Committing to Humility

More from Enough About You, Let's Talk About Me Chapter 8:

p. 144 Humility is the opposite of pride because it reflects a lack of self-preoccupation, a willingness to serve, an acknowledgement that we are limited in our ability to control other people and circumstances, and an understanding that we cannot demand favored treatment. . . . it means being proactive in seeking reasonable treatment but doing so with a spirit of decency. . .

People who truly embody humility are quietly confident and are not prone to irrational outbursts . . . (humility) grounds a person in the realization that life is not always fair, yet it can be manageable. . . Even as they lay down the wish to play God, they also choose not to allow another human to assume the position of a god over them."

He's just annoying

About a year or two before she died, my mother in law kept saying "He's just annoying. He's not really a bad man."

She said this over and over in spite of the fact that she had lived more than 50 years with a man who was annoying at the very least, and selfishly, inhumanly cruel at the worst. Her desire to be a charitable Christian, patient and long suffering, giving up her boundaries and selfhood to placate him, allowed him to become entrenched in his behaviors so completely that great changes took place when the inevitable drying up of his influence began a year after she died.

I say a year because technically, he was her estate Trustee, mistakenly so due to attorney error, although he did no other work than signing his name. The actual work of settling the estate (as MIL had meant it to be) fell to my husband, and to me. FIL got plenty of Narcissistic Supply by having us take him to the bank, and the attorney's office, and having him sign endless documents, tax statements and estate checks. When the year ended, the solicitous attention did too; it was then that he began to rage and shout and lash out, in a futile attempt to get the rest of us back into line with the status quo ante.

My MIL believed him to be ADD, which is possible. I have known and taught ADD and ADHD students and found them to be capable of humility. My niece, who took care of her grandmother in her last six weeks of life, labels him as obsessive, which is obvious. MIL thought his predictable blowups could be traced to a building of need for the adrenalin that comes from runaway anger, so it could serve as amphetamine-like Ritalin, paradoxically used to calm the hyperactive. It's always the backwards reaction with him. Perhaps that's what was happening, I can't say.

But it's amazing how many fewer blowups he's had since she's been gone and his grandiose ego is so rarely rewarded, once he learned the raging and shouting and lashing out resulted in his audience turning their backs on him and walking away. And not coming back. Leaving him all alone with himself for company.

The injury is complete and no one pays attention anymore. His wife is no longer around to compensate for him and make him look good. His daughters make sure he has food to eat and his clothes are clean, but conversation with such a man always has been futile. His expensive and useless inventions sit rusting and crumbling. He locked away his money in an annuity and can't fiddle with it anymore. His biggest claim to fame, teaching a Sunday class once a month, lasted only half a year, since the powers-in-charge realized belatedly that he wasn't much like his son--my husband--who is a superior counselor/teacher. FIL was eased out of the Sunday teaching position that he abandoned family Christmas togetherness and risked his life for, flying and driving at age 83 in blizzard conditions, to make it to church in time for a disorganized and stuttering performance. Other callings, tailored especially for the bare simplicity his capacity demands, were no longer lasting. The large and needy family that so appreciated his garden tomatoes and beans and corn suddenly moved away.

In self-pity, he pines for his dearly departed wife. He misses the way of life she provided for him, the papering over of family pathologies, the closed mouth about the giant borderline elephants in the room, the passing along of blame to those of us who were sane and uncomplaining. The Narcissistic Supply so evenly handed out, the filling her role of devoted wife by fudging the truth here and quietly edging the burden onto her son, my husband, there. When FIL is happy, everyone can have a little peace and quiet.

He was and is annoying, but more to the truth of it, he is and continues to be pathological. Only now he has to behave better, because nobody rewards the adult temper tantrums anymore.

Enough About You, Let's Talk About Me

I highly recommend Enough About You, Let's Talk About Me, by Dr. Les Carter. Solid examples and clear, common sense writing.

Some excerpts:

p. 4 People with a full narcissistic behavior pattern are so completely, even pathologically self-absorbed that they lack empathy, can be thin-skinned, and demonstrate very low levels of true awareness of themselves or others.

p. 5 A high percentage of the people who come to me for counseling reveal that their problems have been either instigated or greatly worsened by very selfish or manipulative people . . . By definition, narcissists have a very low ability to incorporate someone else's version of reality because they see themselves as the ultimate keepers of truth. They admit no wrong, or if they ever do admit wrong, it is only a matter of time before they convince themselves they are actually right.

p. 10 Narcissists are not genuine. . . They are more interested in posturing for favorable reactions than being known as authentic . . . They enter relationships looking for ways to coerce others to do their bidding.

p. 11 Underlying the manipulative behavior of narcissists is a belief that they are entitled to have others do whatever they want or need.

p. 13 The need to be special is so central to narcissists that they repeatedly lie to themselves about their own importance . . .

p. 18 As narcissists ignore truth and invent their own alternative realities, they are not free but imprisoned by their own falsehoods. Over time, it becomes a prison they cannot escape.

p. 19 Narcissism represents personal immaturity at its worst.

p. 59 When you persistently tolerate others' rude or intrusive behaviors, you are saying that you do not believe that you possess enough dignity to stand up for your needs or convictions.

p. 77 Passive-aggressive narcissists find a perverse delight when they know they have generated strong responses of anger in others. As they witness how others fume or rage in response to their stubbornness, they indulge the thought, "This proves how you are inferior to me, and that means I control you."

p. 89 Narcissists define pain differently from the way the average person does. To them, pain means they are not getting their way. . . for narcissists who feel anger or pain at entirely reasonable demands or decisions, their response can be understood as an adult version of a toddler's temper tantrum.

p. 91 Narcissists anchor on the question, "What are you going to do to make my day go better?"

p. 94 . . . Holding them accountable to the consequences of their actions is one of the few ways to convey the message that you intend to be taken seriously. . . Because narcissists like being in tight control, they are likely to protest greatly when someone applies consequences. They will likely express outrage, but usually that rage is a cover for panic. . . They are so enamored of their own special status that they are convinced that others' lives would be much better if they would give them control. This explains why they can be persuasive, stubborn, and bossy.