The Folly and Futility of asking “Why?”

I see it all the time: “Why would my mother do this?” “Why does my father say such things?” “Why would my sister think this way?” “Why did I get chosen to be the scapegoat?” Everybody wants to know the reasons behind the behaviour of their Ns, but has anyone stopped to question that desire?

If you are one of those “Why?” people, have you asked yourself how an answer to your question will help you? Think about that for a minute…would that knowledge improve your life in any way? Does constantly asking it, does the torture of wanting an answer, improve your life? And what are you avoiding while you focus on “why? why? why?”

Our culture likes the idea of “closure.” What does “closure” mean to you? The dictionary defines it as “A feeling of finality or resolution, especially after a traumatic experience…” Do you really think you would have closure if you knew why you were chosen to be the scapegoat? Or do you think the knowledge would just bring you more pain and then elicit even more questions?

The first question, then, that has to be answered is “Why do you want to know?”

You want to know because you want to know if you deserved it or not. Why? Because, most likely unbeknownst to you, you have a hidden agenda at work, a hidden agenda based on never having accepted that your NParent is toxic and that there is no real hope that s/he will ever change.

So how does this work? Well, when you accept that something just is, when you truly accept it, you stop having feelings of angst about it. For example, how you ever wondered why something painted red fades to pink and then to almost nothing when exposed to the sun, but other colours hold up well? Maybe you have, maybe you haven’t…but does not knowing the answer to that question cause you any sense of anxiety? Of course not—because even if you have wondered about this in the past, you have no emotional investment either in having the answer or not having the answer. It is okay with you not to know.

So, if you truly accepted that narcissists are so ego-centric, so self-centred, that the feelings of others—including their own children—are of no concern to them, if you truly accepted that your NParent will treat you, the scapegoat, like crap no matter what you do, that you can’t fix it because it can’t be fixed, that your NParent will never change…if you truly accepted all of that, you wouldn’t be asking “why” because you would no longer have any emotional investment in their behaviour. You would understand, in the deepest, most profound manner, that their treatment of you is a manifestation of their disorder and is no reflection on you and that understanding would bring you both acceptance and peace.

But you are affected, you do have angst, you have emotional pain surrounding this, which indicates that, as much as you may have intellectually accepted that narcissists behave this way no matter what you do, you have not accepted this on an emotional level.

Why not? Because on some level you still have hope that somehow you can do something to change your N into a real, loving, nurturing, emotionally available parent. Your desire for that parent is so precious to you that you will deny reality and even take on guilt…perceive yourself as the responsible party, believe that you somehow caused her condition…in order to preserve the hope that this person can become the competent parent you were denied.

Because if you caused it, you can fix it. It is as simple as that. If your actions in some way created your parent to be rejecting or enmeshing or manifest whatever hurtful behaviour s/he engages in, then if you can figure out what you did and then you can UNdo it—or at least make amends for it—and then have the parent of your dreams. In the meantime, you can only feel guilty about your failures, failures your NParent will happily point out to you—and anyone else who will listen—at any available opportunity.

You have taken responsibility, in your subconscious mind, for your NParent’s behaviour and obvious negative feelings for you. Normal people do not develop negative feelings for others without a reason, so somewhere along the line you have assumed that you provided your NParent with a legitimate reason to feel negative about you. And now you feel guilt for that unknown (and, in truth, fictional) sin and seek ways to gain absolution for it from a person who has a vested interest in keeping you feeling guilty and perpetually penitent. All this from your belief that not only your NParent is normal and therefore has a legitimate reason for treating you like a criminal, but from your further belief that if you could just name the crime you committed, you have the power to fix it and thereby turn your NParent into the perfect, loving parent you have yearned for—and deserved—all this time.

So why do you want to know why? Because some part of you believes that this knowledge is the magic key. In knowing why, you will be able to “fix” it and then have what you want. If you just knew what you did wrong, you could undo it or fix it or make amends or apologize or do something to make it right so that the loving parent you pine for would emerge from the narcissistic shell.

If you could know for certain that it was not your fault, that you didn’t do anything wrong, then you can fix it by making your NParent realize how unjust s/he is being and how much you have been hurt by their treatment. This little part of you believes that once they understand they are being unfair and they are hurting you, their natural sense of justice and parental love will kick in and they will be sorry and soothe your hurts and change their behaviour and become that loving parent you so deserve.

It makes a lovely fairy tale, but you and I both know it ain’t gonna happen. That niggling little voice of hope is actually part of your Narcissist’s voice in your head, the promise that is never kept, the expectation never realized, the hope that can never be fulfilled. Narcissism is forever. Narcissists cannot be successfully treated because they don’t believe there is anything wrong with them, so they won’t cooperate with therapy…and there is no medication that targets the manifestations of narcissism. They are profoundly, deeply selfish and have no sense of empathy for the feelings of others. Appealing to a narcissist’s empathy or sense of fairness is like appealing to the sense of fairness and empathy of a granite wall: there is nothing there to appeal to, nothing to resonate with you or your feelings.

And there is nothing you could have ever done wrong that justifies the treatment they mete out. Nothing. Nada. Nix. You didn’t do anything to make them this way, they were this way before you were born and will be this way—or worse—until they draw their last breath. Your only mistake was to buy into the fiction that you are somehow responsible for their behaviour—that they are reacting to something you did—and therefore you have a chance to fix the problem: you aren’t and you can’t because it isn’t fixable.

By the same token, their apparent obliviousness to your pain and their lack of fairness, isn’t something that can be remedied because it is as much a part of them as their eye colour. It seems like they don’t care if they hurt you because they don’t…not because there is something wrong with you but because there is something wrong with them…and it is something they do not want to fix.

None of us has the power to change the fundamental nature of another human being. Even if we did, we don’t have the right to do so. Each one of us, narcissists included, has an inherent right to self-determination and to think we have the right to change another person to suit our needs is to think like a narcissist. Narcissists are the people who believe they are exempt from the need to respect the rights of others and  have the right to demand others reshape themselves to serve their idea of what they should be.

So what is the point of asking “Why?”? It is the manifestation of a flea, a flea in which you harbour a subconscious belief that you have the right to change your N to suit your desires and needs, just as s/he has been trying to shape and mould you to fit theirs. You believe that the answer to the question is your best clue, your key, to creating an effective campaign to bring that N to heel so that you can get your needs fulfilled, regardless of what s/he wants.

The real answer isn’t what you want to hear, it isn’t what you want it to be because it won’t give you the clues you need to “fix” your Ns and turn them into the people you want them to be. The answer is simply “Because they are narcissists and that is what narcissists do.”

Nothing more profound, nothing more personal, nothing more insightful…no clues, no keys, just the simple fact that narcissists care only for themselves and that everyone around them—including their GCs—are mere pawns in their selfish games of self-gratification.

Narcissists: they are everywhere

Narcissists are everywhere. You will come across them at work, at play, on the road, in the shops. That guy who thinks nothing of carrying on a conversation on his cell in a movie theatre, that woman who rushes ahead of you in the supermarket and then blocks your access to the display of on-sale fruit, that man who saw you politely waiting for a parking space then zooms in and takes it with a smug smile…probably narcissists. They are everywhere—even on line.

The internet, in all truth, is a narcissist’s dream come true. Here predators can become compassionate, understanding men just looking for a good woman, they can become gurus delighted to lead your undecided self to their promised land, they can become repositories of secret knowledge kept from you by greedy corporations and complicit government. The internet was just made for narcissists, those masters of deceit and false personas, and our ability to ferret them out over the web is not nearly as good as it is if we can observe and evaluate them in person.

Common wisdom tells us that if something looks too good to be true, it probably is. What it doesn’t tell us, however, is that if something looks logical and it is about a subject you know little about, it may well be a lie. Narcissists and their flying monkeys set you up to believe their twaddle by creating what looks like a very logical, persuasive argument and then discourage you from seeking the truth by doing a pre-emptive strike against the very people who actually have the truth, telling you the experts are liars who are only saying what they say because there is money in it for them. No place is this more true than in the anti-vax movement.

Very few of us understand how vaccines work or even how our immune systems function. Our public education system has declined in its delivery of hard biological science to students, students who grow up to be parents who know nothing about how their bodies function. Ignorance is the playground of the exploiter and people who are both ignorant and gullible—those who will believe anything that makes logical sense to them—are ripe for being exploited. To cinch the deal, however, these exploiters have to make sure that their targets don’t accept contradictory information from a competing source, so they poison the well. Big Pharma is painted as an evil entity that wants to keep you sick so they can continue to make money off of you and the scientists who work for them are just looking to line their pockets. Doctors who prescribe these Big Pharma products are in league with Big Pharma because they don’t make any money if you aren’t sick, so the whole thing is a conspiracy to keep you and your family sick so all of them can make money.

A little real logic bursts this conspiracy bubble all to hell. Big Pharma actually can’t make money unless it keeps coming up with new drugs because the patent on the drugs they make expire and, once expired, become public domain. That means that if Joe’s Drug Company invents a fancy new antibiotic, and he patents it, nobody can make an antibiotic using Joe’s formula for the life of the patent (20 years). Once that patent expires, however, anybody can use that formula to make an identical drug—that is where generics come from. So, to keep money coming in, Joe not only has to keep coming up with new drugs, they have to work because if they aren’t effective one of two things happens: 1) the FDA won’t license the drug and Joe can’t sell it or 2) doctors won’t prescribe it, patients won’t take it. Either way, Joe makes no money from a drug that doesn’t work and he has a limited span of time to make his money off of it.

So, Joe is greedy, right? It costs him $1 to make a pill he sells for $15 each…that is just greed! Well, not so fast. What did it cost Joe’s Drug Company to come up with this pill? What did they pay out in salaries for all of the people who worked on it? What about cost of facilities, testing the drug, clinical trials, and FDA submissions? None of this is free and a single PhD scientist can command $200,000 a year in salary, not to mention his support team of assistants, admins, procurement specialists, etc. It literally costs billions of dollars to invent, test, and market just one new drug and the company has to put up the money up front, from the profits it made on other drugs, and recoup the investment through the sales of the drug after approval. And if it doesn’t get FDA approval? If the drug doesn’t work or has heinous side effects? All that money is lost and has to be recouped through the sales of successful drugs.

So just how greedy is Big Pharma? Well, ask yourself this: if you had cancer and the doctor gave you a pill that was said to cure cancer, would you want that pill developed by a bunch of kids who barely passed high school biology? Or by a team of people who had as much as 12 years of education after high school, all of it specializing in biology and drugs? And what would you expect to pay a scientist with multiple post graduate degrees and a good ten years of experience in medical research? At least as much as your GP makes, right? The median income for an American GP is $156,051, topping out at $210,875¹. A Research Fellow in the biotech industry can expect a median salary of $153,680, topping out at $198,729². How many of these people, earning $150k to $200k a year, does a drug company have to pay just for one project to come up with one drug, and how long is a drug in development? According to the Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development³, $2.5 billion and ten years. And every penny of that money has to be advanced by the drug company in the hopes that the drug will work and that the FDA will approve it, before they make the first dollar on it.

Considering that these scientists probably have a shipload of student debt and that they went to school an additional 6 to 12 years after high school, it is difficult to argue that they are overpaid. And a drug company has teams of these people, each team working on a different project. And all of it is funded out of that $2 or $5 or $15 per pill that you pay at the pharmacy. (Yes, there was a greedy little twit who bought a patent and jacked up the cost of the drug astronomically, but he is the exception, not the rule, and when the patent expires all of his competitors will delight in making and selling the drug for 10% over their production costs in order to steal his market.)

So the stories about Big Pharma wanting to keep you sick and pick your pocket are all lies. Big Pharma is working on the next generation of drugs, drugs that have to work or you won’t buy them, and we are so very good at sabotaging our own health through carelessness and self-indulgence, and viruses and bacteria are so good at mutating and needing new drugs to control them that Big Pharma doesn’t need to conspire with doctors to keep us sick. We do that all by ourselves with no help needed.

So why do these people peddle these lies and why are they narcissists?

Narcissists are all about feeling powerful and in control. What do narcissists do? They take the truth and twist it to fit their position. They lie to make themselves look good, smart, powerful. They denigrate others and lie about them to destroy their credibility. Sometimes they do it for the personal power trip, other times there is more in it for them. And that pretty much describes the anti-vax community.

How about Dr. Andrew Wakefield⁴? He did it for money. Or, more accurately, for the chance to make a lot of money. In 1998 he published a fraudulent research paper in The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, claiming there was a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. It has since been proven untrue by numerous follow up studies, The Lancet retracted the paper, and Wakefield’s credentials as a doctor and surgeon were revoked.

Why on earth would someone endanger his career in such a way? Well, according to the Toronto Star, Wakefield applied for a patent on a “single jab” measles vaccine before he began his campaign against the MMR: he was after discrediting the existing vaccine so that he could come in later with his own vaccine to take its place. This would be like a company trying to convince the public, through faked tests, that aspirin causes Alzheimers and then coming along six month later and unveiling an OTC painkiller that is “proven” to not cause it. It was a ploy designed to scare parents away from the MMR, leaving the market open for a new vaccine that he could advertise as not causing autism. Isn’t this exactly how a narcissist operates?

He gave no thought to the patients, the children, who would be affected. “Wakefield's study and his claim that the MMR vaccine might cause autism led to a decline in vaccination rates in the United States, United Kingdom and Ireland and a corresponding rise in measles and mumps, resulting in serious illness and deaths, and his continued warnings against the vaccine have contributed to a climate of distrust of all vaccines and the reemergence of other previously controlled diseases…”⁴ Children have died due to this man’s pride and greed and despite dozens of other well managed, and bona fide studies that disprove his contention (and none that support it), he refuses to admit the truth. “As recently as February 2015, he publicly repeated his denials and refused to back down from his assertions, even though—as stated by a British Administrative Court Justice in a related decision—"there is now no respectable body of opinion which supports [Dr. Wakefield's] hypothesis, that MMR vaccine and autism/enterocolitis are causally linked."”⁴

“…no respectable body of opinion which supports…[the] hypothesis that MMR vaccine and autism…are causally linked.” And yet, anti-vaxxers, whose campaign started with this man and his greedy attempt to corner a market by scaring parents who don’t know anything about how the immune system works and will trust what a doctor says, continue to not only spread this lie but, in their zealous ignorance, build upon it.

How do they do this? With specious, twisted logic. In the same way I got blamed and punished for my younger brother’s misdeeds—I was supposed to keep him out of trouble so, if he did something bad it was my fault for letting him, not his fault for disobeying—science is subjected to the specious logic of people who know nothing about science or the immune system. If it doesn’t make sense to them, they can’t go remedy their ignorance because the scientists have been demonized as money-grubbers who will lie to fatten their pockets, so they rely on the phoney logic of the guru. And the guru lies. The guru tells them that the vaccines contain mercury even though the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) says “…thimerosal is no longer used in children’s shots, except some types of flu shots. You can ask for a flu shot without thimerosal.”⁵ The guru says vaccines don’t work…they do and a Google trip through the internet can provide you with records, charts and statistics showing the decline in such diseases as polio, measles, mumps, whooping cough, diphtheria…all diseases that killed thousands of children every year before vaccines were invented. The guru tells them that it is just a way for Big Pharma and the doctors to make money off of you but if that is the case, why was the small pox inoculation eliminated from the vaccination schedule sometime between 1966 and 1973? The disease was eliminated world wide (The last naturally occurring case in the world was in Somalia in 1977.⁶) So, the latest attack on science by the ignorant was on Facebook last week where someone claimed that “smearing blood and pus from a cow won’t prevent smallpox,” and exhorted people to “think about it,” thereby proving her ignorance not only of history but of science and the human immune system. A fellow named Jenner noticed that milk maids who contracted cowpox from the udders of cows they were milking…leaving a small scar on their hands…never contracted small pox and the discovery of vaccination began⁷.

So what kind of people do this? What kind of people prey on the ignorant and fearful rather than educate and empower them? People who, themselves, feel powerless and seek control over others in order to feel empowered themselves. All of the hallmarks of narcissism are there: grandiosity in believing they know more than people who were educated and trained in the discipline; lack of empathy in that they don’t care that children will suffer and die from preventable diseases; a sense of entitlement, like they have a right to lie to the uncertain and gullible and to co-opt them; exploitative, exploiting the ignorance, naïveté, and concern of loving parents to make them disciples so they can feel powerful; envious, certainly these exploiters are envious of those whom they perceive as having more power or prestige than themselves; requires excessive admiration, these anti-vax crusaders expect admiration for their “moral courage” to come out against large, faceless, gluttonous corporate entities—they see themselves as the hero of the little man who cannot stand alone against them; shows arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes, what is more arrogant than having no education or experience in a discipline and purporting to know more than credentialed experts? believes that he or she is "special" and unique, because only this person and the other cognoscenti know the truth, and s/he is the guru, the one dispensing the special knowledge; is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love, it is difficult to know what preoccupies their thoughts, but certainly being thought of as brilliant and powerful are in there, as they trample the truth in their drive to gather followers and spread the lies.

How powerful does a person believe himself to be when his goal is to bring down Big Pharma? How empathetic is he when he risks the health and lives of millions of children to achieve this goal? Do normal people find it goal-worthy to deprive millions of little kids of a chance to go through life free of dreaded—and often deadly or maiming—diseases? The truth is available: there are seven links below that will bring you to the truth and the internet has thousands more, but these people discount or ignore it. Why? Because the truth will take their feeling of power away.

And how narcissistic is that?

¹ http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Family_or_General_Practitioner/Salary

² http://www.biospace.com/News/2014-highest-paying-biotechnology-jobs/334123

³ https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/11/18/cost-bringing-prescription-drug-market-tops-billion-tufts-research-center-estimates/6mPph8maRxzcvftWjr7HUN/story.html

⁴ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield

⁵ http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/faqs.html

⁶ http://www.bt.cdc.gov/agent/smallpox/vaccination/faq.asp

⁷ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1200696/

What happens when you send your N “The Letter”

When we begin to toy with the idea of going NC (No Contact) with our Ns, the first thing that comes to mind is wondering how to do it.

A good number of us want to write a letter with a litany of the N’s sins both as a justification for going NC and as a last-ditch plea for the N to realize just how much s/he has hurt us. This desire for the N to realize how much damage s/he has inflicted is rooted in an expectation that if the N just understood, s/he would feel remorse, apologize, and then change in such a way that a reconciliation and normal relationship could then ensue.

Few of us are attracted to the idea of writing the terse, legalistic letter that gives no reasons for the decision to go No Contact. We either project our feelings onto our N and feel guilty in advance for hurting them (we would be hurt by such a letter and want to know the reasons so we could fix it) or we want to explain ourselves, justify our decision. And more than a few of us hope our letter and decision to disconnect from our parent(s) will be that magic key that finally opens the door to our N’s heart.

So what happens when we send that letter, full of heartbreak and examples of insensitive cruelties both big and small? Does it work as a way to finally break down our Ns and make them realize that their behaviour has hurt us in the most profound way possible? Does it stir up feelings of remorse and a desire to soothe our hurts and make everything right? Does it spark that protective parent mode that sends them to our sides with sincere apologies and earnest amends and heartfelt promises to do better in the future?

In a word—No.

What you will get back will be more of what you have endured. If your N is the overtly cruel, verbally abusive type, you will get more verbal abuse; if your N is the pathetic martyr, guilt-inducing type, you will get more guilt-tripping. But you will get it in buckets.

You will probably get something back in writing, too…something that denies everything you said or excuses and justifies or rationalizes anything that they couldn’t deny. You will be gaslighted, you will be blamed, you will be discounted, denigrated, and possibly even called a liar. Every point you make in your letter that your N chooses to address will be treated as if you didn’t understand or your perception was intentionally faulty. You will be treated to a display of pathos and/or bombast, your N pathetically hurt by your accusations and/or furious and outraged at your temerity…how dare you accuse your N of doing anything but wanting the very best for you and anything s/he actually did was for your own well-being.

Your N may take a few days or even weeks to respond. This is calculated to make you anxious. When your N finally does respond, don’t be surprised if s/he informs you that a copy of her letter to you has been shared with the rest of the family…and don’t be surprised if yours has not been shared at all—or if it was shared, it was kept under wraps until the N had crafted a rebuttal to every point you thought you made, and that rebuttal was shared with your letter. Most of all, do not be surprised if your letter unleashes a flurry of contacts from family members you have had little contact with in the past, contacts that range from “counselling” you to make up with your mother to outright attacks on your character for treating your mother this way. Expect no sympathy and no support because your N is not going to share with anybody s/he does not expect full support from.

One thing we tend to forget is that, for the most part, these other family members have known your NParent longer than they have known you. Their relationships predate your existence. Their bonds were in place before you were born. They are invested in their relationship with your N, both in terms of family ties and in terms of being right or wrong: if they take you at your word and agree your NP is in the wrong, then they are going to have to re-evaluate their entire relationship with your NP and, if they agree to support you, they are going to have to admit they were wrong about your NP for all these years. Most people are simply not going to do that. Not only do they not want to admit they were wrong the N, depending on who the N is to them, they may have to acknowledge wrongdoing of their own.

You may think, for example, that your grandparents will have your back. They adore you, they indulge you, they have always seemed constant and unconditional in their love. But this NParent you are distancing yourself from…this is their own child! Do you think they will readily and easily believe a lot of negative accusations against their own child? Do you think they will turn against that child on your behalf? Or do you think they will defend their child? What if they perceive your “attack” their child as an attack on their parenting? Then where are you?

Unless your NM has a toxic relationship with her own family, guess who she is going to turn to for support? Do you think the loyalty your grandmother and aunt feel towards you is a stronger the loyalty they feel towards their own daughter and sister? Do you think the fact that she had hurt you and that you are the injured party will make a difference? It won’t because when they feel they are being forced to choose between you and your NM, it is very unlikely they will side with another relative (you) over a first degree relative like their own child or sibling.

I have read many reports of the aftermath of sending that heartfelt NC letter that contained a long list of the narcissist’s hurtful behaviours and words. I have never heard of a favourable reaction. Not once have I heard of a narcissistic mother suddenly finding her heart and feeling it squeezed with pain for her suffering child. What I have heard of…and experienced myself…it receiving a scathing letter in return, full of denial, gaslighting, twisting of the victim’s words, projection, accusations, and outright lies. I have heard of letters full of fauxpologies (“I am sorry you feel that way…”) and verbal attacks, accusations of wrongdoing on the part of the victim, and threats. I have heard of letters accusing the victim of being mentally incompetent, expressing sorrow and concern for the victim’s children (thinly-veiled threats about the victim’s competence to have custody of those children) and outright threats of ruining the victim’s name in the family and community, even in her workplace. I have heard of letters in which the NM pretends a breakdown because of the letter, in which she claims to have become emotionally overwrought and her health negatively affected by the cruelty of the victim’s letter. I have heard of letters in which the NM vows that she will never be shut out and letters in which the NM shuts the victim out. I have heard of virtually anything you can imagine short of promising murder…or making a sincere apology and heartfelt promise to do better.

And it gets even worse. By sending such a letter to your N, you have just handed over a blueprint of how to hurt you. Every example you give, every hurtful word you cite, is another piece of ammunition your N now possesses. S/he knows now that one approach didn’t hurt you but another struck gold. It allows them to fine tune their future assaults for maximum damage.

Why would they want to do that…to create maximum damage? Because their stream of Nsupply is in jeopardy if they don’t have a way to control you. It is about power…their power over you. It has nothing to do with love…their power to control you ensures they will continue to get what they want from you, which is Nsupply in whatever form your Ns want it.

Your letter will give them a lot of Nsupply. First of all, they get to feel hurt or outraged by what you have said. Then they get to share it with all and sundry. If they aren’t sure how your accusations will be received, they will craft the rebuttal first, then send both your letter and their rebuttal so that the recipients can see the error of your ways. They will receive an abundance of sympathy and support, see people outraged on their behalf, hear you disparaged as a cruel and unnatural child. The letter, without any further input, will provide them with plenty of drama, and once shared, the drama multiplies melodramatically. The only thing that sending such a letter absolutely guarantees is that your N will get months…even years…of Nsupply from it and it will not have the result you are after.

Such letters will be viewed as an attack. No amount of logic or proof will change that, no amount of witnesses and even third party documentation will change a mind that is preset against you. You will be accosted with people admonishing you that you should “honour your mother,” or telling you that you will be sorry when she is gone (mine’s been gone 18 years and I am not sorry yet), that you should be the “bigger person” and “take the high road” and “bury the hatchet.” They will try to guilt and shame you into putting yourself right back onto the narcissist’s rack, then walk away, blind and deaf to your cries of pain. Not a one of the people who advocate for your NP have your best interests at heart. Not one.

Writing such a letter than enumerates the N’s sins and identifies your own pain is a good, healthy thing to do. Allowing your N or any of her flying monkeys to see it…not a healthy thing to do. It will merely open up a can of chaos that you won’t be able to close for a long, long time. Keeping a journal and filling it with these letters both purges the toxic feelings from your psyche and provides you a record, written in your own words, for those inevitable times when you start second-guessing yourself. Was it really that bad? Am I blowing this out of proportion? What did she do that was so wrong? Reading those letters will remind you of the reality of being in contact with your N and it does not expose your vulnerabilities to people who will not respect your feelings.

I have been writing this blog for more than three years now and operating the Facebook group, which is very active (more than 200 members), for nine months. Not once, in all this time, in all the comments and correspondence, have I heard of someone getting a good result from sending the honest, heartfelt letter that listed the N’s transgressions. Not one time.

If you write and send such a letter be prepared for a shitstorm of retaliation.