Why “sad” people are attracted to narcissists.
Or why some teenage girls, Incels, depressed men and women… look up to very questionable people online and on social medias.
This is an essay, I’m not a specialist in psychology, but I have a few ideas I wanted to share.
I think, by looking around online, that a lot of people who suffer in their lives, are attracted to the lifestyles or personalities of narcissists people. Most notably since a few years, with social medias. This seems weird, or even absurd, for people who live a “healthy life”, with a healthy “self esteem”. So let me try to explain why exactly this attraction occurs, in my humble (not professional) opinion.
Because, in my mind, low self esteem people are on the opposite side of the “spectrum”, in terms of “feelings”, from narcissists.
I think when people suffer emotionally, they feel that they don’t have a lot of power on their lives, or on the people around them. So they wish they could be “stronger” emotionally. They wish they could feel less pain. They wish they didn’t care. And, from their perspective, the people who seem to be the “strongest” emotionally are the narcissists. Why? Because, as narcissists have a delusional idea of their grandiosity, they seem immune to depression and suffering. This is obviously a misleading impression, but a strong one nevertheless.
Most notably, the narcissistic people seem immune to one important thing, a thing that scares a lot of people: they seem immune to shame, and to what other people think of them. It’s not entirely true by the way, I read that narcissists have in fact a shame buried deep down, that they cope with by developing narcissistic personalities. But that’s not the topic here. I want to focus on the perception of people who suffer in this article.
I think that, indeed, some people who suffer in their life may have a heightened sensibility. But I don’t think the healthy solution is to over correct in the other direction. You see, in my opinion, emotionally healthy people are probably in the middle of this emotional “spectrum”. On one end you have people who are too much sensitive, in the middle you have healthy people, and on the other end you have people who totally lack “bonding” emotions, like love or empathy for instance (narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths…).
I think when you suffer, you instinctively want to “over correct” to the other side of the spectrum, and you don’t want to just get “a little bit better”.
In my opinion that’s why people who lacked love, or sex, sometimes want to “over correct” to become “players”, and so look up to Pick up artists gurus for instance. Instead of just wanting to be a little bit more socially adjusted. Or why people who lacked money, want to find easy solutions to become millionaires, instead of just looking for a better paying job. I think that’s also why people who feel they are not sufficiently appreciated, by their peers or even their parents (like a lot of teenagers), want to become famous “superstars”. Instead of dreaming to have a few good friends, or be loved by their parents, they dream to be loved and admired by the whole country.
I believe that’s also why some men, who don’t feel respected, dream so much about this “alpha man” concept. They don’t want to be a little bit more “included”, they want to become this abstract super powerful leader of men, and seducer of women.
I believe that’s also why some women look up to “superficial” symbols of feminine strenght like Kim Kardashian or Cardi B, and try to emulate their “sexy boss vibe” on social medias.
Of course, as most “well adjusted” people know, you really don’t need to be an alpha man or woman, or a superstar, or a billionaire, or to be immune to love and empathy to be happy. Thank god I should say. I would venture to say that having a few good friends, a decent job, and a good physical and mental health is usually enough. You don’t need to be immune to feelings also. You just need to be able to manage a little bit those feelings. I’m not saying in any way that it’s easy to be happy, of course. But I’m certain you don’t need those grandiose things to be. The things you need to work on are much more “mundane”. I’m not going to explain how to be happy in this article, that was not the subject, and I’m sure I couldn’t give you all the answers. But what I can say for sure, is that becoming a narcissist is really not the good way.
If you are worried about what other people think about you, I don’t think the solution is to stop caring entirely about other people feelings. The secret, I think, is more to relativize a little bit those feelings. To put them “in their place”. To understand that it’s not the end of the world if some people don’t like you, but not to cut yourself totally from those feelings.
The Buddhists talk a lot about the concept of the “middle way”. To put it simply, following the middle way means, to my understanding, trying to avoid the extremes of self-gratification on one hand, and self-mortification on the other. I think it is a very reasonable concept.
Having a healthy self esteem doesn’t mean thinking you are better than other people. It just means understanding that you are and will ever be, at a deep human level, neither better or worse than other people. It almost means, to not have any self esteem in a sense, neither good or bad, like Eckhart Tolle would say. It means to understand that people don’t have a “value”, that can be measured, like an object. There are not “high value” men or women. People are subjects, not objects, their value is “infinite”. Infinity is not really a number, more a symbol. You cannot add or subtract anything to infinity. Infinity minus a billion, or plus a billion, is still just the same infinity.
Don’t get caught up in the dreams of grandiosity we see on social medias. Don’t envy people who feel nothing. If you read books on sociopaths for instance, like The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stoot (it’s a condition different from narcissists, but which share some of their symptoms like the lack of bonding emotions), you will totally stop envying their detachment. They may feel no shame, but they feel no love either. Even for their children. What’s the point of being able to charm people, if you can’t love them back? It’s like having access to the biggest buffet in the world, but not being able to taste the food you put in your mouth.
Thank you, have a good day :)
