Good to know.

Whether you know it as A Narcissist’s Prayer, Creed, Mindset or Playbook, in 2016 I posted a short poem online that I’d written about patterns of behaviour I felt were playing out around me. I’ve been writing poetry for myself for a long time and sharing it was a good way for me to ask if anyone else was seeing the same cycles in their relationships. My experiences turned out not to be unique, go figure.

“The narcissist,” or the speaker of the poem, is simply a person so pre-occupied with and anxious about the image they have of themselves and the way that other people perceive them, that they engage in harmful or maladaptive behaviours to preserve it. Across this website and in my writing, I am always speaking of narcissism, the trait, and not Narcissistic Personality Disorder: I’m a poet, not a doctor. I’ve spent a long time as a captive audience for people who are more afraid of being thought poorly of, than behaving hurtfully, and it’s my experiences with them that I’ve drawn on. I’ve found that someone struggling with narcissism doesn’t suffer from an abundance of self-love, but self-loathing: someone proud of their own behaviour doesn’t deny it. A narcissist will avoid letting people see any reflection of themselves except the funhouse-flattering kind not because they believe it to be accurate, but because it’s the only one that isn’t painful for them to look at. Pure unfiltered reality is too frightening, because to the narcissist, it’s hideous. They’re hideous. Sometimes they’re right about that.

An uncomplicatedly malicious person would just skip to the end and enjoy it. A narcissist doesn’t necessarily want to hurt anyone, but if that’s as low as they need to limbo to avoid accountability, they’re flexible enough to go there. They’re not delusional or confused about the truth, either: just editing out the parts they can’t handle. We all have a version of ourselves in our minds that we aspire to be, and be seen as. A version that’s more patient, more polite, better dressed, more charming, in a flattering light with one of those big fans that blow your hair around in slow-motion. A little bit of narcissism is fine and healthy - we’re all going to choose the nicest photos of ourselves for social media, put our best foot forward in an interview or on a date, and gloss over the part about getting a stomach bug when someone asks us how our summer went. We make choices about how we want people to think of us, and that isn’t necessarily problematic. We can’t all be perfectly humble and vulnerable and ego-less all the time, we all find things embarrassing, have insecurities, and know, most of the time, when a shirt looks ridiculous on us. For me, the threshold for narcissistic behaviour becoming an issue is when anxiety about that image starts to negatively impact your life, your behaviour, damage relationships, or keep you from personal growth. How far away from a mirror do you have to be before you stop finding things you hate? How much time do you spend looking, and how close? How do you feel afterwards? The narcissist will go down this flowchart as far as they are forced to, but that doesn’t mean they enjoy it. If you or reality (or both) keep insisting they face a version of themselves that’s too threatening for them to accept, it can truly feel like self-defence to lash out.

It must be isolating to live that way, but I can appreciate that someone is suffering without giving them a pass to hurt people without consequence. It’s difficult to form relationships with other people, and impossible to form deep lasting friendships, when one party is unable to be vulnerable, can never be held accountable, and may turn on you if you try to force the issue. Being able to explain a behaviour is not the same as excusing it: it’s never okay to abuse other people, but I can still see that those with these issues suffer from them significantly.

No, thank you.

If you’d like a copy on your wall, for your journal, to tape on your fridge, to keep on your phone, you go ahead and print one out with my blessing. There are nice images on the internet! But I am not selling anything related to A Narcissist's Prayer. No courses, counselling, coaching, or keyrings - not even affiliate links, sponsored content, or ads. This is important to me! 

If you’d like to license A Narcissist’s Prayer, other writing, or commission original work, drop me a line and tell me about your project. Please don’t buy or sell copies of A Narcissist’s Prayer, or use it in your own paid, paywalled, or monetised work without asking.

Okay, well, maybe. Maybe not. Not everyone saying those words is being dishonest or abusive. People can be wrong, insecure, disagree with you, an asshole, whatever, without being a narcissist. I also don’t think the classification of an abusive behaviour is as important as avoiding the material reality of abuse. If someone is hurting you and then telling you they didn’t, that’s not okay, and that’s all it needs to be before you do something about it. You can theorise about which flavour of not okay that is after you’re removed from that harm. When someone you care about is having repeated difficulty taking responsibility for their actions, or won’t accept that their actions are harmful…and keep on doing harmful things, I don’t think we need to litigate the precise boundaries of narcissism to decide if that’s bad or not.

Your favourite book store will have a section on interpersonal relationships, personality disorders, conflict in relationships, abusive personalities, but if you came to me as a personal friend, I would probably dig out one of these:

Why Does He Do That? Lundy Bancroft
Burnout, Emily Nagoski
The Gift Of Fear, Gavin De Becker
Personal Renewal, John Gardner
On Repentance and Repair Danya Ruttenberg
The Velveteen Rabbit. The Velveteen Rabbit
Crazymad, For Me, CMAT
Daisies Belfast

That's fair. You might have noticed a distinct lack of other work around here, and it's not that I'm not writing, but I'm currently not putting any of it online. The response to A Narcissist's Prayer has been overwhelming, in both positive and negative ways, so I'm taking a long break from publishing anything personal or vulnerable on the internet.

That said, I'm terribly sorry to have nothing for you, so to say thanks for asking in the first place, and thanks for having an interest and thanks for reading any of this and just, thanks- here's a poem I wrote a while back called Elevens. Just for you. To say thank you.


Elevens

When I am old I hope that my smile

Sharpens every wrinkle, deepens every line,

And does not leave unsaid in the furrows

That lie slack across my face, every

Other shape this skin has worn and

All the other lines they've traced.

Dayna EM Craig