Abuse amnesia

“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.” 
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“Some of your childhood traumas may be remembered with incredible clarity, while others are so frightening or incomprehensible that your conscious mind buries the memory in your unconscious.” 
― Renee Fredrickson, Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse



After three years of almost total radio silence and inferred antipathy, I am finally - with cautious optimism - back in touch with my sister. I have hope that she and I can rebuild our relationship, in spite of the thousands of miles between us, not to mention the decades of unspoken pain, grief, misunderstanding and anguish that exists festering in our shared histories.

The other day she told me that our mother had recently stayed at her house and demanded to know - in her usual waspish, hectoring manner - what the hell was going on, and why on earth her clearly deranged and bitter daughter (i.e. me) no longer wanted to have anything to do with her. Yes, this is despite the fact I went to great pains to spell out my reasons as clearly and reasonably as I could in my No Contact email of May 2015. Unless you communicate something my mother wants to hear, she simply will not listen. She never has, and she never will.

Like me, my sister hates confrontation, but this time the dear brave soul did manage to state some home truths, although I doubt she was particularly assertive about it. (This is little wonder; I have lost count of the number of times I have tried to get through to my mother about her abhorrent behaviour only to be shouted down or called a liar. She is wilfully, obstinately obstructive to receiving honesty, because it so often conflicts with her own manufactured reality.) I don't know exactly the words she used of course, but my sister told my mother that my refusal to have her in my life any more is "not without foundation": for starters, she made our dad's life hell, and abused both my sister and me.

With wearying predictability, our mother denied everything. She reacted with outrage at the accusation she made our dad's life hell, and as for abusing my sister and me, she apparently said: "I don't remember that".

It is a fairly straightforward diversionary tactic: simply deny all knowledge. I don't remember it, therefore it didn't happen. In other words: your version of events doesn't correspond with mine. (My version of events will NEVER correspond with my mother's, and that is because she is mentally ill and emotionally disabled.)


I have no expectation - precisely none - that my mother will ever say: "Yeah, I was a total shit to your father, every day I undermined and insulted him and I am at least partly responsible for his inexorable descent into the abject misery of alcoholism... and if it wasn't for me, he would probably have lived a longer and much, much happier life." While that is unquestionably true, she will never admit it. It's a shame, because the confession will release her. It will set her free. My mother the soul murderer needs to confess to many hundreds of sins, but not one single solitary confession will be forthcoming. Ever. That refusal to accept culpability, that total abdication of responsibility, is imprisoning her.  It's horrifically sad but she is the only person in the world with the power to unlock that prison.

And apart from admitting, without even a tinge of shame, that she did regularly hit her daughters (bolstered by her usual piss-poor 'justifications': "my mother smacked me when I was naughty... it was just discipline... I was under so much pressure as a single mother", etc, etc), she "plays the innocent" with aplomb whenever she is accused of being an abuser - accused of anything, in fact, other than of being a loving, struggling mother who only ever did her best.  And besides, 'smacking' is completely and objectively different to what my sister and I experienced when on the receiving end of our mother's regular violent rages. She didn't 'smack' us, she beat us. HARD. The beatings were not attempts at discipline, unless 'discipline' means 'terrorising'. So no, I will not tolerate having the physical abuse we suffered dismissed as mere 'smacking'. Clearly if it had been just that, it would not be an issue now, more than 20 years later.

But it is true that both the abuser and the abused may "forget" some or even all of the abuses, or at least downplay or suppress them in their memories.  They do this for different reasons, of course: the abuser 'forgets' (or rather refuses to remember) because otherwise they will be forced to face their own unspeakable grotesqueness, while the victim forgets in order to protect themselves from the true harshness of reality. This amnesia - which can be selective, localised and generalised - relates to dissociation, summarised below, an important topic which I will cover in another blog post.

It is irrelevant whether or not I believe my mother has genuinely "forgotten" what she made her ex-husband and daughters suffer (I don't believe it; not for a second).  Again it would merely be a case of making a distinction between my mother being mentally ill or outright evil. It doesn't matter: she is toxic, and it is of no consequence whether that toxicity is due to mental illness or something even worse.

In any case, I'm not interested in her own 'amnesia', real or faked. She fakes most things, so I have no reason to assume her purported amnesia is anything other than another of her gargantuan lies.

But I want to look at my own 'amnesia', which I do find troubling when I consider the many 'missing jigsaw puzzle pieces' of my past. I KNOW, with crystal-clear certainty, that I was abused by that woman on a daily basis for many, many years. I know that some days were better than others. Some days, even most days,  I could (and did) kid myself that everything was normal, or at least not terrible. That's because, most of the time, the abuse was passive rather than active (i.e. ignoring or neglecting me rather than hitting or insulting me). But the problem I have now is that because I've been trained to doubt my own perceptions and memories through chronic gaslighting, if someone were to actually ask me "What exactly did your mother do that was so bad?", I'd be unable to give a coherent or convincing response. Perhaps a simple and honest response would be to tell that person that she never actually did anything good.

Narcissist parents are very careful about how, where and when they abuse. I am convinced my mother has always been not only fully aware of abusing me, but enjoys doing it, and often actually PLANNED her abuses. And she probably remembers more than I do - because my brain, by necessity, has blocked a lot of my childhood out. That's the nature of childhood trauma. There are dauntingly huge swathes of time during my late childhood and teens that are simply not there, and these missing memories have to be explained, even if I have no intention or desire to retrieve them.

I do have a few precious memories of my childhood from the age of three to eight, and most of them are happy - even idyllic. Because my dad was there. Today is Christmas Day and I remember fondly the Christmases we had as a family of four, before my parents divorced. I can't be sure whether or not it was all just an illusion. I guess it was. Still, I feel lucky that I did at least have that illusion for the formative years of my childhood.


Further reading:

http://outofthefog.website/what-not-to-do-1/2015/12/3/abuse-amnesia

http://flyingmonkeysdenied.com/glossary/abuse-amnesia/ "Pretending not to remember having abused someone like a family member, love interest, or child — knowing full well they abused and are actively lying in order to avoid taking personal responsibility for moral or legal crime while frustrating, insulting, and leading a smear campaign about the character of their accuser, is a typical move for a person who has an extreme personality disorder."

http://flyingmonkeysdenied.com/2016/01/02/what-is-abuse-amnesia/ "According to Out of the Fog, a domestic abuse recovery website, “Abuse Amnesia is a form of cognitive suppression where an abuse victim has trouble remembering episodes where their boundaries have been violated.” 

http://traumadissociation.com/dissociativeamnesia

Does your mother have narcissistic traits?

Dr Karyl McBride's book "Will I ever be good enough? Healing the daughters of narcissistic mothers" (see my review here) contains a quiz - Does your mother have narcissistic traits? 

This set of questions, in my opinion, is inadequate in terms of addressing the issues that children of extreme (malignant) and/or ignoring narcissistic mothers typically deal with. The questions are far too simplistic and seem to be based largely on the author's own relationship with her own (engulfing, non-psychopathic) narcissistic mother.

My own answers are below:

1. When you discuss your life issues with your mother, does she divert the discussion to talk about herself? 

Yes, so I stopped talking to her about life issues, and stopped confiding in her about anything, after the age of 18.


2. When you discuss your feelings with your mother, does she try to top the feeling with her own? 

Yes, she did, hence I stopped discussing my feelings with her, and haven't done so in any depth since 1995. See question 1.

3. Does your mother act jealous of you?

Yes - insanely.

4. Does your mother lack empathy for your feelings?

Yes, she has precisely NO empathy for me. She cannot even be bothered to fake sympathy or compassion for me. But she APPEARS to have empathy for people she didn't give birth to or wasn't once married to. Still can't quite work this one out.

5. Does your mother only support those things you do that reflect on her as a “good mother"?

Just as she has never shown the slightest concern for me during tumultuous periods of my life (health problems, relationship breakdowns), she has never taken any interest in anything I've done that should have elicited some sort of pride - exam success and other academic achievements, a book publishing deal, job offers, travel experiences, marriage, and the births of my babies. It all passed her by. She's just so busy, you see.

6. Have you consistently felt a lack of emotional closeness with your mother?

Yes - there's never been any. An occasional faked and fleeting gesture of affection when I was a child; that's it.

7. Have you consistently questioned whether or not your mother likes you or loves you?

Yes, I did. But now I don't question it. I KNOW she doesn't love or like me.

8. Does your mother only do things for you when others can see?  

No. She birthed me, fed me, clothed me and kept a roof over my head while I was a child/teen (all begrudgingly), and beyond that, NOTHING. I'm sure she lies to others about all these amazing sacrifices she's supposedly made, but she has done NOTHING beyond the most basic physical sustenance, and so has nothing to back up her lies. Yet people still believe her.

9. When something happens in your life (accident, illness, divorce) does your mother react with how it will affect her rather than how you feel? 

No. She has no sort of human reaction. She's never shown the slightest interest, never mind concern. (Although if something tragic WERE to happen to me, she'd use it as a means of gaining attention and sympathy for herself. She would be THRILLED if I were to die before she did - she'd get so much precious supply, and could play the martyr with total impunity.)

10. Is or was your mother overly conscious of what others think (neighbors, friends, family, co-workers)? 

Yes. She really, really cares about what other people think of her. She is entirely dependent upon their validation because she's completely repulsed and alienated everyone who knows the truth about her (her daughters and one or two other relatives - everyone else presumes she's a lovely little old lady).

11. Does your mother deny her own feelings? 

Her true feelings, yes. By necessity she denies them, and it must be exhausting for her. She is utterly consumed by self-loathing, but she can't deal with that so she projects that as rage, resentment, contempt and jealousy. Everyone else is somehow to blame for the aching, ugly void within her soul.

12. Does your mother blame things on you or others rather  than own responsibility for her feelings or actions?

See above. All. The. Time.

13. Is or was your mother hurt easily and then carried a grudge for a long time without resolving the problem? 

She was easily hurt and TOTALLY impervious to (or perhaps more accurately, unfazed by) the extreme hurt she habitually caused those closest to her. Nobody did the silent treatment like my mother.

14. Do you feel you were a slave to your mother?

Absolutely. I was her slave, her hostage and her punching bag

15. Do you feel you were responsible for your mother’s ailments or sickness (headaches, stress, illness)? 

I was the reason she was unhappy and stressed. She didn't even WANT kids, but there I was, existing just to spite her. So yeah, I felt "responsible".

16. Did you have to take care of your mother’s physical needs as a child? 

No. Thank God.

17. Do you feel unaccepted by your mother? 

Absolutely. Rejected is a better word.

18. Do you feel your mother was critical of you? 

Erm... YES! She never gave me a single compliment. Ever.

19. Do you feel helpless in the presence of your mother? 

Paralyzed with terror, more to the point. And drained of all joy and energy. Hence I never want to see her or communicate with her again.

20. Are you shamed often by your mother? 

I was. She loved to mortify me - it gave her such a thrill.

21. Do you feel your mother knows the real you? 

She does not have the first clue who I am - she is terribly well acquainted with what makes me feel scared and miserable though.

22. Does your mother act like the world should revolve around her? 

All. The. Time.

23. Do you find it difficult to be a separate person from your mother? 

I cannot believe I came from her body, and the fact I did absolutely disgusts me. We could not be less alike. She has totally detached herself from me, and I am now at a point where i welcome that detachment. 

24. Does your mother appear phony to you? 

All. The. Time. She's the phoniest person I've ever met.

25. Does your mother want to control your choices? 

She wants me to make the wrong choices, because nothing makes her happier than my misery. Apart from that, she simply does not care. At all.

26. Does your mother swing from egotistical to a depressed mood? 

Her mood tends to simply be varying degrees of "batshit crazy". Sometimes calm ('simmering'), sometimes an enraged tornado of doom and destruction. And everything in between. She could go from one extreme to the other in the blink of an eye.

27. Did you feel you had to take care of your mother’s emotional needs as a child? 

It was 'obviously' my fault she was unhappy and poor and stressed. So I felt guilty all the time. I tried to please her, but my efforts were in vain. See question 15.

28. Do you feel manipulated in the presence of your mother? 

I only exist to her as a thing to be manipulated. I literally serve no other purpose.

29. Do you feel valued by mother for what you do rather than who you are? 
She doesn't know who I am, and she doesn't care about what I do. So I don't feel valued at all, in any way. Never have done.

30. Is your mother controlling, acting like a victim or martyr? 

Constantly. This question refers to two separate and distinct aspects of her toxic personality though: her 'controlling' side, which is formidable, and her propensity to play the victim (poor long-suffering unappreciated mother), which is possibly even more formidable.

31. Does your mother make you act different from how you really feel? 

She makes me feel ashamed for having feelings at all, never mind making me feel obliged to deny and suppress them.

32. Does your mother compete with you? 

She's insanely jealous and my entire adult life has been viewed by her as a sick game of oneupmanship. One that she has lost, abysmally, hence her willingness to accept my NC decision without the slightest murmur of protest.

33. Does your mother always have to have things her way? 

Yes. Always.

My mother doesn't love me

I'm almost 40 years old and it's taken me this long to realise and accept that my mother doesn't love me. I need to keep repeating it in my head, and I need to write it down, like a mantra that I might eventually be able to say out loud with detachment and no tears, in order to somehow make peace with the cold, brutal fact that my mother doesn't love me. She has never loved me, and never will love me. She's incapable of loving me.

I need to understand that it isn't because I'm unloveable. I know that I am loveable, and worthy. I'm a decent human being with many talents and virtues, none of which she has ever cared enough to take the time to see and appreciate. Or rather: she sees them alright, and she despises and resents them rather than cherishes and encourages them. I need to understand that she doesn't love her own daughter because she never even bothered getting to know me, and because she is sick and broken and mentally maladjusted. Because she is emotionally crippled. I need to understand that there's nothing I can do to make her love me. I am as powerless now as an adult as I was a child (in fact even more so), and I have now, finally, stopped trying to make her love me. Love should never be forced or coerced, and the love a parent has for a child should always be instinctive, abundant and unconditional. But I will never get anything like that from my mother. I need to find the strength to not allow this lack of love to define me, because if I did, it would destroy me.

It's not easy, this acceptance of maternal rejection. It hurts like hell, and right now I cannot envisage a time when it will stop hurting. I still occasionally have days where I might catch myself thinking wistfully "Maybe, after all this time, she's finally realised what she's lost" (she never saw herself as 'having' anything to lose, and my absence from her life is inconsequential to her, other than how it is judged by others). Or "I still have it in my heart to forgive her; all she needs to do is say sorry and we can take it from there" (our relationship isn't just rotten or fractured any more, it's dead. In fact it never actually really existed... And as for holding out any hope of an acknowledgment or apology... I know it won't ever happen. I have at least unquestioningly accepted that much).

What makes this even harder is other peoples' reactions:

"But she's your mother."
"Surely she wants you to be happy."
"Don't let your pride get in the way."
"When she dies, it will be too late and you'll have so much regret."

I covered some of these thoughtless, prosaic remarks in my early blog post Responses and Rebuttals to the Flying Monkeys. Although I am sick and tired of trying to justify myself and my decisions to other people, I have been trained to within an inch of my life (by Mummy, of course) to invest far too much of my precious time and energy into being preoccupied with what other people think of me. Perhaps it's time I grew up and stopped giving a fuck about such humdrum, trivial, glaringly misinformed and trite opinions.

"But she's your mother."
Indeed she is. She conceived and birthed me, and therefore, as much as it pains me to acknowledge it, I am composed of half her DNA. The thought repulses and astonishes me. My birth is doubtless one of her biggest regrets. And while I'm now glad and thankful that I exist, for much of my childhood and the entirety of my teens I wished I had never been born. Now I just wish I hadn't been born to her - someone so innately ill-equipped to be a mother that I will never understand why she decided to have children at all. So yes, she's my mother and I am her daughter. And yet - and yet. Where's the connection? Where's the love, the affection? The loyalty? The warmth, the affinity? Can you show me? Because I've been searching desperately for it for virtually my entire life, and I've come up with sweet FA. Worse: I feel THE OPPOSITE. She loathes me.

"Surely she wants you to be happy."
Yeah, surely! Right? Wrong. On the rare occasions my mother has actually had an awareness of my mental and emotional state, she has only ever seemed grimly satisfied or perversely interested when I have been sad, desolate, desperate, hurt or lonely. I realise this sounds insane to anyone with a normal, decent mother. It sounds insane to anyone with any goodness and compassion in their heart. But she has always enjoyed my suffering. That's the truth, and if you cannot bear to believe it then frankly you've got no business judging me for excluding such a sadistic piece of shit from my life for good.

"Don't let your pride get in the way."
PRIDE? Are you fucking kidding me?! What pride? That woman made damn sure I HAD NO PRIDE. What I do have is some vestiges of self-preservation (although even that hung by a precarious thread for years). That self-preservation is what made me finally look into my mother's intense cold grey-green eyes one day (it was in August 2013, and the moment will be forever ingrained in my memory) and realise, with a blinding, lightning-bolt epiphany, that the only purpose I served for her was as a thing to be manipulated and used. That has literally all I have ever been to her. And so yeah, I do have just about enough pride to demand a little more than that from my so-called mother. And "... get in the way" of what, exactly? Get in the way of continuing to 'put up and shut up' with a sick joke of a relationship which leaves me feeling bruised, emotionally depleted, terrified, ashamed, confused and worthless?

"When she dies, it'll be too late and you'll have so much regret."
When my mother dies, assuming she doesn't outlive me, I will be devastated. By the time she shuffles off this mortal coil, antiquated, doubtless still seething with the same pointless, pitiless defiance and inappropriate self-righteousness that has always clouded her shackled psyche, and shrivelled with bitterness and her own formidable burden of gnawing regret, I expect to be well in my fifties and possibly a grandmother myself. By that time I will not have clapped eyes on my mother, nor heard her grating, critical voice for two decades. My only regret will be that she forced me into this decision, thereby depriving herself of what could and should have been beautiful, life-affirming relationships not just with me but with her grandsons.
I will never, ever regret going No Contact.

The Six Deadly Sins of Narcissism

Do you remember the movie SE7EN, with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman? A psychopathic serial killer with an incongruently robust moral code trawls the sinful streets of a generic grey American city seeking out victims with a particular vice, and then utilises that vice as an innovative method of torture and murder against the sinner.

The killer, played by an unnervingly impassive Kevin Spacey, sees it as his mission to rid the world of sinners (crucially overlooking the fact that "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is one of the principal Ten Commandments).

And so the unfortunate morbidly obese man (Gluttony) is killed by being force-fed dozens of cans of spaghetti and then having his distended stomach kicked in; a beautiful, conceited woman (Pride) is offered the choice of death or cutting off her own nose 'to spite her face'; an unscrupulous city lawyer is forced to slice away a precise pound of his own flesh (Greed). Wrath, Sloth, Lust and Envy also feature, of course. I won't go into any more detail, as you are probably well aware of the intricacies of the movie. It's a good premise and an unremittingly bleak film with an ending that you either love or hate.

And so what are the 'sins' of narcissism? They correspond almost precisely to the original Seven Sins, as depicted in such vivid and gory detail in this 1995 movie.

I am going to bundle Greed and Gluttony together. Narcissists tend to hanker after or obsess over one or more of the following: money, sensual pleasures (hedonism/sex/food and other indulgences), 'prestige' possessions (palatial house/s, cars, designer clothing and accoutrements), qualifications/titles, expensive holidays, profitable/high-profile careers, and attractive acquaintances and/or sexual partners with profitable/high-profile careers. Many of them salivate over these superficial things while maintaining a shameless claim to 'transcend the material world' with their own special brand of uniqueness, a 'uniqueness' they expect to be revered for. It's not enough for a narcissist to simply have 'enough'. They can never have enough. They want these things AT THE EXPENSE of other people. In fact, TAKING from others to bolster themselves is an integral part of The Narcissist's way of life. We supply what they need, either directly or as a conduit (any or all of the following: attention, admiration, love, drama, luxuries, sex, a 'feeling of importance'), and they take, take, take. Fucking hell, are they ever good at taking. What's theirs is theirs, and what's yours is also theirs. Never forget that. If you do forget, you will swiftly be familiarised with the extent of a narcissist's 'wrath' (see below).

Now, not all narcissists are lazy - some of them keep very active indeed. In fact many of them appear to be somewhat hyperactive. It must be an endlessly exhausting endeavour to keep up a charade of being the exact opposite of what you really are, and desperately trying to maintain adequate supply coming in from numerous sources of supply to meet their insatiable demands. Their suckering tentacles are always groping and grasping for more. But in terms of fulfilling the 'Sloth' criterion, most of them are emotionally and spiritually destitute. They cannot and will not fulfil their obligations within any significant relationship. Everyone else must do their bidding. They are torpid, draining leeches who latch onto their targets and suck every drop of life, love and joy out of them. Many narcissists will put considerable effort into the illusion of being "busy" and even "vivacious", but beneath even the most compellingly radiant of veneers, they are simply empty, impoverished husks. They rely on the goodwill and trusting credulity of others to help them fill the horrifying, unfillable void within their howling, hollowed-out souls.

There is not a narcissist alive who is not driven by and consumed with blazing, undiluted, obliterating ENVY. But let's call it what it is: JEALOUSY. Dear God, rabid jealousy swirls through their psyche like a tornado, darkening their every thought and sullying every otherwise positive life experience. The narcissist envies everyone, for all manner of reasons. They envy their next door neighbour for having a nicer garden, or a more loving marriage, or a newer car. They envy their colleague for having a desk located by a window, or a more senior role in the company, or a more generous salary package. They envy their best friend for having a better body, or prettier/cleverer children, or a more attentive and attractive partner. They envy their own children for being youthful and vibrant and bursting with hope and potential. To be a narcissist is to be a jealous, seething creature transfixed by and resentful of the virtues, possessions and achievements of everyone around them.

What about wrath? Well, we know that narcissists rage. They rage internally ALL THE TIME, and at times that rage will inevitably spill out into a screaming hissy fit, a violent outburst or a toddleresque temper tantrum (very unbecoming for anyone over the age of five, and particularly so for an ageing man or woman). Occasionally - all three! Be warned: narcissists are permanently, ferociously, formidably, incurably angry people. (See my blog post about narcissistic rage.)

Pride seems to be the most obvious sin when discussing narcissism. 'Pride' and 'narcissism' are often erroneously conflated. There is much, much more to narcissism than pride, but nevertheless, a Narcissist's pride is indeed a wild and intimidating beast that must never be taunted or affronted.  'Vanity' is a synonym for pride, but it's a shallow version, concerned only with superficial appearances. Most narcissists are at least a little vain, but by no means all of them. Pride can be a positive thing: we can expect to feel rightly proud when we pass an exam, or lose weight, or cook a delicious meal. We should feel 'proud' of our children and of our accomplishments. We should, at a very basic level, feel proud of who and what we are. That is 'adaptive pride'. It is an appropriate response to what we feel gives purpose and meaning to our lives. It is pride that comes from within, and is affirmed and validated.

How a narcissist achieves their sense of pride is quite different. They feel proud by making their targets feel weak, undermined, indebted, inferior, ashamed, guilty and afraid. THAT is 'maladaptive pride'. Relying on another person's cowering submission in order to puff up your own perverted sense of pride and self-importance... it's hardly a healthy way of functioning. But that's the narcissist's way. It's the only way they know.

Finally, lust. This doesn't necessarily have to be sexual desire, of course - although there are plenty of narcissists (usually the so-called 'somatic narcissists') who use seduction and sexual prowess to great effect in order to achieve most of their supply and crucify their targets. They are usually extremely conceited, regardless of their physical attractiveness, and their attitude towards their sexual partners and intimate relationships is as putrid, mangled and twisted as their heart. (There are few creatures on earth more pitiful, spiteful and bitter than an ageing somatic narcissist.) But whether it's for sex, popularity, status, fame, money or power, all narcissists lust. It's a lust that can never, ever be satisfied. Lust is therefore intimately entwined with all the other sins.


Further reading:

The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism - shamelessness, magical thinking, arrogance, envy, sense of entitlement, exploitation and lack of boundaries.

Pride vs. Narcissism

The Somatic Narcissist

Relationships with narcissists: Sisyphean Undertakings

Is it possible to have a reasonably satisfactory, wholesome and authentic relationship with a narcissist? This is a question I have frequently asked myself. I keep arriving at the same answer: probably not. 'Narcissism' is the antithesis of 'wholesome' and 'authentic'. It represents everything that should be the antithesis of 'relationship'.

But - whether we can tolerate or even enjoy a relationship with one depends what we need and expect from a relationship, and on how severely narcissistic they are.

To put it simply: the more narcissistic traits a person has, the more Sisyphean the task of maintaining a relationship with that person. I am going to go out on a limb here and state that it is IMPOSSIBLE to have a fulfilling, honest and happy relationship with someone who has full-blown NPD. Even those of us who are obstinately optimistic masochists (as I tend to be) will soon end up feeling exhausted, demented and depressed. It is simply NOT WORTH IT.

A relationship SHOULD be based on mutual respect, consideration and appreciation (indeed these are the very things most of us consider to be the bare essentials). Problem is, narcissists don't "do" reciprocity. They take, and take, and take. And then they'll take some more. On the rare occasions they 'give', it is done begrudgingly and with a hidden agenda; they will make it seem like it's such a monumental sacrifice for them that your gratitude will be overwhelming, or rather, their expectation of your inordinate gratitude will be overwhelming. They are insensitive or unsympathetic to your feelings, even if they put on a convincing show of the opposite. If you are feeling proud of yourself for some reason, or simply content and at peace, they will attempt to outshine you or bring you down, either flagrantly or covertly. If you are feeling sad and in need of moral support, they will harangue you with their petulant "what about me and my feelings?!" complaints, or will find another way to make you feel even worse. (An example of this is when my dad died. My sister was naturally crying her heart out over it, and rather than extend genuine heartfelt sympathy and perhaps even a little bit of maternal affection (!?) to her bereaved daughter, my mother harrumphed "Well, I knew him longer than you did".)

As I concluded in my blog post Should we think of NPD as a mental illness?, narcissists suffer from what is, essentially, an emotional disability. Is that 'disability' due to an actual lack of ability (to connect with people; to love) or a more unsettling and unbridgeable unwillingness? In other words, can they help being the way they are - or not? I'm aware I've asked that question already, more than once. I just keep coming back to it.  It's because, for me, although the answer might not bring me any closer to understanding NPD, I would rather think of my mother as being sick than being evil. I cannot bear to think of her as evil, although that conclusion does appear to be as legitimate and plausible as the 'sickness' explanation. (See The Narcissist: an emotionless facsimile.)

At least a snake never thinks to pretend to be anything else

Quite.

Of course it is possible to LOVE a narcissist - or at least to love the person they have convinced you they are - the persona, or the person you have romanticised in your mind (through their various manipulations). But a narcissist's 'love' for another person comes with so many conditions and caveats, it can scarcely be thought of as real and proper love at all. (See my blog post: Is a narcissist capable of love?)

Embarking on a romantic/sexual relationship with a narcissist is, of course, quite different to being raised by a narcissistic parent - but the head-fuckery of it all is pretty much the same. They murder souls; they drain the life-force out of their victims, bit by bit. Some people remain married to (and all the while passionately in love with) a narcissist for many years, sometimes even decades. Some narcissists are more skilled, calculating and conniving than others. The stealthiest covert narcissists can dupe hundreds of people over their lifetime (or in the extreme cases of megalomaniacs like Hitler and Trump, millions). While some bide their time, others reveal their true colours within just days or weeks of meeting their target/s. But some of them can act human, even super-human ('too good to be true', 'a perfect soulmate'), for inordinate stretches of time. The illusion, the mirage, is so powerful that it can inveigle and entrap anyone. And it is important to remember this: many narcissists fool themselves at least as much as they fool everyone else. "The most dangerous liars are those who think they are telling the truth."

I made my 'No Contact' decision when I had realised and accepted all of the following fundamental truths, in order:
1. I love my mother, and nothing will ever change that. BUT...
2. She doesn't love me, and will never love me in the way I need(ed) her to love me.
3. She will never acknowledge or apologise for the pain and suffering she has caused me, my sisters and my dad.
4. She will always find a way to blame me (and/or others) for everything.
5. She has at least one serious personality disorder and at least one co-morbid mental illness, which will never be officially diagnosed because she is both 'high-functioning' and a seasoned deceiver (not just a deceiver of other people but above all of herself). Thus, a close and meaningful relationship with her is rendered utterly impossible.
6. She will not change. There is no cure. There is no hope.
7. Her hatred and contempt for me is a reflection of her, not of me.
8. Therefore: Leaving her alone is the kindest thing I can do for her, and for me.

Resources and further reading:

1. Traits of healthy relationships, and what is a 'high conflict' relationship? http://www.bpdcentral.com/blog/?Can-borderlines-and-narcissists-have-healthy-relationships-31

2. The Happy Sensitive: Narcissistic Love Versus Unconditional Love
http://thehappysensitive.com/narcissistic-love-versus-unconditional-love/
This extract in particular is devastatingly true: Some people believe that sending/giving unconditional love will help, but here’s the thing: narcissists don’t want unconditional love. Unconditional love requires openness and honesty. It requires facing fears, feeling difficult emotions and being open to change. In the narcissist’s mind, these are all awful things that are to be avoided at all costs.

Projection: whatever you say I am, that's what you are

Trying to make a narcissist see the error of their ways is an intensely infuriating, pointless and ultimately ineffably self-defeating exercise. Every caring suggestion, accurate observation, justified accusation or constructive criticism either bounces straight off them or is met with seething, formidable anger and defiance. Typically, a narcissist will also do one of two things: project (blame-shift) or deflect (avoid the issue/change the subject).

Example: I confronted my mother (just once, in my twenties) about the fact she used to hit my sister and me. She did this frequently, and sometimes severe enough to make marks on our skin. Firstly, she minimised the physical violence ("it was just discipline; lots of parents smack their children; my mother smacked me, too"), then the blame was projected ("you were such difficult children; I was under so much stress after your father left... I was on my own, living with two rebellious teenage girls!")
Note: we were not difficult. We were not rebellious. And as I have said before, even if we had been, would that justify how she treated us? Even she knows the answer to that.

Narcissistic rage is a common reaction if the narcissist feels threatened, cornered or attacked - or even just simply irritated to the point of lashing out. (I was extremely good at irritating her. Usually I didn't even have to do or say anything to irritate her - my existence alone was enough to provoke her.) My mother's worst rages only ever took place behind closed doors, so whenever I have described her to others as violent, terrifying and volatile, her 'friends' assume that I am the one with a screw loose. To them, she's a diminutive, kind, spiritual old lady who goes out of her way to spread 'love, light and healing' to the deserving people of the world. (This is her 'brand', and yes, as you might imagine, it sickens me to my very core. And no, I am not, and have never been, one of those 'deserving people'. She has instead vomited out all her 'hatred, darkness and suffering' onto me and my sisters, so most of my enduring memories are thus of a person who is the exact polar opposite of the one my mother pretends to be.)

So, this leaves me, and every other narcissistic abuse victim, with a bit of a dilemma. When the person abusing us is going great guns with a smear campaign (trying - and all too often succeeding - to convince everyone that we, the victims, are actually the bad guys), how do we rise above that? How can I prove that I am not the narcissist, that I am not the toxic one, the psycho, the abuser? How can I prove that I am telling the truth?

The simple answer is: I can't. And merely by reacting with (natural) outrage and hurt to my mother's innumerable cruelties and lies - the wholly understandable act of attempting to defend myself - I risk showing myself up as unstable, unreasonable, maladjusted, crazy. I show myself up as everything she claims I am. Therefore, I have made the decision to not defend myself. Why should I bother? There's no point. I know my mother's game. I know the things she does, and I know the things she says, and the insincere, pseudo-maternal way in which she says them. I know the credulous people who uphold her heinous lies as gospel truth.

These people admire her. These people admire someone who I KNOW is a liar, a hypocrite and a child abuser.

So, I know that none of them really know her; certainly none of them has a clue what deliberate, sadistic psychological torture she has inflicted on her daughters while unashamedly parading herself as some kind of model mother.

And I now know what motivates her, and even more importantly, I know what terrifies her. This means I finally have the power, I am no longer the weak, eager-to-please, viciously exploited, downtrodden daughter, and this is why I know, with absolute certainty, that I will never hear from her again. She has no hold over me any more. None. She does not want what she can no longer control. She has no use for me any more. Sadly, I was only ever a 'thing' to her, a thing to be used and abused. Never a person, a human being, someone to relate to and connect with, much less a daughter to be loved and cherished. Perhaps that is the most tragic aspect of the NPD mother: the impossibility of perceiving your child as a human being... an awesome, loveable, unique human being.

What an incalculably massive loss for her. For both of us.

Can NPD be treated or cured?

I've not posted anything for several weeks, and that's because I had almost finished a particularly brilliant and detailed post (even if I do say so myself), which I'd spent many hours researching, only for it to mysteriously disappear (even despite frequently 'saving' it) just before I was ready to publish it. So that set me back a bit.

One of the most important questions, for me, is whether or not NPD can be cured or at least improved. (This relates to a blog post I will publish shortly, about whether it is possible to have a meaningful relationship with a narcissist, or with any toxic person: I think it is, but only if they learn to moderate the way they behave - and that is a monumentally huge 'if'.)

Like all of us, my mother had (has) 'good' days and 'bad' days. Likewise, my schizophrenic half-sister Elle had 'good' days and 'bad' days (by which I mean, sometimes she would appear to be a regular, sane person). My alcoholic father was agreeable company (even irresistibly effervescent company) 99% of the time, even when he was extremely drunk. Sometimes especially when he was drunk...

We are not defined or limited by our afflictions, vices and illnesses - so while I might be accurately described as an anxious, dithering diabetic, I don't consider that to be an entirely fair and rounded description of the person I am. Likewise, my mother is not really a cruel, troubled, deluded narcissist - at least that is not ALL she is, and certainly her friends would never describe her in those terms. (Because they do not know her any better than I do.) Elle was not a tragic paranoid schizophrenic - she was a lovely, compassionate, warm human being who had a catastrophic life of relentless trauma and devastation. My dad was not a shambolic alcoholic - he was an exceptionally clever, witty, warm and wise man, whose life was ruined by the wasteful stupidity of alcoholism. Classifying problems - which invariably entails labelling people in this rather arbitrary, lazy and subjective way - is inherently problematic in itself, as I will discuss in a later post.

If my mother's 'good' ('nice', 'normal') days had significantly outnumbered the bad ('nasty', 'cold', 'inconsistent', 'abusive', 'abnormal') days, there might be no need for this blog at all. Because the 'normal' would be... well, normal. But her 'normal' state was, for want of a better description, profoundly abnormal. Therefore, the abnormal became my normal. (I recently started a new blog called 'Ordinary Abnormal' and my opening post discusses this.)

I have been looking into the long-term prognosis or 'treatability' of NPD ever since I found out that it was a recognised and classified disorder. I've already stated (in my post How do I know my mother has Narcissistic Personality Disorder?) that I am in no doubt that my mother definitely, indisputably has NPD, among at least one or two other mental/emotional issues, which I believe could be bipolar and/or schizophrenia. Sadly, I will never know for sure exactly what troubles my mother, because all her problems and faults are habitually projected onto others (blame-shifting) while she assumes a wearying stance of untouchable moral superiority.

But to assume NPD is treatable - or curable, even - is to assume that it is an organic illness, with a specific and essentially identifiable cerebral impairment, injury or malfunction to target and correct. For example, schizophrenia (or at least its symptoms) can be treated or tamed by anti-psychotics, and a depressed person can take any of the dozens of available anti-depressants to alleviate their symptoms and buoy their mood, albeit temporarily. There are hundreds of prescribed medications available for the dozens of mental and emotional illnesses and disorders, including mood stabilisers and specific anti-depressants (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors, or SSRIs) for anxiety. (Perhaps I would benefit from one of those myself, but I don't want to turn into a walking pharmacy.) It is usually just a case of finding the "right" medication for a particular individual. In the crudest and most basic terms, it's redressing a chemical imbalance.

We all self-medicate from time to time - paracetamol for pain relief, a sedative for insomnia, cough medicine and decongestant for flu and colds, antihistamine for hay fever and allergies, antibiotics for infections, alcohol or other brain-altering drugs (in inadvisable quantities) to escape from reality and stress...

In many cases, we are ignoring the underlying cause of our various problems and targeting only the symptoms of those problems. Much of the time, that's OK, because it works. We get rid of the symptoms of an illness, so we can get on with our lives, and eventually the illness (or problem) itself disappears - the virus passes, the germs dissipate, the migraine subsides.

Even if we accept that NPD is a mental illness (which, strictly speaking, it isn't), it cannot be treated in the same way as mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression, because there is no obvious organic basis. While certain narcissistic traits might be ameliorated by certain medications, nothing (in pill form at least) will stop a narcissist from BEING A NARCISSIST. But likewise, there is no agreed definitive 'cure' for depression or schizophrenia - most sufferers just go through periods of remission - breaks of calm and normalcy between debilitating mental and emotional storms. I don't advocate treating mental illness exclusively with pills anyway, for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that the medication controls the symptoms without addressing the underlying cause. In fact in many cases, the addressing of the symptoms necessitates a masking or oversight of the cause.

It is tempting to conflate 'sickness' and 'disorder'... surely, if you're disordered, you're not exactly 'healthy'? The website 'Flying Monkeys Denied' explains this well (see Further Reading): "People who are diagnosed [with NPD] do not technically speaking have a disease or even truly a dysfunction. What they do have is a highly efficient and self-serving personality type — and a personality type is not something that is broken. Technically speaking, it simply is what it is."

This seems unbearably fatalistic. But true narcissists are extremely unlikely to seek help for themselves. While they may attend therapy sessions, it is rarely as a means of seeking help for their own issues, because that entails admitting fallibility, vulnerability, imperfection. It entails accepting responsibility - something I now know my mother, like all narcissists, will never do. Can never do. All I ever wanted to hear from my mother, even more than the words "I'm sorry", were the words "I fucked up". How she would have liberated herself with those three words! It would have lifted the weight of the world from her shoulders, if only she had found the strength and the courage to confess: yes, I have been a terrible, terrible mother to all three of my daughters. None of you are to blame for any of our family's myriad fractures and dysfunctions, I am. It is all my fault. ALL OF IT. How can I make it better? For you, for me, for all of us?

A recent article, Is There a Cure for Narcissistic Personality Disorder (see the third link under 'Further Reading'), states that: "When I work with my clients, victims of narcissistic abuse, I encourage them to focus on themselves rather than the narcissist. This is where true change happens. You cannot hope to change him [or her] but you can change yourself. This means refusing to tolerate abuse on any level and taking control of your experiences."  [my emphases]

Personality resides in our psyche, and our psyche is undoubtedly the 'soul' of our brain - that endlessly complex, arcane bulk of hectic pyrotechnic convoluted grey matter inside our skulls, which is so susceptible to every life experience and every unpredictable vicissitude of fate. Can we change our personalities? There are certainly aspects of my personality I would dearly love to change, but I fear they have become an intrinsic part of who I am: my anxiety, insecurity, indecisiveness, gullibility, my maddening inability to accept either a compliment or a criticism, my lack of self-confidence (which, to the eternal chagrin of my husband, often translates into a regular and pitifully transparent "fishing for compliments" - compliments that I am unable to accept)... And there is certainly no changing my mother. She is a sad, lonely, bitter, broken, sorrowful woman with a whole range of complex mental and emotional problems that are now so deeply entrenched they have, in effect, become who and what she is. They have usurped the normal, reasonable, pleasant human being that she almost certainly once was. I cannot do anything for her, and I am sick of trying. I am sick of feeling responsible for something that is not and never has been my problem, much less my fault.

I suppose I've got to a point where I no longer even wish for a cure or a solution. I've just removed myself completely from the situation, a situation that was slowly and inexorably killing me off. Removing myself is my only cure, and my only solution, and the only way I am going to see any positive changes in my life. As the 'Your Healthy Tricks' article rightly says, "most people seeking the change are the victims of narcissistic abuse, not the narcissists themselves." 


See my blog post What lies behind NPD?


Further reading:

http://flyingmonkeysdenied.com/2015/11/04/can-narcissism-or-npd-in-narcissistic-people-be-cured/

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/media-spotlight/201509/can-you-change-your-personality

http://www.yourhealthytricks.com/is-there-a-cure-for-narcissistic-personality-disorder/

The elephant in the room, and all her babies

• I was originally going to call this post "Just get over it", because I have lost count of how many times people have said that to me. Recently, even my own sister basically told me to "get over it", which is absolutely flabbergasting, when she is even more damaged than I am. But then she continues to live with Denial, because although it's a lot less comfortable than acceptance, it is easier. She's become accustomed to the discomfort of Denial, so the emancipation of acceptance seems too daunting. I get that. I really do.
  
  While I have been able to accept that my mother's appalling treatment of me is due to the fact she is profoundly mentally sick and disordered, I cannot explain away my sister's treatment of me in quite the same terms. She is not a narcissist, and I do not think she is in danger of ever becoming one - although she is entirely self-absorbed, that self-absorption is based on self-destruction rather than pathological selfishness. Years ago, she and I had a good relationship. We grew up in solidarity and relative harmony with each other. I adored her, and I still do. I always will. Her betrayal - because that is what it is, aided and abetted by our mother, of course - has ripped the heart out of me. Things started going wrong between us when she discovered a predilection for alcohol, back in the late 1990s. When drunk, my sister can be an extremely nasty person - upfront-and-loud nasty, not insidious, 'under-the-radar' nasty like our mother. Escaping into alcoholic oblivion has been her coping mechanism. Every child of a narcissist needs something to help them cope or deny (usually the two are effectively the same).

  
  

  

  
  

  My sister was very close to our dad - even closer than I was, because as much as I like the occasional drink, I find it impossible to consume the vast quantities that my dad and sister could. (Indeed, for me, it would be lethal.) After his death in 2007, my sister (who I shall refer to as Jenny) spiralled into an abyss of despair, and when her husband died three years later after a protracted and horrendously cruel illness, I think she must have reached her "maximum pain" threshold, because ever since, she has been a total stranger to me. I literally know nothing about her any more - nothing. She has chosen to stonewall me, and for every attempt I have made with her to establish contact (even after her betrayal), she has ignored me. Worse, she has ignored my children, her nephews. She had a baby herself last year, and the fact I will probably never get to know my beautiful niece is a crippling concern that haunts me every day.

  
  

  Should I accept some of the blame for this? Well, possibly. While I am big on communication, having been raised by a deranged, loveless woman for whom honesty and reality are anathema, perhaps I tend to gloss over the issues that really matter. At least, I used to. "The elephant in the room" was habitually ignored in our house; we merely tiptoed around it, pretending it wasn't there. The weight and breadth of the elephant increased daily, with every violent admonishment, every insult, every dismissal, every subtle dig, every narcissistic outrage. I am uncomfortable with conflict and confrontation. It deeply upsets and disturbs me, and Jenny has always been the same (although when intoxicated, she usually has no problem expressing and misdirecting her anger). Since finding out about NPD, however, I have been singing like a crazed canary, and for every person that tells me to "just get over it", I will sing a little louder. I am out of my cage now, and singing my heart out, and nothing but NOTHING will shut me up. I no longer care who I offend or upset with my honesty. I certainly don't care if I bore or irritate anyone who dares to assume that parental narcissism is "not that bad". And I absolutely don't give a flying fuck if my new-found propensity to be honest and open makes a few people feel awkward. I WILL NOT SHUT UP AND I WILL NOT GO AWAY.

  
  
  

  

  
  
  

  There is a massive fucking great elephant in the room, and it is called PARENTAL NARCISSISM. That colossal pregnant elephant gave birth to big bouncing babies, which shat all over the place and destroyed everything in their path, and those babies were called Morbid Alcoholism, Domestic Violence, Emotional Abandonment, Self-harming, Drug Abuse, Suicide, Schizophrenia, Brainwashing, Depression, Delusion, Sadism, Projection, Denial, Anxiety and Complex-Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. THEY ALL LIVED THERE WITH US. And we continued ignoring all of them, all the time. 
  
  Complex- Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which I affectionately call 'C-PTSD' (more about that later), and his little sister, Anxiety, are two elephantine gifts my mother allowed me to keep with me, always, throughout my adult life. They have trampled on just about every aspect of my existence. Drug Abuse stayed with me for a while (I actually quite enjoyed his company; he's good fun but only because I do not, mercifully, have an addictive personality); while Denial taps at my window most nights, although I will never let him in again.

  
  

  

  
  

  
  Recently, I tried reaching out to Jenny, for the first time in a few months (I had promised her, and myself, that I would stay away, but I love her, goddammit, and I want to 'save her'). To my astonishment, she responded (redacted as necessary):

  • 
    

    "...As for this lack of contact thing.. Quite honestly, the reason I haven't stayed in touch is because I'm just at a complete loss as to what to say. I find it all so exasperating. Rest assured I'm not in mum's 'manipulative grasp' or anything.. my relationship with her is just as difficult and dysfunctional as it ever was and ever will be, believe me. I keep minimal contact with her. She just sends me endless emails which I tend not to read. When I do see her she tries to pass on much unwanted parenting 'advice' of which I either completely ignore or go out of my way to do completely the opposite (if she's taught me nothing else it's how NOT to be a mother)... And she goes on and on and on about the situation with you. It's all so very sad and tiresome... I just want some peace and bloody quiet. I want to heal properly from the last 8 years, raise my little girl and hopefully be the kind of mother I always yearned to have.

    You and me are just on completely different pages in our mother-coping strategies and I don't appreciate you trying to bludgeon me with this stuff. You've let it consume you so utterly. Just let it go and start enjoying your life ffs!"

    
    
  • 
    

    My response (which she has read, but will not, I have no doubt, respond to):
    

    
    

    "We are on different pages in everything, Jenny. In everything. I have not let it consume me - I DID let it consume me, for YEARS, and it damn near killed me. But now I am being open and honest about it. I am HEALING. Recovering. Slowly. Very slowly. I AM enjoying my life, because SHE IS NO LONGER IN IT. You say you want to heal from the last 8 years? It's longer than that sis.... much, much longer. It goes back to the early 1980s. I worry about you. I don't care that you don't need me to worry, I don't care that you think I am 'bludgeoning' you with stuff. That's not true anyway. I have kept my distance, in fact I couldn't really be more distant. WTF happened? To us? Don't pin all the blame on me, you know that's not true. Peace and quiet... yes, we all deserve peace and quiet. Don't tell me I've "let it consume me so utterly", as if somehow you are not consumed by it. We are both consumed by it. Both of us. Like Elle was. Like dad was. Don't live in denial. I am glad you are keeping contact to a minimum. I do not hate her, and I could never hate her. I love her deeply but I am so scarred by the past that I don't think I will ever feel like a complete human being. This isn't self-pity, it's honesty. I am doing the same: being the best mum I can be by doing the exact fucking opposite of what she did with us. Yes, being the "kind of mother I always yearned to have". ****** and ****** are vibrant, happy boys, and I dote on them. I hope one day they will get to meet their cousin. I love you Jenny. xx"