The last few weeks have been very painful, the negative transference and nothing working to pick me up like it use to. This has been my biggest "moan" in therapy of late. I told T that nothing works for me anymore. I can't seem to find an escape anymore. At one point I told her if this is what therapy does for you I don't want it, and she gave me an empathetic look and said, no thats not what therapy does for you, but my "panic" has been growing and I just feel like somethign has disappeared in my life...even today I was searching the web for answers to what I may be experiencing and found this artical and it describes exactly what I am experiencing right now!!! phew I can live with the pain if I know its part of the journey.....

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.Narcissism as an Adaptive Strategy

Narcissism is an adaptive defence mechanism. I adopted it because it worked. I am not worried at all: the minute it loses its utility, it will vanish. The second its dysfunctional disadvantages outweigh its adaptive advantages - it will hurt badly and I will get rid of it.

This means that the constant hurt that you are experiencing now is the shedding of your defence mechanisms, the transition from the larval stage to a higher order of things.

This persistent feeling of hurt is an alarm signal, telling you that your defence mechanisms are no longer working, that some Trojan horse penetrated your defences, that dysfunction far outweighs function, and that you have to re-adjust your mental jigsaw puzzle.

Defence mechanisms are viruses. They have no genetic material of their own. They infiltrate your cells and make use of YOUR DNA and use YOU for food. Getting rid of them entails a full blown process of DISEASE. Dis-ease. Hurt, pain, temperature, spasms, tears.

This is all in YOU. It has little to do with the real world. Reality is composed of hurtful and joyous things. If you are capable of noticing only the hurtful things - this is because you are using an emotional filter. It is a membrane generated by the slow death of your defence mechanisms, it is scar tissue as your wounds are healing. There is an interim stage where you are no longer in possession of your defences and not yet endowed with your scar tissue. The transparency in between is the filter that makes you see only the bad and the cruel and the shoddy and the shady and the dead.

This is a journey no one can take with you. Part of your healing is to fully assimilate the sad, terrifying realization that we are alone - always, completely and irrevocably. This does not mean that we cannot try to help each other. Nor does it mean that such help can never be effective. On the contrary, the only redeeming feature of human life is our ability to share it through empathy. BUT, it does mean that we must never be dependent. That we must travel our road by ourselves, at our own pace, in accordance with our handicaps and talents, as we deem fit. At the end of this path, only we await ourselves. When we finally meet ourselves, at the end of this course of tortuous obstacles - life begins.