On Narcissism

I don’t know what your social media algorithm is feeding you, but whatever it is is a reflection of your inner state. If you find that things are super negative when you log on, consider what you are choosing to engage with. Algorithms are a literal interpretation of, “as within, so without.” If you don’t like it, change it. Engage with the content that brings you down less, and seek out the content that lifts you up more. The algorithm will follow suit.

Because I follow a lot of self-help and spiritual growth content, one thing I have noticed in my own feed is conversations surrounding “narcissists” and “narcissistic abuse” and it worries me, to be honest. We’re so quick to throw around terms that make us feel like we’re in the right and the other person is in the wrong, we forget that Narcissistic Personality Disorder is an actual psychological condition that has to be diagnosed by a qualified professional. Are there people with NPD walking around undiagnosed and leaving chaos in their wake? Sure. Of course. Does that mean your “toxic ex” is a narcissist? Probably not. And jumping to label them that way likely says more about you than it does about them.

We all have narcissistic traits. Every single human. I do, and you do. It doesn’t mean we’re all narcissists. It just means we still have work to do. Not shockingly, we always will.

My narcissistic traits used to include following somebody around demanding that they engage with me when my emotions were high; manipulating people by making them feel good in order to get my own validation; judging people as being wrong while I considered myself right; taking things personally that in reality had nothing to do with me; prioritizing meeting my own needs in unhealthy ways regardless of how poorly I treated another person to do so. The list goes on and on. Because I am expansive, so are my unhealed coping mechanisms. As soon as I work on one thing, I become aware of another. The biggest win for me was to shift from shame about the things I still had to work on, to pride about the things I already had. But I still have toxic traits, just like we all do. And I’m pretty sure I don’t have NPD.

Sometimes our unhealed wounds directly collide with another person’s unhealed wounds and very toxic dynamics emerge. We can become addicted to the adrenaline that these explosive relationships bring out in us, and it’s easy to mistake the high of conflict for the rush of love. Both are hormonal on a physical level, but only one is beneficial for us on a spiritual level. In my own journey of learning from my many mistakes, the most valuable lesson I have learned is that when something feels off, the first place to start is with myself. Life is just a projection of what’s in our thoughts, and what tends to trigger us in other people are the exact tendencies that we don’t like in ourselves.

I used to get so upset by the feeling of being ignored until I realized that I was ignoring myself. Once I started listening to and accepting myself, I became better at listening to and accepting others. Once again, life is ironic that way. The most empowering part of looking at things this way is that when I focus on myself, I can actually do something about the things that make me unhappy. I spent years blaming everybody else for my unhappiness, but once I shifted the focus onto myself, I felt less powerless because I could actually start changing the things that made me unhappy. In that way, my narcissistic traits began to heal and I proved to myself that I wasn’t a narcissist to begin with (it was a fear of mine, at one point).

I guess my whole point with this is that we are so quick to judge and label other people as being “negative” in some ways, when we really don’t know what we’re talking about, and that’s just something to accept in life. We barely even know ourselves, if we’re honest. How could we know what’s happening in another person’s sphere? The more I focus on staying in my own lane and working on the only things I can control (my thoughts and actions), the more I can accept other people and leave them to live their own life. I can barely keep my shit together as it stands, although I am getting better at it, so I have no space to take on other peoples’ shit too. The amount of peace this has brought me has quite literally changed my entire life, and if you’re looking for more peace and less chaos, I highly recommend it. It’s empowering to take responsibility for your own shit, and it’s peaceful AF to leave other people to do the same.

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