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❧ INTIMACY
Genuine intimacy includes trust, understanding & being understood. It relies on endurance, safety, mutuality, respect & transparency. Without appropriate self-disclosure, there can be no intimacy. Anyone in an intimate relationship (beyond sex) can reveal vulnerabilities without expecting it to be used against them.
People with personality disorders (PDs) are afraid of mature intimacy – which includes being seen with genuine emotional involvement & requires being honest with oneself, which N’s are not.
😵💫 Un-‘educated’ partners of NPDs confuse intensity with intimacy.
Ns are extremely good at giving the appearance of intimacy, but can turn it on & off as it suits them. When they’re short on Supply, , they offer such a good fake version of being needy, which is very appealing, & hard to resist. But when they’ve gotten their hit, they immediately go back to being selfish. Ns are the ultimate users.
Def: “NT S/Os” means neuro-typical significant others.
Generally, Ns are extremely confused & uncomfortable when ‘normal’ people try to bond with them. So Ns may not recognize that this is the ‘push – trigger’ that starts them devaluing the non-narc partner or friend, who will never be able to convince the NPD that their fear of intimacy is at the heart of their relationship-problems.
N’s PROCESS of DEVALUING
💌the N meets a S/O who has the ability to provide the kind of love they crave, & is available
💌 this triggers the infatuation / idealization phase in the N
💌 at first it creates a feeling of euphoria which comes from powerful neuro-chemicals that anesthetizes the N, which temporarily dampens their reflexive instinct to throw up protective narc-defenses
📭As the relationship continues, the N’s high wears off (end of infatuation phase) & they return to their ‘normal’ unhealthy state
🎈Unaware of the N’s internal change, the S/O continues to offer unconditional love. Since the N didn’t get this from parents in childhood, they can never trust that anyone else will ever provide it
🎁Mature intimacy offered by the S/O comes with the inevitable traveling companion of “vulnerability”, which NPDs cannot tolerate. It exposes old abandonment pain & the fear of future loss, which they’ve never learned to face or how to deal with (POSTs : “What Recovery Is / Isn’t“)
TRIGGER ALERT
💔 The N is subconsciously triggered when they start to FEEL emotions that come from someone loving them, which are are new & so alien that it causes a great deal of confusion.
They feel intimidated & overwhelmed.
🤎 This subconsciously sets the N on high alert, potentially being ‘forced’ to experiencing their greatest enemy – emotional pain
😱 In this state of hyper-sensitivity the N can start to experience mounting anxiety, despondence & irritation, with a sense of impending doom – without understanding why
⚡️Before long the N is caught up in a Category-5 emotional hurricane of rapidly changing feelings, attacked by the stinging rain of vulnerability-terror
⚡️They’ll convert “softer” emotions toward the S/O into anger, & possibly hatred, with a stronger & stronger urge to get rid of the source of the pain
⚡️The N’s maladaptive defenses prevent them from distinguishing friend from foe, so they act against their own best interests – to get rid of the love being offered.
Their subconscious starts whispering an endless stream of self-hating & paranoid intrusive thoughts ↘️, which convince the NPD-sufferer to accuse the S/O of causing their ever-increasing angst & agitation
⚡️The tragic twist is that it’s the S/O’s love that inadvertently triggers the N, by providing them with the very thing they’ve always wanted – mature adult intimacy – but which they’re terrified of trusting
⚡️Unfortunately, since the N is not consciously aware of what’s going on inside, they inevitably push the S/O away, unable to recognize that their misery has nothing to do with the S/O, who’s done nothing wrong
💔 Pushing away the very people who are truly capable of psychological / spiritual intimacy & love leaves the N even more deprived & ‘starving’. But it provides temporary relief from their intense anxiety, leaving a feeling of relief & elation after unshackling these ‘chains’.
After that wears off, depression & isolation can set in (loss of the fantasy), but eventually their emptiness will push the N to start the cycle all over again.
Unable to be their own healer & comforter, they need to use other people to ‘feed off’ of.
(SOURCE : Tod Skyler, attorney)
NEXT: N ‘helpers”- BYSTANDERS #1
