Ordinary
I have not seen a stronger protest than when I suggest that a narcissist try on the word “ordinary” to himself. He throws all his strength into resistance, denial, and collapses into a collapse of terror. He begins to see in this word not merely a sign of ordinary human normality and unexceptionalism, but an attempt to plunge him into banality, ordinariness, mediocrity, and so on.
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First of all, everything that is not grandiose and not in the extreme degrees of great manifestations is really mediocrity for the narcissist, and there it is not far to nothingness. Secondly, if he recognizes himself as an ordinary/ordinary person, he will have to accept the fact that, quite probably, his great plans and grandiose demands to himself will never be fulfilled and realized. And thirdly, if he is an ordinary person, then he, like all of us, will have to do ordinary things step by step, because ordinary people have no other way.
This is how the narcissist drives himself into the stupor of inaction time after time. Waiting for miracles and “justice” from the world, which should finally see the light and give everything to the narcissist without any effort on his part, turns out to be quite logical, if we look at it from the position of our own “miraculousness”, uncommonness by human standards.
And meanwhile, it is precisely ordinariness in the sense of recognizing human nature with all its advantages and disadvantages, abilities and limitations, subjection to time and the laws of reality, that provides a way out of the narcissistic paradigm.
Stephen M. Johnson — PhD, is a psychotherapist. In his book Psychotherapy of Character describes this treatment of ordinariness perfectly: “The realization of the fact that significance, achievement, and power are only surrogates for love.
A sense that somewhere to the side goes the real life. That others really see, hear and feel each other. That there is real joy and love hidden in the experiences of others. That those feelings can be real. All of this is too painful to be realized. At the same time, there is an agonizing, growing with age, creeping up on the consciousness that there is still something more to life. The realization of this and the envy born of it are the sprouts of narcissistic transformation.
At such moments, when defenses are thrown aside, the narcissistic personality discovers HUMANITY.
This discovery is followed by a second discovery, the discovery of one’s real feelings.
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Narcissistic Crisis
I realize that facing all the “givenness” described in this chapter is often unbearable. Moreover, in any, even the most favorable scenario, the price of our recovery is a serious narcissistic crisis. Most of us have to go through it every time one or another of the narcissistic defenses that used to provide a solid support for our former all-powerful and omnipotent self falls away. When our bastions of ideality, behind which we hid from our own imperfection and the ordinariness of human nature, fall. It’s painful, difficult and very sad every time…..
But if we go through all this and find ourselves able to feel a little bit of grief; to recognize without shame our need to depend on people; to not hide from the feeling of powerlessness; to recognize our human ordinariness and feel compassion for ourselves, then… The narcissistic crown inevitably falls off. In return, many of us gain access to a more vibrant and real resource of our humanity. And that opens up a different future for us. One in which there is hope for happiness, joy, pleasure and love.
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