A client once sat down and expressed that her unique talent was “anging” everyone she met in her life. Even those who grew to like him soon found that he was less than likable in most interactions. The real difficulty was that he was a highly intelligent and competent professional and could not understand why he repeatedly behaved in what he called a “stupid” way that was guaranteed to have negative reactions to him from others. His answer can be found in his family history and in deficits in his ability to form and maintain satisfying interpersonal relationships that would be considered the basis of healthy attachment and attunement.
Attachment is about the degree to which one feels emotionally connected to others and the predictable nature of that connection. When attachment is inconsistent or poor, the predictable nature of the emotional connection is vague and ill-formed. This significantly reduces the trust and calm expectation of support that human beings have to feel part of a community or family. Furthermore, it is not uncommon to find individuals who reach adulthood in this dynamic and learn to react with aggression and hostility, or by withdrawing and victimizing themselves. These constant characteristics are frequently associated with the pathology label of Narcissist.
When family members experience dysregulated interactions with each other, then the person-to-person attunement is absent, weak, or inconsistent. This promotes a fear-based drive to gain control through negative means such as are easily recognizable in the role of narcissistic personalities. Attunement is related to empathy and the ability to understand what is happening socio-emotionally in the life of another. When the attunement is not present, not well modeled, or not consistently employed in a family, then that sensitivity may be reduced if not fully squashed. When one has low levels of empathy for others, it increases the likelihood that an individual will fail in their attempts to keep up with someone else’s dance and pick up the dance steps they need to perform successfully. Learning to correctly recognize and predict the interactions (dance) of others would assume that there is a consistency in the behavioral and emotional environment.
Attunement and attachment are two areas of concern when it comes to family dynamics that will interfere with an individual’s relationships throughout life. If attachment and attunement are left aside and played little, they may well generate a series of relational markers that can turn out to be narcissistic. in species.
As children grow to maturity in an environment that interferes with or disrupts normal emotional, social, and psychological growth, it is not uncommon to witness a reactivity to this environment that can act as a conduit through which some behavior patterns are modified. and perhaps the child’s personality. it is filled with behaviors that stress the relationship. Generally, when talking about destructive behaviors in relationships, two equal but different patterns emerge. The first is the inhibited symptoms of narcissism and the other could be considered rampant symptoms of narcissism.
Regardless of the pattern an individual expresses in any relationship, interaction dynamics are created that are often exhausting, frustrating, personally painful, and emotionally difficult. The remaining text is devoted to illustrating differences in the dual symptom structure of narcissism beginning with the inhibited symptoms of narcissism and followed by rampant symptoms of narcissism.
Inhibited symptoms of narcissism
- Related to the poor quality of attachment and attunement that exists in a traumatic family environment, it can be found that children develop a sense of inferiority, are indecisive with strong self-doubts, a marked propensity to feel shame, with a fragility and highly defended ego structure. that can activate an incessant search for power and control in a passive and indirect way.
- These are often combined with marked sensitivity to criticism and a low tolerance for realistic setbacks and difficulties. Traumatic families have little stable predictability in their interactions, which can greatly exacerbate interpersonal trust and trust issues. in the others. There is in many traumagenic families a genuine question about the trustworthiness of others and how much they can be trusted. Furthermore, this self-erosion breeds envy and jealousy over others’ possessions, talents, and ability, always finding oneself lacking or falling short in significant ways.
- Another challenge faced by family members that could be characterized as traumatic can be a lack of direction which can manifest as aimlessness and shallow or poor engagement patterns. This lack of goals is related to inadequate reinforcement for successful performance, or a lack of faith in one’s ability to create significant change in a manifest outcome, along with doubt that one can influence one’s own daily life. individual.
- When members of a traumatic family operate within the inhibited symptoms of narcissism, one could easily notice a constant flux or shift in values to gain favor, gain control, or protect a fragile ego structure. This highly defensive posture is recurrently associated with pathological lying, materialistic lifestyles even though the family is very poor, criminal tendencies, and a strong contempt for authority or social institutions.
- As the child grows into adulthood in the traumatic family structure, it becomes apparent that there is a clash in the desire for loving relationships and the ability to sustain love. The loved one is viewed as a possession, there to satisfy the individual’s ego-based needs, impairing one’s ability to view the romantic relationship as having separate interests, rights, and values.
Rampant Symptoms of Narcissism
- The separate but equally disturbing pattern that can develop in a traumatic family structure is the production of members who possess a strong sense of grandeur and entitlement. This dynamic can trigger a perpetual thought process in which one is preoccupied with fantasies of outstanding success coupled with an undue sense of uniqueness, a seeming self-sufficiency that is mostly hollow and protective of a fragile sense of self.
- One of the hallmarks of rampant narcissism is found in repeatedly superficial relationships of a relatively intense nature that require others to provide an emotional, psychological, or social tribute. This is associated with an emotional stance of contempt for those who do not pay the tribute, a genuine lack of empathy for those with whom they share a relationship.
- Unbridled narcissism often adopts the mask of conviviality and social charm as a tool to exert power and control in the social and interpersonal environment in which they operate. There is an intense ambition that can accompany this dynamic that is coupled with a drive for the psychological and social tribute of the admiration of others. There is also a pervasive idiosyncratic personal morality that can be incredibly destructive to relationships in general. This is often manifested by marital instability, seduction but unsatisfactory relationships or extramarital affairs, and promiscuity.
In conclusion, it is easy to understand how poor or insecure attachment and attunement are negatively affected by the interaction patterns of a traumagenic family, as well as how narcissism can easily grow from these dynamics. Many professionals and most laymen who encounter the narcissist tend to react quite negatively and with tremendous judgment and condemnation that has little influence to substantially improve interactions. The challenge is to create environments in which true attachment and attunement can take place while activating old familiar and well-used patterns more than is absolutely necessary. This is usually an issue that will require psychotherapy to overcome the weight firmly placed on the shoulders of those who never asked for this burden to be theirs.
