Narcissistic Defense, Guilt is a Mask for Anger, Controlling Others via People Pleasing & Being in the Moment

Narcissistic Defense

Sometimes, we don’t allow ourselves to feel negative feelings toward others, thinking that we’re “protecting” them from our anger/negative feelings. However, it is actually our desire to protect ourselves from others’ reaction toward our anger/negative feelings…

 

For Example:

Alex is feeling resentful that his mother doesn’t approve of his choice to be an elementary school teacher, as she wants him to make more money and be able to take care of his parents when they retire. Alex doesn’t verbalize his resentment, hurt and feeling of rejection from his mother. He feels guilty for “letting her down” instead. In reality, if he does tell his mother how hurt and rejected he feels by her disapproval, he is afraid that his mother would minimize his feelings and attack him some more.

  

Guilt is a Mask for Anger

When we have committed a real crime, including cheating on our significant other, it is natural and healthy to feel guilty. Short of that though, we usually feel guilty for not being able to meet others’ expectations of us. This latter type of guilt is actually us masking our anger toward the person who has imposed their expectations toward us.

 

For Example:

Chris feels guilty for not getting off his sick bed with a fever of 101.2 to take public transportation to his mother’s house to pick up the soup his mother so “lovingly” made for him when she heard that Chris was sick earlier in the day. Chris did not ask his mother to cook him chicken soup when she found out that he was sick. His mother didn’t tell him that she was cooking him the soup, and called up after having made the soup for him to come to pick it up.

What Chris is feeling deep inside - if he was to allow himself to feel it - is resentment. His mother went ahead and made the soup without first consulting with him whether or not he could come pick it up (he shouldn’t be going out into the cold with a fever!), and said to him, “How could you reject my love by not coming to pick up the soup I made for you?” So, he feels guilty for being an ungrateful son instead.

 

Treatment Suggestion:

To help a patient to get in touch with his anger underneath his guilt, we ask the patient, “If guilt is a mask for a feeling, which feeling might the guilt be masking?” We then help the patient to get in touch with his anger/resentment toward the person who is imposing their expectation on the patient. This alleviates the unnecessary guilt, and helps the person to identify his feelings, to feel his feelings, and understand why he feels the way he feels. We then help the patient to choose to do what is constructive in spite of his feelings…(Please refer to Blog Post 2)

 

Controlling Others Via “People Pleasing”

Some of us shy away from confrontation and tense situations, and end up twisting ourselves into a pretzel to please others. When we examine what’s behind this “people pleasing” behavior/mechanism, we find that we are trying to “prevent” others from feeling hurt or having negative emotions.

Many times, we are over-identified with the person in pain and we want to protect her/him from the pain. But by acting in the manner of pleasing the other person - sometimes “at all cost” - we are actually “saying” that they shouldn’t feel how they feel…we are therefore, controlling the other person’s feelings. After all, why can’t the person feel however s/he feels?

 

Being in the Moment

Whoever has a personal saving relationship with Christ Jesus will live in eternity in the presence of God. Emotionally though, all we have is this present moment. Every moment comes to an end. We have good moments, and they come to an end. We can have a bad moment, and that too, comes to an end.

When we find ourselves regretting our past, we are “playing the tape” of our past. Since no one has yet to invent the time machine, regretting our past and revisiting what did/could’ve/should’ve happened, will only lead us down a spiral of depression.

When we assume the worst will happen to us in the future, we are “writing the script,” as if we know what will take place in the future. Since only God knows the future, we need to stop acting as God.

So, all we have emotionally, is the present. The more we are able to stay in the present moment, the better chance we will have to build a better future.

Treatment Suggestion:

We help our patient to “Stop Playing the Tape” of the past, and “Not Write the Script of the Future,” and stay in the moment instead. We encourage the patient to take a deep breath, look around her environment and verbally describe what she sees in her physical surroundings. This helps to ground the person and to bring her back to the present moment. We tell the patient to feel the moment and to stay in it, knowing that this moment will pass.

When a person can embrace her bad moment (instead of trying to fight it by panicking), the bad moment will pass quicker. The more the person tries to fight the bad moment, the longer the moment lasts.

We tell the patient that this moment will pass. The more she is able to stay in the moment, the better chance she would have to develop a better future. We also tell her that she can decide what type of moment she will have next…by staying in the present moment. The paradox is that the more we embrace our present bad moment, the likelihood of a having a better next moment increases.