I Have Something To Say

A couple years ago, I hit a serious wall.  I was emotionally and physically exhausted, but didn't understand why. Sure, I was a mom, wife, graduate student, and ran a business, but this exhaustion went much deeper than my chronic state of busyness and hypervigilance. Sure, I knew I had a rough childhood and had gone no contact with my parents ten years prior. I got on with my life. I made many positive and deliberate changes so I didn't repeat their patterns, but I hadn't fully unpacked just how vast that black hole of childhood trauma was. For me, awakening to the impact of my childhood trauma has happened over many years, with thousands of tiny steps toward recovery. But one day, the truth of it hit me so hard, I had to drop everything to process it. I had no choice because my body and brain simply gave out. I had to grow or succumb. I chose to grow. I threw myself headlong into the task of really looking at my issues. You could say I was hypervigilant about trauma ...

Abuse survivors are usually wary of new relationships for extremely good reasons that are not their fault. Almost always, the cycle of abuse starts out as something that appears wonderful. The new guy or gal is interested in them. Not only interested, but infatuated. They too-quickly claim they are "the one." They study their target, quick to note all their likes and dislikes, which feels like manna from heaven for someone who has been emotionally neglected. They are quick to become intimate, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Abusers hook their victims fast, always under some romantic guise of "fate" or "true love." Just when the victim believes it's real, the trouble starts. This initial stage of love bombing is how an abuser manipulates their prey into a false attachment. Everyone needs to be seen, heard, loved, and cared for, and this is the ammunition an abuser uses to target their victims. When someone feels loved, they relax. They bond...

Those who have survived abusive childhoods at some time or another have run into someone (or many people) making banal excuses to explain away their experience. "Parents aren't perfect." "They were doing their best." "Just wait until you're a mom or dad." While it's true that no one is perfect and most people don't intend to hurt their children, these excuses wound children of narcissistic parents at their core. These sorts of trite phrases are often used by narcissistic parents to manipulate and dupe others into believing their child is the unreasonable one. It is not possible to ever reason or win an argument with a narcissist. In order for the child of narcissistic parents to have any identity at all, they must get far away.  While it is considered "normal" for most families have some form of dysfunction, narcissistic homes are especially toxic. The following are some common differences between "normal" parents a...

When I was a child, I had no tools or language to understand the abuse that was happening to me. What I did know was that I was constantly misunderstood. My parents often accused me of doing things I never did and punished me for not doing things that were not mine to be done. I didn't know what projection was, but I was constantly accused of having malicious intent when there was none. In order to survive, I stuffed my anger and made sure to never even think a cross thought about my abusers. I attempted to be perfect, which is, of course, impossible. I became hypervigilent in anticipating the needs of others. I became the cheerful servant, like Cinderella, daydreaming about a kinder and gentler world. Also like Cinderella, I didn't understand why, in spite of all my best efforts, my family hated me so much. I thought it was some flaw of mine that I was so misunderstood. When I grew older, I tried in vain to communicate with my abusers. I honed all the skills to write and ...

When I was thirteen, my father burst into my room while I was doing my homework, and demanded that I follow him outside. He lead me in the dark to the steep, empty hillside behind our house to point out that "some guy" could see right into my bedroom window. He then berated me for half an hour because my shades weren't drawn. Never mind there was nothing back there. Never mind whoever wanted to spy on me would have to jump a fence, climb a hill, and navigate their way through trees and poison oak in the dark. "Somebody" could potentially do it, and I was in trouble for not preventing it from happening. As per usual, I absorbed the blame. It wasn't until a few years later that I realized that the "someone" who would go to all that trouble to watch me through my bedroom window was himself. My father did many sexually inappropriate things to me and around me for as far back as I can remember. He used to walk around the house naked when my teenag...

Conversations with narcissists often start out like this. You make a statement about something that matters to you. It doesn't matter what it is exactly, but the fact that it holds some meaning or significance to you is what the narc hones in on. The narc then demeans the thing you care about, through either dismissing it or making excuses why it doesn't matter. Then they make some unrelated accusation that accuses you of the opposite of your actions and intentions.  Next, they twist what you said to make you wrong, and accuse you of they very thing they are blatantly doing. Fun, huh? Let's take a look at an example of this. You say you love kittens, and hope to foster them someday. Not too controversial, right? Just a statement about something you care about. A narcissist says kittens are stupid, and there's too many of them anyway. Then they tell you you're just encouraging all those losers that don't neuter their pets. You're probably going out there...

I mentor a group of young adults, and was recently handling a situation where another mentor systematically tore down much of the esteem I had spent several weeks helping them build up. Her reasoning for doing this was to "toughen them up" and get them ready for "the real world." When asked her why she would purposely disparage young people just starting to grasp on to their own ideas, her response was, "Well, that's just the way the world is." No. That's the way narcissistic abuse is. Fear-based tactics do not work, and they especially have no place in any sort of system where one person holds authority over another. When a mentor shoots down the ideas of a mentee, it creates a false dependence on the mentor's "right" ideas. The mentee then feels a false insecurity about their own "wrong" ideas. Not only is this terrible teaching, this is extremely dangerous territory for anyone who has experienced narcissistic abuse...

Ending a relationship of any kind can be tough, but when someone tries to disentangle themselves from a narcissist, sociopath, or psychopath, the experience is a special kind of hell. From the beginning, partners are groomed to cater to the needs of the narc while denying all of their own. It's an insidious process of devaluation that happens so gradually, few recognize what's happening until it's too late. Eventually, the partner of a narcissist will feel guilty for having any needs or boundaries at all. The narc's constant requirement to be the center of attention at all times ensures that no one else can exist in that space. In the world of a narcissist, they are always right and everyone else is always wrong. If you don't go along with their program, they are always the victim and you are always the perp.  Anyone who does not feed the insatiable ego of a narc at all times will be punished, and narcs are experts at dreaming up ways to be particularly and int...

My mother had a knack for triangulating people through toxic secrets. She learned the behavior from her mother. She would start out by dropping some heavy piece of information that as a child I had no business knowing, and then say, "Don't tell your (dad, brother, teacher, grandma, etc.) because I don't wan't to upset them." Essentially,  this meant I was screwed. Not only was the information itself a source of stress, but I also had to worry that whatever it was didn't leak out. Even if it didn't say anything, if the person found out, I would be blamed and deemed "untrustworthy." On top of all that was an ethical dilemma. The person my mother was keeping secrets from had a right to know. When they inevitably would find out that I kept the information from them, they would be upset with me , not my mom. The stress piled up, and I suffocated under its toxic weight. Because of toxic secrets in my family, I was psychologically and sexually ab...

I grew up in an extremely dysfunctional home with a raging, alcoholic, narcissistic father. I still carry a lot of pain over the traumatic memories of his irrational outbursts and propensity to punish me for imagined slights. I struggle with an overbearing sense of responsibility and need to be blameless as a result of his abuse. But recognizing the ways he abused me and my subsequent hangups are pretty easy to identify. Though painful, my father's overt behavior is not as difficult to process as the other forms of abuse I experienced. The hardest is emotional neglect. The constant baseline in my home was not angry outbursts, it was neglect. It was the chronic, constant expectation that I would not cause any trouble or upset by having needs of any kind. If I did attempt to be seen or heard, I would be punished. My parents were experts in emotional neglect and covert abuse. As a young child, I was expected to require minimal upkeep. My physical need for food, clothing, and shel...

Whether you run in evangelical circles or not, chances are you've encountered someone who has started a sentence with, "God told me to..." and finished it with something inspirational, aspirational, or irrational. Depending on the denomination, it might get thrown around as a common catch phrase, or it might be reserved for more serious, "big" declarations. Either way, narcissists in the church love to exploit it. Here's why. When a narcissist says, "God told me to..." it is almost always in order to over-inflate their own status or position while simultaneously absolving themselves of any personal accountability. What better excuse is there? If a narcissist claims God told them to quit their job, who can argue with that? Certainly not their wife, or their children, or anyone who might be counting on them to pay the bills. Perhaps a narcissist decides to move their family to another country because God told them how they would be "lif...

Nothing is ever good enough for a narcissist. They seek to tear down and destroy any good thing they can't claim for their own spotlight. Chances are, if you've ever confronted a narcissist about their cruel words, you've heard them deflect, "I was just telling the truth!" This is the lie of the narcissist: to twist "truth" into malice and give it a holy name. When something is true, it illuminates and inspires. Sure, the truth can hurt. Like a bright light, truth exposes everything. But truth is not judgment. It reveals, but does not condemn. Truth ensures that all will be seen- good and evil. This is why good people crave the truth and evil people must distort it. A narcissist's "truth" is one such distortion. Its sole purpose is to throw shade on anything the narcissist views as a threat. When a narcissist says, "I was just telling the truth," what they really mean is that they refuse to take responsibility for their cru...

One of the biggest mistakes I see victims of narcissistic abuse make is to feel sorry for their abusers because their abuser is "mentally ill." This is wrong. Narcissism is not the same as mental illness. While someone with a mental illness might inadvertently cause chaos around them due to their mental state, most of them sincerely don't mean to hurt others. Many mentally ill people struggle with shame caused by their desire to be there for loved ones when their mental illness prevents them from doing so. It's important to understand that a narcissist does not feel this way. A narcissist willfully chooses to harm others. They are in control of their behavior, as evidenced when they put on the charm to manipulate people into thinking well of them. When they act in an abusive way, they choose to do so on purpose. Narcissists, psychopaths, sociopaths, and those who make up the cluster B personality disorders are notoriously responsible for the bulk of physical, ps...

It's been nearly twelve years since I went no contact with my covert narcissist mother, thirteen for my malignant narcissist father. After a lifetime of trying to reason and cope with the abuse, I made a choice to leave in order to survive them. I am now a voluntary orphan. It's been the hardest and best decision of and for my life. Being human, there is nothing that makes no contact with both biological parents easy. It goes against all of my biological, physiological, and social programming. I am perpetually broken-hearted. I long for connection and understanding from my narcissistic parents, past, present and future. Alas, there was never, is not, and never shall be. I ache for the child in me who missed out on not having loving, safe, supportive parents. I ache for the adolescent and young adult who had no positive parental example, no guidance, no support of any kind. I ache for the grown woman with kids of her own who struggles forward, hoping to carve a better pat...

Writing about the nature of abuse along with my own personal experience of it has been an extremely helpful tool for me to better integrate who I am. For a long time, I distracted myself from going there, knowing full well that when I did, it would be intense. Eventually, that strategy failed and I was left with no other healthy alternative than to face the big, hairy, purple monster head on. When I did face it head on, guess what? It was intense. I had to do a lot of interior work to get to a place where I could be fully honest and present with the full impact of what happened and the damage that was done. In this full embrace I finally allowed myself to grieve on a level I previously thought was "too selfish" (my abusers' words, not mine) to do. I allowed myself to fully acknowledge a range and depth of feeling that was previously inaccessible. The paradox of pain and relief that go with this sort of work often overwhelms me in a way that requires literally all I h...

I have always been a perceptive person, able to see any situation from the point of view of others. Growing up, I never understood how I could see my parent's point of view, but they could never see mine. And the (not so) funny thing is, their point of view was always skewed in their favor. If they were upset, it was my fault. If I was upset, it was my fault. If they were offended, it was my fault. If I was offended, it was my fault. See the pattern? When I was blamed, which was inevitable, I would take responsibility for my part, and then some. Even when things were not my fault, I could trace the line of reasoning back to how they could potentially find fault with me, and I would even take responsibility for their false perceptions. For example, one time, in a rare act of generosity, my parents took my friend and I to see our favorite band. My bestie and I were understandably excited, and screamed and cheered throughout the show. It was two hours of sheer joy, for which I la...

I went no contact with my abusive parents many years ago, but my mother, a covert narcissist, still continues to hoover me in. Hoovering is a strategy characteristic of Cluster B disordered people wherein, like a vacuum cleaner, they try to suck people back in to their manufactured drama. It is yet another form of manipulation and control, often thinly veiled as "caring" or "concern." When I went no contact, I moved away and left no forwarding address, on purpose. My mother has managed to get hold of my address with every subsequent move. Sometimes she manipulates other family members to get it. At first, she played innocent, as if I must have "forgotten" to give it to her. Other times, she has used the "poor me" approach to gain sympathy from the other flying monkeys in my family, who were all too willing to sell me out. (They are no contact now, too.) The thing is, if there was a real emergency or if she wanted to have a real conversation ...

Even though I had all the classic symptoms and psychological traits of someone who has been abused, it took me a long time to understand and own what happened to me. For many years, I thought that it wasn't that bad. After all, there was no physical evidence, at least not in the way a bruise or a broken arm communicates the obvious. I had no dramatic story that could someday become a Lifetime Movie. There was nothing particularly off about my abusers that an outsider would pick up on. If you met them, you would think they were normal people. The abuse I experienced was rarely grandiose, though my abusers were. Instead, it was the cumulative effect of many years of subtle lies, manipulation, and devaluation. It was in the form of gaslighting and emotional neglect. It was the quiet but consistent denial of my boundaries and personhood. It was the kind of abuse that is so under the radar, no one sees it. If I were to try to describe it to others, they would give me too familiar d...

As a child of narcissistic parents, one of my proudest life accomplishments is over ten years of no contact with them. But let me qualify that. It also took over ten years of no contact to feel proud. For the bulk of my life, I carried all the guilt and shame about their bad behavior. Recovering from narcissistic abuse is a lifelong process that some people never even have the opportunity to begin. Back when I was in contact with them and still trying to make things work, I often experienced extreme migraines, panic attacks and other physical symptoms, not yet understanding all the reasons why my body acted in such violent opposition. Today, I still have frequent migraines and nightmares, but in spite of my daily struggles, I consider myself one of the fortunate ones, especially because I was able to go no contact. For many, especially those who have children with narcissists, no contact is not an option. For many, gaining the necessary distance to recover one's identity and h...

As a person was was manipulated, gaslighted, and lied to for all of her childhood, truth-telling matters deeply to me. Even though I was often punished for it, it became extremely important for me to always tell the truth. I realized at a young age that truth and my own integrity were all I had, and as much as my abusers tried, they couldn't take them away from me. Even if no one believed me, I knew that at the very least, I could trust my myself. My own integrity is what helped me discern the difference between what I was told by my abusers and what was actually happening. I value truth more than anything, and even though sometimes truth does hurt, I believe in its power to heal. That said, holding to the truth in the face of abuse is not easy. In many cases, it's easier to accept the deceptions and lies of the abuser that nothing is wrong, it's not that bad, and to just get over it. Over time, victims of abuse cope by deceiving themselves often become their own worst...