Reflections on Narcissism and the Refusal of Suffering

Sometimes, we encounter people locked in a peculiar struggle—wrestling with profound inner suffering they refuse to name. They seem to run from a shadow, a pain from their past or their nature, yet this very flight often leads them into greater difficulty. It’s a paradox that invites questions, especially when this pattern hardens into something resembling narcissism.

I started to wonder about such people, those who have faced difficult lives but have not yet accepted that feeling of difficulty. Underneath their composed exteriors is a feeling of unease and a kind of resentment towards anyone who would challenge their fate. For example, someone who has been offended by the smallest of gestures:

“How could you treat me like that?” They would ask, “you don’t know how difficult my life has been.” It seems in this narrative, they have begun to not only victimise themselves, but also make enemies out of everyone else.

I wondered whether this was a kind of narcissism because narcissists usually victimise themselves—especially vulnerable narcissists. I’ve tried to think about why people are so self-obsessed. Why they’re not able to see beyond their own experience. I started to question if any of this had to do with the refusal of suffering, the denial of one’s fate.

Of course, we talk of narcissism as if it affects only a few, but we all have certain narcissistic tendencies. If we reduce the fundamentals of narcissism to self-obsession and self-centredness, then we will find that in order to live life, all of us have to engage in this kind of perspective. This self-focus is, perhaps, a natural function of the ego, the part of us concerned with identity, survival, and navigating the world.

Healthy self-esteem, a sense of competence, the drive to achieve—these can share roots with narcissistic traits, representing an ego functioning in a balanced way. But where it goes too far is when this kind of orientation becomes destructive, where the ego’s needs eclipse empathy and authentic connection. And by destructive, I also mean in situations where one finds it hard to keep harmony in their relationships. So we could separate this into healthy and unhealthy forms of narcissism, the latter being the focus of this exploration.

A culture of narcissism Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash

It seems like people come into this life with their own challenges and limitations. These are not only defined by their circumstance, but also their temperament and personality. Once they reach a certain age, there is a necessity to surmount challenges and work on these issues of personality. I think it is here most people get stuck. They’re not able to let go of these ideas that life has always treated them a certain way, and in the end, this philosophy sticks with them throughout their relationships, work and life.

This running away, this refusal is what psychology might call a defence mechanism. Denial becomes a shield against the sharp edges of their reality, a refusal to accept the hand fate has dealt them or the limitations of their own nature or the reality of their own insecurities. And often, what cannot be accepted within is projected outwards; the flaws and pains they deny in themselves are seen and condemned in others, clouding their interactions.

Beneath this shield, a carefully constructed persona often takes root. This is what some thinkers call a ‘False Self’. It’s a necessary fortress built in early life, perhaps, to protect a core too vulnerable for the world as they experienced it. Yet, this fortress can become a prison, preventing authentic connection, even with oneself, locking away the very feelings it was meant to shield and demanding constant validation from the outside world to maintain its structure.

I wonder if this is why people who have had difficult lives can be so vindictive. The tendency to be angry when they’re hurt. I guess it is their only protective mechanism where they couldn’t show sadness in their environment. But there is also a deeper layer: the inability to feel sadness. I read somewhere once that a narcissist truly pities themselves, but is never able to verbalise or truly feel that feeling. It remains a buried ache, inaccessible. Anger becomes the only permissible outlet when vulnerability is deemed too dangerous.

This profound sensitivity underpins their reaction when challenged. A seemingly minor critique, a boundary set, can feel like a devastating attack, triggering what psychologists term a ‘narcissistic injury’. The resulting anger or vindictiveness is beyond a simple hurt; it’s an explosive defence against the perceived threat of annihilation to that fragile, defended self. A desperate attempt to restore the shaky balance of their self-esteem.

What is troubling is how this kind of philosophy causes hurt and distress to the people around them. Because of their situation, such people have developed a lack of empathy and as a consequence, they trained themselves not to perceive this distress.
“Everything is fine,” they say. “is it not?”
They seem genuinely unable, or unwilling, to register the emotional impact of their actions.

The complexity of human connection Photo by Klara Kulikova on Unsplash

This inner turmoil often spills outwards. Because they cannot face their own difficulties, they may unconsciously project these onto others, finding fault or assigning blame where it doesn’t belong. This can create a confusing picture: sometimes they might strive to appear morally upright, yet simultaneously act with a sense of superiority that feels exhausting to witness and contradicts their claims.

Beneath this, there’s often a profound restlessness. Anyone avoiding their own feelings will feel uncomfortable in silence. They struggle to sit with their true feelings, to find stillness. Instead, they constantly seek external distractions—obsessions, new actions, thrills, or novelties. This relentless pursuit is often a desperate attempt to keep the deep-seated suffering, the feeling they refuse to acknowledge, at bay. Their actions, though seemingly selfish, are driven by this need to escape their inner state.

This constant running and avoidance breeds a deep dissatisfaction, not just with themselves, but with life itself. And this pervasive unhappiness is often projected most intensely onto those closest to them. Loved ones can find themselves judged harshly, condemned, or dismissed, seemingly out of nowhere. Naturally, this causes hurt and increases sensitivity in those around them. Tragically, this very sensitivity is often met with further condemnation, locking everyone into a painful, repeating cycle of blame and resentment, where genuine connection struggles to survive.

This internal landscape—the focus on self, the avoidance of deep feeling, the need for external fixes—finds echoes in wider cultural observations. The historian Christopher Lasch, in his 1979 book The Culture of Narcissism, diagnosed a societal shift towards intense self-preoccupation. He described the rise of “psychological man,” feeling alienated and insecure, constantly seeking affirmation from others rather than grounding themselves in history or community. As Lasch noted, “To live for the moment is the prevailing passion - to live for yourself, not for your predecessors or posterity.”

Lasch’s cultural critique resonates powerfully with the individual pattern we’re exploring here. The person avoiding their suffering is living intensely in the moment, precisely to avoid the weight of the past. Their focus on their own needs, their search for validation or distraction, mirrors that “psychological man” seeking external props for a fragile sense of self. It suggests, perhaps, that these individual struggles are sometimes amplified by, or find fertile ground in, broader cultural tendencies.

The hidden wounds we carry Photo by Sergio Rodriguez - Portugues del Olmo on Unsplash

The difficulty with such a person is not how to handle them, but how to stop them when they go into their fit of anger, despair, and victimisation. This is an often-repeated cycle of their inability to feel the feeling that has always accompanied them. This experience is very painful to watch from an outside perspective because those who can see, can feel; they are made to feel what this person is going through. When the fit subsides, the narcissist does not remember much, for this is an eternal recurrence for them. But the people close to the narcissist remember and feel this fit very vividly.

Empathy is the natural human response to another person suffering. In a strange way, the narcissist uses this empathy to enslave the people around them to their own aims. This manipulative aspect of a narcissist is also something that comes across as Machiavellian in nature. However, it is more of a way for them to keep their sanity amid the undercurrent feeling that is causing them to lose it.

The question lingers: why do they do this? I don’t know for sure, but perhaps reflecting on my own path offers some perspective. While I myself can say that I’ve had a difficult life as well (like many people), I have not descended into this narcissism because I cultivated the ability to feel. Feeling is very important because it is immediate, but it is also linked to our past in a very raw sense. Feeling often doesn’t condemn but reveals whatever is. Feeling tends to open the perception of any person to their real lived experience, and if one has the ability to reflect, then they can often make profound changes in their life.

But the lack of feeling, or the overriding of feeling by thought, is often the cause of this malaise that we call narcissism. For the person who is totally self-obsessed and self-centred, we should feel pity, for that is not an easy experience to go through—to not be able to channel into one’s own feeling, to constantly need something or someone to distract them from it, to always live in this restless denial of everything except their own desires and wishes. That seems to me like a very tiring experience of life.

But does this mean I should let a narcissist control me? No. I would even challenge them so that they can understand how to go beyond themselves. Even feeling suffering through someone else is a beginning.

But I must concede that I do not know more than this, for fixing something like this is beyond the scope of someone who has not been there and emerged out of it. I also wonder if this is something to be fixed. Maybe ‘outgrow’ is a better word. For when we say fix, we label something as wrong and problematic, while the act of outgrowing something means that it no longer serves a purpose in this stage of life.

Maybe narcissism served a purpose socially in the past generation; maybe it still serves a purpose culturally in many different places. Maybe this excessive self-centredness is not a problem, but a very common fact of the way people cope in society. Certain people probably use this “technique” to cope and engage with society. Maybe this isn’t all bad, for the people who I have had in my life who one may call Narcissists are still good people. They are wounded people, but I truly believe their heart is in a good place. I talked about this with a friend once, and I said, “Regardless of what I said, I still like you. You may talk only about yourself, but you think about others, do things for others. I admire that.”

So it is also a lesson in life that not everything that is bad, is all bad and not everything that is good, is all good. More often than not we get strange mixes of the two in life, and in the people that we share this life with. Sometimes we have to make do with what we get and try and have the best experience from it. But no matter what situation we find ourselves in, whether we are expressing narcissistic tendencies, or we are dealing with someone who does, the prescription is the same: be empathetic to the experience of someone else. We must all try to feel what someone else might be feeling, and that in itself is a saving grace. It not only gives us the ability to get out of our ego-driven perspective, but also allows us to feel. And feeling, in this world, in today’s society, is all important.

It is very natural, though, that the ego wishes to take centre stage, and narcissism is probably just a manifestation of this tendency. It is possible that these people feel a conflict that those who do not express this tendency, do not know of.

So, we arrive at the point where we may not have solved anything, but we have understood something. For the experience of such people not only teaches us that empathy and feeling are important, but also that the desires of the ego will never be fulfilled, and if we give ourselves over to the ego, then dissatisfaction will forever be our friend.

To end this, I would only like to say that we should strive to be kind to those who we find in such situations. They are not bad people; they are good people dealing with a bad circumstance, a circumstance they have not been able to accept. So it is our duty to try and offer them this understanding, as well as not being available to engage in their fits of despair. More than this, I believe we cannot do. For the ways of human life, the soul and all the things that drift in between are not known by this mind that thinks. It is known by this heart that feels and this entire being that lives life to experience it. We cannot know, but yet we should try to understand.