Читать книгу Fragile People: a Hidden Door into the World of Narcissists - Юлия Пирумова - Страница 5

Our brain has an organ of balance and spatial orientation – the vestibular system. It helps us maintain balance when body position changes. Without it, we would move like small children or drunken people, i.e. we would not be able to coordinate our own movement. The vestibular system is a part of one's inner ear, which carefully monitors his or her position in space. Self-esteem It continuously regulates one's view of oneself, namely continuously shapes a complex picture of a person's inner world. The “inner ear” of our self-esteem registers the slightest changes in the environment and self-perception at every moment of our lives, binding and adjusting the image of our “self”. It endlessly evaluates and compares itself with others in order to have a chance to absorb the insufficient, the lack of which stops it from being good. And this very inner ear may be healthy and construct healthy self-esteem, and it may be sick, therefore, significantly distorting the real picture. is a kind of our “inner ear” which helps us navigate ourselves and maintain balance between our self-perception and those who we actually are.

Let us imagine that someone called Olga has high self-esteem, while Kate has it low. We will start with the latter, since it is her who shares the convictions about herself that are so familiar to us. So, Kate's “inner ear” would not hear anything valuable about what she has got inside. It will be impervious to acknowledgment of her virtues and the way people see her. It will ignore Kate's achievements. If she actually succeeded in something and even if it was highly appreciated by the others, her “inner ear” would make out a tiny whisper: “Anyone can do it. You were nobody and remain nobody”. From reality, this “ear” would catch only the signals that unavoidably prove Kate's “badness”, failure, and neglect from other people. It would be sending out signals of rejection, detecting it even in a neutral attitude to Kate. It would be tuned to the frequency of alienation from people and self-discrepancy anywhere she goes. It would evaluate Kate on a negative scale from total unworthiness to medium badness, without entering the positive area. In case Kate managed to make a little step to the area of “self-normality”, her “inner ear” would inevitably establish in which area she is still not good or even inferior. So, no matter how people saw her or how she performed in life, relationships or work, her “inner ear” would perceive a distorted reality in which she remains bad and there is no way for her to change it.

Olga, in this sense, would be more fortunate. Her “inner ear” works properly, as a healthy part of the vestibular system. If there is a risk of falling, our body changes its position in response to the signal of this system. It also works like this with a healthy psyche: in case something that could negatively affect Olga's self-esteem happened, her “inner ear” would be tuned to itself. Thanks to that, Olga would remember her real virtues and expect support from those around her. Olga's reality is not full of hostility and unavoidable rejection. Olga sees things as they are and is ready to “hold on” to this view.

A good vestibular system has numerous nerve endings, which send out signals of the changes in the environment. Similarly, healthy self-esteem registers all that happens internally and externally: it notices both good, adding it to personal value, and bad, trying to correct it, compensate for it, or in extreme cases – displace it. Normal self-esteem helps us correlate real virtues and limitations and also continuously intercommunicate self-image with reality. It means that Olga's inner ear does not only hear “inside itself” but also “outside itself”, continuously comparing her self-esteem with the environment. Therefore, even if her self-esteem is the highest possible, Olga would still have to see and notice how other people perceive her and react to her.

So, what does the functioning of our “inner ear” tuned to maintaining good or bad self-esteem depend on? Why does Olga's “ear” catch positive evaluations and recognition, while no matter how much you praise Kate, she would still be in the “narcissistic negative”?

What matters here is how healthy or sick one's narcissism is. In fact, healthy narcissism also exists, and it is something that provides us with a foundation for positive and stable self-perception.