mf

I've been watching videos about narcissistic abuse.

At first I just found them inexplicably soothing but then over time they became something like a resource? Like... I feel like I have a framework to think about some behaviours, when I didn't before. With a side of "oh you mean other people find that behaviour toxic?" It's been a bit of a relevation.

Not that I would ever dream of armchair diagnosing narcissism. It's more like - ok here's an example. So this morning, in a meeting at the music school where I teach, one person did the following things:

(1) asked about marginal/edge cases that weren't on the agenda
(2) wanted the school administration to establish and enforce boundaries in their place
(3) had poor listening skills; asked about things that had been discussed and decided minutes before
(4) did not thank other teachers for their help
(5) sat weirdly far away from everyone else
(6) literally said none of the students met expectations

Which are all common behaviours in narcissists. Now, I don't care whether this person is a narcissist or just having a bad day - that's not the point. The point is, it's safe to assume that this person's priority, in that moment, was not the students. The students may not be low of their list of priorities, and this person may be a perfectly good teacher. But in that moment, higher on the priorities list than the students, was their self-esteem, a self-esteem that is disproportionately weak.

So it's like: for me, what I get out of thinking of this situation this way, is that it allows me to approach it in a realistic way. For a start, I think of the entire thing as indicative of this person's self-esteem. I.e. if I'm thinking of the entire meeting as a problem to fix, then I identify the problem as this person's self-esteem (so: not their opinions, not their people skills, not their educational philosophy, etc). And then, with that lucidity, I'm able to think of it as: ok, can I do anything to fix this problem? And I'm sure you can anticipate the answer: no. I cannot, single-handedly, fix this person's self-esteem. Or even help it in that situation.

One of the reasons that this has been a bit of a revelation is that I've, in a way, realized that some things I learned to think of as normal, maybe aren't.

So, for example, when I said something in a meeting this morning, and one of my colleagues disagreed, historically I would have found that unsettling because I was taught that if you don't react to someone disagreeing with you, you're tacitly acknowledging that they are correct. But this morning it was like I realized, for maybe the first time? That the concept of "if you don't react to someone saying you're wrong, you are acknowledging that they are correct" is something that was taught to me by people either engaging in, or aping, narcissistic behaviour. It turns out, lots of people don't see "not reacting to being contradicted" as an acknowledgment.