Lisbeth had a new boyfriend. She was giddy with excitement and wanted to share the news with someone. But she knew that if she told her parents, they would be all over her, wanting to know everything about him and closely observing the relationship. So who could she tell? Her best friend Pam would be the perfect choice, except that Pam was without a partner right now. She might not be able to share Lisbeth’s excitement, and worse, the news might make her feel bad. Lisbeth did not want to make her friend feel bad. So what could she do?
You might ask why she needed to share the information with anyone. Why couldn’t she just enjoy it herself?
The answers to both of these questions are a bit complicated. On the one hand, we have learned from both attachment theory and self psychology that we need other people to share our feelings in order to feel them fully. We humans are, to a great extent, relationally-oriented. Our need for mirroring or affirmation is part of our makeup.
Two psychological theories, attachment theory and self psychology, both tell us that there is a basic human need for others to help us know and process what we are thinking and feeling. Recognition is part of how we connect to others and know ourselves.
This is a lifetime requirement, necessary for healthy psychological functioning, just like we need to breathe oxygen for healthy physical functioning. It’s also what drives the sometimes painful-to-watch twinning of social media darlings like Taylor Swift and her “girl squad.”
But there is often a hidden undercurrent of other feelings that go along with our need to have someone else reflect us back to ourselves: the childlike demand that everyone pay attention to us, the requirement that others see how important or special or better than everyone else we are.
Behavior related to these feelings looks self-centered and is frequently labeled narcissistic. It turns us off when we see it in someone else. We definitely do not like to think that it is part of our own emotional makeup.
In fact, most of us would rather do almost anything rather than be labeled narcissists; yet, according to Heinz Kohut, who developed self psychology, narcissistic needs are normal and even healthy – when not taken to an extreme.
But how do you know whether your desire to be seen and admired is healthy or unhealthy narcissism?
In one of many terrific posts on her blog, my PT colleague Susan Krauss Whitbourne notes that healthy narcissism is related to a healthy foundation of “self love.” http://ift.tt/29d6LKS... Neither totally self-centered nor completely selfless, healthy self-love allows us to balance meeting our own needs with meeting the needs of others.
Lisbeth realized that there were two ways that she could deal with her wish to share her excitement about her new boyfriend. First, she could make sure that she talked about it with other friends who were also in relatively new or exciting relationships. Psychologists have found that sharing with others who are going through something similar to our own experience can enhance our pleasure in the moment.
In a study published in Psychological Science, for example, Gus Cooney, a social psychologist at Harvard University, and his co-authors, Harvard’s Daniel Gilbert and University of Virginia’s Timothy Wilson, found that while extraordinary experiences can make us feel good, they can interfere with our ability to connect with friends who have not shared such moments.
Rather than admiring our specialness, friends may feel left out or simply disconnected from the experience. Thus looking to have your back patted because of something that makes you stand out can actually leave you feeling worse than you would have if you had shared an ordinary experience with your friends.
But does this mean giving up on extra-special moments in your life? Or if you have something wonderful going on, not telling anyone else? If you do share these moments, are you a narcissist?
No. Narcissistic needs are normal, so having them does not define you as a narcissist. According to the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual (DSM-5), a clinical diagnosis of narcissism includes a “pervasive grandiosity, need for admiration and lack of empathy.” Narcissistic needs do not make you a narcissist if you remember that other people also have needs. They have some of the same needs themselves.
Finding a good balance between your needs and your friends’ needs is part of the definition of friendship.
Lisbeth found a solution to her problem. She still wanted to share her excitement with Pam, who was her best friend in the world. She realized that she simply needed to find a way to frame the feelings so that Pam did not feel outside of the moment. How could she share the experience with Pam without making her feel either left out, unhappy or inferior?
She thought about all of the ways that she and Pam had been and would continue to be connected. She also recognized the reality of some of the unpleasant feelings that Pam might feel, and that would be normal responses to her excitement – jealousy, sadness, hopelessness and longing.
In her conversations with Pam, she did not bring up any of these feelings, but she tamped down her own excitement a little as she told her friend about her new boyfriend. Without putting it into words, she was sharing some of Pams discomfort and pain even as she asked her friend to share her pleasure and excitement. And interestingly, recognizing that this was a balance that had to be finely maintained, she found that she did not need to go on and on about her new relationship. Pam was pleased for her. And then they talked about other things.
It is this capacity, to both share your experience and move on, to pay attention to things that are meaningful to your friends as well, to take the focus off yourself, that keeps you from being a narcissist. And perhaps even more important, it appears that the capacity to share their experiences will bring you greater pleasure than insisting that they admire yours!
As always, please let me know what you think!
References
Shauna L. Shapiro and Linda E. Carlson, 2009, The art and science of mindfulness: Integrating mindfulness into psychology and the helping professions. American Psychological Association. http://ift.tt/29C7jIB
H. Kohut, 2009, The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the Psychoanalytic Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders, University Of Chicago Press.
J. Bowlby, 1988 (reprint), A secure base: Parent-child attachment and healthy human development, Basic Books.
Gus Cooney, Daniel T. Gilbert and Timothy D. Wilson. 2014. The Unforeseen Costs of Extraordinary Experience. Psychological Science http://ift.tt/14Jo4xU
Amit Kumar, Matthew A. Killingsworth, and Thomas Gilovich. 2014. Waiting for Merlot: Anticipatory Consumption of Experiential and Material Purchases. Psychological Science. doi: 10.1177/0956797614546556
Susan Krauss Whitbourne The Healthy Side of Narcissism http://ift.tt/29d6LKS...
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