Mates say it best:
“The negative view of self may not always penetrate conscious awareness and may even masquerade as its opposite: high self regard. Some people encase themselves in an armored coast of grandiosity and denial of any shortcomings so as not to feel that enervating shame. That self-puffery is as sure a manifestation of self-loathing as is abject self-deprecation, albeit a much more normalized one.”
Of course this reads true for narcissists, who—though traumatized—-inhabit a healthy dose of shame and therefore create delusions of grandeur.
I also think about how trauma works to make us feel shame and disconnect from ourselves.
It manifests in different people in various ways.
But again, I explore the connection between being shame-filled due to trauma and the connections to mental illnesses and other personality disorders.
The shame-filled adapt some pretty intense ways of being self-delusional to try to avoid their own shame and mistakes.
So, the fault is the other person, the other ways that they are the victim.
There can be a lot of mental gymnastics performed to get there.
And for others, their body ends up on high alert, with intense anxiety, inflamed, over-vigilant, hyperaware, and then they may break down—
Resulting, or rather, manifesting in physical conditions like chronic pain, fibromyalgia, other auto immune disorders, multiple sclerosis, etc, etc.
However, suffice it to say: I am starting to see how trauma is often the root cause of it all.
The universal thread of human suffering.
And the underlying conditions of mental illness, physical illnesses, as they two are often intertwined, maladaptive personality and interrelational behaviors.
As Mates also point out, we would do better not to rank traumas or suffering with capital or lower ‘t’ traumas, and comparing them, but instead, to see most people as having or embodying some trauma-
So, perhaps it is better to instead revision it that we all exist on a trauma spectrum.