Living in Oz
“Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.” - Dorothy in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939)
When your life is dominated by narcissists, you share the same sense of disconnect with reality as Dorothy felt when a tornado landed her in a fantasy land. In order to survive, you begin to adapt to the new rules of the road, whether it’s made of yellow-brick or diktats and limiting behaviors.
The ability to adapt is necessary to all life. No one denies that. It is a necessary evolutionary principle. What has been harder to understand is how adaptation and survival apply in more extreme circumstances, real and psychological.
Across the world, women and children who embraced their captors when kidnapped by enemy tribes lived, while those who resisted, died. In the first couple of hundred years in America, the colonists struggled to understand how family members kidnapped by Native Americans resisted repatriation to their homes. They asked: how could their children, siblings and cousins embrace those who brutally killed others in their families?
Dorothy was able to return to her ordinary life with comparatively fewer hardships, but she always held a fondness for the Land of Oz, despite the privations she experience there. It was just so much more colorful and exciting!
There is no denying that life with a narcissist is more colorful. There are frequent jolts of adrenaline to the system, and constant challenges requiring the victim to persevere to succeed.
Narcissists create a game, and people who want to ‘win’ will play.
TERMINOLOGY
Future-faking: A favorite narcissistic device is telling the target that ‘if you do this now, then you will have a reward in the future.’ Whether the reward is a happier or better life with the narcissist, or a more normal existence in a community, the promised future will not materialize. Future-faking is only intended to change behavior, nothing more. It’s a con game, a cheat.
Shared-fantasy: The old term for a shared delusion is folie à deux, a folly of two. Personality cults are based on the shared fantasies promoted by narcissistic leaders. In modern vernacular, ‘conspiracy theorist’ is often used to describe people who adhere to an out-of-favor narrative. Unfortunately, narcissistic players with biased agendas call those who truthfully and accurately report reality conspiracy theorists in order to marginalize them. Labels like Disinformation Dozen and Flat-Earthers are indicative of that type of propagandized rhetoric intended to keep other people in the dark with ad hominem attacks on those who report the truth and in so doing challenge the power and profit of vested stakeholders in the actual fantasy. The Matrix is a film that introduced the concept of blue pill for those who blithely live in the shared fantasy world and red pill for those who realize the deception and chose to live a real life.
Flying Monkeys: In the Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West commands an army of mindless flying monkeys who unquestioningly do her bidding. ‘Flying monkeys’ is a term used by victims of narcissistic abuse to describe those who down-play the abuse or defend the abusive narcissist. This enabling behavior further victimizes the target. It is tribal abuse by proxy and is very damaging and isolating to the victim. When flying monkeys convince victims of domestic violence to stay with or return to their abusers, they are guilty of abuse and complicit in deaths. The same can be said of those who advocate for draconian mandates that negate personal autonomy or discount risk to the individual.
CLOSING
It is very difficult to live with or work with a narcissist. Living in a world where power structures are dominated by narcissistic leaders puts us in even more danger. We would do well to keep Dorothy’s observation in mind as we navigate the dangerous terrain. We do well to do what is necessary to protect ourselves, but also listen to our dry inner voice in order to return to normalcy, because the narcissist world is not our home.