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Mental Masturbation: the Main Talent of the Covert Narcissist
Growing up in a conservative Christian home, the word “masturbation” was not spoken. I mean….ever. As I got older-now in my 40's-I have made some peace with the word. And, like any literate human can, I used that word to make up a term to make sense of some of the insanity of my life. And that phrase is:
Mental Masturbation-let’s define the term. But first, we have to define what each of the words mean.
Mental: referring to something that happens in your mind, using your brain, your knowledge, and the processing of your lived experience.
Masturbation: a physical deed done to oneself to increase pleasure and to make oneself feel better-for a moment in time. And yet…hours or days later, here you are, in the same place, having the same biological desires and needs.
Put them together and what have you got? Bippety Boppety Boo! jk..not really. You have the lifestyle of a covert narcissist in a nutshell. Its the mental action of ending where you began, with a little pleasure in the middle. It’s cyclical because you never get anywhere. There is “joy”in the journey, but nothing is actually accomplished.
It was many years ago that this term came to me. It popped into my mind after watching my now-ex sit for hours and hours, talking. He would talk…