In one of my diaries, a comment was posted. Whether it was meant to be sarcastic or not is unknown. It did, however, bring up a point that, like other points brought up about me in the past, I feel needs to be addressed and responded to, maybe in this case needlessly.
The comment was:
I hope you’re able to deal with that burden effectively, Michael. Trying to curve corners at a resolutely square place will do weird things to one’s sense of self-righteousness. It almost obscures the sharp points of one’s own corners that refuse to curve.
I understand that, in the overall comment, it was more about DK than it was about me. But, asking if I can deal “with the burden” was, to me, more a comment on being right…
So, why do I feel I can be “condescending”? What have I actually done? Yes, this is an essay about narcissim.
Narcissim is defined as:
The attribute of the human psyche characterized by admiration of oneself but within normal limits.
Do I “love” myself? Do I “admire” myself? I wish. No, the more apt way to describe my life is one where you must have confidence in your decisions, because, literally, each decision I was forced to make for almost 20 years held someone’s life, or death, in the outcome.
There is, also, being right.
The situation I wrote about, the fireworks display gone wrong during my time at Incirlik AB, Turkey, all began when I realized the operation was a bad operation. Do I “pat myself on the back” for being right? Hardly. It was a situation that any EOD tech should have caught — that fireworks that require a gas seal would fail when that gas seal wasn’t there. I caught it.
Yes, my supervisor, SSgt Williams and I, survived the minefields of Iraq. That was because we both made the right decisions based on our knowledge and experience. Nothing more.
During one incident while I, with another team chief, while with the 18th Brigade 325 C Company, that team chief, TSgt Davis, deferred to me during a suspected IED response at the front gate of the camp. Why? Because I had already spent two weeks at the camp and he was new. Did I make the right call? Yes. Again, only because of my knowledge and experience, which any EOD should have had and used.
But, it was when I made Road Sgt. while in law enforcement that my decisions were truly tested. Could I make the decisions? Could I keep everyone safe? I did, yes.
When I left law enforcement and went back to being a bomb tech, working during the clearance at Kaho`olawe, HI, it didn’t take a genius to see that the way the company had structured the teams was ineffective. They had three teams, none of which had the manpower or resources to work alone. Always, two teams had to pull together. Why? Why not simply reallocate the resources? That was my suggestion. After getting over 600 grids behind, management realized something had to be done, and, they did give my suggestion a try. They moved the manpower and resources to where one team could do flyout and the other two teams were strictly walkout. They cleared up that 600 grid backlog in only three months, and, I almost put myself out of a job.
That doesn’t mean that I am always right. I’m not. There are times I get facts wrong. There are times my decisions don’t work out as I thought they would. There are times when things happen I didn’t foresee, didn’t plan for, or didn’t expect.
For almost 20 years of my life I was right when it mattered. Yes, that also brought about an almost unshakable confidence. I say almost, because when my back failed me, and I lost my job, my income, my ability to provide for my family, my confidence took a hit, too. Suddenly, my decisions weren’t working out right. I wasn’t providing for my family, and every way I tried to fix it, frankly, failed. No, I’m not always right. Even more so, not lately.
To be narcissistic, you must love yourself over others, admire all you do no matter what. That isn’t how I lived my life.
I’d say that the world of explosive ordnance disposal has passed me by, but, no matter how much technology you have, you must always depend on a human’s decision. The world of law enforcement has passed me by simply due to the fact I can no longer do the job physically. But, in order to do those jobs, you had to have the ability to take in the facts of a situation, analyze them, and make a decision based on them.
That will never pass you by if you can do it, as I did…
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going batshit crazy when you’re ignored. Showing up on people’s doorsteps making demands after they politely email you and say no thanks; they’re really not in the mood to have lunch. Interrupting conversations because they aren’t about you, and changing the subject to something about you, that you wish to have admired.
It’s about creating an environment of fear for those foolish enough to become close to you. They are never quite good enough, and you always let them know that; sometimes with subtlety, sometimes brutally. Narcissists are brilliant masters at keeping people off balance.
It’s about divide and conquer, playing both sides against the middle. Everything the narcissist does is about power and misdirection.
Because inside, they really do believe there is nothing there. Only the void. And the worst thing that could possibly happen would be for anybody to figure that out.
It’s an illness, and very hard to fix. How do you take someone whose behaviors are inherently dangerous and destructive to others, who act like they are the Gods and Goddesses of the world, and get through to them about where they’re really at?
What happens to the narcissist who admits what s/he really feels? What happens when one admits to believing him or herself truly empty? Pretty scary dark place there.
Many people have elements of this going on, but if you can recognize it enough to fight it; you aren’t really dangerous. Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about it, Michael. People misuse language a lot.
Miep
A bit of wisdom I came up to keep myself on track while I was going through some of the same sort of abusive nastiness you went through.
was making energy efficient light sources. Our group used to be excellent and consistently contributed to that knowledge base but was historized because we made the corporate management look like total asshole idiots. It was just too inconvienient for them and something just had to be done. You and I are just victims of a completely corrupt system. A system my Soviet raised boss talked to me about. “Now I have lived in two socialist countries” he said. He was invited via his engineering expertise to join the soviet party but he declined then escaped to America but was asked what he thought of America by his boss in 1984. Yes this is a communist calling America communist as corporatism and it’s social norms have become as oppresive in their effectiveness as the oppression of rights as the communist regime of the “former” soviet union. Same thing, different languages.
As to being right when it matters. Well you and I should rule the world not the sociopaths who have it currently.
There are some really good comments above describing a condition that many of us resemble in varying degrees. I am no psychologist, but admitting to showing some of the symptoms of this hideous disorder, I feel a responsibility to type some kind of reply from the perspective of one struggling to fill the void by taking an unfamiliar and rocky path.
Some time ago a diarist here drew my attention to ecopsychology, and it has been a blessing to find a place to begin the process of healing. Prior to reading this I cursed what I saw as a failed system built upon self-interest for the way that it crushed those who, too timid to take what they want from life, tried to manipulate relationships for emotional security and contentment while generating profit for acquaintances to “earn” acceptance.
Of course, that is not enough to feed the beast of self, so there were all sorts of weird and immoral attempts to connect with any kind of meaning deeper than professional ones as well. Shame sucks and probably feeds the narcissist’s desire to control the future.
That was how the void affected me, and I’d be willing to bet that if you tricked a thousand narcissists into getting together to vote on it, a good 750 would say my pattern fits. Why else would I pop into a diary about narcissism to make it about me? Maybe someone else will see this and feel their own pain eased a little, so that they can move forward. Sometimes honesty means you just can’t freakin win.
We have a pretty darned narcissistic culture going right now. Others have already described the general appearance of narcissistic behavior. Until my new nature-oriented job starts next week, it’s harder to be a narcissist sitting by the lake than it is writhing in pain in the living room.
Hug a tree today.