welcome to the forum, introduce yourself :)

hey all

glad to find you all. I come from a family rife with npd and always knew 'something' was up.  I didn't know it had a name until about 5yrs ago when the research began.  i'm not where I want to be and am battling what I believe to be c-ptsd, but I am happy to no longer be where I was, mainly due to several youtuber's sharing there awareness and understandings.  many thanks to you all.

Hi!

Are people still doing intros? I'm a bit late to the party, I think. I - my mother I suspect has NPD and probably also paranoid PD - not diagnosed by a medical professional, as she is of course entirely mentally healthy and only unfortunate enough to be surrounded by the weak and oversensitive   I knew from early on that there was something not quite right but I didn't hear the term NPD until about 18 months ago when I was watching Disney's Tangled with my kids and I was like "hey wait now, what is my mother doing in a Disney movie?" Googling produced among other things a link to one of Richard's videos, and the rest is history. Unlike most people on the forum I think, I haven't actually dated any narcissists, but I've had a few "friends" that were definitely in the narc ballpark, and I've had my arse thoroughly kicked by an NPD boss, and just generally, I have that victim stance that tends to attract them. It's like with drunks on the bus. They can tell we're going to be sympathetic, can't they? Every. bloody. time.

Watching Richard's videos and reading around has convinced me that I probably have CPTSD. I'm working on my recovery, particularly important because I have two small kids who I'm trying to not mess up.

While looking for information about NPD, because I am confident my mother is borderline and a covert narcissist... She has not been diagnosed and (I believe) WILL NEVER allow herself to be. If she did, she would disagree and dismiss the diagnosis anyway. Mental health professionals pointed me in the direction of BPD, after I gave several examples of her behavior. (Trying to cover family history for my son, who has bipolar II disorder...and who is doing very well). Information on BPD did touch on narcissistic behavior, but I did not explore that at the time. After coming across Richard's information and videos... her behavior really crosses over into the covert narcissist descriptions given.
She has treated me like the golden child, to a point and my dad as the black sheep.... I am an only child. From a very young age, I felt responsible for her happiness and absolutely did not want to disappoint her. However, at a not much older age, some of her behavior did not seem "right" to me??? If she noticed me getting close to other people, she would say negative things about that person... At a very young age, I learned to hide my feelings. I only allowed myself to feel them in private. Anyway.. my parents are in their mid 70s and doing well (physically) overall. They live in their home and take care of themselves. I am nearing retirement and she has been "laying the groundwork" for a couple years to manipulate me into moving closer to them so I can be her handmaiden... As an only child, I am the one caregiving "the right thing to do" falls to.
If she was not my mother (immediate family member) I would have never had a relationship with her personality to begin with. I hate negativity and drama... I do not disillusion myself with rainbows and unicorns (though they are a pleasing visual). I just prefer to look at the positives... My point was not to ramble on about myself so much, I am not sure where to begin as far as Richard's various courses. Which apply to my situation. I have been trying to find more information on having him actually coach me a bit. I am not a "techy", and have not found that information.

Hi everyone and thank you for this forum - I have been an avid Spartan Coach fan for a couple of years now. I stumbled across Richard's youtube channel when I went searching on the web for clues and was grasping at straws to comprehend what was happening to me back then. His video on Grey Rock basically saved me from a family member.

Excuse me, but English is not my primary language.

Currently I am, for the first time in 15 years, completely free of antidepressants (SSRI medicine) and I do not know what to make of it - I feel like I have been asleep for just as long if not my whole life. I read up on Cluster B and feel that I resonate with the description of Borderline (BPD) and that I have narcissistic traits as well, unfortunately.

Upbringing went on in a dysfunctional family where my parents seem to match the description of BPD as well as NPD. Very few boundaries. Everything looked nice on the surface, but underneath it was very chaotic, it was emotionally and financially a very unstable environment. Dad cheated on my mum, tried to commit suicide. Felt as if my siblings hated my guts, like I was unwanted. We moved around a lot, I experienced lots of bullying, was told to toughen up and i have tried both toxic roles - being the black sheep as well as the golden child. I think all my siblings have tried to be put on the piedestal and then discarded.

My father died when I was 9 or 10 and I had to take care of my mother and her grief consumed everything. All family members close by show very narcissistic / self absorbed traits. My sister carried on a terror regime for years towards me until I cut ties with her some years ago after serious threats from her. I have suffered from eating disorders, substance abuse and exhibited rebellious, unresponsible behaviour. On the surface you can not tell these things from looking at me and my life situation (education, a job) , but when life gets in the way everything feels chaotic, fragmented and , even super duper gloooomy even at the adult age of 41. Got tonnes of anger to deal with!

So sorry for your pain, I try to live each day to the fullest,if possible,not always as easy to do as it is as easy to say. I think a lot of my functioning problems are my meds,so glad to hear you are off yours,that is a great step.. One day at a time.

monkert67 wrote:So sorry for your pain, I try to live each day to the fullest,if possible,not always as easy to do as it is as easy to say. I think a lot of my functioning problems are my meds,so glad to hear you are off yours,that is a great step.. One day at a time.

v

Thank you very much monkert67 for your sound advice - all the best wishes to you on your road to recovery.

Hello,

Warning: very long read. So sorry about the length, but I think my experience might be useful to others.....

I already wrote in the forum for some time. I've decided to finally write an intro about myself.

I was born in a family full of bullies. These bullies didn't acknowledge they were bullies. They seemed so unaware of it, they took all comments they made so lightly, they ended up paying a very high price. The family was a total mess.

My father was the worst of all of them. He is the puppet master moving all the threads - but they don't know, they never knew it, and they died without knowing it.

I found out my father was a psychopath in 2013. I married a psychopath, of course. Thanks to googling about abusive relationships I finally found out the truth about my husband. He nearly killed me, and he put me in very dangerous situations. He also caused me physical injuries, that will last for the rest of my life.

I was on the phone explaining to my father about the type of person my husband was, when I realised my father was just exactly the same type. I was scared and in shock. I didn't find so many answers on the internet. When I thought I had discovered all the psychopaths around me, a few weeks later, still in deep shock, I realised that one of my "best" friends was a psychopath. He confessed it all very calmly while I was explaining it about my husband being a psychopath. I was so in shock I could barely react. I wanted to tell more people about it, but people didn't seem to understand anything when I tried to explain it. Very frustrating indeed.

As many others, I kept doing research and rushing to fix my life asap. My life was a total mess. I had no money and my mental health was severely damaged. I couldn't focus properly or plan things ahead.

As many others, I tried many things that didn't work. I didn't find Richard's videos until 2015, a bit late for me.

As the post from "Inititated", I'm also a mix of golden child and at the same time a victim of bullying all my life. I think this might be also something many others have in common.

Anyways, I find quite difficult to know when I should say "I'm fully recovered" as in some way or another, life seems to be a path of improvements. However, a good sign of recovery to me is that you feel in control of the situation, not the other way around.

All these years my life has been a mess after another. No matter what I did, I was getting in trouble.

When choosing my roommates, I made horrible decisions that lead me to many problems. When choosing a boyfriend, it was also very bad.

At work it was a nightmare, as I am always bullied. I made the mistake of working too hard. I couldn't control it. At the beginning it was the idea that I needed to work hard to get out of my dramatic situation asap. Then it mutated into a workaholic person somehow and I couldn't stop working at all times.

I worked in IT. As I didn't have any money, Linux was the only way to learn for free. I got addicted to Linux and all their ideals. To me is like a cult. People believe that open source software is going to save the world, but it also has a dark side. The dark side is so dark, that someone willing to see it, won't be supporting it blindly like that. I've realised that being a workaholic and believing in Linux is a very bad combination. Linux means that you believe that voluntary work is necessary to support the ideals of open source software, so you devote all your spare time to work for those ideals. It takes all your life. Moreover, you become a radical person, anyone telling you that you're wrong about Linux, will be automatically labelled as the "enemy" and a very ignorant person. I spent so many years in the Linux cult, and thankfully I'm out of it now. There's so much arrogance in those assumptions. I feel sorry for all those that stick to those ideals, as I see myself in them now, and this was not that long ago. Anytime I try to tell my colleagues that I see open source software in a very different way, that I see now it has bad things too, they see me as the enemy. They say to me that I am now in the "dark side", and that I should go back to the "light". I keep telling them that I don't hate open source software, I'm not against it, I am against of slavery, as being a workaholic is a mental health issue, and I used to have it, but not any more. They seem to start understanding it a bit now. It's quite hard to be honest, and to see myself like that, it makes it even harder.

All these realisations came very recently. My mind has been framed to see the world in a very idealistic view. This is bad. A mix of arrogance and radical ideas. I'm not quite sure what's all about it, but no matter what I tried to see for life, it felt into some sort of radical view.

My ex husband, the psychopath, he made me believe that extreme freedom ideals were something amazing. It was again this arrogant idea that others can't understand or see the "magic", while you have some kind of superpowers so you can see it. I used to believe the bs called the "invisible hand", and many other radical right wing ideas. All these ideas were put inside my head by my husband.

It didn't last long until I got into trouble. As I became an evangelist of this political view, I turned into social media to post all the time about this, to have arguments in Twitter and just to be everywhere talking about the good things of "freedom". I was very happy with my new "friends". The problem came when right after I managed to get rid from my ex husband, I started realising that my ideas might be wrong. I questioned them and with the help of a friend, I finally found the way to exit this political movement. It was quite hard to acknowledge a few things. It was a tough decision. Then I had all the internet with my name and saying things I found horrible. I found very difficult and almost impossible to remove all my comments from the internet. I was afraid an employer would find them. So my ex husband wanted to destroy me in so many ways, and he managed to do almost do it. There were so many things to fight against, while having a horrible financial situation and a very bad mental health. Remembering those days is a painful thing.

Then I found about this thing called bitcoin. When I thought I was free from any brainwash, another bitter surprise came. By then, I was still very much into the open source philosophy. I met a guy that was an open source supporter. He used to give talks, he was very active. I quickly became a fan of him. He also supported bitcoin ideals. My poor mind saw a good guy with good intentions. Nowadays I see a guy with severe codependency issues and radical ideals.

He fully brainwashed me with the bitcoin ideals. One weekend after another, he kept talking and talking about how amazing this bitcoin thing is. He seemed so smart and a good guy I felt so comfortable listening to him. At some point something "clicked" inside of my mind, and I started believing into this bitcoin thing too.

As bitcoin seemed to demand a lot of time to study, I exhausted all my spare time again, this time studying bitcoin. This time I got in serious trouble.

While I believed bitcoin was something good for the world, I started to see many bad things happened thanks to bitcoin. At the beginning they were easily ignored, but after some time they became more and more difficult to ignore. Crimes and terrorists were supported with bitcoin.

Moreover, I was suddenly surrounded by psychopaths that were looking to make quick profit from this new technology. I was caught in the middle of this mess, and I didn't know how to get out of it. I met so many criminals and bad guys that it was extremely difficult for me to "prove" that I was not one of them too. In reality I was very naive and full of ideals. Nothing to do with my piers in the business.

To make matters worse, I started working in the field. As they pay very well, it was very difficult for me to get out of this world. However, the shadow of doing illegal things was always next to me. I kept trying to remain away from illegal stuff, but at some point it became impossible. Bitcoin became the tool for illegal stuff, and hence I was inadvertently caught in all this mess.

What made it very weird is that I found myself saying things and acting in a way I wouldn't normally. I was quite shocked and confused. It seemed like some kind of double personality was within myself, someone that would defend bitcoin among all the things, and also capable of doing illegal stuff. I had to make great efforts to control myself. I was desperate to know the truth about bitcoin.

In the middle of all this confusion, an investor approached me and told me that he would be willing to support a business in bitcoin if I wanted to start my own. This was the golden opportunity to be rich. I have met so many people that were now rich thanks to this bitcoin thing. This was my opportunity.

However, I was in great distress. I didn't want to make a mistake. I wanted to make sure that bitcoin was something legit, I didn't want to do something illegal.

Then it's when things turned very very nasty for me. As I was not sure about the real nature of bitcoin, I kept asking for honest feedback from people, specially in the field of security. I always had a backlash, or some sort of negative answer, or just ignoring me. I was very confused as to what to expect. No one told me what they really thought about bitcoin.

I kept approaching people working in the security field, and I always had bitter experiences. Then I met a guy that changed my life. He worked in security for the government. He worked against terrorism.

What happened next is a very difficult story. He used my naivity to arrest me and to torture me. As I was deeply involved into bitcoin related things, he used this as an excuse to arrest me and torture me. He wanted me to confess about illegal stuff. The problem is that I didn't do anything illegal by itself. This guy showed me things that were horrifying that completely changed the way I see bitcoin for ever. Bitcoin is used to support terrorism, and for many other horrible things. So in one hand I was grateful I finally understood that bitcoin is something bad. Also, I understood that bitcoin is a cult. If you search on the internet about this, you'll find some people are already talking about this. This would explain why I was acting in a very strange way, and doing and saying things that I wouldn't normally. This was such a relief. However, I invested many years learning about bitcoin and I was extremely close to build my own bitcoin company. I was totally destroyed in tears. I couldn't stop crying.

As days went by, this guy didn't release me soon at all, and no matter what I told him, he kept looking for information that could be used against me, or against others. I have physical sequels after the torture that will remain with me for the rest of my life. Not to mention the psychological part, that I'm still trying to cope with.

This guy experimented with me while torturing me, and he also abused me in a sexual way. I'm not sure if I'll ever get any compensation after this. I wish this never happened.

After this guy released me, the government has showed zero support to me, and they've been trying to cover up the situation for him.

Now, I'm once again, left with nothing in life.......... I lost my job because of this. Now I started over again. I had zero in my bank account and no one to ask for help. I had to eat for a couple of weeks in a place for beggars. I had to pretend to be under a different situation. Telling them about bitcoin and torture by government was not a good idea. I finally managed to find a new job and things started to be a bit better now? I don't even know what "better" means at this point. I'm just waiting for the next psychopath to come across with, as this seems the fate for all of us.

PS. If you think some of the information given here might put me in danger, please let me know. I've modified/excluded some info with the purpose of explaining things but keeping certain degree of privacy.

So, I am here alive not because he let me go, but because I managed to scape after being captured for one year. Just FYI, I wouldn't be here alive without the knowledge about psychology I gathered thanks to Richard. When you are in an extreme situation like that you are willing to try the most bizarre and challenging things that you can possibly imagine.

There are many things that I can't tell here that would change how you see life,but that would uncover my identity. I think those things are extremely important for us to know but I can't disclose them

To make things way worse, these psychopaths working for the government have managed to brainwash a good guy working in the same field. Who knows what they've told him. I believe they were extremely convincing, most probably they even cried. This innocent guy has been used as a weapon. They will believe him and he's inadvertently helping a murderer. I am sure he doesn't know the truth and I know how easily we are convinced as human beings to think in a way or another, as myself has been involved so many times in "good causes".

I still don't know how to handle this situation. I'm alone, in poor financial and health conditions, fighting against psychopaths working for the government. They're using the power of the government against me.

I really don't know.

I ask God to help me, because I can't do this on my own.