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Are you unhappy in a relationship? It is possible that the whole point is that they are toxic, and your partner is a narcissist, moreover, perverted. Such a “simple” explanation can often be obtained by contacting support groups on social networks. But are we in a hurry with diagnoses and conclusions, and do such labels exacerbate an already difficult situation?
Social networks gave us the opportunity not only to communicate with former classmates and relatives from the outback, but also to find interest groups in just one click. It is a sign of our times that there are numerous support groups for those who have suffered in romantic relationships. They have their own rules of communication, and usually quite strict, and even their own slang.
By joining one of these groups, you will definitely receive support and sympathy. But can being in a group alone heal us from the emotional wounds received as a result of love affairs? And how does the language participants use help them cope with grief, but at the same time and sometimes hinder personal growth?
On the shelves
Entering the phrase “perverted narcissist” into the search bar, we get a lot of detailed materials with the characteristics of such people. And often these descriptions differ from each other, as if we are talking about different people. Is there such a thing as “perverted narcissus” in official psychology? And what does the word “perverse” actually mean?
“As such, there is no concept of “perverse narcissist” in scientific psychology,” says practical psychologist Anastasia Dolganova. — Otto Kernberg, who today can be considered the most important researcher of narcissism and the father of the scientific language in which this phenomenon is described, has the terms «benign narcissism» and «malignant narcissism.»
Malignant narcissism, unlike benign narcissism, is difficult to correct and progresses. The person suffering from it is extremely suspicious, and it comes to delirium: «You are doing everything to make me feel worse.» In malignant narcissism, people have a tendency to harm themselves in order to punish others, even to the point of committing suicide. Such people are characterized by dishonesty and outright sadism, manifested in the form of rage and contemptuous triumph directed at another person.
Malignant narcissism is a severe disorder that negatively affects performance, health, and relationships.
This kind of narcissism is just characterized as perverse (from the term «perversion» — distortion, perversion). Perversity in malignant narcissism is the tendency, however unconscious, to transform the good into the bad through speech and behavior. With its appearance, love turns into hatred, goodness into evil, energy into emptiness.
Thus, perversity is one of the characteristics of malignant narcissism: a severe disorder that negatively affects performance, health, and relationships.
But how many people with similar properties are next to us? Or is this the exception rather than the rule?
“Malignant narcissism is quite rare, especially in everyday contacts: the lifestyle that people with malignant narcissism lead is very likely to lead to their hospitalizations, imprisonment or death,” explains Anastasia Dolganova.
At the level
“For a more complete description of the scientific language of narcissism, it is worth introducing the term “level of personality functioning,” the psychologist suggests. — These levels are different: neurotic, borderline and psychotic. They differ from each other in the degree of severity of the violation and the level of adaptation of the individual to the outside world.
People with a neurotic structure generally behave quite logically, are able to separate themselves and their feelings from those around them and their emotions, and generally live “in reality”. They are not characterized by inadequate behavior and thinking. Neurotic people try to improve relations with the world and others and are capable (sometimes even too much) of self-criticism.
The “border guards” do not suffer from delusions and remain in touch with reality, but they cannot fully realize what is happening to them
The psychotic level of personality is characterized by loss of identity, lack of connection with reality. While on it, we cannot be critical of ourselves. Psychosis, illogical thinking and behavior, delirium — all this can be, for the time being, even unnoticed by others. However, internal devastation, disorganization of the personality manifests itself in a person’s life in different ways.
The borderline level of personality organization is an intermediate option between psychotic and neurotic. Its «owners» are thrown from one extreme to another. Despite the fact that the «border guards» have problems with identity, they know that it exists. They do not suffer from delusions and hallucinations and remain in touch with reality, but they cannot be fully aware of what is happening to them.
“Trends to distort reality will manifest themselves at all levels, but perversity is characteristic of deeply borderline and psychotic functioning,” adds Anastasia Dolganova.
Name sister!
We know that the diagnosis can only be made by a doctor who personally communicates with the patient. However, both members of support groups and psychologists often make a «diagnosis by avatar.» Like, what do you want, he is definitely a narcissist. But is it possible to determine from the description that someone suffers from a particular personality disorder, guided only by brief descriptions?
“Only by external signs — no, by a comprehensive observation of behavior, speech, actions, life history — yes, but it’s not easy,” says Anastasia Dolganova. “We are now at the peak of the popularity of narcissism, and therefore everything that looks painful, inadequate or destructive is labeled as “narcissism.”
The therapist uses special tools, and his knowledge allows him to distinguish one disorder from another
In fact, there are many personality disorders and other mental anomalies. And each of them, at its borderline or psychotic level, brings a lot of problems to the relationship. There are schizoid, paranoid, depressive and manic characters, hysteria and so on. The psychotherapist uses specially designed tools for diagnosis, and his knowledge allows him to distinguish one disorder from another. Such a diagnosis is very important, because different personality disorders have different dynamics, and, accordingly, different strategies for helping.”
Can your psychologist, not to mention «colleagues» in the support group, determine if your partner is a narcissist or not? “With such complex diagnostic work, it is unethical and unprofessional for a psychologist to talk about narcissism remotely. Rather, the practitioner may notice that what the client is describing is similar to the partner’s narcissistic traits, and tell a little more about what it is.»
Great and beautiful
There is an opinion that a narcissist is necessarily an insensitive person who does not understand at all that he is hurting someone with his behavior. Is it so?
“The narcissistic personality does have certain difficulties with empathy. The essence of a narcissistic disorder is the ego directed at oneself,” explains Anastasia Dolganova. — Surroundings interest such a person as their own reflections or functions, and not as separate individuals experiencing feelings that the narcissist himself does not experience. However, at a neurotic level of functioning, the narcissistic personality is quite capable of developing empathy: it comes with age, experience, or therapy.
Neurotics don’t usually do really bad things. And to say, for example, that “he is a good person, but a pedophile” is absurd
Sometimes good people do bad things. Does this mean they are narcissists and sociopaths? Is there any danger in reducing a person’s entire personality to a set of negative traits?
“As far as people and their actions are concerned, it is better, in my opinion, to use the terms of the level of functioning of the individual,” says the expert. A truly bad deed can be committed by a person with any type of character, who is at the borderline or psychotic level of functioning. Neurotics don’t usually do really bad things. And to say, for example, that “he is a good person, but a pedophile” is absurd!
The story of a person’s life, in which there are repeated violations of the law, unethical acts, destruction of relationships, endless career changes, is not a story about narcissism as such, but about the borderline level of personality organization — perhaps borderline narcissism.
Toxic for life
The phrase «toxic relationship» came to us recently. Its distribution has one indisputable plus: now we can easily declare that we are in a problem relationship without going into details. However, it seems that we are trying to fit everything into this concept. With its help, they describe both stories of outright violence, and cases when a partner, due to his characteristics, does not know how to voice his opinion or behaves passively-aggressively. And therefore the term itself seems to have spread and now occupies a space that is limited only by our own fantasies.
“Toxic relationships” is a term of popular psychology, it is usually not used in official science, explains Anastasia Dolganova. — It appeared after the translation of Susan Forward’s book «Toxic Parents» into Russian. The book describes such a relationship between a child and a parent, in which the basis for relationships in the family, instead of love and support, is service, repeated attempts to shame, exploitation, humiliation, and accusation.
Bad people happen, it’s true. But the problem of bad relationships is much deeper than this indisputable fact.
A toxic relationship is, in a general sense, a relationship of psychological abuse in which the child loves but does not love him. For the relationship of two adults, the term does not look quite correct: after all, there is no assignment and the need to be close to the one who poisons you. There is no difference in the status of Adult (responsible) — Child (innocent victim).
So is it worth calling any relationship toxic in which we feel bad for some reason, if we are talking about mature people? Or is it better to try to avoid stamps and understand the specific situation?
“To say, ‘It was a toxic relationship’ is to declare, in essence, the following: ‘He was bad, and I suffered from him. To say “this relationship was bad” means not to refuse to ask yourself important questions about the causes and consequences of what happened,” the psychologist is sure. “Bad people do happen, it’s true. I believe that understanding and recognizing this is the main social task of our time. But the problem of bad relationships is much deeper than this indisputable fact. Stamps should not prevent us from exploring our own lives and psyches.
New words, new agenda
For those who are discussed in support groups, their own language is invented: “toks” (toxic people), “narcis” (daffodils), “stumps” (perverted daffodils). What are these new words for? How will we help ourselves if we give in a sense a contemptuous nickname to the one who hurt us?
“I think this is an attempt to devalue the one who caused us suffering. Devaluation is one of the defensive strategies that are needed when the feelings we experience are too strong and we do not have the necessary skills to cope with them in full, says Anastasia Dolganova. “After all, relationships with a narcissistic personality really evoke many strong feelings: pain, anger, guilt and shame, powerlessness, confusion, often their own sadism and triumph. This raises a lot of questions for a person about how to deal with it now — both in relations with a partner and in relations with oneself.
And not everyone is ready to face these questions immediately after getting into a traumatic situation. The same happens in therapy: working with a client who has experienced such a relationship, the specialist tries to support him, sympathize with him.
Why is it now that groups dedicated to “stumps”, “toxes” and all kinds of “perverts” are so popular? Haven’t we encountered them before?
«Perverznik» is a socially widespread popular and very demonic image, — Anastasia Dolganova believes. — He is as stereotypical as the images, for example, of hysterics, which were called everyone in a row in Freud’s time. Outside of psychology, similar images also exist: suffragettes at the end of the XNUMXth century, communists in the XNUMXth. Roughly speaking, this is a primitive way of knowing others.
Devaluing your partner with such condescending newspeak is a simple pain avoidance strategy.
«Perverznik» is a sign of our times. Today, society is trying to recognize and define abuse, violence, toxicity in relationships and develop new rules for their regulation. It is normal that we start with primitive images — like children who are introduced to cubes and pyramids. This image is far from complex reality, but already similar to it.
What does a person miss, who focuses on the personality of a partner and explains his actions by a set of qualities inherent in another? Are there any blind spots that he does not notice either in others or in himself?
“Blind spots in this image concern the narcissistic personality itself, and the narcissistic relationship, and the victim of the narcissist,” the psychologist suggests. “These are difficult questions, the answers to which you will have to look for if you want to change the strategy of communication with others. For example, what is narcissism? Are narcissists the only ones that are destructive? Under what conditions does narcissism escalate, under what conditions does it subside?
How is a child brought up, that his personality is distorted in this direction? What happens in a narcissistic relationship? Why do I have a narcissistic husband, narcissistic child, narcissistic girlfriends, and narcissistic co-workers? Do I have narcissism in myself, and if so, how does it manifest itself? Why do I have feelings for a person who treats me badly? Why can’t I leave? Why didn’t my life get better after the relationship ended?”
We will be able to find answers if we shift the focus from external to internal, from a partner or acquaintance to ourselves.
“Devaluing a partner with such contemptuously condescending newspeak is a simple strategy for avoiding pain,” the psychologist concludes. “Through extreme feelings and situations, she will really help us get through. After all, the essence of simple strategies is precisely help in extreme situations (for example, when you need to decide to break off relations with a sadist). But they do not have a developmental effect.
Repetition is the mother of learning?
Groups that discuss «perverts» and «toxins» are full of people who have really experienced scary stories. Many of them really need help. And it is in the matter of «first aid» that such communities are very good at showing themselves.
“Support groups have an important function: they give a person the opportunity to navigate what is happening to him. They support him in the most extreme times of his life,” explains the psychologist. — As I said above, the mechanisms that are used for such support should be as simple as possible, primitive, because a person in a terrible situation will not be able to use complex tools. Hence — demonization, simplifications, cutting off unnecessary questions and thoughts: “you are good — he is bad.”
There is a feeling that these bands give false hope: I will just repeat my story many times, be with others in their grief — and the situation will sort of straighten itself out. But isn’t there something dangerous and destructive for the personality in this constant talking, boiling in one’s own juice?
The strategy of extreme survival at some point should be replaced by more effective methods
“Over time, for someone who wants to move on, this resource becomes insufficient: with such a view of the world, everything in the world seems either dangerous or unworthy,” emphasizes Anastasia Dolganova. — Usually people gradually lose interest in discussions within the group, write less, comment less. They have other tasks besides getting out of their own crisis, and the aggressively painful atmosphere of these spaces becomes uninteresting to them.
Those who stay tend to get stuck in the phase of anger and devaluation. Adhering to a clear and simple picture of the world, they block their way to freedom. They do not go further because they do not touch their complex feelings, and without this personal growth is impossible. At some point, the strategy of extreme survival must be replaced by more effective methods if we want to live fully and not fall into such stories again.
If we continue to stay in a support group, but there is no change in life, despite the regular telling of the story and the full empathy of others, if we feel that we are “hanging out”, it is worth considering a therapy option for ourselves.
Avoid simple solutions
Scrolling through community posts for the tag «narcissus» or «tox» can make us feel better. We give the problem a name, and it can actually alleviate our suffering temporarily.
“Reducing a person’s personality to a set of negative traits is definitely unacceptable for a therapist,” recalls Anastasia Dolganova. — But for a person who is in a destructive relationship, at some point such demonization of a partner may be useful. The fear and anger that comes with seeing the other as completely bad, disappointment, and devaluation can help end a relationship. If all this is not there, a person will be hindered by love, guilt, illusions, excuses for the other, and so on. And it’s still better to get out of destructive relationships than to stay in them. ”
However, the work should not end there: there is a high risk that we will find ourselves in a similar situation with a new partner — or even return to our beloved “tox”.
“The danger here is to linger in this process,” the psychologist warns. — Those who devalue are more likely to idealize — a past partner over time (and return to him) or a new partner, not noticing dangerous signs in him and agreeing to a relationship that can become the same as the previous ones. A deeper perception of people, which is beyond the «demonization-idealization», allows for a more conscious and appropriate choice.