Narcissistic injury (or wound) is any threat (real or imagined) to the narcissist's grandiose and fantastic self-perception (False Self) as perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, and entitled to special treatment and recognition, regardless of her actual accomplishments (or lack thereof).
The narcissist actively solicits Narcissistic Supply – adulation, compliments, admiration, subservience, attention, being feared – from others in order to sustain her fragile and dysfunctional Ego. Thus, she constantly courts possible rejection, criticism, disagreement, and even mockery.
The narcissist is, therefore, dependent on other people. She is aware of the risks associated with such all-pervasive and essential dependence. She resents her weakness and dreads possible disruptions in the flow of her drug: Narcissistic Supply. She is caught between the rock of her habit and the hard place of her frustration. No wonder she is prone to raging, lashing and acting out, and to pathological, all-consuming envy (all expressions of pent-up aggression).
The narcissist's thinking is magical. In her own mind, the narcissist is brilliant, perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, and unique. Compliments and observations that accord with ther inflated self-image ("The False Self") are taken for granted and as a matter of course.
Having anticipated the praise as fully justified and in accordance with (her) "reality", the narcissist feels that her traits, behavior, and "accomplishments" have made the accolades and kudos happen, have generated them, and have brought them into being. She "annexes" positive input and feels, irrationally, that its source is internal, not external; that it is emanating from inside himself, not from outside, independent sources. She, therefore, takes positive narcissistic supply lightly.
The narcissist treats disharmonious input - criticism, or disagreement, or data that negate the her self-perception - completely differently. She accords a far greater weight to these types of countervailing, challenging, and destabilizing information because they are felt by her to be "more real" and coming verily from the outside. Obviously, the narcissist cannot cast himself as the cause and source of opprobrium, castigation, and mockery.
This sourcing and weighing asymmetry is the reason for the narcissist's disproportionate reactions to perceived insults. She simply takes them as more "real" and more "serious". The narcissist is constantly on the lookout for slights. She is hypervigilant. She perceives every disagreement as criticism and every critical remark as complete and humiliating rejection: nothing short of a threat. Gradually, her mind turns into a chaotic battlefield of paranoia and ideas of reference.
The narcissist is forever trapped in the unresolved conflicts of her childhood (including the famous Oedipus Complex). This compels him to seek resolution by re-enacting these conflicts with significant others. But she is likely to return to the Primary Objects in her life (parents, authority figures, role models, or caregivers) to do either of two:
1. To "re-charge" the conflict "battery", or
2. When unable to re-enact the conflict with another.
The narcissist relates to her human environment through her unresolved conflicts. It is the energy of the tension thus created that sustains her.
The narcissist is a person driven by parlously imminent eruptions, by the unsettling prospect of losing her precarious balance. Being a narcissist is a tightrope act. The narcissist must remain alert and on-edge. Only in a constant state of active conflict does she attain the requisite levels of mental arousal.
