What is narcissistic collapse?

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I have witnessed a narcissistic collapse more than once. A collapse happens when a narcissist’s source of self worth mal-functions. For example, their significant other stops trying to make them happy. If they have no other sources of validation and they start to feel like they’re losing control of things they once controlled, they spiral. What specifically happens is their false ego starts to crumble. The false identity they have “installed” around them has been consistently validated by the source of self worth, maybe for years. When the validation stops, they are suddenly confronted with the reality that their false self isn’t actually real and isn’t actually worth anything to anyone anymore. They lose their identity. This is extremely distressing to them. This is no joke. I speculate that they feel like they’re dying. They are terrified like a small child lost in the woods on a winter night. They lose their self control and they lose their sense of how to behave. Their mask just crumbles and all that is left is a helpless, dysfunctional, terrified little child. This is as close as you will ever get to meeting their “true self”. This might sound overly dramatic, but this can really happen when the narcissist doesn’t get the “supply” they need. It is not a pretty picture.

They recover just fine, though. They find new ways to validate themselves, maybe a new partner, and they put the pieces of the false self back around them and they carry on.

 

Narcissistic collapse is a psychological state of extreme emotional crisis and distress triggered by the loss of a narcissistic supply—an external source of validation, admiration, and supply. It is typically seen in individuals with narcissistic personality disorder, but can be caused by significant life events such as the death of a loved one, rejection, or a major loss. This often leads to feelings of extreme insecurity, helplessness, self-loathing, and depression.

 

Ahhh, the infamous collapse, I’ve seen this up close and personal. The collapse normally occurs immediately after you have told the narc No, disagreed with the narc or caught the narc in a lie red-handed! This person may remind you of the girl in the movie “The Excorsist” minus the projectile vomiting! Screaming and hollering, you’re called every name in the book, they might even run up on you or swing on you! Incoherent paraphrased non sense, about irrelevant issues and matters will pop up in the collapse. The narc is cornered, you don’t believe the hype! The narc only collapses after the jig is up, even if they are denying your questions or accusations! Even when the proof is right in your hands !

Why societies collapse | Jared Diamond

http://www.ted.com Why do societies fail? With lessons from the Norse of Iron Age Greenland, deforested Easter Island and present-day Montana, Jared Diamond talks about the signs that collapse is near, and how — if we see it in time — we can prevent it.
Australia’s British identity has been a strength, but if failing to adapt to its Asia’s identity can be a weakness.

The issue that is — unfortunately — uniting Americans on the left and the right

Some of the tenured class that sets the intellectual tone of the left concluded long ago that America was built by oppression, is sustained by white privilege and requires the cleansing purity of social revolution (however that is defined). In this story, capitalism accumulates inequities that will eventually lead the rich to eat the poor. The American Dream is an exploitative myth. Change will come only through a coalition of the aggrieved. And those who are not permanently enraged are not paying proper attention.

.. It is unrecognizable to people — mostly white people — who regard mid-20th-century America as a social and economic ideal. The country has been fundamentally altered by multiculturalism and political correctness. It has been ruined by secularism and moral relativism. America, says the Rev. Franklin Graham, is “on the verge of total moral and spiritual collapse.” And those who are not permanently offended are not paying proper attention.
.. a poll taken last year found that 72 percent of Donald Trump supporters believe American society and its way of life have changed for the worse since the 1950s. And the most pessimistic and discontented lot of all was white evangelical Protestants. Almost three-quarters believed the past 70 years to be a period of social decline.

Those of us who remember politics in the Reagan era have a mental habit of regarding conservatism as more optimistic about the American experiment and liberalism as more discontented.
.. They are united in their belief that the United States is dominated by corrupt, self-serving elites. They are united in their call for radical rather than incremental change. While disagreeing deeply about the cause, they see America as careening off course.
.. What group believes that American society has gotten better since the 1950s? About 60 percent of African Americans and Hispanics.
.. Many conservatives have failed to appreciate the mixed legacy of modernity. In recent decades, the United States has seen declining community and family cohesion, and what former U.S. surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy calls “a loneliness epidemic.” “We live in the most technologically connected age in the history of civilization,” he says, “yet rates of loneliness have doubled since the 1980s.”
.. elevate and praise American ideals while courageously applying them to our social inconsistencies and hypocrisies.
.. And this might be matched with a spirit of gratitude — for a country capable of shame and change, and better than its grievances.