The fine line between accountability and holding space.

Besides my mother, I have encountered one other covert narcissist in my life. We were close friends for three years, and it took me an entire year to even start having a feeling that this person had narcissistic tendencies. It started manifesting in hypocrisy, which is, in itself, a form of gaslighting. Take my mother, for example: when her beliefs are confronted for not being sensical (even within her own belief system), she cries and becomes distraught saying she’s not being accepted as she is, with her beliefs, yet she doesn’t believe trans people might know who they really are better than she does and goes as far as writing publicly that trans people need to “heal” themselves.

This friend of mine used this tactic often. Each wound and each hurt was some sort of error in life philosophy, which resulted in me changing who I was at my core, only to witness her replicate the same behaviors I was berated for. I once told her I didn’t feel like she truly saw me (which was ironic, coming from someone who claimed she only ever wanted to be seen) and her answer was, “Well, you don’t let me see you.” Since I trusted her, I ended up changing my behavior to “let her see me,” which defeats the purpose entirely… but her response was symbolic of the issue at hand: she could not tolerate being wrong or failing; therefore, she would do anything to avoid accountability and always deflect blame onto the other person. When confronted to her hypocrisy, she would fight tooth and nail with nuances to justify why her behavior was acceptable but other’s weren’t; unable to see that her finding these nuances was nothing other than an inability to look at any wrongdoing on her part.

These kinds of manipulations take months to notice, so it’s really hard to know it’s happening in the moment. I could not see any other way to combat these events other than trying to raise her consciousness of her deeper motivations, which were narcissistic in nature. And even though she had spent three years telling me “all that matters is the connection,” she ghosted me upon my revealing that I thought she could be really manipulative at times.

Despite this unwillingness to look at her own deeper motivations, she was a human with a wonderful mind and talent with words. I often feel alone in my profound desire to raise people’s compassion, and that was something we shared. Covert narcissists may lack empathy (the ability to relate to others’ emotions in real time) but almost always have heaps of compassion (the desire to reduce human suffering). It seems like, all around me, the philosophy I hear most often being shared is “protect your peace, do what’s good for you, get what you want,” etc. I don’t care about popularity, wealth, or my fucking peace; what I want is for people to care about each other more.

This is the motivation behind this blog: to create a window into the mind of someone who’s doing their best, so people can understand that suffering is not always a reflection of a lack of trying, and that we can trust people in knowing what they are experiencing. This, of course, does not mean I should not be held accountable for my actions, I am always willing to grow, as long as I am given space to.

So the question rises: how to find balance between accountability and holding space? I like to see emotional responsibility on a timeline. In the present moment, we have to accept that a person is truly doing their best; however, they are accountable for taking steps to grow their emotional capacity in the future. In a healthy relationship, this is manifested in making people aware of the hurt they cause and giving them space to grow by letting them know they are not judged or rejected. However, what do you do when faced with a someone who refuses to look at their own behavior?

It’s extremely difficult to identify manipulation without making judgments or accusations. One of my motto is “emotions last 90 seconds, everything after is a choice.” Harsh words coming from someone who can spend weeks or months feeling depressed, no? When I’m depressed, I accept the fact that this depression comes from a deep longing to create a better world. Even if the choice is subconscious, it’s still a choice. If things were easy for me, I would just be one of those people who enjoys life and hoards wealth while people die under bombs or famine. At least, that’s how I’ve come to accept it. I still practice somatic therapy, meditate, and am generally careful about what I put in my body so as not to make my depression unbearable for the people around me.

Balance.

But how can you raise the level of awareness of someone who doesn’t care how their depression affects others? Someone whose only goal is to be seen, but is oblivious to how they are not seeing others? How can you tell someone you notice a toxic pattern, but the mere fact of mentioning it will trigger their defense mechanism? How can you hold space for someone who refuses to take accountability?

I hate everything I read on narcissism. Everywhere I look, the advice is: be fake, don’t engage, or even ghost. I don’t want to believe this is it, I refuse to. Narcissism is a defense mechanism like any other; it’s the result of trauma, and it’s not a choice. There has to be a way to connect.