The Narcissist's Entitlement of Routine

The Narcissist's Entitlement of Routine

The Narcissist's Entitlement of Routine

I hate routine. When I find myself doing the same things over and over again, I get depressed. I oversleep, overeat, over-drink and, in general, engage in addictive, impulsive and compulsive behaviours. This is my way

of re-introducing risk and excitement into what I (emotionally) perceive to be a barren life.

The problem is that even the most exciting and varied existence becomes routine after a while. Living in the

same country or apartment, meeting the same people, doing essentially the same things (though with changing content) – all "qualify" as stultifying rote. 

I feel entitled to more. I feel it is my right – due to my intellectual superiority – to lead a thrilling, rewarding,

kaleidoscopic life. I feel entitled to force life itself, or, at least, people around me – to yield to my wishes and needs, supreme among them the need for stimulating variety. 

This rejection of habit is part of a larger pattern of aggressive entitlement. I feel that the very existence of a

sublime intellect (such as myself) warrants concessions and allowances. Standing in line is a waste of time best spent pursuing knowledge, inventing and creating. I should avail myself of the best medical treatment proffered by the most prominent medical authorities – lest the asset that is I be lost to Mankind. I should not be bothered with proofreading my articles (or even rereading them) – these lowly jobs best be assigned to the

less gifted. The devil is in paying precious attention to details.

Entitlement is sometimes justified in a Picasso or an Einstein. But I am neither. My achievements are grotesquely incommensurate with my overwhelming sense of entitlement. I am but a mediocre and

forgettable scribbler who, at the age of 39, is a colossal under-achiever, if anything.

Of course, the feeling of supremacy often serves to mask a cancerous complex of inferiority. Moreover, I

infect others with my projected grandiosity and their feedback constitutes the edifice upon which I construct

my self-esteem. I regulate my sense of self-worth by rigidly insisting that I am above the madding crowd

while deriving my Narcissistic Supply from this very thus despised source.

But there is a second angle to this abhorrence of the predictable. As a narcissist, I employ a host of

Emotional Involvement Prevention Mechanisms (EIPM). Despising routine and avoiding it is one of

these mechanisms. Their function is to prevent me from getting emotionally involved and, subsequently, hurt.

Their application results in an "approach-avoidance repetition complex". The narcissist, fearing and loathing

intimacy, stability and security – yet craving them – approaches and then avoids significant others or important tasks in a rapid succession of apparently inconsistent and disconnected behaviours.

ـــــــــــــــــــــــــ

Narcissistic

And Psychopathic

Leaders

1st EDITION

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.