The previous article dealt with the origin and the consequences of narcissistic disorders in our society as the German psychiatrist and psychotherapist Hans-Joachim Maaz described them in his book: “The narcissistic society”. This article is about healing possibilities of narcissism. In my opinion selflove is the key.
Narcissism is curable
Personally I am convinced that narcissism is curable. For I´ve met people who were diagnosed with intense narcissistic disorders or recognized them in themselves and who seemed much less narcissistic after some time: you can learn compassion, sympathy and love and intentionally exercise it.
Michael Roads, the spiritual teacher from Australia constantly advises to choose love. No matter the issue and he recommends it particularly to people who are ill, either physically or mentally. Even if they cannot feel it initially they are to stand in front of the mirror twice a day for at least twenty minutes and say “I love you” to themselves. According to his experience the matching feeling emerges in time – for this phrase is a call to your consciousness to manifest that reality. This very often also leads to a massive reduction of the ailments and sometimes even their complete disappearance.
My own work has shown me that there are ways indeed that allow for these ancient wounds to heal from the lack of parental love in early childhood – quite independently from how they occurred. The lack of this love can be caused – besides the blockages of feeling in the parents by various traumata and also through the early loss or the absence of one parent. (A touchy subject in our time with so many single parents).
Besides therapy psycho-energetic work also helps
Two ways have proven helpful so far: firstly one can contact one´s inner child through thorough psycho-emotional work and exactly that aspect of it that was hurt so early and lastingly and finally offer one´s undivided and healing attention to it and its enormous pain. It requires willingness to finally feel that primal pain. The immense pain of experiencing no love. The fear of that can prevent a healing to take place for years.
However, if one has really felt it once it suffices for the healing – there is no need to repeatedly wallow in old wounds.) This approach is still rather similar to the therapeutic means of Maaz as described in the previous article. But my colleagues and I we often take it a step further:.
Since our mind doesn´t know the difference between an actual and an imagined experience, the effect of imagining in detail what it would actually feel like to receive the so desired approval and confirmation by your own mother and/or father is already very helpful to the soul.
Selflove is the conscious turning towards and affection for one´s own soul
Even more powerful is the effect of the imagination and working with your adult self as mothering and fathering aspects of your own child self. We can actually nurture ourselves!
Among the magical phenomena of being human is our ability to have our thoughts received by others, especially if we do that with an intense feeling and independently from the physical distance between us. Many couples, parents and children and close friends know this.
In the same ways we can reach ourselves with our own loving thoughts and feelings, if we consciously send them to our needy inner child self. For many people it is helpful to hold a toy animal or a cushion like a child in your arms – a child that is yourself! So the loving thoughts, feelings and energy then flow from your own heart in a healing way into your old wounds of the past. If you feel like trying this, just do it!
Even nature helps us
For those who are even more courageous and have faith in metaphysics, they can be nurtured by the cosmic-fatherly and the cosmic-motherly energies. You only have to hold your face and chest towards the sun and ask the sun to heal the old wounds in the field of the masculine within yourself.
The feminine field is nurtured by the earth. The best way to do that is to consciously put both feet on the ground, preferable barefoot, or even better lie down in the grass and imagine how you are embraced by the loving mother earth. Just like a physical human mother would hug us and also ask her to heal all the old wound in your own feminine field.
This may seem ridiculous or nuts to some – but those, who´ve tried it and were open to this psycho-physical experience felt noticeably better.
You can only really heal your narcissism yourself
The root cause of narcissism – in that respect I completely agree with Maaz – is a lack of love profound experience in early childhood. The lack of love ultimately leads to an inability as an adult to connect with others in love. Quite a number of people suffer intensely from this.
Asked about this the nonphysical realms explained to a psychic friend and me that narcissism heals when one turns towards one´s own light, one´s own soul. This begins with making a conscious choice that entails learning to love yourself (again) unconditionally and starts with the conscious acceptance of your own wounds and accepting your own responsibility for your own healing and trusting that this is possible.
Only selflove can heal narcissism
In truth there is actually nobody except you who can heal you. If you are not truly willing to take care of your own soul, you cannot really be helped by therapists.
Narcissus finally despaired over his unfulfilled love for himself or rather his self-desire. Had he been given the chance to not only know himself – by which the seer Teiresias obviously meant his mirror image in the water – but to recognize himself…possibly a healing process of insights could have begun that might have enabled him to truly love himself rather than suffer from deathly self-craving. Then he maybe would have learned to become part of the cycle of a healthy exchange of love – and wouldn´t have perished in the dead end of insatiable desire.
A helpful image
Some time ago a young friend asked me if and to what degree I considered myself narcissistic. It made me remember a few more or less painful moments in my own life and I thought about our perception of the world, where perhaps at the beginning of puberty the narcissistic mirror still touches the tip of our nose: it is a time where we take almost everything personal and we need all superlatives to express our specific perception whether it’s positive or negative.
But in time we get a hunch that it might be a good idea to hold the mirror a little further away and the older and more aware we become, the larger the distance between us and the mirror grows. We still perceive us as central in the view – after all we are the protagonists of our own lives. But the broader the view grows, the more we see others and understand that they too, are the heroes of their lives…which makes everything ever more relative…
And so the former narcissistic disorder shrinks to an acceptable size and with the help of various insights and experience we can finally even reach the ever so necessary degree of “narcissistic saturation”. In other words we develop a healthily growing self-worth that ultimately allows us to perceive the world with kind compassion, trusting love, serene humor and generous tolerance.
I believe that it works more or less like that for many people.
Replace pain with forgiveness and unconditional love…
Presumably almost everybody has “narcissistic areas” in his own psyche where the “software of self-love” got corrupted and a pain program became active instead. But you can change the program and in turn change your own mirror image: you will not perceive any longer only your suffering, lack and need…but you learn to appreciate and accept yourself completely like healthy parents their children…or as if you were god and saw your own divine creation in an of course divine mirror… How could you not love this unique divine child truly and unconditionally?
