Dear Survivors of Narcissistic Abuse: Own Your Healthy Narcissism!
Introduction Search Narcissism on the internet and you’ll see that evocative word does not fill people up with the warm fuzzies that a word like “puppies” might. Anger, despondent wails, grievances and other cries of unfairness would overwhelm anyone who takes the time to sample content from social media, forums, and blogs on the subject. And yet I think we need to change our attitude towards the word. A revered mentor of mine, David Shapiro, used to say that he was unimpressed by Narcissism as a diagnostic label. “Everyone’s narcissistic,” he’d say. “Narcissism is a developmental stage. It’s not really a personality organization,” he elaborated. Narcissism is one of the few topics on which Dr. Shapiro and I disagree. And even though I believe Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a very real phenomenon, Dr. Shapiro says something we should all take very seriously. That is, everyone is narcissistic. Why do we need to re-appropriate the the term “narcissism”? We’re not all narcissistic in the same way, or to the same degree, but we do all have …
