Ideas are where I go when I'm feeling narcissistically injured -- numbs out the pain and the aggressive energy can sometimes be used to try to understand things, maybe "fix" them. Yes, in a community you certainly can't "fix" anybody but (maybe) yourself, and that is certainly very hard enough. And the aggressive energy that fuels my thinking isn't so pleasant to be around.

So, when injured, so the theory goes at least, people with PD's are "rigid" and not flexible in the ways they try to build their sense of self (back).

Grandiosity and rage are one way, intellectually "rising above" is another, hurting people back who hurt you is another.

But, quite normally, some people whom you hurt aren't likely to want to be around you very much. And when the grandiosity that you use to help yourself feel better has a "know-it-all" quality (I'm speaking of myself as that being likely how I come off sometimes) that doesn't make other people feel so good either.

When I entered my last therapy I told the T that I could either be all about the other person or all about me. No inbetween.

That's what's missing for me -- a group of people, a "place", where I feel I belong where I feel accepted for myself, even when I mess up. Maybe I still get triggered and therefore not so pleasant to be around when I mess up because that used to get responses that said "you don't belong, I don't like you" when I was growing up. But looking to repair that situation with one T has apparently just been too much of a load.

I'll keep posting here, too. If nobody is fleeing or freezing (including freezing out others) or fawning, maybe we will get over the fight.