July 28, 2003

• FINALLY–back to NPD!

  I have been way remiss lately–lately?  Over the past I don’t know how long–weeks?  Anyway, I have been slacking off, partly due to sloth, mostly due to complacency.  And complacency, like anger and resentment and a few other separating emotions–is a “luxury” I cannot afford.  Addicts in recovery who get complacent, tend to go out and get loaded.  I have seen this happen in others, as well as doing it myself.

  
  

  When I last blogged about NPD, I had worked my way down the list to a biggie–”Overly dramatic presentation of emotion: could well be known as the ‘drama’ queen or king(negative emotions), exaggerates the importance of his experiences.” Yeah, that’s me all right.  And boy do I have examples.

  
  

  One that springs to mind is when I was a kid playing with firecrackers.  I put a bottle cap on one, it flew at my face, knocked a lens out of my glasses, and I got some glass in my eye.  Okay, this was, I suppose, a fairly scary thing.  I remember taking my clothes off and going to bed, for reasons that are still not clear to me. The doctor came, got the glass out of my eye, and that was pretty much it.  I had a hell of a bloodshot eye for a few days, but I don’t think my eyesight was permanently affected.  Here’s the NPD part–the last time I spoke of this in public, it was “I almost lost an eye.”  That was bullshit.

  
  

  My rationale was that it was a pardonable exaggeration, as I was trying to make a point about how dangerous fireworks are.  It was still bullshit, and NPD bullshit at that.

  
  

  Another example springs to mind, the damage I sustained from being handcuffed when I was busted.  In my NPD way, I dramatize this to show how brutal and callous the troopers were.  More bullshit.   I was drunk and disorderly, they busted me for having a pretty considerable amount of dope in plain sight, and as it was, I got off lightly, even though I had a PD–20 hours community service, six months SIS.  Big deal.

  
  

  Thing is, they always cuff people they bust, and I made it worse by struggling.  I had never been cuffed before, didn’t know how to act.  And I was going in and out of a blackout, for all I know, they might have warned me not to struggle. I do have some permanent loss of function in my right middle finger, it tends to kind of lock in position.  But hell, I couldn’t play the piano before the incident.  I should consider myself  lucky they didn’t really beat me up or shoot me.  They do that sometimes, you know.

  
  

  SuSu has pointed out that I holler before I’m hurt.  Hey, why waste time?  Why wait till the last minute is my lame rationale. Another lame rationale is that I am just expressing surprise.  More bullshit.  What I am doing is being overly dramatic, trying to get attention and/or narcissistic supply, playing the “poor me” game.

  
  

  I often do the “poor me” game in a more literal sense, pointing out my family’s poverty at every opportunity that arises.  And if no opportunity arises, I make one.  Okay, the fact is that our income is below the federal poverty level.  The Lions Club paid for my bifocals, and the ones SuSu wears.  Our two cars together are worth less than $3000.  But so fucking what?  What is so special about me in that respect?

  
  

  Easily 40% of the folks around here are in the same boat or worse off.  We own our home, as well as some property.  We own the cars.  We keep our credit card bill paid.  We often find useful things in dumpsters, or just laying on the ground.  God provides.  I have so much fun shopping at thrift shops I woldn’t want to pay the high prices for new clothes even if I could.  Heck, the first time you wash them, they are used anyway, just like the stuff we get for next to nothing (like a very good almost new trench coat for 50 cents, like a very nice Brooks Brothers tweed sport coat as part of a $5 bag sale) at the thrifts.  Sure, we could use some medical and dental care we can’t afford, but it is not life-threatening.

  
  

  The point is, I tend to make a big deal out of little deals, or even non-deals.  That is a big part of NPD in a nutshell.

  
  

  I AM getting a handle on some of this.  Used to be, when it rained when I wanted to work outdoors, sometimes I would literally get hopping mad.  I woulld literally jump up and down, shaking my fist at the sky like some third-rate road-show Lear.  I still get pretty testy in windstorms–boy do I hate wind–but I am learning, all too slowly, to put my energy into changing what I can and accepting what I can’t, instead of just acting like a petulant fool. For instance,  I figured out a real efficient way of covering my tables and stock, have yet to implement it. Also, one of my problems with wind was that it made my eyes hurt.  So I got some special eye drops which I use before the eyes start hurting.  And you know what–it works.

  
  

  (This is not rocket science, I know, and you may be wondering why such a brilliant dude  as myself has so much trouble with simple concepts, like “protect your eyes when in a wind/dust storm.”  This ties in with NPD behavior number 9–”lack of practicality,” which I will get to later.)

  
  

  My rationale for the overly dramatic presentation thing has been that, well, I’m just eloquent. Anyone else would present like this if they had my vocabulary, my gift of gab, my  years of experience at public speaking.  More bullshit.  The fact is, I am a recovering drama queen, and when someone some time ago pulled my covers on this, I pulled them right back over my head with a mixture of arrogance and defensiveness.  The fact is, I have NPD and misuse some of the gifts God gave me in order to be better at being disfunctional.  Disorderly.  Sick.

  
  

  One f the AA cliches about getting sober is “I got sick and tired of being sick and tired.”  Right now, I am just plain sick of being so damn disfunctional.  AA guys say that if the program doesn’t stop your drinking, it will at least ruin it for you.  In a similar fashion, my NPD therapy has not stopped all my NPD behavior, but at least I can recongnize it (sometimes–okay, rarely), and I can endure having it pointed it out to me without flying into narsissistic rage.

  
  

  I am sick of being a pain in the ass, I am sick of being burdensome to those I love and who love me, and I am sick of being unconsciously obnoxious.  If I must be obnoxious, it should at least be by choice and conscious volition.  It should NOT be a symptom.

  
  

  My therapist gave me some specific ways to transcend some of this negative programming that has dictated so much of my behavior over the past half-century plus. Perhaps by the time I have worked through the remaining specific NPD behaviors on the sheet, I can share some of that.

  
  

  Meanwhile, I have no idea what I’ll blog about next.  The next item on the list is “inappropriate attempts to control and dominate others.”  That’s another biggie for me.

  • 4:09 pm
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