Hiding a shameful secret and pretending it’s not there – Are you a narcissist?
Mostly, we try to find ways to identify a narcissist looking at someone else. But it’s REALLY HARD to understand what a narcissist experiences on the inside. And because we don’t understand, we can’t help.
This post might help, even if you find out you’re a narcissist.
I say, “narcissism is a performance of a lifetime to an audience of one – yourself.” I figured this out when a former friend of mine was still putting on some crazy charade and I was digging in for an answer: “Who the fuck do you think you’re fooling right now? We both know damned well that’s not what happened.” She didn’t answer but I realized, as a psychic empath, that the person she is fooling is herself, and she knows nobody else is fooled. This is her performance to herself. She’s doing fine… Everything is fine… She compares to others well. (She doesn’t.)
Edited life; life with makeup on.
A narcissists’ life is like a game of play-pretend, a theatre show, or, most apptly; an edited video. You figure everyone knows it’s edited, but you do it anyway. It’s like applying makeup to a less than perfect life. You hide the nasty, emphasis the good, to make yourself believe you’re doing fine. Your performance is good, that you don’t need anybody to fix you or to help you…
That is not that you don’t think you need help, you think you’re not worthy of help, or that nobody else around you needs help, so you shouldn’t need it either. And I won’t lie to you; it’s true: not everybody needs help, but most people do from time to time. You need less self-managing friends, really. Then you have to try NOT TO be the first one to help them out because they’ll start seeing you as the strong one, and things will again fall into a heap for you. You feel it’s your duty to hide your issues, fears, and insecurities from the view so nobody needs to deal with whatever you feel you can’t manage.
Then, when you trust somebody, you feel now it’s time for you to lay your problems at their feet, and the way you might do it is effectively to cry out loud, argue, fight, and throw temper tantrums, hoping they’ll pick you up and comfort you. Still, they tend to rather run away from you or fight back – and if they fight back, you feel they’re creating a connection at least – you think they may also be insecure, but at least they’re in need of a connection… And that’s something, right?
You may not want to be the perfect one.
It’s possible that you don’t want to be the perfect one, but that the role seems to be given to you every time. The reason is this: The others don’t think ANYBODY needs to be perfect. They don’t feel the need to pretend to be perfect, or to try to help you or anyone else to be perfect. They’re quite happy with average.
Now here’s the silverline to narcissism: They’re perfectionists, and perfectionists CAN heal themselves from the inside in their pursuit of perfectionism. That said, perfection is often in the imperfection. There’s a balance to be struck. I say this, too: To be healthy is to be as close to a narcissist as you can without being one. Base your personal story to TRUTH, give up on shit that doesn’t matter, and perfect the things that do matter. This includes being relaxing company; to be able to make others feel at ease with you, accepted, and free to be who they are.
This is not generally known psychology, I’m afraid.
Now… I’m the only “normal” person in this world, to my knowledge, to have figured this out. I’m (soon) 50, both my mom’s and my former best friend are narcissists and I’m a psychic empath and have been discussing this using spiritual methods for 12 years straight – daily. This is not easy for a person to understand, but I HAD TO figure this out for my own sanity and future lifetimes. It took me most of my adult life. I say that because if you’d go to a psychologist with this and tell them this is how you feel, they would not recognize it for narcissism. If you don’t use the word ‘narcissist’ they’ll probably understand you fine, and will be able to help you if this rings true to you.
From the outside, everything narcissists do is based on lying, deceit, and manipulation… You being evil, you know? But you won’t recognize that, because you don’t want to harm anybody. You just want someone to be there for you, too. And your problem is mostly that you feel you are not allowed to break down, but everything is breaking and held together with duct tape and nobody is stepping in to take your position from you.
The reason why descriptions of narcissism don’t sound right to you at all is because they are so far from your perceived reality. They’re mostly written for the victims by the victims (the people you wanted to help), and their perception of what is going on is different. You try to do a nice thing for them, but they feel manipulated and lied to. Deceived to trust and to love you… And, you know you can also stab your friends in the back when you feel like they’re not paying attention to you or they’re underestimating you.
You may also be addicted to the sensation of being forgiven (or relieved from the duties of your position), which then requires you to do something bad so you can be forgiven for it, but I’m not sure if that’s across the board true.
You feel loved and love for the favor of hiding your/their flaws.
Would you say you feel loved when others help you to hide your flaws? Maybe love is when they play along in your game of pretend and even let you have the lead role. You try to show them love by helping them hide their flaws from the world. It’s like “it’s us against them.” You look for a coach of sort in your relationships, but when the self-confident people you’re drawn to turn out to be flawed, and even clueless as to hide their flaws, you try to help them hide their flaws.
It’s just that… They don’t realize it’s a play. They don’t think their “flaws” are shameful. To them, they’re just traits – like them or love them, they don’t really care. And when their authentic self comes to a conflict with what you expect of them, how your world should look like, you start pushing them into the role you think will gain them acceptance; their lines, their performance, and that’s where things get nasty. They’ll refuse, because they don’t feel loved for who they are, but who you wish they were. You love them only for what they do for your play, right? That makes them feel used and deceived.
Everybody hides something (without it being exactly a secret)
There’s a time and place for everything. When you’re at work, your coworkers don’t need to know anything about your sexuality for instance, unless you intend to fuck them all. 😉 Coworkers and schools should not involve themselves into people’s sexuality. That said, when you’re dating, that stuff becomes the key point to share.
Many people lay their secrets out in front of strangers easier than they do with their own friends and family in particular. The reason is that often we don’t get to choose the people who wind up being close to us, and we don’t always think alike, but we still need to get along. So we don’t talk about certain things, they may come up in conversation in a side-sentence, but they’re not delved deep between non-friends.
This is to say WHY some people, who are not quite normative-perfect tell you all of their deal breakers in the first meeting: They are not asking you to help them change or hide that stuff, but to let you know you shouldn’t expect a white picket fence -sort of life with them. What they tell you is how they want it to be – your job is to decide if you want their life or something different. (And yes, there’s a lot of people, men and women alike, who are genuinely into some weird stuff – like BDSM and who knows what – but they understand these fetishes are not always shared, and feeling the urgency of finding someone suitable, they wish to save time by laying it out in the open straight away. If you don’t like it, move on, and never expect to change them or force them to hide it all.)
When they protect themselves from you, they protect their right to be who they are. Warts and all.
When others seem to be protecting themselves from you, it’s not the shameful secret they are guarding. What they’re doing is to try and protect their right to be who they are. They don’t feel loved by being asked to change, and your definition of perfection is only YOUR definition of perfection. Everybody’s definition of perfection varies, quite a lot, too. In fact, everyone is their BEST display they can manage on human perfection, and trust you me, even a homeless person, in their view, is the perfect person. (They’re not soft, they’re resourceful, they’re not tempted by money and fancy clothes – modest, humble, and not greedy…)
That includes “normal people”, they, too are their own expression of perfection, and the ONLY WAY you ever change a person, is to change their idea of what is perfect. NOBODY will agree to change for the worse, but you may disagree what is “better” and why.
Also, normal people don’t want to be tricked into opening up. If you use lies to pretend to be their equal or the same, they won’t appreciate it… Not one bit. You HAVE TO ALWAYS stick to the truth, even if it means you can’t help them.
So… Let’s fix some things.
You don’t have to be perfect. Nobody is. You are allowed to be as close to the approximation of perfection that is humanly possible as you can, but you don’t have to be. In fact, most people like less than perfect people around them, it makes them feel good about themselves. 😉 You are allowed to have issues. Real issues. Not issues with having issues. You can’t continue having an issue with the fact you have issues.
The difference between a narcissist and a helpful person
The difference between a narcissist and a helpful person is that a narcissist decides for their friend, family member, or client where they want to go. A normal helpful person allows their client to choose what they want the outcome to be, and then help them get there, without deciding what is the “correct destination.” Normal coaches are taxi drivers, narcissists are train operators.
Secrets
Every narcissist has a shameful secret. They fear that if others find it out, they’ll stop trusting or loving them as a result. The thing is tho, others don’t necessarily think it’s shameful at all.
Some narcissists fear people will find out that when they were a child, they were a nerd or a bully victim. Maybe the new shameful future secret will be that they WERE trans in their teen years. Maybe they’re from a small town, and as such uncool. Some fear being found out to have committed a crime… The thing they’re ashamed of doesn’t need to be big, but every narcissist feels it’s in their best interest to keep something from everybody in their lives.
If you’ve ever made to hide a secret, you are not obligated to keep holding onto that secret if it’s about you. What I mean is a situation such as getting into a car accident as a minor driver, winding up killing someone, but having your record expunged because you’re a minor. Now, that sends a message to you that this thing is so shameful you should never speak of it, ever, but it’s more that they didn’t want a foolish teen mistake to ruin the rest of your life. That said, truth is always better told – it allows people to connect with you and to understand where you’re coming from. WHY things are so… Scary for you.
“I helped you, now, you help me.”
A narcissist believes friendship is about helping each other to hide the truth or to fix a flaw if possible. The trouble is, while they feel they are in desperate need of fixing, their friends and family might like themselves the way they are just fine. They also feel the LAST THING YOU DO for a friend or a family member is to give them the impression that they are not loved as who they are as a person – for their character traits.
Therefore, when a narcissist helps you forward first, they feel disappointed when the same favor isn’t shown to them in return. And this is when things may become nasty. “I gave you all of my help (abuse) and if you don’t want to return the favor, I’ll destroy your life – it belongs to me anyway.”
Not everybody have secrets.
This is something you need to know: Not everyone has shameful secrets. You may always try to seek your friends or family member’s pain point so you can connect with them, but if they don’t share their shame with you it maybe that they don’t have such secrets. I don’t. To a lot of people, telling the truth is kind of a game they play. A dare if you will. They enjoy the risk of being disliked for the truth, even if the truth is something that is merely frowned upon rather than shameful.
Therefore, if you’re bullying someone to reveal their secrets and you’re not getting anywhere, they probably feel abused rather than helped.
Talk to anybody you trust… Even online. (And don’t kill them after they know your secret, please.)
Whatever you’re ashamed of is probably something you need to talk about, really. To anybody you trust. Don’t rush it tho. Just be aware that this is probably something you need to do.
Don’t be offended if the person you turn to (first) feel like they shouldn’t be the one hearing it, or that they fear this is yet another one of your ploys to appeal to their emotions again. They fear their own empathy, you know, they fear that the compassion and empathy they feel for you will again land them into the position of being manipulated and played with. So they have to harden themselves against you after a while, just to protect themselves. Maybe start opening up to someone less involved in your life, someone like a therapist.
Also, if you seek compassion from another person, take it for first aid to start with. Just something to balance yourself with. Even though they will know your secret, you have to trust them with it and move on. You cannot have a relationship with the first or second person you entrust your secrets to. You have to get used to telling the truth and enjoying the sensation of being able to be truthful with others. That people in your life now will actually let you be normal. Then, when you feel like you don’t have to cut and paste your life into a wide screen movie anymore, you can start thinking of a relationship.
Good luck out there.
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*) Term changed after this post was originally written. Fractions of old terms may exist elsewhere in the post. Read about term updates.
**) Narcissists are Young Souls left alone to survive and they're doing their best. Their emotional age ranges from 3 to 17 -year old. The younger, the more severe the narcissism.
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