Narcissus

I have started accruing my client hours for licensure, and have been lucky enough to find a supervisor that charges a reasonable price and also knows what he is talking about.

A particularly poignant experience/thought I brought into my session with him a couple weeks ago. I thought it really interesting that the most disorganized, screwed up, sitting in unpleasant feelings kind of day on the adolescent unit for me was also one of the days I felt most connected, most able to enjoy the adolescents.

After some thoughts on narcissism's play in all of this, my supervisor brought up the original story of Narcissus. The important point he spoke was that it was not simply that Narcissus fell in love with how beautiful he was, but that he fell in love with himself.

Put differently, the main function of narcissism is not just about looking good and perfect, it is also about never acknowledging any type of same-ness with others. Falling in love with yourself keeps you from ever having to genuinely move towards someone else. If you are all good, if you are perfect, why ever get contaminated with another's gross, disorganized mess?

Thus the narcissist lives in blissful denial of any of their own shit, projecting this mess onto others who are then called disgusting.

A bit of my narcissistic bliss had been dismantled the following day in counseling. I came to work more than a bit disorganized, humbled, humbled well by my own apparent mess. I could approach these adolescents, I could understand a bit more what their struggle was, because I wasn't in denial of my own. I even held a sense of honor for them. They are at the pinnacle of disorganization, hospitalized for their present mess. They are on the edge of survival, such a tangible display of life and death.

So easy to shift from one perspective to the other. A patient can look like a deteriorated, blabbering nuisance or a fighting, courageous survivor; context paints each view. Context is being at least remotely cued into your own story and theirs. One with no story, one with no idea of who they really were, what life has really been, how they really bring themselves today; they will inevitably see a blabbering nuisance who needs to get his shit together.

And it cycles...someone who tells another to get their shit together has never had the chance to really let their shit be seen by someone else. One who has never been able to express need will inevitably despise the need of another.

"This is very important stuff. This is grounds where very good work will take place." The discussion had left me soft, soft enough for me to feel like a sponge, slowly and deliberately soaking in those words. Life in slow motion. Hard to describe those moments other than being spiritual. Time slows down. Senses feel alive. Things have weight, but the opposite of the weight of a burden. Weight as fullness, depth. I see people and the slightest facial expression feels honest. Their motivations feel honest.

These moments I step out of my critical eye, judgment no longer holding the reigns. They still don't last long, but that is ok, don't want to judge my own judgment...I know how vicious that cycle is.