Transcription
A lot of the suicides in the context of narcissistic pathology, not all of them, but many of them, are not associated with the presence of significant AIS. One pathology, in other words, people may not experience significant depression at the same time that they become very suicidal. And that's another reason that they could fly under the radar of, um, significant others, uh, but also mental health practitioners, because, um, usually people associate suicide with the presence of mood disorder such as depression.
Another characteristic feature that, um, that seems to be quite common is a certain level of secrecy related to suicidality. So effectively, what happens is that many of those suicides provoke shock and surprise in people around them that feel like it was a complete, uh, that it took them by surprise. They have never anticipated that the person would go on, on killing themselves, and in fact thought that the, the person is safe and never considered them at risk. I want to clarify that we are talking about a surprise of people that really know the person. Um, of course, a lot of surprises, uh, happen when we, uh, don't know the person, and we say, how is it possible that they are suicidal? They committed suicide or they died by suicide. And, but we don't really don't know. For example, that happens a lot in cases of suicide covered by media. And, uh, because a lot of times media is very selective in terms of what it, it's covering, and it may not be covering all the details. And the issue is that it's a surprise also for people that supposed to know this person very closely. And that has to do with, um, either difficulties that the person has reporting, um, that personal distress, either related to shame or dissociation or in awareness, really, of how, um, distressed they could be, how, and how suicidal they could be at the same time. Which is tragic because they are making it more difficult for themselves to, uh, to seek help or get help or be seen as needing help by people that are close to them. Um, but it also contributes to, to a suicidal dynamic.
I know that one thing you're saying is they don't express the distress they're feeling in order to get to a place where they're making a choice to plan. But do they also just not feel it? Do they just kind of skip over the feelings and make sort of cognitive equations that say, I can't get out of this bad situation. I see no way to recover from this job loss. I see no way to earn money after the loss of my spouse. And thus, I must do this without feeling the experience that's leading them to make such a long-term choice?
This is an excellent question. I mean, um, along with many others who, uh, studied suicide before me, I could say that suicide is always associated with unbearable emotional pain. So, in my mind, when people are contemplating suicide or, in fact, commit suicide, I presume that they have experienced unbearable emotional pain or some emotional pain that they consider it as unbearable. From that perspective, suicide in, in people with pathological narcissism is not any different. I think it's still driven by unbearable emotional pain. The nature of the pain may be different because of the nature of the vulnerabilities that people have. It may be more associated, for example, with experience of shame or humiliation, even though it may not be specific, but certainly those experiences are very, very painful for people with pathological narcissism. Or it could be related to, um, management of anger, interpersonal relationships, and, um, different issues related to control and power. And those are very complicated dynamics, but they are present in people with pathological narcissism, and they could contribute to suicidal dynamics. But I also think that it's always driven by experience of emotional pain.
When it comes to, uh, the secrecy or surprise factor, um, it could really come from a number of reasons. One of them is that, um, execution of suicide requires secrecy because people do not want the environment to intervene and rescue them. That could be one aspect. But also, it does happen that people plan, um, so suicidal action in a semi-dissociative state, and they continue to live their lives as if it's not happening. And they might really execute that if they feel distressed. Or sometimes they even plan a moment when they might execute something like this. So, there are multiple reasons why that could happen. The most common reason is the difficulty articulating emotional state and ultimately feeling overwhelmed by emotional pain that breaks through the personal capacity to regulate emotions and deal with the distress. And ultimately, that could lead to execution of the suicidal plan that may have been planned even in advance, a long time before that.
MH, there's also, and I don't know if this is with everyone, um, it's a sense of mastery over life, right? Like you can control your destiny, you can control the narrative, you can control when you come or go. And that there is maybe on some level, with many people, the belief that they're dead, but they're not really going to be dead.
Um, I think that one of the specific characteristics that is present a lot of the times in people with pathological narcissism is the, uh, fantasy or hope that the suicide itself will elevate the self-esteem. And, um, when I put it that way, it may sound paradoxical. However, a lot of times people, uh, expect that they will, um, preserve their self-esteem or they will recover self-esteem through suicide. Or they feel like they have to end their life on a high note. And, and sometimes they feel that suicide is that type of a high note that would give meaning to the rest of their lives. And this is the type of a fantasy that many times helps people to glue together the self-esteem that may be crumbling and really falling into pieces. And that could really fuel very powerful suicidal dynamics and make suicide very difficult to, um, to stop because they feel that that's the only way for them to, uh, rebuild the self-esteem that is so damaged.
But rebuilding it, how? Would it just be that act of sort of, uh, total execution of control that, um, lords over not just them, but everyone in their orbit and empowers them, rightly or wrongly, because of the impact such an event would have on other people, that recovers the self-esteem? Is that, is that what it is?
For some people, it could be an issue of a narrative. For some people, it's part of the narrative that they feel that the ending their life on the high note. For other people, it could be control factor or some other interpersonal factors because they feel that they have a, uh, an opportunity to have a very powerful, though very, uh, painful impact on other people. And that also could be a factor that contributes to suicidal dynamics.
Is narcissistic suicide more, it's sort of a, a power move? And there's anger? Is there more rage also associated with a narcissistically driven suicide than the other?
It could be. It could be. We, we, we are talking about likelihoods and we're talking about more rather than absolute yes or no. So, from that perspective, I don't want to make it sound that people with depression do not do things that other people do without depression. However, it's a question of what's the typical profile, what's more typically found. And I think that that's, uh, that's accurate that there is more likelihood to find rage, uh, as a, as a force that's, uh, that's contributing to suicide and interpersonal expression of rage that could be leading to wishes for revenge or otherwise, um, expression of anger and controlling other individuals or torturing other individuals. At the same time, this is what's also present is sensitivity to shame, humiliation, and defeat. That also could very, very powerfully drive suicide. And which we know historically, one of the first depictions of suicide is the suicide of Ajax, who threw himself on, on his sword because he lost a battle. And he lost a battle. And so he felt that the honorable thing to do would be to kill himself. It's death before dishonor. That would, that would be the dictum that sort of explains and, um, stands behind that dynamic. And we still know this today very well. And many, um, people that consider suicide as an honorable way to avoid humiliation, especially public humiliation or shame, a sense of defeat. And that drives their suicide in a very, very powerful way.
Right. And it's really, though, the feelings that they would have to feel if they had public humiliation. I mean, you'd have to, like, survive those feelings. And it's also the way they would be seen in the eyes of the others, right? Which is, which becomes painful and excruciating and unbearable.
Yes. Which sometimes isn't wrong. I mean, I mean, maybe it's never worth the suicide, but it's not always wrong either. I'm not advocating it, but I'm just saying, right, it's, we always say that suicide is a permanent solution for a temporary problem. From that perspective, uh, I would say that we're looking for other ways of dealing with those painful emotions. And emotions in themselves are part of how, of our reactions to what's going on with us. Um, however, they become unbearable, uh, many times because of the vulnerability that people have related to regulation of self-esteem and relationship with other people, um, that makes them more vulnerable to feeling that the only way for them to avoid this is to contemplate suicide.