by Band Back Together | Aug 15, 2015 | Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents, Estrangement, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Personality Disorders, Psychological Manipulation |
Oh, thank you. Thank you for creating this site. For bringing to light the disturbance and disruption created by having, knowing, or having the narcissist thrust upon you.
First thought: let’s build a gated community! Yes! A place where we can run free! A preserve! Where we are protected. A place where we can meander down to the watering hole, tell some marvelously offensive jokes, laugh till our collective sinuses are clear and then do it again.
I still want to just type the words “thank you” over and over. And I haven’t read Band Back Together but for ten or fifteen minutes, but I see that this is the place. The place where people say – hey, you’re not losing your mind. You’re not.
You’ve just met your first dyed in the wool, Grade A, First Prize, Blue Ribbon Narcissist. And you can’t return it. You don’t seem to have the receipt. No one is going to reimburse your account and basically, you’re stuck with it. You can’t unload it at a tag sale, you can’t give it away on Craig’s List, you can’t scour the shelves at CVS for a salve or a wash or treatment to make it go away. You can peruse the CDC in Atlanta and it ain’t there. You can read till you’re nodding off all of the archives of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly and there are no blips on the radar.
It’s almost a quiet killer. A killer of marriages. A killer of relationships. A killer, most assuredly, of peace of mind. It’s little like menopause when you have a hot sweat; the urgent need to pull off the sweater, fan yourself with whatever you can grab and declare to anyone nearby, “Oh my God, it’s happening!”
The need to share is common (thank goodness, we all get a turn! Just like your Mama!! Ha! Made ya laugh!) I wish having a Narc in the family was half as much fun as a hot sweat. As if the body’s response to the stress of their existence doesn’t do enough damage. My bod pumps out more Cortisol in that wretched persons’ company than is imaginable. Can’t sell that on Craig’s List either. Too bad it wasn’t like plasma and we could donate to help someone!
But! I’ve just found this site. And I said, “who is this broad? She sounds like me. That sentence sounds like mine!”
And I want to reach through the screen and shake her hand! Hi! Ohhh, you were on that bus, too? That was quite a cliff, wasn’t it? Our nodding the implied “YES!” validates the bus trip off the cliff and we exclaim heartily that we are so lucky to have come out alive. But – we’ll always be the ones who got on that bus. Unknowingly. Crap luck.
And today, out of nowhere, the other side of the luck coin crops up. Well, truth is I have read about narcissistic personality disorder, NPD, a fair amount, unfortunately leaves me feeling like I should find a rope and a branch that”ll hold me. One YouTube video left me in a funk for days – went from a fairly good mood into the bowels of hell. I yelled at myself, why oh why did you listen to that? And gave in to the tears.
Screw it. It is what it is. I’ve a habit of biting off my nose to spite my face, but my life is taking such a direction due to an extended family member’s personality disorder, that I admit I cannot do it alone. This is not a time that I’ll say that I’ll just take care of it myself. No. Nope. Can’t do it. Have been drowning for almost six years in the wake of her behavior and how the person closest to me has become estranged for his fear of being put out in the corn.
It’s a nightmare. Wake me, please. Help me. Help me to mitigate the damage she is doing to a little girl. It’s done. Done deal. And I am a piece of s?!
by Band Back Together | Aug 4, 2015 | Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents, Emotional Boundaries, Estrangement, Narcissistic Personality Disorder |
During my childhood, our family life revolved around his narcissism. I didn’t realize it then. The realization that he had narcissistic personality disorder gradually became apparent during my adult life.
I first learned about narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) in nursing school. The further I matured into adult life, the worse my father’s behavior has gotten. My husband and I had an ugly blowout argument with him on New Years Day in front of our teenage children.
I’ve since decided to separate from him.
Since then, my husband and I have done extensive research into narcissistic personality disorder. I’ve gotten therapy and I do daily journaling. I pray, I soul search, and I know in my heart that this separation has been a good thing for me.
I’ve accepted what is.
I know with narcissists, you either have to separate or clearly establish boundaries. Unfortunately, establishing boundaries failed with my father.
My brother is also separated from my father. We’ve had recent communications with our father via email in which we are blamed for everything while nothing is his fault. With notes I made in journaling and therapy, I was able to formulate a clear and effective response to pinpoint the issues I have with his behavior. Together, we have him up against a wall. His behavior is exposed and he is playing the victim.
Recently, my parents have purchased a new car and are giving my mother’s old car to my teenage son. We are accepting the car because we need it and my mother has a special place in her heart for my son.
I feel strong enough after our six months separation to attempt a relationship with him with clearly defined emotional boundaries. It’s going to be a challenge because he’s already playing the victim.
During my morning writing today, I had the realization that God gives certain challenges to people. Some deal with illness, tragedy, abuse, or poverty, to name a few. For whatever reason, I believe God has given me this challenge. I don’t really like it. It’s not fun to have a father that sucks the life out of you, but I believe this is what God gave me.
My father will feed his narcissism with my broken heart.
by Band Back Together | Feb 11, 2015 | Abandonment, Anger, Anxiety, Child Abuse, Compassion, Emotional Abuse, Estrangement, Family, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss, Sadness, Stress |
I dread the day, but I know it is coming. The day when she asks why she doesn’t know her grandpa, or if mommy has a daddy, or why grandpa doesn’t talk to mommy but he does talk to her uncle, or why grandpa doesn’t want to know her or love her. It is coming.
It would be so much easier to tell her he was dead. I wish I could say that were true. If it weren’t for the fact that he is still very much a part of my brother’s life, and the likelihood of her knowing that he does exist is high, I might have no qualms lying to her and telling her that grandpa is dead and gone. Because he is dead to me.
It will be six years in January since we spoke.
The angry phone call that started with me announcing our engagement and ended with him telling me “good luck with the rest of your life” was the last time I could feel the hate in his voice vibrating through my bones. After telling me he could never be happy for me and reminding me what a huge failure I was for marrying someone who doesn’t hunt or watch NASCAR or eat meat and has tattoos, the phone clicked and I knew that would be the last time I spoke to him.
At four months pregnant, I mulled over the idea of informing him about his future grandchild. I decided to do the responsible thing and write him a letter and tell him he is welcome to know future baby if he so chooses. Why I offered such a gracious peace offering to him is beyond me now. A month passed with no response and I assumed he just didn’t give a shit, which, he obviously did not.
When I received his three-page hate-letter, my heart stopped in my chest. All air escaped my lungs. The words I was reading were piercing, deliberate, familiar –filled with hate and such inconvenience– the way I felt my entire childhood under his rule. The words and filth and lies he wrote made me grateful to no longer know him. It made me realize that even though the choices I had made were difficult to make, and the process of breaking generational cycles felt like trying to run a marathon underwater, no one is destined for a life reflective of the one from which they came.
It really solidified the choices in life that I had made up to that point and showed me that I truly have been, and always will be, a better person than he could ever dream of becoming.
I know the day is coming, the day she asks who her grandpa is. If he isn’t dead by then, my only wish is to handle that conversation with truth, grace and compassion like a champ, in a way he never could.
by Band Back Together | Jun 6, 2014 | Abandonment, Child Neglect, Emotional Boundaries, Estrangement, Sadness |
Being denied the love and tenderness of a mother lead us to want something we can never have.
This is her story:
Some people should never be allowed to have children. Carol is one of those people. One of my earliest memories is her visiting me at my grandmother’s house during her lunch break at work when I was 3 or 4.
When it was time for her to leave, I would cry uncontrollably, begging her to stay and grabbing at her clothes as if I could stop her from leaving by sheer force of will. Inevitably, she’d go and I’d be left there with my heart broken until the next day when she’d come and start the process over again.
Eventually she stopped coming.
Eventually I got used to it.
In time, I came to accept that our relationship would never be as I wanted it to be.
She calls me a cold-hearted bitch (which is ironic, considering) and I very well may be – where she’s concerned, at least – but if I am, it’s an act of self-preservation; building a wall to keep the thing that hurt me the most out.
It works, or at least I thought it did. Two sentences in a romance novel:
“She hugged her tight, patted her hair and guided her to a kitchen chair. Within minutes her hands were wrapped around a mug of her mothers coffee.”
Punched in the face by experiences I’ll never have and opportunities I missed, suddenly I’m 4 years old again, laying on my grandmother’s floor, desperate for affection and love from someone incapable of giving it.
by Band Back Together | Apr 2, 2014 | Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Child Abuse, Child Sexual Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Estrangement |
I want to make this short and to the point, as best as I can.
My husband was abused (mentally, emotionally, physically, and sexually) by members of his family. His father sexually abused him as a child, his mother and grandparents covered up the abuse, and outside the sexual abuse incident, they themselves were physically and emotionally abusive. When we met, I didn’t know this, and he’d blocked much of it out, or pushed it down and chose not accept what happened to him. It’s taken years for him to find the strength to shut these people out of his life. It’s also taken years for me to find the strength to deny his mother and her parents access to our daughter.
I don’t want to explain why I even allowed my daughter around them in the first place. Honestly, I have no excuse and I feel like an unworthy mother for not putting my foot down harder when my husband pushed to have them in her life. His family is prominent in his hometown and thought highly of, despite the dark secrets they have hidden in all the corners (the abuse).
A few months ago I had enough, separated from him, and he went to a psychiatrist who echoed what I’d been saying for years: these are not good people and it isn’t safe for him or his daughter to be around them.
Through therapy and medication he’s been able to start coming to grips with the abuse he endured as a child, and he’s starting to break free of the emotional control they’ve had over him. It’s now been about 4 months since our daughter has spoken to or see his family, and it’s our intent that she never sees any of them again.
However …up to this point, she grew up with them in her life on a regular basis. This last month she’s begun asking when she’ll be seeing them again. She liked his grandparents especially (his grandmother was the ringleader in instigating and covering up the abuse). She’s starting to ask at least once a day to go over and visit with them.
She’s never going back over there. I will never put my child or my family in danger like that again.
But, she’s 5 years old. And I honestly don’t know how to explain to her why she won’t be seeing them again. I just don’t. I have an answer for nearly everything for her. But this situation is beyond my scope of understanding. Sometimes I think we should just come right out with it and tell her that they all hurt her Daddy when he was a little boy, but I don’t know if she’ll understand that, and I don’t want to put more on her than she needs right now. (I want to preserve some bit of her innocence, I guess.)
Has anyone else been forced to remove several family members from the lives of their children? Does anyone have any advice about how to talk to my daughter about this situation?
by Band Back Together | Jul 20, 2013 | Abuse, Anger, Emotional Abuse, Estrangement, Loneliness, Love, Psychological Manipulation |
Emotional abuse is not limited to romantic relationships. The scars of emotional abuse last long after the hateful words are spewed.
This is her story:
Every couple months, she contacts me again.
My best friend, the closest person in my life for over a decade the hardest breakup I’ve ever been through.
I’m writing this because I can see those attempts for what they are, and I want to solidify it so I don’t forget. Perhaps my words may even help someone else who’s suffering from a verbally abusive relationship.
My best friend and I split up – rather, I cut her off – almost three years ago now. For a solid year before that, we couldn’t interact without her verbally abusing me.
I’m so very grateful to have friends who understand what verbal abuse is and why it’s so damaging, because I didn’t. Without their help, encouragement, and constant resources and strength, I might not have left. Or, I may not have stayed away, which would have been equally difficult – abusers don’t tend to give up easily, as many of you (unfortunately) may know.
There are many wonderful resources about emotional abuse, but what’s helped me most is this statement: A verbal abuser is someone who claims to love you, but who uses their love to consistently make you feel awful. The love of an abuser revolves around what you owe them, how you’re letting them down, and what you need to change in order to be worthy of that love.
Guess what?
Love shouldn’t feel like that.
The first time I realized that something was seriously wrong with our friendship was the day I caught myself thinking, “How is it okay to deliberately, consciously, repeatedly, hurt someone as badly as you can? How is okay for friends to do that to each other?”
Because no matter how much we disagreed, how angry we got, I never, not once, pulled out my worst words and aimed them to hurt her as badly as I could…yet I could clearly see that she did this to me.
That behavior got me looking more closely, and I realized (I believe “dawning horror” is a good phrase for how it felt) that almost every single thing she said to me was manipulative…every word chosen to get me to do what she wanted. And like some sick psy-ops torturer, every time I wasn’t going in the “right” direction, she pulled out the ones that hurt and started swinging.
Having not heard from her in months makes it obvious that’s what’s going on. It doesn’t make it hurt less – someone who knows you well, who you loved a long time can master causing emotional pain.
Seeing it clearly makes it easier to do what I know has to be done – it isn’t easy, even though it’s been so long and so bad. Once you love somebody deeply, it’s hard to choose to not have a relationship with them, but I recognize that to do otherwise would be stupid, self-destructive and gain me nothing. So I’m working on learning my lessons and moving on.
Yesterday we “talked” via text-message – all told, the conversation wouldn’t be half as long as this story. During the conversation, she informed me that I’d betrayed everything about myself, thrown away my ethics; and she’d have a happy future without me.. but I’d get what I deserved” for “abandoning everyone who’d ever voluntarily loved” me (she and my also verbally-abusive ex. They now live together).
She said that the words she’d said hurt me was proof she was right and I felt guilty; she’d be willing to give me a second chance, but only if I would do the work to stop “disappointing her with all my actions and decisions.”
When I stopped replying, she pulled out the really big guns; she’d love my daughter forever, she’d always be her family. She threatened that she’d see my daughter eventually whether I liked it or not; my daughter would rather be with her anyway. She told me that I wasn’t acting in my girl’s best interests – “look at everything you’ve cost her already with your bad decisions” – and that I only cared about myself.
All told, this tiny conversation probably contained twenty hidden knives, and as many less-deadly clever little needles, designed to prod me in the “right” direction. Hints that her life is so awesome now that it’s a “shame we can’t share it,” using her father’s cancer to lay guilt that I’m not being supportive.
Participating in that short conversation brought me to my knees, quite literally at times.
But fortunately, no one I love (or even mildly care about) has made me feel so awful in many months, and the contrast really helped me see this for what it was: ABUSE.
Say it with me now, The Band: People who love you do not deliberately hurt you.
We all hurt each other sometimes, but there’s a difference between “my actions hurt you” or “I was angry and said something awful and I apologize,” and “I will systematically make you feel as awful as I possibly can in order to control you.”
The latter verbal interaction is abuse, it’s a method of control; it beats at you, bends your spine and, over time, it wears away your resolve. Eventually no matter what you’d decided or how good an idea you have, you desperately want to change your mind and do what your abuser wants, just to make the pain stop.
It’s not okay to control people like that – we must have free will, and respect the right to make our own decisions – but it’s especially not okay to exert that kind of forcible control over those you love.
Verbal abuse is an emotional cattle prod. It’s bad enough to use pain-motivation and torture on strangers, but using them on your beloveds is just vile. And I don’t care how much abusers like to throw around the word “love” – that’s not love.
Love is what I have for my daughter.
Love makes me say things like, “Sweetie, I may not always agree with your decisions, I may get angry at you sometimes, but I will always love you.”
Never, EVER would I say to her, overtly or as an insinuation, that my love obligates her to do what I want; never would I make her feel like a terrible person who betrayed me by making a choice I didn’t agree with.
I know what that feels like – it’s torture. Even if it caused her to do what I wanted, it would never be worth it.
Love is something you give. It is not a transaction that leaves the loved person in perpetual debt to you. And it sure as hell doesn’t give you the right to hurt them.
Deliberately hurting someone is betraying them and their love, and I have sworn to never allow myself to stay in a relationship with someone who hurts me deliberately again.
I don’t have friends as close as we were now – I’m working back up to that – but as I said to her before blocking her number, the best part about my life now is that I know that if anyone else I love ever deliberately tortures me the way she does, I have the strength to end that relationship.
For awhile, it was terrifying and terribly lonely. But I wanted to write this so I could say that ending my abusive relationship was the best thing I ever did, and it’s a decision I’m standing by no matter how hard it is.
The less I let her in, the less control she can exert, and the less she can hurt me. I’ve resolved to keep abusive people far away from me and surround myself with people whose love is supportive and strengthening. I’m be better off, happier and healthier, than I would eating the poisoned apples of verbal abusers.
Thanks, The Band.
Glitter for everyone!!
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What have YOU, The Band, learned from an abusive relationship?
