By Philip Chanin, Ed.D., ABPP, CGP
Board Certified Clinical Psychologist
Assistant Clinical Professor, Department of Psychiatry
Vanderbilt University Medical Center

“We all view life through the lens of (our) experiences, but the narcissist has something more, not just a lens but a prism that refracts and distorts incoming messages to avoid the intolerable feeing of shame.  This means that you are never in control of how these people perceive you, or when you will be assaulted with some defensive maneuver that deflects their shame, prevents their deflation, or re-inflates them after a narcissistic injury.”

“Narcissists constantly dump—or project—unwanted parts of themselves onto other people.  They then begin to behave as if others possess these unwanted pieces of themselves, and they may even succeed in getting others to feel as if they actually have those traits or feelings.  This is an unconscious process for both the dumper and the dumpee, but what it means is that you end up being treated like the dirt they’ve brushed off their own psyches, or feeling the humiliation, the anger, the vulnerability, and the worthlessness that they cannot tolerate themselves…”

“Chances are that something you did without even being aware of it deflated her, and you

‘caught’ her deflected shame.  Most of us have our own vulnerabilities to shaming experiences

such as this, but when we cooperate with the projections and take ownership of someone else’s shame, there is often a sense of unreality about what has just happened.  We may realize that we’ve been treated with contempt, but we generally don’t recognize that we have absorbed the shame of the person who is humiliating us, a shame that has been ‘bypassed’ and kept from (our) awareness.”  (Why is it Always About You?: The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism, by Sandy Hotchkiss, pp. 64-65)

Psychotherapists work with many patients who are trying to cope with the attitudes and behaviors of narcissistic partners, parents, children, or bosses.  Sometimes our patients mistakenly think that that they are dealing with “bipolar” individuals because of the intensity of their reactions and behaviors.  Often grandiose narcissists need “seamless mirroring,” or perfect resonance, with is impossible.  When they don’t get this perfect resonance, they often regress into “blitzkrieg affects”—sudden shifts in mood, particularly into anger and rage.

David Celani, in his books The Illusion of Love: Why the Battered Woman Returns to her Abuser, and Leaving Home, describes the circumstances that lead to blitzkrieg affects by the narcissist.

Celani outlines this phenomenon in The Illusion of Love: “Any little disappointment in her current life can provoke the sudden emergence of her abused self.  The sudden dominance of this part-self will cause a rapid mood change.  The abused self is not always characterized by self-destructive hate or defensive hostility toward others.  It can simply appear as a sudden shift into deep disappointment and resentment.  The uninformed observer, who has no idea of the inner world of the borderline (or narcissistic) individual, may be startled to see another person (or personality) suddenly jump out of the same body.” (p. 122)

Celani then relates a case which, in my mind, powerfully illustrates the connection between the need for seamless mirroring and the emergence of blitzkrieg affects:

“Sandy came to therapy with her boyfriend, Jack, with the goal of making Jack more sensitive to her needs.  Sandy had competed in the Miss America contest and had been a finalist.  At thirty-five she was still strikingly beautiful.  Despite her beauty, Sandy had not been able to maintain a relationship with a man for more than a few months because her boyfriends would inevitably disappoint her.  She brought Jack, her current boyfriend, to therapy with her because of her increasing reluctance to venture back into the ‘meat market,’ as she put it.  She felt that Jack was the most aware of her boyfriends and therefore the relationship held some promise.”

“Sandy perceived herself as being perfectly normal and she was not bothered by the fact that nearly sixty men over a period of fifteen years had failed to meet her expectations.  Jack was an affable and handsome fellow who was obviously pained by Sandy’s harsh accusations of him.  For example, he described his problems with her by reviewing his preparations for her last birthday.  He knew how upset she became if everything was not perfect.  He had arranged for a limousine and driver to take them to dinner at a posh restaurant and he’d ordered a dozen yellow roses.”

“Upon seeing the yellow roses Sandy immediately became angry at Jack, because they reminded her of the roses she held when she lost the Miss America contest.  She then took issue with his choice of a restaurant, saying that the service was too impersonal.  By the end of the evening, Jack was bitterly reminding himself never to take her out again, and Sandy was silent and convinced of Jack’s total insensitivity to her…An event, a gift, or a bit of behavior that even hinted of a lack of ‘absolute’ sensitivity to her needs reminded Sandy (unconsciously) of her almost totally insensitive treatment as an infant.  This would activate her wounded self, and her whole history of frustration would then come pouring into her awareness.” (p. 123)

In my clinical experience, this case speaks to the most difficult part of working with narcissistic individuals and especially their partners.  Celani’s description of “An event, a gift, or a bit of behavior that even hinted of a lack of “absolute sensitivity to her needs” describes the demand on a partner for seamless mirroring, or perfect resonance, which of course is impossible.  When this seamless mirroring is not immediately forthcoming, the narcissist is thrown into his or her abused/wounded self, and the partner is subjected to either anger, hostile withdrawal, or to what I call “resentful self-pity.”  Moreover, there is absolutely nothing the partner can say in his or her defense.  As I say to my patients who are trying to cope with these reactions from their partners, “Your partner is in an altered state.  Nothing you can say or do will make a difference as long as your partner is in that state, in his (or her) wounded self.”

Recently a new patient came to see me, worried about his marriage.  In the first session, he stated:

“She blames me, or is jealous of me.  She lashes out at me.  Even if she apologizes, it has an effect.  It’s making me bitter, angry.  She got lashed out at by her father, the disciplinarian.  Her mother was the victim.  A troubled household.  With my wife, there’s this dynamic at work.  She has moments of disproportional rage or anger.  She seeks to derail the argument, shut down the debate.  It’s conditioned me, over time, to where I know there are places I cannot go.  It’s left me confused.  Am I justified to feel this way?  Communication between us is extraordinarily difficult, if the subject is one of those issues, where I can expect a reaction…For quite a while, I’ve sought to avoid going there.  It’s like a switch.  Our friends would be shocked that we’re having problems.”

Celani paints a particularly compelling picture of a (narcissistic) batterer’s desperate need for seamless mirroring:

“His hypersensitivity to her every attitude causes him to react to all of her behaviors that are not absolutely congruent with his experience.  The only way he can feel comfortable with her is when her positions, opinions, and behaviors are in perfect compliance with his own.  Even minor dissention produces powerful feelings of abandonment in him, and the sense that he is completely losing control of his partner…Like an infant, the batterer feels abandoned the moment he and his object are not feeling the same emotion…The motivation for control of his partner’s every feeling state is an attempt on his part to avoid feeling an intense inner panic when she acts differently from himself.  Every little difference between his inner world and his partner’s inner world signals abandonment and disloyalty to him…the batterer believes all of his partner’s behaviors are intended to create a reaction in him.”         (pages 162-163)

Recently a new patient came to see me, concerned about her marriage.  She described the following scenario:

“It’s a control thing.  He’ll grab my wrist.  ‘Stand here and listen to me!’  It flips a switch in me.  I’ll do everything in my physical power to get away.  I blow up.  I’ll say, ‘You are restraining me against my will.  That’s domestic violence is a different form!’ But, for me to insinuate that to him…he went off…the maddest I’ve ever seen him in my entire life.  He screamed, ‘I hate you!  I’ll see you in court!  You’re trash!  Get out of my house!  I pay for your house!’  Sometimes he’ll follow me.  I’m trying to get away.  He’ll corner me, and grab my wrists.  He will distort what happened, and say ‘You hit me!’ when I haven’t.  I’m at a crossroads in my life.  It’s horrible for three days, every six months.  I dissect our divorce in my head.  Then he flips a switch, and he’s lovely.  We’ll do things together.  Everything is fantastic.  We’re best friends.”

My former supervisor Dr. Volney Gay once described to me how implicit in the blitzkrieg affect reaction is the imperative the person lashing out has that “Never Again Will You Treat Me This Way!”  As a patient might describe to me an incident of exploding at his partner, I might suggest to him that he felt victimized in that moment, and thus entitled to go on the offensive.  Technically this is called “offending from the victim position.”

I have a patient has been married to a grandiose narcissist for many decades.  Here are some of her words, from a recent session:

“How can I be more assertive with him?  I let him run all over me.  I’m not able to get what I want.  For dinner, we have what he wants to cook.  The little day to day things.  I get resentful when I do what he wants all the time.  Like going to the movies.  He has such a strong personality.  It’s really hard to stand up to him.  A lot of times, he’s already made a decision.  At the last minute, he’ll say, ‘Let’s go to the movies—in 30 minutes.’ We don’t make decisions together.  That’s been a problem in our marriage.”

I ask, “What happens if you say what you want?”  She responds:

“He gets his feelings hurt.  He’ll say, ‘You’re ruining our weekend’ when I bring up difficult issues.  How can I talk to him, when he sees me as attacking him, when I question him?  He’s transferred his feelings about his father onto me.  He doesn’t want to work on himself…Almost every day, that pops into my head, the thought of being on my own.”

In this session, I found myself asking the patient, “Do you want me to help you to get strong enough to leave, or do you want me to help you be strong enough to stay?”  Sometimes, I do work with a patient, who is in this kind of marriage to a grandiose narcissist, to get strong enough to leave.

With all of my patients who are dealing with narcissistic partners, parents, children, or bosses, I almost always end up teaching them about what Terrence Real has called a functioning “internal boundary.”

I think it’s almost impossible to manage a relationship with a narcissist without some kind of invisible shield.  Here, in his book How Can I Get Through to You, is Terry Real’s description:

“In order to listen well a capacity most in this culture have not developed must be cultivated—a functioning ‘internal boundary.’…An internal boundary is to your psyche as skin is to your body.  It is where you end and the world begins…I sometimes call it a ‘receptivity regulator’; it modulates the extremes of over-and under-reactivity…A poor internal boundary allows other people’s feedback, beliefs about you, even, at times, their emotional state to pierce you to the quick.  ‘How could you think that of me?’ ‘I’m so hurt that you feel that way!’ or ‘It depresses me when you get so sad,’ are hallmark sentiments of someone with a ‘thin skin,’ a poor internal boundary.”

“…a healthy boundary is supple; it allows you to be both protected and yet connected at the same time.  As your partner speaks, whatever emotion she throws at you goes splat on the outside of your internal boundary.”

“Imagine this psychic shield as resting about arm’s length away, encircling you.  Safely ensconced within your boundary, you cast a cool eye on what’s being asserted, point by point.  If the material rings true for you, or if some portion of it seems true, you relax your boundary and let that in—‘Yes, I did that,’ or ‘I know I can sometimes be that way’…(However) that portion of the material that does not seem true you simply let drop, like an egg sliding off glass and landing on the floor.  You understand that such inaccurate descriptions of you are important information about the speaker…”

“Projections are human.  We make up things about one another all the time.  You needn’t feel shame about someone’s misperception, nor grandiose because your partner ‘got you wrong.’  Healthy self-esteem and a good boundary work together.  Going neither ‘one down’ (shame) nor ‘one up’ (grandiosity), you hold both yourself and your partner in warm regard while accepting nothing that inaccurately describes you.”

“Visualizing an internal boundary works like this.  Picture a place—it could be real or imaginary—in which you have a sense of relaxation, a feeling of ‘I’m enough and I matter.’  Then drop the imagined place, and stay centered in that state of ‘enoughness’ (or okayness) for a moment.  Imagine a shield encircling you.  It can be realistic or fanciful, a screen of flowers, a force-field, or a glass dome…Be certain that your internal boundary remains impermeable; nothing can get past it unless you choose to let it.  The nastiest comment, the most raw feeling—an emotional atom bomb could go off and you would remain unfazed.  Inside your circle you can afford to be open, spacious, curious, relaxed.”  (pages 237-240)

This functioning internal boundary is thus a fundamental tool that I teach my patients, especially those with narcissistic or controlling partners, parents, children, or bosses.  Some of my patients then teach it to their family members.  One female patient, with whom I’ve worked weekly for ten years, has taught the internal boundary to her 10-year-old daughter, who sometimes gets in minor quarrels with her girlfriends or her brothers.  “Use your bubble,” my patient will encourage her daughter.

I would like to conclude this article with words from Terry Real, again from How Can I Get Through To You, which speak to the challenges of all partner relationships, and perhaps particularly so to those who decide, despite the obstacles, to remain with narcissistic partners.

“There are things you get in a real relationship, and things you do not get.  The character of the union is determined by how the two partners manage both aspects of love—the getting and the not getting.  Moving into acceptance means moving into grief, without being a victim.  You own your choice. ‘I am getting enough in this relationship,’ you say, ‘to make it worth my while to mourn the rest.’  And mourn we do.  Real love is not for the faint of heart.  What we miss in our relationships we truly miss.  The pain of it does not, and need not, go away.  It is like dealing with any loss.  I object when people, especially therapists, talk about ‘resolving grief,’ as if grief could ever be so compliant.  We humans don’t ‘resolve’ grief; we live with it.”   (page 224)