 Pronounced: Silla and ca-rib-dis If you’re not familiar with this Greek myth, recorded by Homer, here’s a (very) brief recap. Our hero, Odysseus is on his perilous journey. He’s on a ship, near to the Southern Italian coast, and has to navigate something extraordinarily difficult. His path is blocked: on one side, up ahead, waits Scylla, who is a multi-headed sea monster. Scylla would like nothing more than to bite him into pieces and devour him. On the other side, and perhaps even more dangerous, lies Charybdis, which is a terrifying whirlpool, ready to suck him and his ship down into oblivion. The situation Odysseus encounters is impossible to navigate, because avoiding one “monster” means coming within range of the other: there’s no way through without exposure. Odysseus is advised to sail closer to Scylla in the hope it would devour only a few of his men, and not all of them. Charybdis on the other hand, threatened total loss. Survivors of narcissistic environments If you’re reading this, you’re probably a survivor. You’re probably a bit like Odysseus, trying to find your way through life’s difficulties and choppy seas. But unlike some other, more fortunate others who may see a clear passage ahead, you start to feel trapped, exhausted and stuck between these “monsters”. Scylla The vicious, hungry, devouring monster. Ask yourself this: do you find yourself becoming angry, or ruminating a lot about particular characters you encounter in life? I don’t mean anyone. I mean people who seem narcissistic. It could be a boss who doesn’t care, or an entire (probably telecoms!) company. Anyone really who lights that ancient fire in you - the place you were originally burned. For survivors, this danger signal is liable to fixate you. Without your awareness, you’re liable to start making this “other” the unpleasant sun to your Earth. You are, psychologically speaking, drawn near to this monster. You are consumed by her in a cycling repetition of relating to narcissism. I think of Scylla by a different name: the narcissistically-intoned traumatic other (NITO). Scylla or NITO, it doesn’t matter. What matters is your divergence into dysregulation, and away from safe passage. It’s not your fault: this has become a compulsion in you, a compulsive fixation on danger. A desire to control or expose it, or destroy it…only brings you into its waiting jaws. One body, many heads, narcissism comes in a selection of different manifestations. Maybe it’s someone who’s the perennial victim (who doesn’t really love or care about others). Ditto the arrogant “phallic” version. The image-merchant. The toxic hater. All narcissistic. All, even if only partial, liable to capture you, and throw you into projection and fixation…making the repetition of your past, traumatic reality return time and again in a repetition compulsion. Charybdis When we’ve had a hard day trying to deal with the NITO(s) in our lives, which we are unconsciously co-creating with objective reality through projection and compulsive fixation…we’re at risk of oversteer. Or perhaps we steered towards Charybdis in the first place: after all, why would we want to encounter a cold, rejecting, demanding and self-centred world/person/other in the first place? Charybdis has a different skill set to the biting, snarling, feeding energy of Scylla. It is a vast whirlpool of immeasurable strength. To survivors, this is the danger of slipping away, of disappearing and avoidance. Charybdis is the arch dissociator; the away-from defence mechanism that can take us over and take us down, without us even realizing what’s happening to us. Survivors are expert dissociators. By this I mean any psychological, or physical, ways of…well, the opposite of associating. Survivors want to avoid, to withdraw, to fuzz out, to numb, and avoid: to be away. If we’re not aware of our desire, and proclivity to dissociation, it will keep happening in a compulsive, repetitive way. To survivors, this is often experienced at a mammalian level: we want to go back to the nest, to comfort. And the nest is also the womb. And the womb is also the mother. It’s important to note that dissociation can take different forms, but this is the essence of it. By the way, we all dissociate! Being healthy means being able to to-and-fro with association and dissociation - meaning we all dream, we all get lost in thought, most of us watch TV and descend into its nest, many adults dissociate via substances like alcohol or marijuana. But that’s different from compulsions that keep us there, control our lives, and can turn into dependencies if we're not care-ful. The Twin Dangers Scylla and Charybdis really do create twin dangers. They are linked and keep us static, reactive and without clear direction. When we sail too close to either, we are tipped out of our ship: the ship being our regulated, authentic, intentional Self. We flip, in coping, between hyper and hypo arousal. We live a reactive life that exhausts every cell of our being. And what do we want, ultimately? Is it really to “fix”, reveal or destroy other people’s narcissism? Is it really to live a life of control? We usually can’t. And these patterns are liable to repetitively dysregulate and disorient you if you are stuck in them. Clear water between these dangerous “monsters” is a better, more realistic and rewarding aim. A calm passage. As the Greeks said: riding out a bit of damage from everyday human-narcissistic damage. A view that feels it’s an adventure, not a perilous fight to stay afloat. A guiding star - a destination we aim for that feels connected to us in an authentic, non-reactive sense. Ahh! Now, when that happens, we can fall in love with the journey again, and potential opens up before us. I don’t pretend it’s easy, but this is the work, the task we take on together. The nature of the Guiding Star is another story, and one I’ll return to soon in the Narcissist Survivors’ Club. Thanks for reading!
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 Assuming "an Empath" as your identity can:
1. Mask hypervigilance, which is a trauma response 2. Mask being a “suppliant personality” - a specialist in giving narcissistic supply 3. Mask a loss or lack of self/social authenticity 4. Mask a narcissistic, grandiose self-image. 5. Mask passivity: being a sponge to others' emotions, or a chameleon, a defensive way of hiding By contrast, integrated empathy is:
For survivors of narcissistic environments, self-empathy is crucial:
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Tom BarwellPsychotherapist, working in private practice online Archives
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