Apr 12, 2022·edited Apr 12, 2022Liked by Christina Rees
The grandiose narcissists are easy to spot. However, the quiet narcissists go about their business undetected, and they are often the more dangerous ones. Years go by before the others in their lives realise they've been targeted. Your assessment of the phenomenon is quite accurate. I think the most toxic thing about so-called "vulnerable narcissists" is their lack of self awareness and their proclivity to blame problems in their relationships on everyone else. It is rare for these people to seek help. Many professionals categorically refuse to see them clinically because they don't change. People close to them often stay, thinking "if I only try harder to get through to X, he/she will finally get it", but that's a fool's errand.
Just came across this today, from a link in Andrew Sullivan’s Weekly Dish. I was married for 20 years to a borderline, so understand this issue from that perspective. It is a nightmare, slowly unfolding. The honeymoon period is real -- ours lasted a year or so (until we were married, naturally, and I was legally hooked), and became the subject of many, many arguments: “You weren’t always like this. You changed.” “No, *you* changed, you were the one who never ...” fill in the blank with whatever I had done to cause her upset at that particular moment. The gaslighting is real. And it absolutely blows my mind that Donald Trump, an obvious narcissist (I’ll armchair diagnose right along with you), has gaslighted tens of millions of Americans into believing he was wronged and an election was stolen. What makes his claims of victim hood worse (and this is the case with these crafty crazies) is that so much of the media coverage of him that the called a witch hunt actually was bullshit (see: Russiagate). I hope and pray enough folks have lost their blinders and he won’t get re-elected in 2024, but there’s no doubt he could handily win the GOP nomination. Crazy times. Like you, I worry about the Republic withstanding such madness.
Some percentage of this type are malignant narcissists. Their wiring is backwards. They actually enjoy causing distress to other people. They're craftily cruel. This is effective because normal, decent people simply can't understand it. They can't bring themselves to believe this person that they've come to care about and depend on enjoys causing them pain and will continue to do so no matter what. Evil is another word for this. Once you've dealt with a person like this successfully, though, you develop a radar for it. And it's not hard to understand: their wiring is backwards. They can't be happy in normal ways, so they get release by causing misery.
It's a bit of a coincidence that I went into a bit of a youtube hole last night learning about Jimmy Saville who you mention in your article. I found out that the documentarian Louis Theroux had made a documentary about the man later in his life and had indirectly asked him about the accusations of pedophilia and though he detected that the things that Saville said didn't quite make sense he seems to count himself among the people who were duped by Saville. It looks like it was an open secret, that people knew that Saville was a monster but because of his powerful position in life, because of his friendships with royalty etc. Saville remained protected until his death. Even when Johnny Rotten spoke out and Saville publicly it was Johnny Rotten who was punished and black-balled by the BBC and no serious investigation was done into Saville. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4OzI9GYag0
I wonder if you have ever seen Dr. Grande's channel on youtube. If you're like me and you find this sort of stuff interesting you should really check him out. He covers all sorts of "current topics" from the perspective of a psychologist but also famous murder cases, serial killers and more. He released a video on Saville a day ago which is probably what led me down the that particular rabbit hole though I was already familiar with the issue. Here's a link to the video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD1oS404EZI
Thank you for continuing to share your writing. I can’t watch Roadrunner. Tony was a special human and all too often teetering on the edge over the years. He battled a lot of demons. My heart broke that day. We all thought he had finally made it through the darkness. I guess the shadow is always right there waiting to overcome.
The stats are actually a bit more harrowing: It's not 5% of the population in total; it's 1 to 6% of the population for each disorder, meaning more like 15 to 20% of the population has some version of a cluster b. Bill Eddy, a lawyer and social worker, wrote the book "The Five Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life" about a subset of cluster B who are also considered high-conflict, meaning they will go to war with whomever becomes their Target of Blame. He says 1 in 10 people in the general population are in that category, meaning your chances are really high of becoming someone's Target of Blame at some point in your life.
Oooh this is such a good topic...I've been diving into chaos agents from another angle since 2017, specifically the Charlottesville nightmare and the nuclear fall out...I started with that Eli Saslow book interviewing Derek Black, a former White supremacist...I read a lot of stuff on policy, like a book on the Christian Right and how the Constitution and the Founding Fathers have been badly misconstrued and reinterpreted to support that narrative written by a Constitutional Scholar and lawyer...another writer who is queer and Jewish but created a fake online persona to access White Supremacist dating sites and encrypted channels and chats...I even read Hannah Arendt's The Origins Of Totalitarianism...all in the hopes of understanding WHY these pretty abhorrent ways of being one type of human persisted...but I never got to why, just the what and the how...what I didn't get into, YOU have...the psychological aspect and I thank you...I think my next reading will be finding out more about Cluster B's, after I read the new Fiona Hill book...more of the "how"...an old friend of mine was the "public JT Leroy" in the whole JT Leroy debacle and she/they actually wrote a book of their experiences and bc Asia produced the movie of the book, my pal spend a LOT of time with her...I will spare the details, as they are easily accessible in their book, but Asia was very problematic back then too...AB was someone I held as my imaginary mentor and I was devastated...I did not know him and I am not one who cries or even cares about celebrities but AB's death hit me hard...and since I followed Asia on IG, I started seeing increasing ire towards her about his death and I was confused...I hadn't and still haven't watched the first episode where they met and haven't yet watched Roadrunner...I still don't think I will feel good yet...I did watch Phoenix Rising and yes MM was always silly to me...I saw what a corny ass poseur he was...but I was older too, so it's easy for me to sit and say I'd never get sucked in...but everyone has their Achilles Heel...thank you for always putting out topics that dig into the WHY...I look forward to my email notification each time you post...
We haven’t brought ourselves to watch Roadrunner yet. Bourdain got our little family through the difficult postpartum haze. Vicarious adventure, hope, humor, connection.
Read a startling article about rising suicide and depression in teens, especially girls, today. Don’t know exactly why that feels relevant with this, but it does.
The grandiose narcissists are easy to spot. However, the quiet narcissists go about their business undetected, and they are often the more dangerous ones. Years go by before the others in their lives realise they've been targeted. Your assessment of the phenomenon is quite accurate. I think the most toxic thing about so-called "vulnerable narcissists" is their lack of self awareness and their proclivity to blame problems in their relationships on everyone else. It is rare for these people to seek help. Many professionals categorically refuse to see them clinically because they don't change. People close to them often stay, thinking "if I only try harder to get through to X, he/she will finally get it", but that's a fool's errand.
Just came across this today, from a link in Andrew Sullivan’s Weekly Dish. I was married for 20 years to a borderline, so understand this issue from that perspective. It is a nightmare, slowly unfolding. The honeymoon period is real -- ours lasted a year or so (until we were married, naturally, and I was legally hooked), and became the subject of many, many arguments: “You weren’t always like this. You changed.” “No, *you* changed, you were the one who never ...” fill in the blank with whatever I had done to cause her upset at that particular moment. The gaslighting is real. And it absolutely blows my mind that Donald Trump, an obvious narcissist (I’ll armchair diagnose right along with you), has gaslighted tens of millions of Americans into believing he was wronged and an election was stolen. What makes his claims of victim hood worse (and this is the case with these crafty crazies) is that so much of the media coverage of him that the called a witch hunt actually was bullshit (see: Russiagate). I hope and pray enough folks have lost their blinders and he won’t get re-elected in 2024, but there’s no doubt he could handily win the GOP nomination. Crazy times. Like you, I worry about the Republic withstanding such madness.
Some percentage of this type are malignant narcissists. Their wiring is backwards. They actually enjoy causing distress to other people. They're craftily cruel. This is effective because normal, decent people simply can't understand it. They can't bring themselves to believe this person that they've come to care about and depend on enjoys causing them pain and will continue to do so no matter what. Evil is another word for this. Once you've dealt with a person like this successfully, though, you develop a radar for it. And it's not hard to understand: their wiring is backwards. They can't be happy in normal ways, so they get release by causing misery.
I think the problem is these cluster b people tend to be so good in bed.
It's a bit of a coincidence that I went into a bit of a youtube hole last night learning about Jimmy Saville who you mention in your article. I found out that the documentarian Louis Theroux had made a documentary about the man later in his life and had indirectly asked him about the accusations of pedophilia and though he detected that the things that Saville said didn't quite make sense he seems to count himself among the people who were duped by Saville. It looks like it was an open secret, that people knew that Saville was a monster but because of his powerful position in life, because of his friendships with royalty etc. Saville remained protected until his death. Even when Johnny Rotten spoke out and Saville publicly it was Johnny Rotten who was punished and black-balled by the BBC and no serious investigation was done into Saville. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4OzI9GYag0
I wonder if you have ever seen Dr. Grande's channel on youtube. If you're like me and you find this sort of stuff interesting you should really check him out. He covers all sorts of "current topics" from the perspective of a psychologist but also famous murder cases, serial killers and more. He released a video on Saville a day ago which is probably what led me down the that particular rabbit hole though I was already familiar with the issue. Here's a link to the video; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD1oS404EZI
Thank you for continuing to share your writing. I can’t watch Roadrunner. Tony was a special human and all too often teetering on the edge over the years. He battled a lot of demons. My heart broke that day. We all thought he had finally made it through the darkness. I guess the shadow is always right there waiting to overcome.
The stats are actually a bit more harrowing: It's not 5% of the population in total; it's 1 to 6% of the population for each disorder, meaning more like 15 to 20% of the population has some version of a cluster b. Bill Eddy, a lawyer and social worker, wrote the book "The Five Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life" about a subset of cluster B who are also considered high-conflict, meaning they will go to war with whomever becomes their Target of Blame. He says 1 in 10 people in the general population are in that category, meaning your chances are really high of becoming someone's Target of Blame at some point in your life.
Oooh this is such a good topic...I've been diving into chaos agents from another angle since 2017, specifically the Charlottesville nightmare and the nuclear fall out...I started with that Eli Saslow book interviewing Derek Black, a former White supremacist...I read a lot of stuff on policy, like a book on the Christian Right and how the Constitution and the Founding Fathers have been badly misconstrued and reinterpreted to support that narrative written by a Constitutional Scholar and lawyer...another writer who is queer and Jewish but created a fake online persona to access White Supremacist dating sites and encrypted channels and chats...I even read Hannah Arendt's The Origins Of Totalitarianism...all in the hopes of understanding WHY these pretty abhorrent ways of being one type of human persisted...but I never got to why, just the what and the how...what I didn't get into, YOU have...the psychological aspect and I thank you...I think my next reading will be finding out more about Cluster B's, after I read the new Fiona Hill book...more of the "how"...an old friend of mine was the "public JT Leroy" in the whole JT Leroy debacle and she/they actually wrote a book of their experiences and bc Asia produced the movie of the book, my pal spend a LOT of time with her...I will spare the details, as they are easily accessible in their book, but Asia was very problematic back then too...AB was someone I held as my imaginary mentor and I was devastated...I did not know him and I am not one who cries or even cares about celebrities but AB's death hit me hard...and since I followed Asia on IG, I started seeing increasing ire towards her about his death and I was confused...I hadn't and still haven't watched the first episode where they met and haven't yet watched Roadrunner...I still don't think I will feel good yet...I did watch Phoenix Rising and yes MM was always silly to me...I saw what a corny ass poseur he was...but I was older too, so it's easy for me to sit and say I'd never get sucked in...but everyone has their Achilles Heel...thank you for always putting out topics that dig into the WHY...I look forward to my email notification each time you post...
We haven’t brought ourselves to watch Roadrunner yet. Bourdain got our little family through the difficult postpartum haze. Vicarious adventure, hope, humor, connection.
Read a startling article about rising suicide and depression in teens, especially girls, today. Don’t know exactly why that feels relevant with this, but it does.
Thank you for your continued writing!
Winona? Maybe he’s still in love with her.
This is on a very different topic....but wanted to point out this excellent essay on "1619 Project".
https://catalyst-journal.com/2021/12/what-the-1619-project-got-wrong