Why Narcissism Makes You Question What’s Real

If you’ve ever felt invisible in a relationship or as a child this article is for you. The fear of being invisible again is central to why finding help can feel so risky.

Much has been written about narcissism in recent years. Some say too much. Others say—not nearly enough—it’s out of control!

And for those who intuit the reality that narcissism is not just about traits in an individual, but something that can distort whole families and cultural spaces, the urgency is clear. We are destined to repeat what we don’t understand.

Our culture has found the central myth of our times.  Narcissism is with us and affecting us every day. The explosion of books, podcasts and documentaries on the subject is not a quirk. The hive mind tries to inoculate itself, and it’s trying to find out how.

What’s difficult to grasp is why narcissism is such a fundamental problem. The truth is simple but disturbing: narcissism is not a trait at all, but our relationship with reality itself.

Others become objects for the purpose of self-elevation, not beings in themselves. What begins with individuals often expands into culture itself.   Many people today feel reality wobble at scale—through politics, media, celebrity and power—even our response to the climate crisis. The same disorientation that happens in a narcissistic relationship can be felt in the wider world: the strange sense of gaslighting, of fighting a parallel reality of hardened self-obsession.  Of lies filling the gaps, of being used, of cruelty, vanity and bluster where once a humility kept relationships more honest.  The desperate self-elevation that makes others into scapegoats and objects for use can scale from individual to empire.

Children growing up under this distortion can develop problems later in life because they’ve had to find a way to adapt at depth to something invisible which has affected every aspect of their lives.  They know what it means to be voiceless, an extension, a scapegoat, and an echo.

And here’s the unsettling twist: psychology itself is not immune.  Seeking therapy can in itself feel terrifying and disorienting. To risk being unseen again, to be treated once more as if your actual being is unreal, to be gaslit and manipulated, to be treated as a mere collection of historical events, chemicals and behaviours or otherwise painfully missed, is a tragedy many people want to avoid at all costs.

At its best, therapy is the reverse: a process that’s squarely aimed at authentic relating. It is the steady work of finding the real, as real. Of finding one another as beings, understanding the meaning of what we’re going through, and ways we’ve had to adapt.  In the process we gain esteem and a sense of direction so we can move forward, as ourselves.
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If this resonates, and if you’d like a spot to land, please let me know. I’m taking on a few clients over the next few weeks.

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