Traumas aligned

The narcissist and his victim share the same trauma. I consider the narcissistic traumatization of both partners to be the primary, if not the only, reason for starting and maintaining a narcissistic relationship. I do not believe that only one partner is responsible for the destructiveness (this applies to relationships, not one-off encounters or casual contact). A relationship is the space that occurs between two people, their shared field in which they both are. A relationship accommodates all of our past experiences, all of our developed personality over a lifetime — how can it be that none of that matters? I’m sure what happens in a relationship holds on to each partner’s experience and includes their personality, their conscious and unconscious needs.

Feeling like a passive party is only safe at first glance. Without the opportunity to feel our own responsibility, we lose the chance to change and rob our partner of hope for a healthier relationship. By refusing to do something-something real, unrelated to the traumatized person’s games and patterns-the victim is just as much supporting the very patterns that are destroying her as her partner. And since narcissistic trauma and narcissistic traits are common to most modern people, any relationship can exhibit feelings and behaviors that will make that relationship narcissistic. This tendency is not even at the level of the individual, but at the level of the system.

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There are four types of traumatic reactions: flight, fight, freeze, and total submission. The traumatized person fixates on these modes of action, losing the ability for flexible adaptation.

All he or she can do is run, show aggression, freeze, or submit. In this sense, the mass call to “run from relationships with narcissists” is also the result of trauma.

That said, the challenges of any relationship are complex and multifaceted. They require more skills and reactions than these four. Flexible, creative adaptation to the relationship and to the partner is essential for that relationship (and partner) to be as healthy and functional as possible. The more complex the life situations a couple is going through, the more complex and ambiguous their ways of adapting will be.

For example, moneylessness or unemployment of one partner may occur in the relationship. Based on a set of traumatic patterns, in this case one can:
- run away — end the relationship;
- fight — get angry at the partner, accuse him/her externally or internally, consider him/her an alfonso or look for a job for him/her, borrow money, rescue;
- freeze — avoid talking about the subject, stop hearing your needs for material support, turn off your anxiety for your partner and for yourself;
- submit — adjust to the situation in the belief that the partner does not have money and never will.

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Reality is much more complex. In reality, we experience all these feelings at the same time: anger, fear, pity, desire to help, hope, despair, willingness to accept and the need for support. Each particular relationship must give birth to its own unique version of what the couple will do about the situation. The universal answers that any system offers are not and cannot fit because they do not take into account the individual reality of the couple. A universal answer is one version of trauma patterns.

For example, it may be acceptable for a couple to take advantage of outside help — turning to parents, taking out a loan from the bank, borrowing money from friends. It may be suitable for this couple to have the second partner take over all material functions for a while and give the other partner time and opportunity to find himself and start earning again, if he wants to. For the third couple the best option will be moving to India, spiritual practices and occasional earnings. For the rest — it is quite possible that and separation, and salvation, and adaptation, but it should be the result of a conscious choice from a variety of possibilities.

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To give back to the adult the ability to flexibly adapt to what is happening in his life and in his relationships is the most important and healthiest thing to offer when he is not coping with his life. To offer such a person the idea of his total innocence is to reinforce his neurosis and condemn him to repeat the old story, over and over again, perhaps for the rest of his life.

Tamara, for example, endures daily threats and abuse from her husband. She endures it as if because he can make her life very difficult: having moved to another country after him, she is afraid of losing her residence permit in a divorce, and her husband does not forget to remind her of this. There is a dead end here: I can sympathize with her and teach her to take more care of herself, but I can’t do anything else. She gets a lot of reasons for missing appointments or having them, repeating old complaints, she starts complaining about me too, about how nothing is helping her. It is only when I tell her that in our relationship she is making me out to be a narcissist who takes advantage of her resources and remains useless that we begin to have a work out. Tamara tells me that from the beginning she married a man she didn’t particularly like, and his reproaches of her indifference are well-founded. As she begins to be honest with herself, she stops being destroyed by her husband’s anger as she finally stops making excuses and trying to convince him that he is wrong. Somehow everything works out with the residence permit as well. The couple separates, but the relationship between them becomes healthier than in marriage.

Sveta with her severe anxiety and a suicide attempt in the anamnesis, talking about what her husband is a sadist, also does not really help. Rather, the situation becomes worse: playing the good client for me and the good wife for her husband, she finds herself even more unstable because she has to be two different people. Only after realizing that she was deceiving herself and that such a relationship could not become good with all the efforts of another person (me, for example), Sveta began to build boundaries, talk about her experiences, and feel safer.

Yulia, on the other hand, in response to my comment that she doesn’t hear me and isn’t going to, after a pause, continues to talk about the past week. When I talk about my irritation, she reacts aggressively, justifying my rightness by the fact that I am a psychotherapist. When I talk about the lack of contact, she pretends to understand me, talks about the past week again, leaves me unsatisfied and finds a reason (it’s always either money or time) not to come to sessions anymore.

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