A Dose of White Narcissus

What an absolutely gorgeous wildflower, that denotes selfishness? If you have never heard of the term narcissism read on, you may learn something insightful. I thought it was interesting that Narcissism got notoriety amongst the wildflower family.

Let's be honest here, there is plenty of narcissism in my family. As I have said before, I am no expert in anything I blog (blab) about, unless it comes to the school of actually staring it in the face kind...I have been fortunate enough to have about 19 years of on again off again counseling with one of the most compassionate, insightful human spiritual beings I have come to know. What a benefit it has been in my life.

Sometimes narcissism is easy to spot and other times not so much. I do know some wolves in sheep’s clothing.

I'm not going to give advice on what to do with narcissistic people in your life. All I can say is, they are difficult, and rarely do they recognize their behavior and truthfully they can make life uncomfortable to downright painful for those around them...But if your life is miserable remember that is YOUR choice. You never change ANYONE but yourself. So you either live with it or leave it, or if you're the accommodating type, you live Your life around them. That's how it works. For better and worse, know the score.

Here are a FEW SIGNS of narcissism in its negative form:
They:
1) Need lots of admiration and attention from others
2) Feel a certain sense of entitlement
3) Feel the need to be unique or special in others eyes
4) More interested in their concerns than in yours
5) Want to control what you do and say
6) Pout
7) Fail to listen to you
8) Change the topic when you're talking about something that has emotional intensity for you
9) Manipulate you
10) Use emotional blackmail

There is a positive side of narcissism; yes we must have a certain dose of it to be healthy. I suppose we are always seeking for a good BALANCE in all things.

1) Have empathy
2) Have a sense of humor
3) Are creative
4) Able to delay gratification
5) Assumption of responsibility to self and others
6) A capacity to develop and maintain meaningful and satisfying relationships
7) A deep and broad range of emotional expressiveness (I like that one!)
8) Firm and clear boundaries

Fortunately or unfortunately when you look in the mirror you see a mixture of your parents staring back at you. Whether you want to admit it or not it's true! The real question is how aware of it are we, and which parts of them did we take the good, the bad or the ugly? Probably a little of all three?!

I worked with my mom for 20 years. Now she is just my mom and I like it that way. My sister is now my business partner and in many ways we are alike and in others we are totally opposite. My sister is my only living sibling. I guess it has been like having a double dose of watching me now that we spend so much time together... For better or worse, we definitely know the score and we always are on each other’s side 100 percent!