I dag skal jeg si litt om et svært vanlig fenomen, og som jeg har kalt: narsissisten som mishandler hevder å være offer Jeg vet at mange leter etter svar på hvorfor narsissisten som mishandler hevder å være offer. Altså at alt blir snudd om på. Og i dag vil jeg gi dere et innlegg med svar på denne problemstillingen. Og innlegget er utdrag fra en engelsk fagartikkel som opplevdes veldig nyttig å lese om dette. Den var lettlest og hadde en god forklaring på hvorfor det er slik.
Fagartikkelen jeg refererer til idag, er skrevet av den anerkjente amerikanske gestaltterapeuten Elinor Greenberg Ph.D, CGP, som har spesialfelt NPD og andre personlighetsforstyrrelser. Hun har fått publisert mange viktige fagartikler innen sitt spesialfelt, og flere av dem har jeg gjengitt på bloggen. Nederst i dette innlegget, finner du lenke til hele fagartikkelen. Innlegget er på engelsk.
Les også: En anbefalt bok om psykisk vold og hvordan reise seg igjen
Hvorfor hevder narsissisten som mishandler å være offer?
Greenberg sier dette i fagartikkelen:
KEY POINTS
- Narcissism can be viewed as a self-esteem regulation disorder plus a lack of emotional empathy.
- Narcissists twist the truth to present themselves as either heroes or the innocent victims of other people’s malice.
- Narcissists lack whole object relations, which means they can only see themselves as perfect or worthless.
- If narcissists cannot be your hero, they may claim to be your victim.
From an object relations theoretical point of view, all people with personality disorders lack whole object relations (WOR). This lack of whole object relations means that they can only see themselves and other people as either all-good or all-bad. They cannot form an integrated, stable, and realistic picture of people that simultaneously includes both liked and disliked qualities. This is also called “splitting” or black-and-white thinking with no shades of gray. Each of the different personality disorders has a different definition of all-good and all-bad. In the narcissistic type of splitting:
- All-Good = Special, perfect, omnipotent, admirable, high status, idealizable, and entitled to special treatment.
- All-Bad = Worthless, flawed, inadequate, average, wrong, and entitled to nothing.
This leads people with NPD to be hyper-focused on projecting an image that they feel is admirable and blameless. It also leads to them devaluing other people and not taking responsibility for their share of failures and faults.
Hvorfor hevder narsissisten å være offer eller helt?
The Hero
In myth, fairytales, action movies, and news stories, there are heroes who—through strength, bravery, cleverness, toughness, and persistence—save everyone else. The heroes in these stories are usually the main character and the focus of everyone’s admiring and grateful attention. It is easy to see the overlap between the concept of the hero and the narcissist’s version of the all-good side of the split into special vs. worthless.
The Victim
By definition, victims are not to blame for their situation. If they fail in some area, it is because someone else had it in for them or is taking advantage of them. The essence of embracing victimhood is embracing the idea that every bad thing that happens to you is actually someone else’s fault.
Of course, there are real victims in life who suffer greatly at the hands of other people. Many narcissists were the victims of some form of bad parenting. However, that is in the past.
Now, when people with NPD claim to be victims, they are usually twisting the truth to suit their narrative that they are always in the right. In fact, many narcissists claim to be the innocent victim of a person who is actually their victim—someone they have been abusing. Narcissists can convince themselves of almost anything if it protects their self-esteem.
Greenberg sier videre:
To understand why someone who wants to be seen as perfect and special would embrace the notion that they are a victim, we have to go back to the all-good vs. all-bad split thinking. It is easy to see how the hero can be viewed as perfect, but the victim can be seen as flawless, too. This is a bit like the old Superman comic books and movies. Superman is clearly a hero who devotes his life to saving people, but when some villain exposes him to kryptonite, he becomes weak. The hero temporarily becomes the victim.
Heroes are viewed as special because they are recognized as having highly desirable qualities. Victims are viewed as blameless. This means that when people with NPD have any form of success, they can see themselves as heroes. This validates their all-good self-image as better than other people.
However, if they have a failure, they can still feel perfect and preserve their sense of being all-good by embracing the idea that their failure is someone else’s fault. They are the blameless victim. Someone else is purposely harming them or thwarting them. You, their victim, are reframed as kryptonite.
Oppsummert hvorfor narsissisten hevder å være offer
People with narcissistic personality disorder need to see themselves as perfect and superior to other people to feel good about themselves. They have no middle ground. Average is an insult to a narcissist. In their mind, they are either perfect and special or defective and worthless. As no one is perfect, narcissists have to twist the truth when they make a mistake.
Their first line of defense, is usually to blame someone else for the error and not take responsibility for their own behavior. One of the ways that they rationalize this is by ignoring their own prior behavior that gave rise to their problems, and instead claiming to be the innocent victim of someone else’s malice. Presenting themselves as a victim has the added benefit of letting them brag about their martyr-like status. A martyr is just another type of hero.
Hele fagartikkelen kan leses her:
Les om Elinor Greenberg her:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/contributors/elinor-greenberg-phd
