Юлия Пирумова – Fragile connections. How wounded narcissism prevents us from living in peace with ourselves and others (страница 5)

Feelings of guilt, shame, melancholy, and hopelessness – that is what lies at the root of loneliness. It is global alienation, not related to the physical absence of people but to the internal impossibility of genuine connection. We do not even believe that we are capable of being in these relationships. We do not believe it is even possible to be who we are in intimacy with others. Since attempts to change ourselves create too much tension, and, thus, isolation and refusal to establish connections become the logical choice.

And now this process of “withdrawing ourselves” from connections becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We turn into observers, unable to get involved in direct interaction. We avoid intimacy, believing that it is the only way we can protect ourselves from pain, fear, and tension.

One day during a session, a client and I observed how he was making himself lonely right in our conversation.

He said, “Firstly, I don't look at you. Secondly, I don't show my feelings. And thirdly, I always try to answer your questions correctly so that nothing else is noticed.”

It was a clear demonstration. You can close all channels of communication: visual, emotional, verbal. You can cut off all energetic exchange with the world: give nothing and take nothing. We seem to be present, but we remain somewhere far away, on our own cold and deserted inner North Pole. We talk, listen, show emotions, but we do not let anything inside. We do not allow ourselves to be touched or involved. It is an eternal illusion of connection and escape into oneself for self-correction…

The experience of abandonment, on the one hand, resembles loneliness, but it contains something more: feelings directed not just inward but toward those who left us. It is like constant flashbacks where someone once left or simply abandoned us to our fate. It is a psychic imprint left by relationships that defines our essence.

“Abandonment” has synonyms: “being lost”, “being forsaken”, “orphanhood”. But for abandonment to become a habitual state, it is not necessary to have been a literal orphan from childhood. It is enough that no one showed us we were important to others, that no one gave us a sense of belonging. We were not given attention and care but rather shown indifference or apathy.

Abandonment is when we are left alone with ourselves and have no one to rely on at the very moments when someone is needed around.

These moments did not just generate pain, fear, or dissatisfaction in us – they planted the feeling of having been left behind.

Deep inside, there is a belief that we were abandoned because something is wrong with us. Because abandonment is not just an action, it is an attitude, and no one would abandon someone who is valuable and loved. After being left, we feel a rupture not only with the external world but also with ourselves. We begin to feel that some parts of us deserved this rejection.

Of course, the sense of abnormality resulting from abandonment can be very loud and destructive. It can sound like: “I am a mistake, I am an error.” Or it can manifest itself as a faint thought that something is wrong with you when things do not work out, when you do not meet expectations. Or it can appear as clear convictions about yourself: I don't fit, I'm not enough. But most often, it is deep melancholy that is hard to recognize consciously. A feeling that everyone around knows how to do things, and you don't.

I am incapable of loving.

I am incapable of feeling.

I am incapable of creating, of making something new.

I am incapable of being in deep relationships with others.

I am incapable of being…

For a long time, I could not find the right word to describe something I felt myself and that my clients tried to convey to me. It always seemed that some aspects remained unexpressed. And then I found it: self-alienation! That is the word!

We feel cut off from our Self, as if we exist behind thick glass that prevents us from connecting either with the energy of life or with other people. We are separated from ourselves, we do not understand who lives inside us and whether they even exist. We do not feel our desires, we do not understand what we truly want. It is as if we live someone else's life, fulfilling duties, following obligations. Sometimes, when waking up in the morning, we do not even know why we got out of bed. We read books, talk to people, but we do not feel that it has anything to do with us. Sometimes, it seems that we act not out of our own inner impulse, but because “it is necessary,” because others expect it.

For example: we sit at work, enjoying our achievements, but inside, there is emptiness. We feel anxiety that we cannot express in words. It seems that no accomplishments can bring a sense of reality, because we do not feel connected to ourselves. We strive for success, but inside, there is no one who could rejoice in these victories.

Self-alienation can manifest itself even in the simplest actions. For example, we simply sit at dinner and suddenly realize that we do not feel the taste of the food or the pleasure of communication. We are surrounded by people who love us, but inside, we still feel as if we are not there. Or, on the contrary, we sincerely laugh with friends, but then, when we are left alone, we feel emptiness, as if the good mood was just a mask we wear to avoid being noticed, to hide from others the absence of connection with ourselves.

And in such moments, the realization comes that we were never truly in contact with ourselves, that our inner world remained inaccessible.

But scarier still is the feeling that this “real self” might not exist at all.

And then we see no point in changing or doing anything, because it seems that, anyway, it will lead nowhere. We do not feel hope that life can change. We feel complete meaninglessness and even despair. Yes, we flail, try to drown out the anxiety, chase achievements and reflections – but it is useless.

That is how self-alienation works.

It manifests itself in the fact that we do not believe ourselves.

We do not feel what we want and what we do not want.

We do not feel our body and what is happening to it.

We whip ourselves with a mental “lash” for misfortunes and failures that prevented us from becoming the ideal version of ourselves.

We close our eyes to what has been done and experienced.

We betray our soul, which was silenced because its impulses led us into trouble too many times.

We refuse our potential, citing the pain of past disappointments when something did not work out.

We retreat from life into our psychic shelters, prepared back in childhood when we were too young to have any control.

We hide in loneliness, fleeing from connections that might bring new disappointments.

We become so cautious that we almost block the flow of our own life, turning it into a dried-up trickle.

Case from Practice

One day, a client came to a session and said he had nothing to talk about today. And that if he could, he would just go and lie down to sleep because he was very tired. A person, coming to another person, does not consider it possible to talk about what is really happening to him and how he truly feels. Fatigue and the tension that caused it seemed not serious or weighty enough for conversation. Who he was at that moment seemed not important enough to be brought into the present contact.

When we began to discuss this, it turned out that, like many of us, he was guided by a purely functional attitude toward himself: if I cannot feel relieved, why share it with you? As a result, the entire layer of human attitude to oneself gets removed from all contacts. What remains is effective and useful interaction. At first glance, the logic is flawless and fits the modern trend: “I'll come to you, you'll fix me, and as for how I am in all this and how I experience it – let's leave that out of brackets.”

Only somehow it turns out that the problems the client came with do not go away. Because in life he does exactly the same: he extracts himself, his feelings, experiences, pains, and anxieties from relationships, sincerely considering them unimportant and undeserving of attention. He tries to present himself at that moment as someone else: collected and efficiently coping with his fatigue, for instance, somewhere else.

“If we cannot solve my work problems right now, why discuss them? If, for example, I punctured my foot, I need to run to get it stitched, not discuss my feelings.”

“I totally agree. But that doesn't mean you won't have feelings at that moment. And I, for example, can handle them differently while being around. I can comfort and soothe you, acknowledging your pain as real. Or I can pretend that for me nothing is happening except the task of stitching your foot. And then, when everything is over, I can ask you how you experienced it. And you will tell me how scared you were, how you panicked, how it hurt. You will recall that in childhood you had already punctured your foot. And what happened then. And I will sympathize with you or tell you about my own case. And then the human part will surface in each of us, as well as toward each other. But we can stay efficient, rational, cold. We won't leave these roles: I am a psychologist, who doesn't get distracted by feelings and solves people's problems; you are a proper client of a psychologist.”