Every January, people make resolutions. We want to change. We want to do better. We want to pray more, be healthier, be more disciplined, be more loving. And yet, so often, the same patterns return.
The reason isn’t desire or willpower (though both impact the ability to change).
Willpower alone is not enough because we are dealing with very complex psyches. When we try to force change through effort alone, the psychological system often ends up working against itself.
What we usually end up doing is rearranging behavior on the surface or rearranging the furniture on the deck of a sinking ship, without ever addressing where the cracks are. If we never address the foundation, the source of the cracks, the ship will just keep sinking.
Why White-Knuckling Never Leads to Lasting Change
When we try to change patterns we don’t like—whether that’s addiction, health, prayer, or relationships—we tend to rely on what you might call “white-knuckling” effort. We push harder. We resolve more firmly. We try to out-discipline the problem.
But when we approach change this way, all we’re really doing is rearranging our manager parts, the parts of us that already exist to keep things under control.
We get rid of one manager and replace it with another. We become stricter instead of avoidant. More disciplined instead of indulgent. More intense instead of disengaged. But all of this rearranging doesn’t lead to sustainable change.
What’s missing is recognition of the key blind spot.
What Blind Spots Really Are
Blind spots are not weaknesses. They are not character flaws. They are things we are psychologically protected from seeing because if we saw them, our psyche has determined that it would threaten our survival system.
This is incredibly important to understand.
There’s almost a “cheat code” here. When you go deeper—when you find the blind spot—it’s like hitting a warp pipe in a video game. You can fight and fight and fight your way through the levels, or you can find the place where everything suddenly opens up.
And this applies everywhere: addiction, health, spiritual life, routines. We fight to wake up earlier, pray more, remember what we’re supposed to do. But there are reasons why we’re not doing these things well—and the reason is almost always a blind spot.
Often, we need another person to help us see it. Someone who can act like a mirror. And when the mirror is held up, we finally see what we couldn’t see on our own. We can see the REAL problem which, in turn, allows us to find the REAl solution.
Narcissism: Not a Diagnosis, but a Pattern
When we talk about narcissistic parts, we’re not always talking about a diagnosis. Most of the time, we’re actually talking about a part that is driving a pattern of personality. I don’t like labeling people. We are sons and daughters of God. But we can be sons and daughters of God who are struggling with narcissistic patterns.
At its core, narcissism functions like a God complex. The self becomes the center of attention, admiration, and meaning.
And interestingly, people with narcissistic patterns usually don’t make New Year’s resolutions to become more compassionate or empathetic. That would require admitting that something is wrong.
And that is terrifying.
The Terror of Being Ordinary
For people with narcissistic patterns, at the center of their personality pattern is something very specific: the terror of being ordinary.
This is not just a dislike of being average. It’s not mild discomfort. It’s terror.
For most of us, being average is neutral. We may want to be great, but if we’re average, we’re still okay.
For someone with narcissistic patterns, average feels like nihilation. It feels like death. Being ordinary means being invisible. And being invisible means not existing.
This is what Heinz Kohut called disintegration anxiety, the fear of falling apart, of ceasing to exist as a coherent self.
So grandiosity, admiration-seeking, and lack of empathy are not about superiority. They are about survival.
What the DSM Misses
The DSM talks about grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy. And that’s where it stops.
That’s tragic.
Because all that does is describe how people make other people feel. It never asks what it feels like to live inside that system.
From the outside, narcissists look arrogant, selfish, abusive. And those behaviors are real and harmful. But underneath them is a person who is suffering.
They are not bragging to annoy you. They are bragging to convince themselves that they exist.
When we look relationally, narcissistic patterns often develop in childhood through conditional love.
A child may receive enormous praise—“you’re the best, the smartest, the funniest”—but that praise is tied to performance, image, or achievement. The problem here isn’t praise. The problem is condition.
The child learns: I need to be special in order to be loved.
This reverses the proper order of love. As St. John teaches us, love consists in this: God loved us first. The child’s role is to receive love freely, not earn it. When love is conditional, the child internalizes a distorted model. That model becomes an introject—a way the person treats themselves. They alternate between extreme self-indulgence and extreme self-attack, with no tolerable middle ground.
And as adults, they need others to mirror that same dynamic back to them.
What Heals This Wound
One of the most important takeaways for people in relationship with narcissistic personalities: you can’t fix the problem.
Trying harder will not work. Being more patient will not work. Being more sacrificial will not work. You cannot heal a wound caused by a parent unless you can step into a parental role and re-parenting that person. And re-parenting requires a power differential that only exists in very specific therapeutic contexts over long periods of time.
This is why their narcissistic part is not your fault. And it is not your responsibility to fix.
What you can do is set healthy boundaries. Walls. Limits. When the narcissistic system hits enough walls, the person may finally seek help.
Hope Through Insight and Personalism
The hope is not behavior modification.
The hope is insight coupled with a corrective emotional experience.
When blind spots are uncovered, blindness can turn into sight. And when there is sight, the will can finally move freely.
This is where the personalism of St. John Paul II becomes essential. His vision of the human person teaches us how to see blind spots and how to move from insight into healing.
Once the blindspot is revealed, “I’m terrified,” re-parenting can begin. And the suffering soul can experience a corrective emotional relationship where they learn they are not loved because they are extraordinary. They are loved because they exist.
And when that truth begins to replace the terror of being ordinary, real change happens.
*if this blog resonates with you, if you are terrified of being ordinary, please reach out to our team to schedule a free mentorship consultation.