Too Mild To Be Acknowledged

This is a canva.com stock photo. I tried to add two words to it, but it doesn’t look as I expected it to be.

Sports

It has been easy for me to recognize my parents’ narcissism because they were extreme cases on the narcissism spectrum, to the point that they were normal but barely functional, not insane but almost out of their mind. For example, I was forced to do high jumps in high school, which I was not good at. When my mother heard about this, she told me she was a great athlete when she was young and held the high jump school record when she was in college. After hearing that, I was determined to avoid being a disgrace and disappointment to my family. So I jumped and jumped until I hurt my leg and one meniscus in my right knee. Later on, I reflected on this and realized that my mother was obviously not telling the truth. If she was a great school athlete, how come I never saw any photos of her running, jumping, or in sports outfits? If she was holding a school record, how come I never saw one trophy or even a picture of a trophy. Being so vain and so boastful, they would not want to hide their trophies or their pictures of glory. The fact that I had never seen any proof of my mother’s athleticism indicated that it didn’t exist. Normal parents would have behaved normally, like showing sympathy or trying to help in certain ways or telling you high jump doesn’t really matter. But narcissistic parents would want to use the opportunity to put up a fake image to attract attention to themselves, and to let their children know that they are, once again, a disappointment and a shame, who do not deserve to be loved.

Since my parents never said anything without a wicked purpose–such as to make themselves look good and make me look bad, or to boast their own shining image while ridiculing everybody else–it has been easy for me to reflect on the past and grasp their narcissism with certainty. Actually I think I am going to write all the details of their narcissistic display in my future posts. Whenever I have nothing to write, I can write about them, who could provide basically an inexhaustible ocean of narcissistic material.

However, some of my friends have got mildly narcissistic parents who were good providers for their children, who were good tempered, who didn’t display any of the extreme behavior or outright inscrutability of my own parents, who didn’t shame their children whenever possible. For these friends of mine, it is not easy to recognize the mild narcissism, which is often merged and mostly inseparable from normal parental behavior.

I think I have two friends who are like this–one woman and one man, both middle-aged like me. Let’s just say the man’s name is B and the woman’s name is G. Neither admits that his or her parents behaved mildly narcissistic, or their parents practiced avoidant attachment style, or their parents tricked their mind into thinking that cold relationships are normal and even economically beneficial.

B told me an incident that while as a little boy, he was not happy with the food allocation at home. So he somehow yelled, screamed, alarmed their neighbors. And everybody, including people in the neighborhood, remembers this particular incident of his wild running around and shouting about many years afterwards. At first, I didn’t pay much attention to this story he told me, but then I reflected on it and thought to myself that his parents obviously didn’t listen to him at all. It was a little teacup problem in a little family. If the parents had the habit of listening to him, they would talk with him, reason with him, and negotiate with him about the food allocation. It was really not a very big issue at all, and I think everybody was trying to be fair and to be good. The fact that he had to scream, run, and rouse the neighbors in order to get his parents’ attention demonstrated that his parents didn’t listen to him.

I observed him further and realized that whenever he wanted to express something to his friends, he was afraid that other people would not pay attention to him. He would often use some tricks, like creating a good image of himself, stressing the importance, becoming angry, raising his voice, or repeating so much that people couldn’t ignore him. He really didn’t have to do this, but due to the habits he developed as a child, he couldn’t help it. He believed that if he didn’t make a big fuss, people just wouldn’t listen. Actually he was overthinking–his friends would listen even if he didn’t play any of these mild tricks. His friends not only wanted to listen, but they also wanted to listen more, but he couldn’t comprehend that. These mild tricks don’t matter much at all if they haven’t cast a big shadow in his life–after practicing these mild tricks, he trusts his own ability in tricking people to listen, and doesn’t trust his friends’ willingness to listen and their regards for him. He has a big insecurity whenever he is dealing with people, even though he tries to hide his insecurity with his never failing politeness.

My friend G also has parents who are mildly narcissistic, despite the fact that she probably would never acknowledge it. She told me that her parents pushed her to study hard when she was in school, but they would always stop pushing whenever she cried or became sick. G also couldn’t communicate with her parents and couldn’t get much attention. Her parents were nice to her, but not to the point of listening to her. I wonder if you have ever had friends, especially girlfriends, who cried a lot and who became indisposed or sick a lot with non-serious illnesses. I think they are just like G. I have met several women like G, who would resort to tears and sickness in order to gain attention from others.

I am not trying to badmouth other people here. Actually whatever misconception or frailty my friends have, I have so much more and so much worse since I was definitely more damaged than my friends from my more-than-mild narcissistic parents.

Zoo And Photos

Narcissistic parents love to go to zoos and to talk about photos. However I don’t have time to write tonight. I will write another post about zoos and photos and why they are the favorite tools for narcissists to torture their victims.