.
In them, we seek reassurance of our capacity to captivate or
impress others, anxiously searching out blemishes that might detract
from the appearance we intend to project. The advertising
industry deliberately encourages this preoccupation with appearances.
In the twenties, "the women in ads were constantly observing
themselves, ever self-critical. ... A noticeable proportion
of magazine ads directed at women depicted them looking
into mirrors. . . . Ads of the 1920s were quite explicit about this
narcissistic imperative. They unabashedly used pictures of veiled
nudes, and women in auto-erotic stances to encourage self-comparison
and to remind women of the primacy of their sexuality."
A booklet advertising beauty aids depicted on its cover a nude
with the caption: "Your Masterpiece-Yourself.
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Christopher Lasch (The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations)
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The romance that has surrounded the Beat generation since the mid-Sixties has acted as a kind of sentimental glaze, obscuring its fundamentally nihilistic impulse under a heap of bogus rhetoric about liberation, spontaneity, and 'startling oases of creativity', Notwithstanding their recent media media make-over, the Beats were not Promethean iconoclasts. They were drug-abusing sexual predators and infantilized narcissists whose shamelessness helped dupe a confused and gullible public into believing that their utterances were works of genius. We have to thank Lisa Phillips and the Whitney for inadvertently reminding us of this with such vividness. If nothing else, 'Beat Culture and the New America' showed that the Beats were not simply artistic charlatans; the were -- and, in the case of those who are still with us, they remain -- moral simpletons, whose destructive influence helped fuel the cultural catastrophe with which we are now living.
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Roger Kimball (The Long March: How the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s Changed America)
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The Paranoid Schizoid Solution When narcissism fails as a defense mechanism, the narcissist develops paranoid narratives: self-directed confabulations which place him at the center of others' allegedly malign attention. The narcissist becomes his own audience and self-sufficient as his own, sometimes exclusive, source of narcissistic supply. The narcissist develops persecutory delusions. He perceives slights and insults where none were intended. He becomes subject to ideas of reference (people are gossiping about him, mocking him, prying into his affairs, cracking his e-mail, etc.). He is convinced that he is the centre of malign and mal-intentioned attention. People are conspiring to humiliate him, punish him, abscond with his property, delude him, impoverish him, confine him physically or intellectually, censor him, impose on his time, force him to action (or to inaction), frighten him, coerce him, surround and besiege him, change his mind, part with his values, victimize or even murder him, and so on.
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Sam Vaknin (Narcissistic and Psychopathic Parents And their Children)
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I must confess that I am not at all partial to the fabrication of Weltanschauungen. Such activities may be left to philosophers, who avowedly find it impossible to make their journey through life without a Baedeker of that kind to give them information on every subject. Let us humbly accept the contempt with which they look down on us from the vantage-ground of their superior needs. But since we cannot forgo our narcissistic pride either, we will draw comfort from the reflection that such ‘Handbooks to Life’ soon grow out of date and that it is precisely our short-sighted, narrow and finicky work which obliges them to appear in new editions, and that even the most up-to-date of them are nothing but attempts to find a substitute for the ancient, useful and all-sufficient Church Catechism. We know well enough how little light science has so far been able to throw on the problems that surround us. But however much ado the philosophers may make, they cannot alter the situation. Only patient, persevering research, in which everything is subordinated to the one requirement of certainty, can gradually bring about a change. The benighted traveller may sing aloud in the dark to deny his own fears; but, for all that, he will not see an inch further beyond his nose.
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Sigmund Freud (Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety)
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The Janus Symbiosis by Stewart Stafford
Ambition's fruition never matches,
The reach of the expanding ego,
Then its imperious Siamese twin,
Savagely seeks sanguine satiation.
Who shall be the meat for the feast?
What shall the slaughter method be?
A blood sport for the VIP Narcissus,
Spitting bones through a rictus grin.
Sycophants surround the Janus figure,
Wheat and chaff to the scythe's blade,
Starving out any vestiges of moral fibre,
Lumps on the humps of the all-powerful.
© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved
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Stewart Stafford
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Because there is beauty and there is art that celebrates it like a secret language, I was reassured and connected to something greater than my immediate surroundings.
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Elizabeth Garden (TREE OF LIVES: My rocky path out of the Wildwoods)
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Healing takes time, patience, and self-compassion. Each step you take towards healing is significant, and progress may not always be linear. Trust your instincts, prioritize self-care, and surround yourself with a support system that uplifts and empowers you.
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Eleni Sagredos (But They're So Nice: Unmasking Covert Abuse & Narcissistic People)
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This is actually a universal trend with narcissists—they tend to surround themselves with voices that agree with them and silence those that do not.
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Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
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In my clinical practice, I talk and I listen. I talk more to some people, and listen more to others. Many of the people I listen to have no one else to talk to. Some of them are truly alone in the world. There are far more people like that than you think. You don’t meet them, because they are alone. Others are surrounded by tyrants or narcissists or drunks or traumatized people or professional victims. Some are not good at articulating themselves. They go off on tangents. They repeat themselves. They say vague and contradictory things. They’re hard to listen to. Others have terrible things happening around them. They have parents with Alzheimer’s or sick children. There’s not much time left over for their personal concerns.
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Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
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Surrounding yourself with “yes people” when stuck in a Loop is a surefire way to develop narcissistic tendencies. You have created a close loop system and the only people around you feed your ego, not your soul’s desire to grow. You need to find a better mirror.
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Erin Dinsmore (How to Be A Human Being)
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I think, too, about how there are many ways to defend oneself from the unspeakable. Here’s one: you split off unwanted parts of yourself, hide behind a false self, and develop narcissistic traits. You say, Yeah, this catastrophic thing has happened, but I’m A-Okay. Nothing can touch me because I’m special. A special surprise. When John was a boy, wrapping himself in the memory of his mother’s delight was a way to shield himself from the horror of life’s utter unpredictability. He may have comforted himself this way as an adult too, clinging to how special he was after Gabe died. Because the one certainty that John can count on in this world is that he is a special person surrounded by idiots. Through his tears, John says that this is exactly what he didn’t want to happen, that he didn’t come here to have a breakdown. But I assure him that he’s not breaking down; he’s breaking open.
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Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed)
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You can't afford to be surrounded by a bunch of energy vampires and spiritual parasites looking to deplete your time.
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Chanel Jasmin Clark (My Family Can Kiss My Ass: How to Deal with Toxic, Messy, Narcissistic Family Members (Volume 1))
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I’ve written at length about Trump’s racial history, and the picture is hideously below the mark of what America deserves in a president; he’s an awful, dark stain on our history. What the first term makes abundantly clear is that it’s not an act, it’s not a strategy, and it’s not something the American people can bear. It is exactly who he is: a fucking racist. The referendum on Trump’s racism will play out in 2020, and well beyond, costing the GOP seats, status, and support for generations. They have no one to blame but themselves. IT’S ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE Which leads us to what he looks like in a second term. Cognitive decline is an ugly, hard reality for millions of Americans. As the Silent Generation slips into their final years, and the oldest Boomers join them, families all over America confront Alzheimer’s and many other tolls of aging. For many afflicted with a loss of memory and ability, this decline is a sad, steady reduction in the joys of life. For Trump, it’s part of the reality show, though not one he wants to focus on. Comparing Trump now with video clips from a decade ago is chilling. The slippage in his verbal acuity is marked. His rages and explosions of temper aren’t part of an act; they’re no longer controlled or controllable. The nearest contemporary parallel was the second-term decline of Ronald Reagan. Americans sensed the terrible gravity of Alzheimer’s pulling at him, but he was still surrounded by largely competent people and was, on the whole, a healthy man. For all the disagreements Democrats had with him, Reagan could never be considered an impulsive narcissist with a hair-trigger temper and no concern for others. Reagan actually bothered to understand nuclear weapons and the risks they posed, unlike President Missile Parade. Trump’s lack of knowledge should terrify you as much as it does me, especially as his cognitive decline continues apace. Given his hold over the cabinet, there’s no workable solution for this president’s combination of apparent mental infirmities and uncontrolled urges and racist fuckery, suggesting a second term will be more dangerous than the first.
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Rick Wilson (Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America from Trump--and Democrats from Themselves)
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The main priority of everyone surrounding a highly narcissistic person is to ensure that they are looking after themselves, maintaining their own mental and physical health and wellbeing, before looking after the narcissist.
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Theresa Jackson
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This does not necessarily mean that he has the most education (or the best). The narcissistic pastor doesn’t need the best education because he’s self-educated, surrounded by books (some his own, prominently displayed), and proud to remind you of his unique vision, the brilliant constellation of church plants, the genius plan that he has implemented. When he speaks of his unique contributions, there is a hint of condescension toward other churches that, in his high estimation, “lack vision” or “don’t have the talent we have.” Of course, he is speaking of his talent.
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Chuck DeGroat (When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community From Emotional and Spiritual Abuse)
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Dissociative amnesia (also referred to as “abuse amnesia”): Dissociative amnesia is when a person “forgets” certain incidents surrounding a traumatic event or events—in this case, abusive behavior.
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Dana Morningstar (Start Here: A Crash Course in Understanding, Navigating, and Healing From Narcissistic Abuse)
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I think, too, about how there are many ways to defend oneself from the unspeakable. Here’s one: you split off unwanted parts of yourself, hide behind a false self, and develop narcissistic traits. You say, „Yeah, this catastrophic thing has happened, but I’m A-Okay. Nothing can touch me because I’m special. A special surprise. When John was a boy, wrapping himself in the memory of his mother’s delight was a way to shield himself from the horror of life’s utter unpredictability. He may have comforted himself this way as an adult too, clinging to how special he was after Gabe died. Because the one certainty that John can count on in this world is that he is a special person surrounded by idiots.
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Lori Gottlieb (Maybe You Should Talk to Someone)