I trust no one, not even myself.
- Joseph Stalin
The connection/actualisation continuum, with its emotional forces of fear, love, hate, pride and shame, is a useful tool for illustrating how narcissism might arise due to a loss of balance. In the case of pride, a child can grow up in a cold, grandiose environment, incessantly pushed toward being more and achieving more by an overbearing parent. The parent is themselves usually driven by an unrelenting thirst for more; more status, more money, more attention and more recognition, and forces their child to partake in this doctrine. Growing up in such a shameless environment suffocates the child’s authenticity and increases their chances of becoming narcissistic. But the question remains: Where did this thirst originate?
During infancy, a child needs a consistent, balanced attachment to the mother to establish harmony with their True Self. A lot can go wrong during this fragile process. Mothers can be overwhelmed by their environment. Their ancestors may have lived during a time plagued by conflict or war, where survival and stability were a higher priority than emotional well-being and actualisation. Intergenerational trauma can plague a family, passed on through behavioural patterns, belief systems, addiction and even DNA. This leads to systemic dysfunction becoming like the air a family breathes. Those who grow up in such an environment often adapt by becoming callous, ruthless, manipulative, emotionally dysregulated or emotionally detached. As a result, they behave in destructive and unpredictable ways.
Mothers with this kind of personality are incapable of sustaining the steady openness and warmth the child needs. Instead, they...
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