Beyond NPD and fear of the Narcissist

Narcissist.

What does this mean and why is this person a threat?
Perhaps this threat is connected to toxic shame.
We must get to a place of empowerment.
From here we begin to see that what seems to be a present threat, is, in fact, one from the past.  It is the shadow of helplessness and fear.
Yet it feels like it’s right here, right now.
It taunts, it weakens; it makes living day to day difficult.
But we are not weak.  
We survived.

So who was the original Narcissist?
Unfortunately it was a primary caregiver.  This is just the way it goes.  If anyone reading this had a spectacular childhood where they were validated every day of their lives, well, good for you, you are one of the very few, a rarity indeed.
When Alice Miller identified the invalidation of the child’s true self as an issue relating to society as a whole, I knew she was on to something.  It just made sense.
For anyone experiencing C-PTSD and emotional dysregulation, these are symptoms of the condition Miller devoted her life to understanding.

What if we’re not bad, what if the narcissist isn’t all bad (and this can feel painful to acknowledge).

However, the things they have done are terrible.  Often, their actions are unforgivable.
We survived; we have a right to decide on contact or no contact.  This must be respected.  However, when I think of my fellow Irish who looked back on their time in the Industrial Schools (gulags), I hope to learn from their perspective as adults.

Christine Buckley was told by the nun who raised her that she was a third class citizen, a ‘whore’ just like her mother (these words are difficult to write).  

Lioness that she was, she refused to believe it.  She became a nurse, she found love, she had a family (and how she adored her children).  Christine brought her indomitable spirit to advocacy and protected her fellow industrial school survivors against Irish society's resistance to their pain.  In the beginning she was a lone voice, but not for long.  Conservative Irish society did not want to believe the truth, that children had been abused on an overwhelming scale.  Yet Christine's work eventually led to the Ryan Report and the truth could no longer be denied.

What sustained her?
She must have loved that nun, as all children love their parental figures, their primary caregivers.  Christine was bi-cultural; her father was a medical student from Africa.  He visited her as a child.  Perhaps, in having contact with her father, even sporadically, she was able to hold onto a sense of her true self.

If we didn’t have this as children, if we didn't have what Miller describes as a 'supporting witness' in childhood, then we must be here for the child now.
Even if we have to start from scratch and choose our own values, faith and sense of identity, it is possible.

I believe that coming to terms with the love and despair she felt for the nuns who raised her was central to Christine’s life’s work.  She knew that to heal, she had to voice her pain and bring validation to the most vulnerable in society (herself included).  She broke the rules of her indoctrination; she raised her voice and was fearsome in her advocacy.

In valuing and validating the child she had been, she freed herself from toxic shame.
She was not to blame, she deserved love, attention and cherishing, not cruelty.

Within this very action, this courageous gesture, she reclaimed herself and the nuns were no longer all powerful or infallible.
Christine was an extraordinary person.

Her strength came from a place beyond piety.  She had come to terms with those feelings of needing to be a saint in order to transcend shame.  She let it go and in doing so, she became more than all the labels life had thrown at her.

Christine Buckley became herself and she offered hope to others.

If Christine could do it, then so can we :)

Sometimes being liked by people doesn't mean so much about character as being despised by cruel & nasty people.. I am starting to get this now.

It is nothing of great effort to be liked for how you present yourself, but it is difficult to enjoy your own courageous gifts, especially when others have judged the best elements in you "troubling" . This keeps good people who would normally do well, without support and protection of others when they need it most. I add to this courageous story that maybe there was more than just a sometimes "father" in the picture but the sometimes father might be better than none at all for just clinging on to.

One has to remember that it is upon the time we are born, our parents exclusive job to care for, love and protect us, and when we don't get this, we are betrayed by them, as this was their job, and very important it was. Then the community which turns its back to abuse and neglect, institutions which do not emotionally support the well being of children.

Still, if Christine, no matter what greatness she had achieved in her life, sacrificing it for the good of others and never once understanding that her own joy is also important, what happens then?

Every aspect of escape can be both positive and negative for the individual leading to life or death for said person, for example co dependency creating a person who is addicted to being in relationships to be dominated, or a person who throws themselves into work at the cost of their health are just a few ways things which are positive can become very dangerous.

Even this description of being a Saint, sounds very suspect, while elevating and spiritual, we must realise that this is a projection of an image, while a person can be saintly in action and behaviour, this ALWAYS comes at the expense of personal needs which are very important and is basically an addiction turned into community approval.

With these small critiques in mind, did Christine actually become her self or a self the community would no longer call a "whore" becoming a "saint" instead of being who she is, perhaps a woman who needed the care and unconditional love of her family and community she only got by being a human "doing" and a saint.

While it is courageous to do something in opposition to the negative expectations of others, what does this mean about who a person genuinely is? What their true ambitions should have been, and what does this mean about genuine happiness?

What sustained her? wrote:

I suspect what may sustain others including myself in some rather bad times, "proving them wrong"
(which I recognise can people can bury pain deep inside of them with strict focus upon goals neglecting everything else)

Of course we can all do that, the question is, do we know when it's healthy, do we become shattered by failure or do we quit when we come to realise so much of what we may have thought was important was really to show others how "important" we were/are.

(...and I must add, its well acceptable to be a success in the eyes of the Narc as long as you are willing to not be yourself. As long as you don't compete with them.)

It was Stefan Molyneux who said, "being yourself annoys most people and even provokes attack because it's like everyone had a winning lottery ticket but they burned it, while you kept yours and just happen to show off your winnings"

This is possibly how the Narc feels in the presence of anyone who still owns a spark of life in them they haven't either beat out, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually or a combination of or stolen.

Thank you for your reply, although it’s a tad bit cryptic...

I have a feeling that it’s because I questioned vilifying the Narcissist.

It’s just that Christine Buckley is the closest embodiment of Narcissist antidote that I can find at this present moment :)  
Not only did she take on the indoctrination of her family (the nuns who raised her), she also challenged the deeply instilled narcissism within an oppressed (and repressed) society.

It is well documented that children like Christine, who were raised in Industrial schools, were deprived of every resource.  
Apart from her father’s sporadic visits, which ended when he returned to Africa, her only support against full on abuse would have been her fellow inmates.  Amazingly, many children did bond, even as their caregivers attempted to separate them (physically and/or emotionally) and I have witnessed this sense of patchwork family at a reunion.  I know for certain that they will be devoted to one another until the end of their days.  It was an honour to be present.

The ladies mentioned here had all testified for the Ryan Report.

It is also my belief that Christine Buckley lived her life to the full.  She would have sacrificed herself had she not spoken out.  

Don’t you see that she also struggled against being considered ‘trouble’ by the very people who had abused her?

Those who have survived abuse often feel the need to be seen as overtly good or ‘saintly’ because of a deeply held belief that they are inherently bad.  No doubt, Christine struggled with this at some stage; after all, by the time she reached out to the public, she had already made great strides in her own personal development.

Christine understood that in finally validating the child she had been; that she had been blameless in the circumstances of both her birth and her childhood.  

When we truly reclaim our sense of value, we can move passed the fear that somehow we will be ‘found out’ and ‘punished’ just for being ourselves.
This requires courage.  

This is a trait that all survivors have in abundance, often without realizing it.

You are stronger than the narcissist/s in your life, past or present.
Don’t care so much (or at all) about what they think.
This is your life.  You are enough just as you are.
You are a high value person in your own right.
Celebrate and validate who you are :)

Recently I rediscovered Kate Bush and have been listening to her again.

She and Tori Amos saw me through a fair few art based projects over the years.  Kate had already had her time in the spotlight when I found her, yet I still listened.  She never shied away from emotional expression and I appreciated this, even when I didn’t know what to do with mine.

These women taught me so much.  I absorbed their message, their exploration of what it means to be human.  
Their words and the emotion behind them guided me without my realizing it.  Was it a kind of blue print?  I don’t know.

I had to find others who understood.  Lord knows, my parents hadn’t a clue!
If I had followed their lead, I would have squashed down every uncomfortable emotion and every uplifting sensation as well!  

Instead, the artists in my life, both in person and within their work, all consistently encouraged the unfettered exploration of emotion.  Suddenly feelings did not equal insanity, quite the opposite.  Emotional self expression offered hope and the promise of wholeness.

For the first time, I didn’t have to apologize for how I felt.  Yet this didn’t mean being irresponsible.  We were expected to work with our emotions (challenging but doable!).  Part of the process was to offer a synopsis of the creative journey.  
I learned to move passed utter and complete paralysis, self sabotage (like leaving an A3 sketchbook filled with preliminary drawings somewhere in the city – still have no idea where I left it) to tentatively sharing my truth.  
Universal acceptance allowed for unhindered investigation and by my third year, I remember sharing the creative work that resulted from a life changing reunion with my fellow students and every single person in that room was on my side.
 
This is what I try to convey when I talk about art and artists.  Creativity is interwoven with personal development and it is liberating for each person.  Everyone has the capacity to be creative, it part of what it means to be human.

We can rediscover ourselves through the process if we trust it.  This doesn’t have to be an isolating experience; at the deepest level it is collaborative and affirming.  If we go with it, the process can give us the tools to understand the human condition.

In understanding, self acceptance is possible.  And this is just the beginning.

Accomplishment.
That word jumped out at me in the core values list and I resolutely ignored it.

Bloody accomplishment!  I wanted to take it down and crumple it up.
It made me think of the times when I worked myself to the bone for some externally based goal.  And I did, oh yes, I was very good at it (I believed in all the rhetoric of a conformist/fear based community – it mirrored the internal fear).  That word for me is connected to society and family.  The message of accomplishment is ‘be a good girl, do as your told, sacrifice yourself for the goal and then you’ll have security.’

Well this is nonsense. And it hurts.  I want to reclaim the word Accomplishment.

I will remind myself of the quiet unfurling of a flower; I will celebrate all the small, singing joys found in being true to what I love.  When this happens, it feels like an accident, like some treasure that has escaped censorship.

What if accomplishment is a lovely thing?
Instead of being hollow, it can be a celebration of the spirit.
Instead of it being a stamp, an externally based thing which is used to prove proficiency (worth?), it can be a knowingness; a core based pride.

We can only begin to feel this if we love something about ourselves.  Just one thing, that’s all it takes to start the journey.

I want to say sorry to my body.  I know that it holds all the pain.  I can feel it now.
Body stores it while mind spins and whirls high above, trying to make sense of everything.
Biologically based response, biologically internalized trauma:  I’m sorry, so sorry.  

Anger is one thing, hate is quite another.  This means mistrust/rejection of the self and mistrust/rejection of everything good.
Even as we believe that we are protecting ourselves from constant threat, it debilitates our spirit, our essence.

One character reminded me of this.  In his search for forgiveness, I finally understood.  
My most vulnerable character accepts him and through this, he finds redemption.

In writing stories relating to our experiences, we can work on difficult subjects at our own pace.  Helpful insights may be gained.  
Life doesn’t have to be about Crime and Punishment, Saints and Sinners. I don’t want to be a martyr (I’d rather be a trouble maker like my uncle :), and I don’t want to seek absolution from some externally based spiritual representative.  Organized religion has always confused me; it tells me that I’m damned no matter what I do.  This has never inspired my confidence.  A child born out of wedlock can never enter Heaven...

So what is left?  Feeling good in the here and now; making peace with the shadows.
We all want to be good; it’s a basic human desire.  In feeling good about ourselves, we don’t need to make another bad.  That impulse comes from childhood hurt.  Yet we are no longer at the mercy of such external judgement, we can be free.  It’s our time now.  Our sense of goodness can spring from the light that is within us all.  

What if we’re all just people trying to do the best we can with what we have?
We must find a way of forgiving ourselves.
Wherever we are on this journey, self hate must stop, right now.

Hatred is founded in alienation, it made the soldiers in Vietnam consider the ordinary civilians as less than human.  We can see that this thinking is dangerous, yet we do it to others and most of all, to ourselves.  Catching self condemning thoughts seems like an impossible task – they ambush us at the most absurd moments!  

And those positive affirmations, they can taunt.  We know what happens when we work with them... uncomfortable memories begin to rise up. Damn it!  Why can’t we heal without being reminded of the past?  

I manage agitation with creativity, yet there was a time when that didn’t work.  When I can’t access it, I listen to the voices of artists who resonate.  Somehow, when I allowed myself to feel the emotions, it helped.  I got traction.  Everything can still stall, but more and more, there are moments of real traction.

Healing work begins with self acceptance.  My students remind me of this; it’s not about the ‘perfect’ finished product, it’s about trusting the process and going with it.  Even when you doubt yourself right in the middle, keep going; if it’s really difficult, take a break.  But don’t give up.  This is accomplishment :)

I’ve been thinking about anger.  We’re not bad for feeling it.

In fact, we must feel it to heal.  If it can be channelled into creative expression, it can be worked on and released.

Always, I look to nature for answers.

A magnificent German Shepherd named King had been terribly mistreated.  My friend was rehabilitating him.  Once, when we were having coffee, my friend, who is completely at one with the dogs she rescues, verbally called King out for snapping at another dog.  
King knew that he shouldn’t have gone for the other dog.  My friend works intuitively with pack order.

Suddenly King threw himself against the wall; it looked like a ghost was beating him.  We watched in stunned horror.  
Both of us knew that he was re-enacting the violence of the past.  He was punishing himself using the method he had endured as a puppy.  
It was distressing to witness, yet rehabilitation was, and remains, possible.

Similarly, when I was out in the garden with the bunnies, Freyja suddenly acted out of character.  She returned to the place where the cat had attacked her and started to re-enact the traumatic event.  Again and again, she returned to the same spot and ran frantically in tight, panicked circles.  She acted as though the restrictive plastic mesh that had been there that night was still in place.  I knew from her body language that she was distressed.  She was also aware of my attentive presence.  After a while she freed herself from the expression and rested, she lay down low beside me.

Since this time, Freyja has not needed to re-enact the near deadly encounter.

What if King had internalized the blame?  
From his actions, it is clear to me that he had.  
Within my friend's safe environment, he was learning to trust, yet triggers brought him back to the past.  
He also needed to express what had been done to him.

Freyja is securely bonded; she had never experienced threat before the cat.  
She needed to show me what had happened, to literally get it out of her system.  

The same goes for humans.

When a person is in a great deal of pain, there’s a tendency to see wrong in many others and the closer you are to the source of their pain, the more you experience being a scapegoat.  This describes my childhood.

Having a father with ongoing mother issues taught me a great deal.
(But wait – parents are perfect – all of life’s problems concerning npd, malignant borderline etc. stem from dreadful partners – right? ;)

Somewhere along the line I went from victim mentality to something else and all I can say is that it feels better now.

My father had a terrible childhood.  He did not receive the love and support he deserved.  As a teen, he told my mother that he wanted to be a monk, to escape to the peace and tranquility of a monastery.  
Yet my father also longed to be an extrovert.
Just being himself was torment.

When a person is in this state, a small human who is just being themselves induces uncontrollable agitation.  His mother had taught him that being authentic was unacceptable, so it became impossible to accept a daughter’s self expression.
Children do their best to adapt.  But when a person is in pain and lost at sea emotionally, that person will find fault with everything.

If you’re exuberant, you learn very quickly not to be.  All communication is considered ‘attention seeking.’
If you’re quiet and subdued, you should be happy, so you learn to smile no matter how you really feel.
Anger and sadness are, of course, not allowed.
Basically any expression can be re-framed as arrogant, deliberately mystifying or just plain manipulative.

He knew he was being unreasonable, yet he knew of no other way to be.

The only honest way to work through the fallout of a lifetime is to break from categorizing and look at the situation and the individuals concerned with compassion.  
Is this new age moral relativism?  Is this a bad thing?

Labels encourage binary thinking and a sense of alienation; they are helpful only to a point.
If old cycles and patterns of behaviour are to be replaced by personal sovereignty, we need look at the past with courage.  
Unfortunately, hating the parent means hating part of yourself.  Hatred can only be dissolved by working with anger; feel it and have compassion for the child you were.

Often we put the other parent on a pedestal just in order to survive.  
If you rationalize the actions of one and demonize the other, explore this too.
 
This work may feel uncomfortable and frightening.  However, know that by looking at it with honesty and courage, you have the opportunity to gain real insights.  You know yourself the best, trust in your inherent goodness and go with intuition.  When you validate the child you were, you are being the protector and that anxiety of being overwhelmed by abusive personalities will diminish significantly.

Be fearless

Guilt is felt when we believe that our actions are wrong.
Shame is felt when we believe that we are wrong.
Toxic shame is founded in long term abuse from childhood.

When we are consumed by shame, having someone say that they don’t care if they are judged seems like the ultimate in narcissistic grandiosity.

Shame was used to control us in childhood.
We were simply wrong.

Often family will hold up a certain trait or traits as essential for acceptance, for example, you must be extraordinarily good at school, you must be beautiful, handsome and/or athletic; if it is a military family, you must be brave and strong, you must attain at least what father/grandfather has attained.  Similarly, great artists expect to find the same talent in their children.

The message is universal, emulate our assets/gifts and ignore our vulnerability.  Be a shiny new version of us.  
Prove yourself, relentlessly.  Never question us or our choices.  If you do, we will crucify you.

Hello double bind!

So what do we do?  
We work very hard at being what they want us to be and when we attain a measure of acceptance, we find temporary comfort in judging those who express the vulnerability we fear.
Instead of truly knowing equality, we are forever at the mercy of feeling intimidated by those ‘above’ us and feeling insecurely superior to those ‘below’ us.

Only self acceptance liberates us from this imbalance.

No wonder Uncle loved Socialism!  
He found an emotionally based sense of equality within this reality tunnel, just as I discovered it through Art.

There comes a moment when you think ‘I don’t have to prove anything to you,’ and you really feel it.  
There’s a veritable shift from an externally based perception of accomplishment to honouring the self.  
Shame is obliterated.  You stand strong against adversity and you don’t need to apologize for how you feel.  
The internal compass is activated and even if you make mistakes, a positive sense of self remains intact.  

Ideally this revelation happens as part of teenage rebellion.

Unfortunately, those of us who were surviving our environment could not go through this process, we didn’t feel safe enough back then.

So let it be now.

It’s so easy to make a child feel like they are a disappointment.  
There are many ways of doing this – active abuse, cruel words and/or just ignoring them.
If society says that the child has a gift and rewards them, it can give the child a sense of worth.  
For example, my uncle had learning; he was really good at it.  His parents said they didn’t understand him.

That must have hurt like hell.
I know for a fact that my uncle was very good at explaining things.

We all want to be understood.
In understanding there is acceptance.  Even if we don’t agree, the process of understanding offers both regard and inclusion.
What if a young person can’t express themselves?  Is it their fault that the family condemns them?
That’s what happened to my father.  He could not even talk about the things he loved.  
That silence, that reticence, I know it well because I emulated him.
My uncle had an element of self-acceptance, my father never did.

Moments of connection with my father:
The two of us being equally mesmerized by AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ on the television
Him showing me how to lift a shore crab from the rock pool and me having no fear
Both of us laughing till our sides hurt when the boys in the film ‘Young Guns’ got high together
Being assigned to carry his binoculars because I was so careful with things (although he never told me this)

Moments when I gained an understanding of his pain:
He told me that his father had thrown him into the deep end of the swimming pool in order to learn to swim: he thought he was going to drown.  Everyone laughed at his distress.
Singing in Church: I realized that he never actually sang.  With the camaraderie of a school boy, he said that I could mouth the words too; I did so to be supportive, yet I knew that I could sing because my best friend loved my voice.
At prayer, he refused to kneel, yet his hands were clasped.  He was very unsure of God.
He said that his mother beat him with the broom and that life wasn’t worth living after his eldest brother left home.
He had trouble liking cats because of what they do to birds.  Big Brother unapologetically hated cats for the same reason.
He had huge issues with food.
He was fascinated by Arthur C. Clarke’s exploration of the paranormal and yet was furious when I showed an interest.  In my teens, he gave me Tarot Cards; I still have them.

In the end, these are the things that come back to resonate.  We are here for such a short time.  I knew he was bereft of both freedom and hope.  
I wish for one thing only, that he knows a mother’s love next time around.