There's a certain member here who will go unnamed and who reminds me of my father. ~quote Michael

I have had some of this happen to me as well, I have had two narcissists in my childhood that profoundly effected me. My father had narcissitic tendancies and my sister was constantly over ruling me. I was invalidated in all kinds of ways and the message that seemed to come out was that I had no right to my own opinion. When I come accross messages that touch on that, I do react, and not always appropriately.
I was invalidated so much in my life and not really taught how to overcome that by seeing someone else handle it effectively.

I've regretted it since the moment I hit "submit". Not for anything said in response, mind you. It just leaves me with a feeling of unease. But through sheer force of will (and partly because of lack of computer access), I've refrained from deleting it entirely. ~quote Michael

Yes, I have that problem as well. This is because it exposes us to critisizm and also leaves us feeling vulnerable. Honestly, no matter what a person struggles with, no one wants to reveal their vulnerable facets.

The problem with acting out on cues that remind us of a toxic person we experienced, is that sometimes we fail to see who the other person is or even that this person may have a similar issue. As I mentioned, I had this very same scenario happen to me and I REALLY had to stop and think about what it meant. This really IS a challenge when we have some very disturbing imprints that are negetive and opressive. If two people come from a similar oppressive background, it can result in only giving rise to the anger and it simply is NOT truely fruitful. It can escalate in a very bad direction because both people are expressing anger that is ingrained in them from the same kind of controling force. Once anger kicks in, reason goes out the window just about every time. It can be a problem for both individuals and hard to not continue looking at that other person as a source to let out old anger, or deep anger from the origninal source.

I have seen this take place a lot in different kinds of scenarios. I have worked with children that were picked on and controlled somehow. I give them attention and when I bring in another child that gets attention the original child is threatened. This has been a constant that I have seen happen in the field of horse showing as well.
Often there is no REAL team work, only a goal to stand out as ONE winner. There is a lot of narcissism involved that is the original source behind this phenomenom.

If I get a chance to work on this with the children and redirect it to a more positive direction, it CAN be overcome. However, if I cannot personally effect the change, then I simply have to bear witness to the damage that ALWAYS takes place. I hated going to horse shows for this reason. And I hated seeing how the horses were ridden into the ground because of the need for the win driven by narcissits that ONLY cared about THEIR EGO. The sad part is that the children never truely learned HOW to be WINNERS and REAL HORSEMAN. The horses were trained to carry and do ALL the work while the spoiled child sat and posed. These horses are VERY HIGH PRICED and just there for FEEDING EGO'S. Alot of these young riders could not really ride without the horse knowing HOW to execute the course. Most, if not all these children would not know how to ride and train a horse, could not really ride their way out of a paper bag. There was NO REAL learning involved, NO mastery of REAL SKILLS and NO sense of TEAM WORK AT ALL.

What I saw is that the REAL successful RIDER was often the lowly barn girl that did all the work and was the one that had to sit on the very untrained horses through all the stages of educating these horses. It was always nice to see when these lowly barn girls came from nowhere and WON inspite of all the MONEY and EGOS flashed around. There is ALWAYS a silence that follows that.

This world has really changed so much. Money and EGO talks. The coach for the US olympic team sees this all the time. He talks about the old days when children had to switch horses and show their REAL skills.
This is not permitted today and because of that the competition is skewed. When it comes time to ride in the Olympics, a talented horse is a must, but a knowlegable rider is also a MUST. The picking can be slim and a rider must be prepared to ride a replacement horse if the original mount is injured. The REAL professional are a whole different group of individuals. There really isn't any room for over inflated egos.

From what I have seen, I don't think narcissits are born that way, I think they are taught to be that way.
Once they are completely formed they can only see their OWN egos. From my own observations, it only creates a lot of all around waste.

Open Eyes