If I want to feel close to people, I’ve learned to listen for the essence of what they’re trying to express, which may or may not be directly conveyed by their words, the topic under discussion, or the position taken.

Since the 2016 election, and more acutely since the January 20, 2017 inauguration of President Donald Trump, I have been listening through the news, social media, and personal interactions, trying to hear what Trump’s supporters are expressing. I listened to several supporters on February 1, 2017, when NPR reporter Susan Davis interviewed Republicans on their views about Trump’s executive orders on immigration policies.

When I’m listening to adults, I assume they have reasons for what they’re saying that make sense to them. I assume they’ve learned through bitter experience to protect their feelings and to state reasons for feelings rather than the feelings themselves. I assume humanity, i.e. people will feel better or worse on some days, express themselves more or less clearly at some times, and simply make mistakes. I assume thinking fluctuates, evolves and regresses. I assume good intentions.

What I think I’m hearing is that Trump’s supporters want to feel safe geographically (immigration), financially (jobs), and morally (religion, abortion). They don’t feel safe – in fact, they feel threatened – they’ve tried individually and collectively to do something about it (Republicans vs. Democrats), that hasn’t worked, so now they want someone in power to make it happen. Regrettable means may be necessary, but they’re justified by the end in mind, i.e. safety and security.

I’ve learned that, if I want to have a working or close relationship with someone else – and I’ve discerned that the person is capable of it – after I listen, I need to try to understand. Internally, I discover and acknowledge my own position which may differ significantly from the other’s – in this case, until the election, I felt geographically, financially and morally safe in America – but I try to use my mind and heart to think and feel as the other person might. So, wanting and needing safety makes sense to me. Feeling threatened triggers my own survival instinct, the fight-flight-freeze response, an acute and destabilizing state of stress. I understand how alarm leaves no room for nuance and negotiation and any-means-necessary can kick in as an imperative.

Then I ask the person, Have I understood what you’re thinking? Is that what you’re feeling? I listen to the answers and refine until I receive confirmation that I do understand.

Then I seek common ground.

In her report for NPR, Susan Davis states, “[W]hen it comes to Trump, Democrats and Republicans are often living in parallel universes.”

In his article on how Chavez came to power in Venezuela, Andrés Miguel Rondón writes, “Don’t feed polarization, disarm it.”

In seeking common ground with adults, I assume at 58 something I could not fathom at 28: Opposing sides may both be true. Or truth may exist on a continuum. Or we may be in the wrong universe not even talking about what’s really the problem. And I, individually, never know enough or understand enough to make a perfect choice. I am limited to making the best choice I can with what I know at the time. Similarly limited are my paradoxically tough and fragile fellow human beings.

Fear may be the mind-killer. But judgment is the killer of connection.

To seek common ground, here is the question I ask:

How might we work together on this?

Asking the question requires vulnerability. Asking the question requires risk because the response may evoke shaming, rejecting, belittling. Asking the question asks all parties to suspend connection-killing judgment, at least for a moment. The answer may not be one we want to hear. The answer may alarm us, triggering a fight-flight-freeze reaction, or the more weighty, strategic decision to go to battle.

But not asking the question keeps us polarized, separated, disconnected.

What we want, we don’t have. We are not safe when we are not together.

How might we work together on this?

. . . . .

Photo by Zane Queijo

What a person without narcissism needs to understand about a person with narcissism is one simple word: won’t. The person with narcissism won’t understand, won’t realize, won’t empathize, and won’t change.

No matter what one says or does, no matter how vulnerably one reveals or starkly one demonstrates, no matter how impeccable the facts one cites, the elegance of one’s logic, the passion of one’s outrage, or the eloquence of one’s appeals to humanity or rule of law, the person won’t say or do anything other than what the person is saying or doing right now, regardless of what the person might have said or done previously.

Logical, rational, insightful, informed, well-meaning, moral people who have someone appear in their lives who has narcissism will end up in paralyzed, demoralized despair if they keep pulling the hope lever. Wishfully, wistfully thinking “If only they…” and making one more attempt, then one more, results only in exhaustion, sometimes in punishment. Nothing can be done. The person simply won’t.

How can this be? Psychologically-minded people might attempt to analyze what’s going on within the person with narcissism. They may gain expert insight into the origins, manifestations, and recommended treatments for this person’s particular form. Their smarts and efforts are for naught. The person won’t.

That means that no matter how keen probability models might be, no prediction about the words or actions of a person with narcissism is possible.

People who have a person with narcissism appear in their lives are plunged into a chaotic reality. What happens next is unpredictable and intermittently volatile, and they are powerless to influence any of it. The new reality operates in opposition to all natural laws of human connection. People logically begin to question themselves. “He/she is a person, I’m a person, and we should be able to understand each other. If we can’t, it must be my fault. I’m not trying hard enough, I’m not saying or doing things in the right way, I’m not good enough…” No matter what one tries, says or does, no matter how one attempts to transform and improve, the person won’t. Minds and hearts break under such circumstances.

In situations where interacting with a person with narcissism is optional, people usually opt out. However, if a person with narcissism appears in one’s life in a position of power from which one cannot extricate oneself, perhaps as a partner, parent to one’s child, neighbor, boss, even chief executive, only one priority can exist: safety.

Safety has to be the one and only goal because no other goals are possible. The person won’t hold to negotiated agreements no matter how contractually we obligate him or her. Deal-breaking can range from showing up late for our coffee date, to breaking our terms of engagement when discussing conflicts, to delayed paperwork. Protesting, “Yes, but you said!” is based on the fallacy in logic that a person with narcissism operates with a knowable code. Unless they’re keeping their word right now, in this moment, whether or not they will do so in the future is an unknown.

The only way to deal with someone with narcissism in a position of power is to accept powerlessness rather than to resist it. This requires initially overriding one’s survival instinct to do anything and everything to right wrongs and create life-nourishing stability. Paradoxically, accepting the reality of unchangeability and volatility creates a different kind of power: the power of strategy.

The only triumph over a person with narcissism in a position of power is to outlast them and, while doing time, outgrow them. People move on, lose favor, age or weaken, and so, too, eventually, will the person with narcissism in your life.

That means developing the ability to access to one’s full heart and full mind at all times, developing excruciatingly, on-going, meticulous control over one’s potential reactions, and using discernment, moment to moment, about what to say or do, or not say or not do, all with the intent to foster one’s ability to protect oneself and others and to grow. No more is one dissipated by attempting the impossible, i.e. to influence the other person by pleasing, appealing, arguing or explaining. One acknowledges that both too much and too little may escalate the interaction and provoke attack. One accepts that what one says and does has no discernible causal power over the other person’s reaction, only over how one builds one’s own inner power or weakens it. And to do that in the next moment. And the next one.

To use one’s energies on oneself and one’s purpose – safety for self and others – rather than on the impossibility of the other person, frees one to grow the power, strength, fitness and endurance of one’s own heart and mind to be able to handle whatever happens. Further, “strength in numbers” is a cliché because it’s true. One can examine which relationships one has that are strengthening, and work on deepening those and building new ones.

The corollary to this is to have as little private, unwitnessed contact as possible with the person with narcissism and to remove oneself from such situations as soon as possible. People with narcissism can be highly adept at engendering self-doubt about one’s own perception of reality and one’s own worth and competence as a person. Alone time can trigger the conditioned response of pulling the hope lever. Alone time drains energy rather than restores it.

In addition, attempting to understand and or empathize with a person with narcissism, or speculating whether or not the person is impaired and could be treated and healed, wastes precious resources that could be used for growth. No matter what, the person won’t. That is the state of things.

People who are imprisoned, whether physically, emotionally, relationally or politically, have choices about how they spend their time. The walls are what they are. If someone with narcissism has unexpectedly appeared in your life, this is my advice: Master yourself, grow yourself, take care of yourself and your fellow inmates, protect yourself and others the best you can, perform triage in aftermaths, and prepare to be able to access your full heart, full mind and wise strategy for the day when the person with narcissism is just about to harm the children.

Image: iStockphoto