Could it be that “it takes a village” of narcissists to get a president who appears to have NPD?

I was up in arms (again) when Trump went to Dayton/Toledo and then El Paso and managed to make the story about himself and how he was treated. The HuffPost France made a disapproving video about it:

The news media is in awe of how he can do these heartless things and get away with it. But he’s the master a making sure nothing can get to him. They no longer try to be polite, “Can’t he see he is a jerk?” But I think people miss the big point of the narcissist psychological defense. The whole point of narcissism is not seeing and NOT feeling.  I think that is why he so often talks about himself in the third person. He is talking about the persona he has so carefully cultured to get affirmation and other comforts his true person has no hope of receiving.

Narcissism is a village issue

But we all have this overlay of narcissism – the constant scanning the horizon for anything that can pierce our armor and point out how empty we have made ourselves and how underneath it all we fear our intolerable shame. When we get pushed towards that shame we erupt with blame to get the attention back out on the “other” and how they are or should be responding to the persona that has swallowed our personhood. {We’ve talked about this before].

I say “we” even though many of us aren’t organized that way because the whole country seems a bit like a narcissist food fight. The people on screens that dominate our days are all performing an image or are themselves images scorning someone else. No one seems to have an alternative.

There isn’t an alternative jumping up into view because so many of the people running the “show” which is the United States are working out a narcissistic wound. I think all of us experience the overlay in one way or another, since we are all schooled to present a persona that can be hired and can avoid offending people. It’s the way we learn to get affirmation in a rather heartless world. As we know, as Trump has often said, if we do not succeed, we are losers.

Narcissism comes to the Sunday meeting

Long before the country spawned Trump, the influence of the narcissistic wound we all carry was developing (or undeveloping) the church. The church is under attack by your narcissism, too.

There are a few signs of it:

• Can’t stand to be wrong or wronged?
• Can’t repent and don’t like hearing about it?
• Find reading the daily prayer threatening or boring or for “others?”
• Suspicious of most people in the church? Isolated?
• Can’t build something, only assess what you are being provided? or what’s missing?
• Looking for affirmation all day? Angry when it feels denied to you?

Obviously, you don’t need to be pulled by narcissism to act and feel these ways. But, as painful and unlikely as it might be, it would be good to recognize that you are being pulled around by it, if you are, and not just righter or more wronged than everyone else.

The U.S. is pretty much a unique place. The whole country seems to feel entitled to rule the world on the basis of its exceptional nature. Presently the president heaps daily scorn on someone who’s not “us”: shithole nations, invading brown people, Chinese cheaters, silly Europeans. A retaliatory barrage of scorn comes right back on Donald Trump and his “base.”

The U.S. stands alone behind its arsenal, untouchable, with an increasing array of sophisticated ways to scan the horizon for enemies that would expose its shame. Even citizens eager to expose the shame so we might get over it rarely expect telling the truth will do anything but make the nation more exceptional and able to live up to the idealizations of the founding fathers.

I’ve been working on this malady in myself and with clients for many years now. It is not easy to even see, much less make choices about. It is hard to sympathize with a narcissist, even oneself. They feel guilty that they can’t keep up the maintenance on their persona, but they are usually determined to try harder when they fail. They get super angry when their expectations are not met, especially if you are close to them, or in their family (or church). It is the missing closeness that sets them off, even though the lack of it is buried under layers of self-protection.

The church is a lot more than a bunch of narcissists, of course. But when Paul says our battle is not just against flesh and blood, but against the powers, it makes sense to identify those powers. I’m suggesting one of them is this repeated narcissistic wound, the interactions with people who should care for us that keep resulting in messages of devaluation and indifference. If you already have the wound, it would not be surprising to get close to someone in the church and get a feeling of shame triggered. When you do, it would be great if you took a minute with God and remembered whose child you are. Take a look at Jesus and remember who was worth dying for. Get in touch with the Spirit and get a dose of empathy to spread around; we’ve all got a lot to work through.