Imagine for a moment that a person’s sense of self/identity/ego has a structure inside their chest. A person with deep abilities such as insight, self-reflection, accountability, remorse, humility, compassion, and open-mindedness has a “wooden box” inside their chest. A person with a very fragile identity has a “glass box.”
When life throws negative material at a person holding a wooden box, the structure may be damaged. The attack may leave a crack, break a panel, or even destroy an entire side, but the box is still standing. In other words, a person may feel a great deal of emotional pain, but they remain intact. The pain may seem unbearable and unbearable at times, but the individual survives it. They can feel the pain because they are safe enough to bear it.
However, an individual who feels themselves as a glass box cannot allow anything with an element of pain to enter, because it can easily shatter their identity. So, this person is acutely sensitive to negative material that approaches their ego. He immediately repels it and projects it back into the world. His defense mechanisms act like a force field around his ego. Any threat to his ego, such as insight, accountability, remorse, empathy, and humility (anything that has an element of pain) is repelled and projected back into the world—usually to someone else. For example, the most common defense a narcissist has is to accuse someone else of being a narcissist.
The defensive force field consists of multiple defenses such as projection, projective identification, denial, narcissism, displacement, regression (victim position), idealization, and intellectualization. These defenses are used to protect the narcissist’s very fragile ego. Often, when a threat to the ego is infringed upon, the narcissist will react with anger, blaming and attacking someone else.
It is important to note that everyone uses defense mechanisms. However, narcissists use these mechanisms to an extreme, preventing them from having a realistic view of themselves, others, and the world. So, when you are in a relationship with a narcissist, because of his distortions, projections, and his intense need to always be the good guy, he will attack you a lot, trying to portray you as the bad guy. His distortions are often so great that they seem to create an alternate reality; a reality in which the narcissist is always right, straight, and innocent, and anyone who disagrees with him is crazy.
The tricky thing is that narcissists can work nicely with people who are not close to them. Intellectually, they know how to act so that they are seen as kind and responsible. They are good at mobilizing a favorable public opinion. Behind closed doors, they constantly swing from cruelty/abuse to kindness. The game of inversion is designed to deceive those close to them.
If a person is in a relationship with a narcissist and they are not a narcissist, it is the nature of the individual that threatens the fragile ego of the narcissist. It is deep and the narcissist is not. The narcissist is unaware of his envy because he lacks self-awareness and insight, so he subconsciously sabotages the person he is jealous of. Narcissists desperately want to be seen as deep, so they portray and distort, and they see the deep person as crazy and in need of correction. They then feel like they are the upright and honorable person in the relationship.
In short, there are two distinct types of sensitivity, one revolves around sensing potential threats to the ego and the other involves depth of feeling.
The second type of sensitivity allows a person to be acutely aware of the feelings of others as well as their own. This individual is introverted, conscientious, and empathetic. They are not immune to blows to the ego because they are human, and their intense anger is felt about injustice, disrespect, and cruelty. However, unlike narcissists, their anger is intense in response to a real threat to their humanity or the humanity of others. Because one type of sensitivity is entirely ego-driven and produces dysfunctional defense mechanisms, it is not a positive trait. But the second type of sensitivity, which is a deep feeling, allows a person to continually grow, develop, and empathize with others. The second type of sensitivity is what heals the world. It is a gift.
