2003-05-23 - 12:06 p.m.

yesterday was host to an exhausting lunch about all the same things. both f and i left our favorite restaraunt feeling burned out and angry, and not really totally sure why.

i've been thinking a lot about narcissism lately. a headshrinker recommended a book to me called 'the drama of the gifted child' and its mostly about how children learn to cope with parental narcissism. the book was helpful for me, and i was able to recast a lot of my own broken thinking in light of some of the adaptive strategies described.

i am beginning to wonder if the burnt-out, ground-down feeling we came away with yesterday was due to our presence at a 90-minute narcissism session. reading the literature on the topic is leading me to that conclusion.

certainly, we all have narcissistic tendencies. it's narcissist for me to publish my diary, and imagine strangers reading it! but i have also attracted many genuine narcissists in my adult life, and i wonder if that's a pattern i'm ready to break now.