We’re Just One Big Dysfunctional Family
The overt narcissist
Scenario: you have an obviously narcissistic, authoritarian father. You cannot understand why people can’t seem to see it. There are plenty of people apparently lined up on his side, but he’s a brazen bully. A braggart who engages in screeching victimhood narratives anytime someone dares to disagree with him. Or disobey him.
It’s so obvious to you, his child, that he is a pathetic coward. His brazenness comes from his fragile insecurity, and his total and complete inability to face any degree of reality. If he could, he would have to self-reflect and face his own shame. He shut out his capacity to get in touch with that a long time ago. His only interest since then is to impose on everybody else by forcing them to crush out their own apprehension of reality and reflect some positive view of him back at himself.
This guy is an obvious narcissistic emotional batterer. He is obnoxious, exhausting, and fundamentally a loser.
So why do people still support this guy?
The covert narcissist
Before answering that, let’s take a quick look at Mom. Your parents have been divorced since forever. She’s well educated, thoughtful, nice, seems to understand relationship dynamics, and is constantly declaring her wishes to do nothing but help people.
Except, in the end, she never actually does come out and help you. For the longest time, you saw her as the victim and fellow fighter in this relationship. But it turns out, she’s codependent. If she didn’t have your dad as the villain in her life, she’d have to take a look in the mirror herself, wouldn’t she? And then, all of that virtue signaling about helping people and caring for others would kind of fall apart. In her own way, she’s just as controlling as he is.
She’s really good at selling that guise of understanding, supportive rescuer. But somehow her help never takes into account your wishes at all.
Somehow, this supposedly safe and supportive being erases you out of existence just as much as the authoritarian. Her unsolicited advice and covert criticism never seem to stop. It’s all supposed to “help”, but did you ask her for help? Of course you needed her growing up, but this dance of dysfunction never stopped, though you’re well into adulthood.
Where’s your agency? What happened when you asserted yourself? Then, you noticed that your supposed caretaker suddenly turned into a bully/victim too. ” I’m only trying to help, ” she said in a hurt voice, as if you’ve done something terrible by trying to think for yourself. This “help and praise” always has strings attached. In fact these strings are almost like IV tubes that constantly drain your life force away.
You, traumatized
You noticed you had to cut off your own agency in order to reflect her “helpful” persona.
Eventually, you had to strike out on your own and take charge of your own agency. You had to do the tough work of defining what was happening, breaking the cycle, and healing. You realized that to do this, you simply couldn’t stay enmeshed with these parents. Despite their insistence that it was all for your own good, they never had any help to offer you.
Everything they did or said fostered, not toughness, not support, not help, but dependency. There’s no psychological air for you to breathe if you stay close to them.
So you finally broke away and worked on raising yourself. And now you’re stronger. You know how to work on yourself. You’re ready to take a place in the wider world. You want to reexamine your beliefs and get involved in culture, in politics. What do you find?
The larger system
Well, shit. Shit shit shit.
An obnoxious, overtly abusive, fragile, deluded, authoritarian figure on the right. And on the left–the optics are better. But it’s just as controlling underneath. A covertly controlling, dependency-fostering, condescending, censorious group that’s always shrieking about how caring, concerned, helpful, and enlightened they are. Unless you dare to disagree or critique.
Where’s the room for your autonomy and agency? Who is defending any level of freedom for adults who have the right to their own agency?
There’s no one. There are some thinkers who are fighting, refusing to let classical liberal ideas go. But in politics. No one.
We’re in the midst of a rapidly degenerating cycle of toxic politics. The same swinging back and forth. We’re stuck in the same cycle as trauma from families that are stuck in generational trauma cycles.
There are two sides and a whole bunch of people thinking that they have to pick one or the other to take care of them.
The abusive dad is back in charge right now, and the covert mom is very smugly feeling as though she has been vindicated. Because hasn’t she told us this is who he is all along?
But if we do enough work on our healing, we see that both of these people prop each other up in this sick, codependent relationship. They’re enabling each other.
If this is very clear when it comes to a personal relationships, why is it not becoming just as clear that this is exactly what’s going on in our politics?
If you’ve rejected both sides, you’re ahead of the game. Things will not improve by continuing this cycle of extreme polarization.
The right is plumbing the depths of authoritarian depravity. They are consolidating a dictatorship right now; make no mistake. So vote blue and join forces with anyone you can that is fighting for anything resembling democracy at the moment.
But do not kid yourself if you think that the solution is to hand these same levers of power to the political left. We will quickly see then that the left is just as authoritarian is the right. They just have better PR.
Now what?
It’s time to claim our own agency. What we need to be fighting for are rights and freedom. Freedom not to control our neighbors or to keep building out social safety nets. Actual agency. Basic rights- the right speech, to property.
It’s probably unnerving enough just to look at what’s happening. It may be much more frightening to accept that there is no side that has much better answers. But it does no good to stay stuck in the cycle of abuse.
Don’t let yourself be polarized into the same old rhetoric by the danger of the current situation. Think about who’s the most moderate, reasonable voices out there. Seek them out. Support them. And don’t give up.