Is chronic anxiety a form of narcissism?
There’s something inherently narcissistic about ruminating on our anxiety. It’s a state where it’s all about what we’re feeling, thinking, and going through.
There’s a hyper-awareness of the Self to a point where it can become so overwhelming that it extends itself to others.
It indulges so many aspects of your being — from acquiring the stimulants that we need to feel better, or having a (sometimes valid) excuse to avoid a situation.
Anxiety can be debilitating for some. There are 5 major types of anxiety disorders, so to be more specific, the kind of anxiety I’m reflecting on is General Anxiety Disorder (GAD) which is characterized by feelings of chronic anxiety, having an inflated sense of worry, even when there is little or nothing to cause it.
I’ve been rereading Christopher Lasch’s, The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations and this section is worth unpacking:
“In the last twenty-five years, the borderline patient, who confronts the psychiatrist not with well-defined symptoms but with diffused dissatisfactions, has become increasingly common.
He does not suffer from debilitating fixations or phobias or from the conversion of repressed sexual energy into nervous ailments; instead he complains “of vague, diffuse dissatisfactions with life” and feels his “amorphous existence to be futile and purposeles”
…Although he carries out his daily responsibilities and even achieves distinction, happiness eludes him, and life frequently strikes him as not worth living.”
Let’s start with the term “vague, diffused dissatisfaction with life.”
When anxiety kicks in and we indulge it, what exactly are we worried about? Can we itemize these worries and pick apart their validity? These days, it’s easy to throw around “my anxiety is making me do this or not letting me do that.” Rarely do I hear empirical reasons for throwing the anxiety card.
Lasch’s book was written in 1978 but somehow still explains so much of what people are like today. It’s that, people expect modern life to be a therapy session — that a breakthrough is owed to everyone.
For me, to over-identify with anxiety is like having a sign around your neck that says “Caution: Fragile Inside.” Notice the term over-identify — because mental illness has become part of a lot of people’s identities. This internalized fragility has mutated into victimhood mentality which makes the source of anxiety more vague and diffused.
A Research on the Link Between Narcissism and Victimhood
A 14-day diary study in 2003 titled, Narcissists as “Victims”: The Role of Narcissism in the Perception of Transgression hypothesized that narcissists perceive a higher frequency of transgression toward themselves more than others. Essentially, from the point of view of a narcissist, the world is a harsh place and it’s out to get them.
The study did find a correlation between victimhood and narcissism from the sample of participants whose average age was 21. (I felt that it was worth mentioning the median age of the participants to avoid too much generalization.)
Key takeaways from the 2003 study by Mccullough, et. al:
- The motivational core of a narcissist is to maintain a positive image but with brittle and vulnerable tendencies. So they project a grandiose sense of self, padded by the over-projection of being a sensitive soul — not to be mistaken by their heightened sensitivity to criticism that goes against the ideal image they’ve built.
- The presentation of a sensitive and vulnerable side then becomes an excuse for their true negative attributes. In turn, their self-esteem stays intact because they can distance themselves from any accountability and actual effort to be a good person. They could say, for example, “I’m not making the money I’m supposed to because of my anxiety,” or “I’m just too out there for other people so I prefer to have fewer friends to get me.”
- Narcissists will often have distorted recollections of their past — often alluding to having a difficult childhood or having experienced trauma. The intention for this is to inflate whatever mediocre achievements they reach as adults. This tendency can even result in the blatant disregard of facts as well as other people’s lived experiences.
All this is aggravated by social media, the current culture war, the casualness of a constantly inebriated population, and the romanticization of mental illness and what we end up with is a term I’ll borrow from Noah Rothman in a podcast with Bridget Phetasy: “Babies with atomic bombs.”
Suffering, or the idea of it, has somehow become weaponized. Suffering from anxiety has even become a virtue — a religious, puritanical 16th-century concept that’s making a comeback.
All this is further punctuated by Lasch’s statement:
Our growing dependence on technologies no one seems to understand or control has given rise to feelings of powerlessness and victimization. We find it more and more difficult to achieve a sense of continuity, permanence, or connection with the world around us. Relationships with others are notably fragile; goods are made to be used up and discarded; reality is experienced as an unstable environment of flickering images.
Using anxiety as an excuse has the intention of manipulating situations to cater to our self-interest. Manipulation is what narcissists do.
The World is on Fire But The Birds are Chirping
But what if you’re not a narcissist? What if you’re just a pragmatic and realistic person? What if you’re indifferent? I’d like to think that I belong to this demographic and I find myself giving in to my anxiety 6 out of 10 times… maybe 7.
What I’ve started reminding myself more often these days is that: Two things can be true at once. It feels like the epidemic of reductive thinking demands reinforcement of this mindset.
That mindset is especially applicable to having anxiety and living in a world where things are actually also fine. Also, as natural troubleshooters, we have a tendency to highlight everything that can go wrong. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but I believe it shouldn't be a default setting.
I suppose the resolution still goes back to philosophy.
“It is what it is.” — Marcus Aurelius
This is not to invalidate how scared we can be because there are real threats out there. But it’s taking the time to parse through our thoughts and worries and which things are within our control.
It’s less about the Self but more about the Whole.
