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Question:
Narcissistic identification capability that the kid prefers to love himself (direct his libido at himself) than to love an unpredictable, forsaking parent (mother, most often). Thus, the kid will flip out to be his own parent and directs his aggression at himself (=to the parent that he has flip out to be). Throughout this wrenching process, the Ego feels helpless and this is yet another main supply of depression.
These are all proscribed by the Superego. This is doubly true if the individual possesses a sadistic, capricious Superego (a quit result of the unsuitable style of parenting). These thoughts and wishes do not absolutely surface. The individual is only wakeful about them in passing and vaguely. But they are sufficient to galvanize intense guilt thoughts and to set in motion a series of self-flagellation and self-punishment.
The depressive patient has been conditioned by repeated aversive stimuli to freeze he does not even have the vigor vital to go out this merciless worldwide by committing suicide. The depressive is devoid of the positive reinforcements, which are the building blocks of our vanity.
In this feeling, the depressive is cognitively distorted. He interprets his reviews, evaluates his self and assesses the long run tremendously negatively. He behaves as although persistently disenchanted, disillusioned, and hurting (dysphoric have effects on) and this helps to sustain the distorted perceptions.
He is filled with negative contemplating his self, his (lack of) goals, his (lack of) achievements, his emptiness and loneliness and many others. And if you consider that his cognition and perceptions are deformed no cognitive or rational input can alter the situation. Everything is routinely reinterpreted to in shape the paradigm.
Freud suggested that the depressive person had lost a love object (was deprived of a properly functioning parent). The psychic trauma suffered early on shall be alleviated only by inflicting self-punishment (thus implicitly "punishing" and devaluing the internalised version of the disappointing love object).
Depression is how such people day holiday their overflowing reservoirs of aggression. They are a volcano, which is about to explode and bury them under their own ashes. Anxiety is how they day holiday the warfare raging within them. Sadness is the identify that they furnish to the resulting wariness, to the tricks that the battle is lost and private doom is at hand.
The narcissist is a human pendulum hanging by the thread of the void that is his False Self. He swings between brutal and merciless abrasiveness and mellifluous, maudlin, and saccharine sentimentality. It is all a simulacrum. A verisimilitude. A facsimile. Enough to fool the casual observer. Enough to extract the drug other people's interest, reflection that by hook or by prison sustains this condominium of cards.
Whether provoked by misfortune or endogenously (from the inside), whether during childhood or later in life it is all one and the same. A depression is a depression is a depression whatever its precipitating causes are or wherein degree in life it appears.
True, anxiety disorders and depression (mood disorders) do not belong within the same diagnostic class. But they are very often comorbid. In many cases, the patient makes an attempt to exorcise his depressive demons by adopting ever extra bizarre rituals. These are the compulsions, which by diverting vigor and interest away from the "unhealthy" content in additional or much less symbolic (although tremendously arbitrary) ways bring temporary relief and an easing of the anxiety. It is very typical to satisfy all four: a mood disorder, an anxiety disorder, an obsessive-compulsive disorder and a personality disorder in one patient.
When depressed, the patient will flip out to be an artist of sorts. He tars his life, people around him, his reviews, components, and memories with a thick brush of schmaltzy, sentimental, and nostalgic longing. The depressive imbues the entire thing with sadness: a tune, a sight, a colour, yet another person, a situation, a reminiscence.
The other style of depressive is psychomotorically active (once in a while, hyperactive). These are the patients that I described above: they report overwhelming guilt thoughts, anxiety, even to the purpose of having delusions (delusional thinking, not grounded in reality however in a thwarted logic of an outlandish worldwide).
Overly strict Superegos are broadly speaking coupled with weaknesses and vulnerabilities in all other personality structures. Thus, there isn't any psychic charter capable of fight back, to take the facet of the depressed person. Small wonder that depressives have fastened suicidal ideation (=they toy with ideas of self-mutilation and suicide), or worse, commit such acts.
This is a at ease little circle, charmed and emotionally protective if you consider that it is unfailingly predictable. Depression is addictive if you consider that it is a robust love substitute. Much like medicines, it has its own rituals, language and worldview. It imposes rigid order and behaviour patterns on the depressive. This is realized helplessness the depressive prefers to avoid instances even supposing they retain the promise of improvement.
The growth of the Ego is conditioned upon a a success resolution of the loss of the affection objects (a phase all of us have to move by way of). When the affection object fails the kid is furious, revengeful, and aggressive. Unable to direct these negative emotions at the frustrating parent the kid directs them at himself.
These poisoned garden sorts are all-pervasive. Not a unmarried aspect of the human condition escapes them, not one aspect of human behaviour avoids their grip. It is not smart (has no predictive or explanatory magnitude) to differentiate "decent" or "normal" depressions from "pathological" ones. There are no "decent" depressions.
Depression is a style of aggression. Transformed, this aggression is directed at the depressed person moderately than at his ambiance. This regime of repressed and mutated aggression is a characteristic of both narcissism and depression.
Originally, the narcissist reviews "forbidden" thoughts and urges (sometimes to the purpose of an obsession). His brain is filled with "dirty" words, curses, the remnants of magical thinking ("If I think or wish a specific thing it just would possibly ensue"), denigrating and malicious thinking concerned with authority figures (mostly parents or academics).
People often mistake depression for emotion. They say concerning the narcissist: "however he's sad" and that they mean: "however he's human", "however he has emotions". This is unsuitable. True, depression is a massive component within the narcissist's emotional make-up. But it mostly has to do with the absence of Narcissistic Supply. It mostly has to do with nostalgia for extra plentiful days, filled with adoration and interest and applause. It mostly occurs after the narcissist has depleted his secondary Sources of Narcissistic Supply (extra top notch half, mate, female chum, colleagues) with his fastened demands for for the "re-enactment" of his days of glory. Some narcissists even cry however they cry exclusively for themselves and for their lost paradise. And they do so conspicuously and publicly to appeal to interest.
My husband is a narcissist and is persistently depressed. Is there any connection between these two problems?
Depression is the acknowledgement by the depressed individual that a specific thing is so essentially unsuitable that there's no way he can win. The individual is depressed if you consider that he is fatalistic. As lengthy as he believes that there's a possibility however slim to extra top notch his position, he moves out and in of depressive episodes.
Amplified by an abnormally strict, sadistic, and punitive Superego this leads to a fastened feeling of imminent danger. This is what we call anxiety. It has no discernible external triggers and, therefore, it is not fear. It is the echo of a battle between one part of the personality, which viciously wishes to destroy the individual by way of immoderate punishment and the intuition of self-renovation.
This is a vicious and self-glorious prophetic cycle. The depressive feels valueless, doubts his future and his day holiday, feels guilty. This fastened brooding alienates his dearest and nearest. His interpersonal relationships flip out to be distorted and disrupted and this, in flip, exacerbates his depression.
The only legitimate distinction seems to be phenomenological: some depressives slow down (psychomotor retardation), their appetite, sex life (libido) and sleep (identified together as the vegetative) just proper points are substantially perturbed. Behaviour patterns change or disappear altogether. These patients feel dead: they are anhedonic (in finding pleasure or pleasure in nothing) and dysphoric (sad).
Assuming that these are clinically established info, there isn't any worthwhile connection between them. In other words, there isn't any proven high correlation between suffering from NPD (or having even a milder form of narcissism) and enduring bouts of depression.
No success, accomplishment, or support can break this cycle if you consider that it is so self-contained and self-enhancing. Dysphoric have effects on supports distorted perceptions, which increase dysphoria, which encourages self-defeating behaviours, which quit result in failure, which justifies depression.
The most severe cases (severity shall be manifest physiologically, within the worsening of the above-mentioned symptoms) present paranoia (delusions of systematic conspiracies to persecute them), and seriously entertain ideas of self-destruction and the destruction of others (nihilistic delusions).
Anxiety is not as some pupils have it an irrational reaction to internal dynamics involving imaginary threats. Actually, anxiety is extra rational than many fears. The powers unleashed by the Superego are so massive, its intentions so fatal, the self-loathing and self-degradation that it brings with it so intense that the danger is real.
Other depressions are "constructed into" the characters and the personalities of the patients (the dysthymic disorder or what used to be is termed depressive neurosis). One style of depression is even seasonal and shall be cured by graphic-therapy (gradual publicity to carefully timed artificial lighting). We all day holiday "adjustment disorders with depressed mood" (used to be regularly identified as reactive depression which occurs after a traumatic life occasion and as an immediate and time-limited reaction to it).
Depression is the most varied of all psychological ailments. It assumes a myriad of guises and disguises. Many people are chronically depressed devoid of even knowing it and devoid of corresponding cognitive or affective contents. Some depressive episodes are part of a cycle of ups and downs (bipolar disorder and a milder form, the cyclothymic disorder).
Depression can ensue at any age, to any one, with or devoid of a preceding traumatic occasion. It can set on gradually or erupt dramatically. The earlier it occurs the additional likely it is to recur. This seemingly arbitrary and shifting nature of depression only enhances the guilt thoughts of the patient. He refuses to settle for that the availability of his problems is beyond his control (at least as a just proper buy as his aggression) and shall be biological, to illustrate. The depressive patient continuously blames himself, or occasions in his immediate past, or his ambiance.
Perhaps narcissism is, indeed, as many say, a reversible determination. But it shall be a rational determination, making guaranteed self-renovation and survival. The paradox is that being a self-loathing narcissist is likely to be the best possible act of true self-love the narcissist ever commits.
The patient finally reveals it most convenient and rewarding to avoid human contact altogether. He resigns from his job, shies away from social occasions, sexually abstains, shuts off his few remaining associates and family members. Hostility, avoidance, histrionics all emerge and the existence of personality disorders only make issues worse.
But the stronger and extra rigid the defences and nothing is extra resilient than pathological narcissism the upper and deeper the hurt the narcissist goals to make amends for. One's narcissism stands in direct relation to the seething abyss and the devouring vacuum that one harbours in one's True Self.
Confronted with a horrible internal enemy, lacking in defences, falling apart at the seams, depleted by previous attacks, devoid of vigor of life the depressed wishes himself dead. Anxiety is about survival, the choices being, broadly speaking, self-torture or self-annihilation.
Answer:
