|
|
Home | Switchboard | Unix Administration | Red Hat | TCP/IP Networks | Neoliberalism | Toxic Managers |
| (slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and bastardization of classic Unix | |||||||
While according to Greek origin of the term a narcissist is a person in love with himself, in reality, it is mostly the opposite. Narcissists suffer from the acute lack of self-respect. That's why narcissism is frequently discussed as a type of depression. And that's why aggression, anger at any threat to the image is the most valuable sign for diagnostics of narcissism.
So in a way this is mechanism of overcompensation of low self-esteem.
The overall pattern of narcissistic behavior is emotional instability and aggressive behavior caused by insecurity and weakness rather than any real feelings of confidence or self-esteem.
One very interesting and revealing feature of a narcissist (as well as several other types of psychopaths) pointed by Dr. Craig Malkin is emotion-phobia (5 Early Warning Signs You're With a Narcissist):
Emotion-phobia: Feelings are a natural consequence of being human, and we tend to have lots of them in the course of normal interactions. But the very fact of having a feeling in the presence of another person suggests you can be touched emotionally by friends, family, partners, and even the occasional tragedy or failure. Narcissists abhor feeling influenced in any significant way. It challenges their sense of perfect autonomy; to admit to a feeling of any kind suggests they can be affected by someone or something outside of them. So they often change the subject when feelings come up, especially their own, and as quick as they might be to anger, it’s often like pulling teeth to get them to admit that they’ve reached the boiling point — even when they’re in the midst of the most terrifying tirade.
It demonstrates itself in such ways as lack of interest to movies (because of the emotions they elicit), especially tragedies and theatrical plays. Or desire to avoid events connected with deep emotions such as funerals, or even celebrations. At the same time they themselves can behave like a "drama-queens" and kings) who respond to some minor "provocation" with level of emotion (for example anger) that is completely out of place. This allows them to feel that their lives have meaning, that they are at the center of a significant human story. We all need a sense of meaning, but trying to meet this need with our own emotional excess is ultimately a hollow exercise (and pretty tiresome for everyone around us). Anger and rage are the only acceptable emotions to a narcissist. They cover up every other emotion (hurt, desperation, pain, disappointment, fear, shame, guilt) with anger. It's a 'confusion to the enemy' sort of tactic - make everyone think you are mad, and blame them for it, and they'll never suspect that you are afraid. And if you dare show feelings you're accused of being over emotional or over sensitive when really our feelings are completely normal and appropriate!
Based on the emotional theory, the emotional life is crucial due to communication and finding a direction in difficult situations. When we communicate with other people, it is common to experience feelings that we don’t express and we may express other feelings than those we experience. For example we might cry when we feel angry, or yell when we are afraid. Family culture and socio-cultural settings affect our way of expressing and communicating our emotions. Avoiding certain emotions is called affect phobia or emotional phobia.
It is easy to think of a emotion communication misunderstandings that can occur between two people when one person is afraid, but is instead yelling. The other person interprets that as criticism, becoming angry and starting to cry. The first message, of being afraid never came to the other person’s knowledge because the yelling was misinterpreted as anger and the person in need of support (the person afraid) becomes the supporter of the person (feeling criticism) who begins to cry. This leads to discussions and quarrels about the wrong things.
What is especially interesting is that it is a subset of set of behaviour known as social anxiety, which run completely opposite to the image of self-confident successful human being narcissist is trying to project. Here is more general description of this set of behaviors (Social anxiety - Mayo Clinic) a
Signs and symptoms of social anxiety disorder can include persistent:
For children, anxiety about interacting with adults or peers may be shown by crying, having temper tantrums, clinging to parents or refusing to speak in social situations.
|
|
Switchboard | ||||
| Latest | |||||
| Past week | |||||
| Past month | |||||
 |
 |
 |
The first time I heard the term "emotion phobia" was when I was a graduate student and attended a workshop on Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) given by Marsha Linehan, Ph.D. Over the years in my career as a Clinical Psychologist I've become more and more interested in learning and working with people who struggle with "emotion phobia."
What is emotion phobia? Emotion phobia is not an academic term per se, but it is a way to describe what clinicians and researchers in psychology refer to as "emotion regulation problems." Here is what you need to know: "Emotion phobia refers to any acction/attempt (s) to avoid any emotional reaction you have at a given moment."
As you know, every emotion has a life in it's own. They have a specific duration and intensity; they attempt to communicate us something about ourselves, others, or the environment; and finally, emotions ask us to do something immediately, right away. More often than not and as a natural response, every time we experience uncomfortable emotions like shame, fear, or guilt we do everything we can to stop experiencing them… we simply, run away from our pain by engaging in a particular avoidance response or a combination of them.
Avoidance responses include responses like trying to replace one emotion with another one, drinking, using drugs, behaviorally withdrawing, cutting, escaping from an uncomfortable situation/place, etc. If we look at the workability of these avoidance responses, they work in a short-term because they help us to stop our discomfort/pain right away. Unfortunately, in the long-term avoidance responses make things worse for ourselves, people around us, and our living situation in general. Research has consistently show us that the more we "run away, suppress, or avoid" an emotion, not only the more frequent we'll experience them but also their intensity will increase. At the end, we fundamentally ended up living a life that is based on our emotions (primary pain) and not on what truly matter to us (our values).
Now, here is a question for you: Are you struggling with emotion phobia? If you're not sure, you can take a free online self-asessment by clicking here. If your answer is "yes" this is what you need to learn: emotion regulation skills.
Google matched content |
5 Early Warning Signs You're With a Narcissist
Society
Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers : Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy
Quotes
War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes : Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce : Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes
Bulletin:
Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law
History:
Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds : Larry Wall : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS : Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development : Scripting Languages : Perl history : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history
Classic books:
The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month : How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite
Most popular humor pages:
Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor
The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D
Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.
FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.
This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...
|
|
You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site |
Disclaimer:
The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.
Last modified: May, 28, 2020
