When looks and appearance matter more than actual reality to a person, they have developed a Somatic personality disorder. People who care more about what people will say or think if and when they hear the truth or witness someone in an authentic state tend to be tunnel-visioned, short-sighted, profoundly emotionally and intellectually handicapped, and prone to treating other human beings terribly during any moment they are stressed or when they should be treating them in ways that show fond appreciation and social forms of authentic affection.
The Somatic Narcissist mother creates the problem for boys and girls. Their children tend to become the next generation of snotty children roaming the halls of their elementary and middle schools insulting other children for things like what they are wearing, how much money their parents or family has, what they look like, and trying to cause other people to look and to personally feel like lessers.
The more somatic a person is, the more they will typically tend toward extroverted behavior. It’s rare for a shut-in introvert who has massive social anxiety and no interest in what other people are doing, thinking, feeling, or wearing to be obsessed with getting into just the right nightclub or country club to impress other human beings who are typically vapid.
The Somatic Narcissist is a bit like the person with Histrionic Personality disorder in that they only seem to care about the impression they make on an audience. The more comorbid anti-social affectations a Narcissist fixated on social competition has, the more likely they are to treat love interests, family members, and their children like means while only ever thinking in their own mind of them as if they are useful — arguably socially necessary people to control but individually (personally) worthless objects.
Mother does not care if you want to go play in the mud with your brothers if you are a girl. You must play dress-up doll and keep her company while she grooms you to develop every neurosis and insecurity she has — only more devastating because she robs you of your sense of self.
Father does not care if you hate team sports. He only cares that you keep up with and exceed his own childhood measures of success. Whatever his parents put him through, chances are he will try to bully and con you into putting yourself through voluntarily, too.
A child groomed to obsess about appearance is a child groomed to obsess about appearance.
A young adult taught to value themselves and to appreciate the finer things in life is not the same kind of child who is handed everything, is allowed to act terribly towards others, is petulant and socially violent, and has no conscience about morals… only a nurtured fixation about labels. The high school-aged child given a luxury car as a reward at 16 for getting a 1-2 day per week job at his father’s company — a bribe to get him to show up to work — has been underparented and socially harmed by his caregivers in such a way that he and everyone who is forced to or willingly comes into contact with him will suffer daily as a result of the parent’s emotional hedonism for the rest of that child’s natural born life.
A great kid who works hard being a family member, at school, and who contributes regularly to their community is likely to learn the value of things like having friends and coworkers to collaborate with to achieve successes in life on collaborative projects. Kids taught to work for money to afford the nicer things in life that are self-indulgent and status aspiring miss the boat.
When looks and appearance matter to someone more than reality, the person afflicted lives in a dream world where they are on an imaginary stage seven days a week, 365 days per year.
The adults who groomed and nurtured them to be so self-conscious about things like what they look like, what they are wearing, where they live, how much money they have, how little other people have in comparison to the grandiose parent or toxic grandparent’s family unit did, what car they drive, what boat they own, where they go on vacation, how they spend their free time, whether or not they have the right job or go to the right schools, whether or not their children and grandchildren live in the right areas and live a lifestyle equal to or more socially impressive than their own (noting they love to take credit for family member accomplishment they had no part whatsoever in physically materializing or actualizing)…
The list of fears and concerns about how the person stacks up in social comparison and in competition with others goes on and on.
Who taught them that other people are constantly worried about, interested in, or thinking at all about what they are doing? Did Mommy Dearest and her Enabling Henchman fixate on other people’s appearance and financial status so frequently that you grew up assuming (errantly) that’s how everyone on the planet acts and thinks?
When was the last time mother or father read a really moving or challenging piece of philosophy material they understood?
When was the last time they went to the opera or symphony to really enjoy and to appreciate the music as well as the time spent by musicians perfecting their craft — instead of to see who was there with whom wearing what and to fixate on things like gossiping about who landed the wealthiest husband or who left their 50-year-old wife when the children were out of high school for that 23-year-old hot yoga instructor or the pool boy who used to serve as a lifeguard at the country club during the summer swim events for the kids?
The problem with all forms of Somatic Narcissism is it’s nurtured dysfunction. Lowering the EQ due to non-use is not only likely to freeze neuroplasticity, but it is also likely to leave the person taught by someone when they were little that they are the center of attention and the entire world is obsessed with looking at — rather than interacting with — them in a real neurological bind by or before they turn 65.
Somatic Narcissism is ultimately nothing more than a truly illogical and self-destructive form of a run-of-the-mill OCD obsession, rooted in delusional as well as magical thinking. It causes whoever develops the deviant thought patterns to become nothing more socially interesting or historically unique than someone with a scorching case of Codependent Personality Disorder who is prone to grossly abusing not only their family but literally everyone who they compare themselves to — positively or negatively — in general society.
A scorching case of Codependency.
Be sure to remind them of that the next time they inform you of all the reasons why they are so superior to you while telling everyone in earshot or who reads a verbal assault about how you mean nothing and are worthless to everybody. Because guess what they reveal when they do?
It’s all about them…
And in order for them to feel impressive, they must compare themselves in their own mind to others. It’s their evolutionary weakness, needing an audience — even if that audience only consists of the one person who they target for social or emotional abuse during any given moment where there are no other witnesses but they still feel like dishing out situational abuses.
Abuse that, if they stay true to nurtured Narcopath habits and patterns, that if you cry or respond as if you have been hurt by their words, they will ridicule you for feeling, deride you for sharing, and will mock and relentlessly. They weaponize whatever wound they caused in you as long as you live whenever you lend them an ear and are willing to grant them subjective credibility, knowing they are prone to self-aggrandizing and gaslighting.
If they were traumatized when they were little, they are likely to be non-apologetic when caught having done something to neglect or to socially harm you. They will tell you things like they did the best they could (knowing full well they didn’t) and that whatever horrible thing they initiated for you to develop serious PTSD and mental health issues with over the course of your life was something good for you… to build your character.
As if brutalizing people like little children who are in your care, siblings, a neighbor, a classmate, a work contemporary, or anyone is somehow good for any of us.
Sorry, magical thinking Hospitality Abusers.
What we know about life and health that you don’t is when you fixate on appearances to the exclusion of the development of healthy neuroplasticity formation, you self-harm. And we don’t. But you do.
And that, Somatic Narcissists, is your Achilles Heel style weakness. Because the longer we live, the nicer life tends to become for all of us. And while you are forced to go and go to keep yourself in the social limelight — exhausted and never feeling a sense of joy in the process — as well as to non-stop extrovert while running yourself ragged trying to keep up with or to outperform the Jones… while we sleep in late in the morning and sip lemonade in the afternoon on our porch followed by a nice Netflix marathon in our PJs or comfortably nekkie at night curled up with our pets and our mates…
You are busy thinking about us.
We’re thinking about what we feel like ordering in from room service or about what we feel like having for dinner.
After the first five or six decades, those of us who eschew socially competitive behaviors tend to enjoy a second childhood. A renaissance of the mind, to be most accurate.
What do all Somatic Narcissists have to look forward to throughout their lives as a result of their mindful behavioral choices to behave in ways that are morally deplorable?
Midlife crises galore. First, they are upset about turning 30. Then, oh my gosh — lookie there, they turn 40. By the time 50 and the age of AARP eligibility comes around at age 55, it’s literally (for them) all downhill from there.
And they know in their bones the only way to do things like to keep social power and control over their friends and their family is to literally do things like to offer to babysit for free, to buy people gifts, and to promise everyone that they are their secret favorite — tricking them into believing that if they stick around and tolerate the Somatic Narcissist’s endless attention-seeking behaviors that they will be richly rewarded after the Machiavellian Social Predator dies.
Then, at the very end of life, they write whoever treated them best out of the will. And or they inform their offspring who stood by caretaking them faithfully through their elderly years, tolerating decades of abuse and enabling it all willingly while thinking they were doing the right thing and that their own monetary and time sacrifices they made in their personal life to make their parent more comfortable will be shown appreciation by the toxic senior.
When mom looks you right in the eye and tells you something like she always loved, respected, and admired and liked your runner Golden Child brother more or dad tells you that he wished his whole life you were more like somebody else’s kid that he knows… pull the plug. Not on them — on your interaction.
Somatic Narcissists have no need for compassion. They place no value on people who display it, perceiving it as a social handicap or liability that could stop them from behaving in ways that are socially gluttonous.
Compassionate people are unlikely to aspire to become Robber Barron types or to profiteer ruthlessly. But Malignant Somatic Narcissists are — and what’s more, they really seem to care about what you are wearing, how you look physically, and they want you to know how much they disdain you personally or they dislike your taste in things like homes, interior decorating, cars, and mates.
Oh yes…
And if and when they summon you — they will be sure to inform the Security Team at the guard gate to let you into their exclusive community. Because keeping people out who they want to exclude only if and when they want in is their thing.
Let your gray rock skill set guide you through any interaction with one… noting the fastest way to get them to pay more attention to themselves than to what you look like or are doing is to compliment them. Seriously.
Or ask them if some item of clothing, their haircut, or an accessory they have is new.
That tends to keep them busy talking about themselves and fixating on their own self-aggrandizing for at least long enough for you to escape the conversation.
And if you can’t get them to stop trying to force you to listen to their endless prattle about their day and life challenges… or about what they look like… or about how far superior they are to you and to every other human being who they have met on the planet who is not a more sinister, deranged, or emotionally handicapped than them… excuse yourself to the bathroom.
Somatic Narcissists are the type of people to most readily lose interest in a person or a conversation if someone is boring to them.
Work the angle for all it’s worth in order to avoid having to spend any serious time listening to their brainwashing rhetoric about how great they are and that no other people will ever possibly be as great as them — except, of course, for their dead idols and most socially ruthless, bullish, and toxic parent.
That person — whoever did them the most harm by grooming Narcissism with a Somatic flair — is the only person the Somatic Narcissist is likely to have nothing whatsoever to say even remotely critical or negative about. Even after that person is long dead and gone, the Cluster B person who is intellectually inextricably prone to living life by comparison with no internal or central locus of control will always seek validation from Social Predators who remind them the most of whoever broke them when they were just little children.
People who are not codependent in their mindset are self-sufficient.
They need us to perceive their own senses of self. We don’t need them or their abuse of our hospitality to evolve and to mature in mind simultaneously with the body.
They need us to self-reflect using us as their internal mirror. We don’t need them.
Someone not obsessed with Somatic Narcissism looks around a room and thinks to themselves, “I wonder who here is nice and someone I might like to talk with or who I can learn something from about life because they are different than me?”
Narcissistic people look around the room and wonder to themselves who can I use to make me look good, to feed my own ego, or to con into providing free manual labor or reduced rate services for me while I seek to make them think that I am really someone or something.
Some THING is right.
They see themselves and other people like things.
We prefer to be verbs, people who are nice. If we appear to be acting or feeling some other way, it’s prudent to ask us what we actually feel or think before making errors of projection that we feel non-complex emotion like coveting, jealousy, socially competitive emotions, or some form of interest in what you look like or are wearing.
To anyone not socially afflicted with a Somatic Narcissist emotional, social, and intellectual handicap, things like honest behavior, acting with integrity (matching your public and private actions with your words), and living life in a healthy community-serving way tends to be our neural obsession. That, and making sure when we use our words to others or inside our own head that they are pro-social and an accurate portrayal of actual fact-based reality.
Not worrying about how to get other people’s attention.
