Narcissistic Personality - Protecting Ourselves

Protecting Ourselves

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I suppose professionals fear that a well informed public would rise up and call for a witch-hunt to discover everyone suffering from NPD/psychopathy and lock them up. In fact, there is already a move afoot in Great Britain for Dr. Robert Hare's Psychopathy Checklist to be used to identify and lock up psychopaths. In the United States, some want it to be used as grounds to impose the death penalty on criminal offenders eligible for it.

The movement afoot in Great Britain is based on the assumption that the government is responsible for taking care of us, cleansing our environment of anything dangerous, and thus making our world a utopia for us. The movement afoot in the United States stems from outrage at psychopaths being set free to do to it again and again and again by professionals and parole boards who just won't face facts.

But, though the threat predators like psychopaths and other malignant pose is serious, though they do a tremendous amount of harm in the world that must be addressed, it seems to me that this threat is easy to deal with and that doing so requires no Draconian measures of dubious morality and fairness that violate individual rights.

The reason I say that is because, as in the wild, predators kept at a safe distance are no threat. In the vast majority of cases, the prey has simply let a wolf in sheep's clothing get too close.

Even in those cases where a narcissist is abusing his or her own children, to get into a position to do that, he or she first had to fool the other parent into marriage.

This doesn't have to happen, at least not nearly as frequently as it does. A wolf in sheep's clothing can be recognized. The problem is that many people don't spot the signs of bad faith and mental illness. Or, if they do notice something that sets off their red alert, they blow it off.

This indicates that we need two things:

a well informed public

a change in attitude.

First, no more Big Secret. Everyone needs to know the truth, that there are predators among us. They seem just like the rest of us, so appearances and reputation mean nothing. It could be your grandmother, a bishop, the CEO of a major corporation, a senator, a psychiatrist, a social worker. They are everywhere, and we all encounter them.

Second, we each must measure out the trust we place in others with that truth in mind.

Why don't many do that? I think it's because of a seismic shift in attitude during the last few decades. As individuals, we have ceded the primary responsibility for our welfare to others.

For example, teachers complain that parents have shifted much responsibility for raising their children to the schools. Doctors complain that patients seem unwilling to accept any responsibility for their own health, doing nothing to take care of it themselves and expecting the doctor to keep them healthy.

Unfortunately, even though they complain, that's quite a head-trip for teachers and doctors. They are quick to take charge of your health and of raising your children, as if these things are none of your business. You should leave it to them, the experts, you know, because they know what's best for you.

But it's your children and your health, so what's it to them if they screw up? Their main motivations come through their income and remaining politically correct in their peer group of groupthink, no matter what the consequences to you.

In public safety, this others-take-care-of-me attitude has gone so far that many people think an individual has no right to defend himself. That's for the police to do. The individual is treated like a child whose judgment can't be trusted. So he or she mustn't ever hit back. Even in rural areas where the nearest police officer is many miles away, they insist that people have no right to own firearms. If the police can't or don't protect them, well, that's just tough: they must just die because they can't be trusted with the right to use force, even in their own self-defense.

Till not long ago, if you tried to patronize someone, he or she was liable to remind you that they were an adult with the reply, "I can take care of myself, thank you." But you almost never hear anyone say that anymore.

I once heard former Congressman Lee Hamilton (a Democrat and co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission) say that during the 1960's the constituents who contacted him for services were almost all essentially saying, "Get the government off my back!" But by the time he left Congress in the 1990s, the attitude had completely reversed so that his constituents were saying, "Make the government take care of me!"

Note that this is a Democrat, not a Republican, voicing concern over this change of attitude in the Land of the Self Reliant. One wonders what Democratic President John F. Kennedy would say about it, since he is famous for saying, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."

So, here we live, in a society in which 15–20% of people meet the diagnostic criteria for at least one personality disorder and 20–25% meet the diagnostic criteria for a mental disorder at some point in their lives. We are not Babes in Toyland.

Therefore, some of the crazy chatter we hear is just that, crazy. And among the personality disordered are narcissists and psychopaths, predators.

We feel sorry for people in the Third World who live in wild areas with, say, man-eating tigers to worry about. But we can't assume that since lions and tigers and bears (oh, my!) don't roam our streets we live in a safe environment and needn't be on the lookout for predators.

The good news is great news: most predators are easily discouraged. If they see that the moment they take one step too close, you are wary of them, they head off in search of easier prey.

One Step Too Close

Predators are quite ready to do this, because they are wary of you. Like sharks, on their first run, they usually aren't serious yet: they're just testing/tasting you. So, if you show them that you aren't naive, they're gone.

In bold, imposing closer encounters, you can just whack them on the snout. Divers swim safely among packs of great white sharks using this simple tactic as necessary. What do I mean?

When someone imposes to violate your privacy with a personal question, don't cave an inch: confront it. For example, you might say something like "Boy, you ask a lot of questions" or "I'm afraid that's none of your business" or "I'm going to keep that to myself" or even the simple "Why are you asking?"

When someone imposes to violate your privacy by presuming to be the judge of your personal, private choices, thoughts, or feelings, don't succumb to that flattering carrot or dodge that unflattering stick: confront it. You can say something like "That's up to me, not you" or "Who do you think you are?" or "You're not my judge."

Like I said, you can just whack them on the snout like this. By doing so you are keeping their nose out of your business. In the blink of an eye they're gone ... in search of easier prey. Just like that shark.

Really. recently, an abalone diver off the coast of Australia fought off a great white shark that had him half-swallowed head first!

Why? Because predators can't afford the injuries their prey may do them: those injuries might prevent them from successfully making future kills. It's the same with human predators. When they see that you aren't naive, they fear that you might sound the alarm to warn others about them. So they leave you alone, long before doing anything that you could accuse them of.

They are the ones who have crossed the line (of your personal boundaries), so they are the ones being rude, not you.

Moreover, caving in to impositions like this is dangerous, because predators view that as a sign of weakness. Now you're really on the menu, because they aren't just testing/tasting you anymore: now they're after you.

© 2004 � 2008, Kathleen Krajco � all rights reserved worldwide.
The URL of this page is: http://www.narcissism.operationdoubles.com/protectingourselves.htm.
It was last updated on 3/7/2008.
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