I get a lot of emails from people curious about the Facebook
group. What do we do? How do we operate? Do I qualify to get in? What is it all
about?
The group has a basic set of Boundaries that govern
behaviour and interactions (there is no limit to the length or number of your
posts, for example) and it has a set of Basic Tenets. It is important that all
group members have the same basic understanding of the group’s purpose and of
concepts and information that are commonly brought up in the group, things like
whether or not narcissism is a mental illness, how narcissists got that way,
are we just shifting blame, and a host of other commonplace issues.
If you have been curious about the group and what we do in
there, this listing of the group’s Basic Tenets may answer some of your
questions:
Basic tenets—truths that underpin this group
I. Purpose of the group: The purpose of this
group is to help ourselves and others to heal from the legacy of a childhood
dominated by a narcissistic parent or parental figure. We do this through
telling our own stories, reading and commenting on the stories of others…hopefully
giving them insights and perspectives they have not discovered on their own...,
empathizing with and supporting their feelings and even offering advice from
our perspectives.
II. The need for change: The definition of
“crazy,” it is said, is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting
a different result. I wouldn’t exactly call it “crazy,” but I most certainly
would call it “dysfunctional.” If you put salt in your coffee, it is going to
be salty every single time you do it. It doesn’t matter if you do it once or
twenty thousand times, putting salt in your coffee will never make it sweet. If
you want that coffee sweet you have to change something…like what you choose to
put in the coffee. Only by changing what you do—in this case, choosing sugar instead
of salt—can you get a different outcome. Your life is no different: if you want
your life to change you have to
change it.
a. WE are dysfunctional: In order to be
able to fix how you feel, you must first acknowledge that we are dysfunctional. For all that our Ns do hurtful things to us,
the fact that we continue to allow it, to feel hurt by it, to dwell on the N’s
behaviour or our guilt or our hurt over being rejected, proves that we are
dysfunctional. We refuse to accept them as they are, believing instead that if
we can just find the right word or deeds or gifts or behaviour, we can open
their hearts to love us; we are further dysfunctional in that we harbour a
belief that if we could bring such a thing to pass, we would be magically
healed from the legacy of our accumulated hurts and slights, rejections and affronts,
and that simply is not going to happen.
b. Healing is hard: It is painful work
and nobody can heal us but ourselves. We can be guided by therapists and
self-help books, blogs and websites, and we can be supported by friends and
fellow victims, but in the final analysis, nobody can heal us but ourselves.
And we do that by acknowledging our own dysfunctions and changing them.
c.
Distractions: Sometimes
we allow ourselves to be distracted…or we distract ourselves…from our own
issues by the drama and chaos of others in our lives. It is tempting to put the
issues of others ahead of our own because we can see ourselves as being noble
and self-sacrificing that way and manage to wriggle out of facing our own
painful truths that, if acknowledged, would steal away our hope of getting what
we want: our Ns turning into loving and functional people who value and accept
us.
Another way
we distract ourselves is to intellectualize our issues, to become seekers of
knowledge rather than address—which means feeling—our pain. We become obsessed
with learning as much as we can about narcissism, we want to know how they
became Ns, why they do what they do, how they can live with themselves, all of
the minutia of their condition, their behaviour, their thoughts and feelings.
We fool ourselves into believing that the more we know about them, the better we will be when, in fact, nothing is further from the truth. We
focus on them at the expense of ourselves when all we need to do is understand
the barest of basics: they are narcissists, narcissists love only themselves,
we can’t change them but we can change ourselves.
d.
You can’t change them: The only person on the planet that you
can change is yourself. In fact, trying to change another person, whether by
demands, bargains, manipulation, threats or precipitous action is disrespectful.
Other people have exactly the same rights of self-determination that you have
and, like it or not, they actually have a right to choose to be entitled
assholes. You, however, have a right to not tolerate that kind of behaviour, a
right you exercise by refusing to respond to their advances or by removing them
from your life.
f. Nobody is going to change for you:
People, when they truly change, do so for their own reasons. Anybody who
promises to change in order to appease you is lying. They may put on an
appearance of change for a while, but unless the reason for change comes from
within a person’s own heart, the change will be both temporary and superficial
and may well inspire resentment and antipathy towards you for being
controlling.
g.
Choosing dysfunctional partners: One of the things we tend to
do is choose partners like the Ns who raised us. It is generally accepted that
we do this in a subconscious attempt to re-write our primary emotional connection,
that with our NParents: we choose what we know, in terms of emotional triggers
and responses, and this time we aim to fix the parts of that first relationship
that hurt us. So, we come to the group not only with a history of an NParent to
resolve, but NPartners as well. This group, however, is focussed on healing
from the effects of having dysfunctional parents…the reason you chose dysfunctional partners in the first place…not your
relationship with that partner. And while that partner’s behaviour has an
effect on your present life and even your performance as a parent, it is not
the main focus of the group. There are many, many groups on the internet that
focus primarily on narcissistic partners and ex-partners: we only admit people
who had narcissistic parents/parental figures and their spouses with the
expectation that they will primarily focus on and address that primary
relationship, analysing it and healing from it.
h.
Raising dysfunctional kids: One of the unfortunate side-effects
of having dysfunctional parents is that we has a strong tendency to be
dysfunctional parents as well, raising dysfunctional kids. Whether we simply
emulate our own NParents out of ignorance or the belief that we were the
problem rather than them, or we do the opposite of what they did under the
misguided notion that the opposite of their mistakes is the right thing to do,
or we cobble together some kind of trendy, earth-mother cum trendy New Age
child rearing philosophy of our own, unless we actually sat down and gave
conscious thought to the best way to raise each of your children (they are all
different and have different needs) to become the most emotionally healthy and
fulfilled people possible, chances are you screwed it up. Guess what that makes
you? NORMAL.
You cannot do what you don’t
know. It simply isn’t possible. And there is a much stronger influence on your
child’s development than your parenting techniques: your child’s innate
personality and resilience. Yes, you have an opportunity to shape the direction
that a child’s psyche grows, but it is not a blank slate upon which you can
write anything you want: if it was, we would not have empathy or a conscience
or be the least bit bothered by the way Ns behave. This group, however, is not
about parenting or dealing with kids who display N behaviours. There are plenty
of websites for parents who have discipline-averse children, out-of-control
children, disturbed children and while helping you cope with stress is part of our
focus, our primary focus is on you
and your issues with your own parents—which is very likely the genesis of your
own parenting problems. This group exists to help you sort out your problems with
your parents, not your kids. They are an appropriate topic if your parenting
skills, learned from (or in knee-jerk reaction to) your NParents, have caused
them to be difficult, but the focus needs to be primarily on you and how your
upbringing generated those skills and what we can do to help you to overcome
those messages from your NPs and make you a more effective parent. Focusing on
a narcissistic or otherwise challenging child is also an excellent way to
distract yourself from the painful and difficult work of healing yourself.
III. Forgiveness: It is the official position of this group that forgiveness is only
warranted when you actually feel forgiving.
Forgiveness is a topic that comes
up over and over again in the group. Popular thought holds that forgiveness is
something you do for yourself, to make yourself feel better. This is not only not
true, it is a narcissistic perversion of its original intent. It is taking
something that was initially meant as a healing gesture intended to assuage the
guilt of a remorseful wrong-doer and flipping it to be a way to make yourself
feel better, regardless of the other party. It goes from a selfless act in
which you give the person who injured you surcease from his guilt to being an
act in which you selfishly salve your wounds without regard to others…and
without, in many cases, honouring your own true feelings.
Forgiveness,
as a social construct, originated with the Catholic Church as the Rite or
Sacrament of Penance. It is predicated on the idea that, through sinning, we
offend God. As a result, we have to repent our sin, do penance, and seek
forgiveness or God will punish us. God does not watch us sin and just
automatically forgive us, knowing we are not sorry and have made no amends. The
act of forgiveness is not to make God feel better about having been sinned
against, it is to make you feel
better and assuage your presumed guilt for having sinned against God.
You hold
the ability to forgive people for hurting you in your hands just as in the
Church, God holds that ability. According to Church canon, the priests are
appointed by God as his proxies (they are God’s “instruments on earth”) so they
have the power to forgive in the name of God. In order to give you absolution
(forgiveness) the priest must hear you admit to your wrong doing (confession), hear
your remorse (contrition), accept your apology—and possibly admonish you, tell
you how to make amends (penance), and finally, assuage your feelings of guilt
for having sinned by forgiving you. The forgiveness is for you, not for the priest or the god he represents. It is presumed
that you feel bad (guilty) about doing wrong and forgiveness is intended to
wash away that bad feeling.
Today there
is the “forgiveness imperative” which turns this on its head. Now we are
expected to forgive or there is something wrong with us even if the people who victimized us are laughing in our faces.
If we won’t forgive the person who raped us or stole our children or beat us
bloody or set our house alight or stole our last dollar, it is we who are in the wrong, it is we who
are lacking in moral character. This is victim blaming and nothing more than
complete and utter bullshit. Forgiveness, like love, comes from the heart. If
you don’t feel it, you can’t give it, only a pale imitation of it that is both
dishonest and dissatisfactory. And while it is corrosive to hold hate and
bitterness in your heart, it is not necessary to forgive those who hurt you in
order to let hate and bitterness go…and making yourself “forgive” someone when
you aren’t feeling forgiving won’t wash them away.
There is
nothing wrong with you if you don’t feel forgiving and you are perfectly within
your rights to expect those who hurt you to acknowledge their acts, apologize
for them, offer to make some kind of amends that are meaningful to you before
you even consider forgiveness. And you know what? Even after your abusers do
all of that, if you still don’t feel forgiving, it is ok to not do it.
Forgiveness is a gift, not an entitlement and it is entirely up to you whether
or not to give it, and who to give it to.
IV. Respect: It is the official position of this group that respect is not earned,
it is freely given to everyone until and unless a person earns our DISrespect.
The idea
that all of the rest of the people on the planet have to earn your respect is
another one of those narcissistic points of view that has crept into the public
consciousness. But if you think about it, all it is is a way to justify
treating people badly and doing whatever you want without considering the
feelings of others. Queue for movie tickets too long? Just cut in—those people
haven’t earned my respect so fuck ‘em. Girlfriend upset because you stepped out
on her? What has she done to earn your respect? Tough shit for her.
Why is it
narcissistic to believe that people should earn your respect? Because it means
that you think that every one of the more than seven billion people on this
planet have to figure out how to please you before you think you need to
respect them. And that is exceedingly self-centred.
Have you
ever even thought about what it means to earn your respect? Can you sit down,
right now, and list ten things a person—someone you do not like or respect—can
do to make you respect him? If everybody around you has to earn your respect,
do you give them that list up front so they at least have a chance to earn it?
Or do you just judge them and hold them in disrespect because they didn’t accurately
guess what it takes to earn your respect? Do you know what it takes to earn the
respect of the guy driving the car next to you in traffic? The waitress who
brought your lunch? The guy who signs your pay check? The doctor who delivered
your child? The interviewer who holds that juicy new job in the palms of her
hands? No? Guess what—they don’t know what it takes to earn yours, either.
V. Mental illness: It is the official position of this group that narcissism is not a mental illness.
I will
repeat that for those readers who didn’t get it the first time: Narcissism is
not a mental illness. This comes up repeatedly in the group, particularly from
people who believe they have to be tolerant of the N’s behaviour because “She’s
sick, she can’t help it.” Not true.
Narcissism
is a personality disorder. Like mental illnesses, PDs occur in the brain, and
they are mental health issues, but they are not mental illnesses. Leaves and
bark and thorns and flowers all grow on lemon trees, but they aren’t lemons:
just because something occurs in the mind doesn’t make it a mental illness.
Why?
Because narcissists are not ill. They have choices over their behaviours that
the truly mentally ill do not. They are aware of what their culture identifies
as right and wrong, good and bad, and they demonstrate that awareness either
through overt and intentional defiance or through hiding their wrongs to avoid censure
or consequences.
This
issue—choice—is critical. Courts that allow an unmedicated schizophrenic to
plead “not guilty by reason of insanity” will not even entertain such a plea
from a narcissist because, unlike the schizophrenic, the narcissist is fully
aware of what the society and laws expect of him. And because of that
awareness, the narcissist is able to choose whether or not to obey a law.
Some people
ascribe to the concept of “narcissistic
wounding” or “narcissistic injury”
in which it is posited that the narcissist was a perfectly normal child until
s/he suffered a psychological “narcissistic wound” that arrested their emotional
development. The main fault with this theory is that those of us who were
raised by narcissistic parents suffered some serious wounds and injuries to our
psyches during our early childhoods…and we
aren’t narcissists. In fact, according to a Yale study1, only 30% of
people who were abused in childhood go on to abuse their own children. That would
indicate that the great majority of ACoNs—70% of us—suffered psychological
wounding as children but did not go on to be narcissists and abuse our own
children. Narcissistic wounding, then, doesn’t appear to be all that certain an
explanation for the narcissist’s condition.
The truth
is, psychologists and researchers do not yet know what causes narcissism. They
know it is not amenable to treatment, there are indicators of multiple
generations of individuals in families suffering from it—but they don’t know if
it is inherited or imprinted—and they know that a narcissist may not feel love
or empathy or compassion, but they can imitate it.
And there’s
the rub: choice. The narcissistic parent can choose to act like The Most
Wonderful Mother in the World at a parent-teacher conference only an hour after
brutally beating or verbally disembowelling the child in question. If the
narcissistic parent can fawn over and give attention and advantages to one
child, that parent is fully capable of choosing to exhibit the same behaviour
to the child who has been singled out as the family scapegoat. For the
narcissist, it is all about choice: no illness, no childhood trauma compels
them to treat some people badly and others well, it is all simply a matter of
what they want and what they choose to do.
VI. Blame vs responsibility: When we try to
speak to “normies” about our lives—even when we speak to other members of our
family who experienced our Ns differently from the way we did, all too often we
are admonished to not “blame” our parents. And that cuts deep.
What these
insensitive, unfeeling individuals fail to grasp is that there is subtle but
very substantial difference between blame and responsibility. We are not
responsible for how we were raised, for the lessons we learned, for the beliefs
and attitudes we adopted, the maladaptive behaviours that we took on in order
to survive. To assign responsibility to our parents for teaching us to be
passive and to not believe in ourselves, to submit to abuse without complaint,
to be a people pleaser while neglecting ourselves—that is not blame, that is
identifying the root of a problem. And if you want to conquer a problem, you
need to address its root. If you merely address your symptoms, you will never be
able to eradicate the cause for those symptoms.
Too often
our very legitimate concerns are ignored by the authority of a “higher power.”
We are told to “honour thy mother” only minutes after she has dumped a deluge
of NRage on us. We are told to ignore the elephant in the room—the narcissist
parent who torments us and may even recruit our siblings and other family
members to destroy our very sense self—and to “turn it over to God.” When we
lament our place in the world we are told that “God works in mysterious ways,”
or to “Pray on it” rather than to take logical and productive action like
calling the police on an abusive parent or leaving an abusive spouse. Abusers are
quick to cite higher powers to keep you in your place, to give them the right
to exploit you and keep you shackled to their abuse. If you accept the tenets
of the faith, you believe you cannot blame God because you are “reaping what
you have sown.” Your pain is the result of your sin and only by rectifying that
sin—in the way your abuser demands—will you ever have a chance of being
released from your pain. This is classic victim-blaming, using a higher
authority to back up the authority of the abuser.
What we
don’t want to hear, however, is that we have a responsibility in this because
we have repeatedly chosen to remain in the abusive relationship long past the
day when we first had a choice to leave. You can leave, you can stand
up for yourself, you can refuse to
accept the abuse. Yes, it may be frightening or even risky, but if you choose
the fear over the risk, it is your choice and you are responsible for it.
VII. Most narcissists are not malicious:
Narcissists make up approximately 6.2% of the population and people suffering
from AsPD (Anti-social Personality Disorder, formerly called “sociopathy” and “psychopathy”)
are estimated to make up no more than 3% of the population. Many people think
that narcissists are deliberately cruel and that they enjoy the suffering of
their victims but this is not the case.
a. Narcissists are primarily self-absorbed. Everything
is about them, about getting what they want, about always being right, about
not being blamed for anything. They might behave in a spiteful, mean manner as
a means of retaliation over a perceived slight, but they don’t go around
dreaming up ways to frighten, intimidate or hurt people for their own amusement.
They will tell lies to others about you, make you look like you victimized
them, so that they can get sympathy and support from their friends, their
retaliations will be petty and hurtful, like not inviting you to a birthday
party or family event like Thanksgiving dinner or giving you a cheap and tacky
Christmas present while your siblings get something expensive or cool.
The narcissist does not care
about your feelings because narcissists lack empathy—but that is the point: the
narcissist doesn’t care if you are
hurt. S/he doesn’t seek out opportunities to hurt you because s/he doesn’t
care. If you are hurt, that is just a by-product of the narcissist’s
self-absorption and if you point out to a narcissist that she has hurt you, you
will get no remorse because she doesn’t care. In fact, you may get denial, or
even your hurt blamed on you because the narcissist believes she can do no
wrong, therefore if you are hurt, that must be your fault.
b.
Malignant narcissists are a whole other dimension of nasty. The
malignant narcissist is a person who displays traits not only of NPD, but of
AsPD as well. This person not only cares if you feel hurt, this person may
relish it, look for or even create opportunities to hurt you, and will delight
in your pain. This person is as self-absorbed as any other narcissist but has
the added dimensions of cruelty and sadism. She enjoys your pain, she revels in
her power to control you through fear and pain. It isn’t just the nasty
retaliation against you for some real or imagined slight, this is pain
inflicted for no other reason than she can do it, she can get away with it, it
makes her feel powerful, it gets her what she wants, and she has manufactured
ways to make it look rational to onlookers.
A woman who
kidnaps her daughter’s children in retaliation for an episode of defiance six
years past would be looked down upon by others, reviled. But if the woman can
convince people that her daughter is a drug-addicted prostitute, if she has an
upper-middleclass adoptive home for the children with a member of the family,
if she can convince the courts that her daughter is unfit—this woman is hailed
as a hero, a saviour of the children, even if everything she said about her
daughter was a lie. Because if she can discredit that daughter, nobody is going
to believe the truth. This is a malicious behaviour perpetrated by a malignant
narcissist who cared nothing about the feelings of her daughter, the children,
or even the adopting parents. She cared only that she succeeded in punishing
her daughter for standing up to her and that she can reap years of narcissistic
supply from her position as rescuer of innocent children from a life in the
gutter with their allegedly soiled mother.
That is a
malignant narcissist. Someone who feeds on the pain of others to the degree
that they will intentionally create it in order to reap the rewards of feeling
like they have won, that they have power, that they are admired. They are, in a
word, bullies, and they are bullies
to the degree that they will do literally anything they think they can get away
with in order to get and keep the power and control they crave.
VIII. Trigger warnings do not help us heal: It is the official position of this group
that trigger warnings and avoiding triggers are not desirable. Numerous
studies indicate that facing those things that we fear leads to healing where
avoidance only entrenches the fear further. “…avoidance reinforces PTSD.
Conversely, systematic exposure to triggers and the memories they provoke is
the most effective means of overcoming…”2 As a result,
the publication of trigger warnings in posts and comments in the group are
strongly discouraged.
We cannot overcome the fear of
something we refuse to face.
IX. Healing from our dysfunction: Healing is
not a passive activity. Like many others, I first went into therapy thinking
that I would sit in a chair—or lie on a couch—and talk about my problem, maybe
cry a little, and walk out with my burden lightened. I further believed that
enough of these visits would ultimately result in my recovery. I viewed the
therapist like my internist: she
would do the fixing just like my doctor fixed my sinus infection with a shot
and a prescription. All I had to do was show up and talk, she would do the
rest. Boy! was I wrong about that!
Healing is
a proactive thing. Your therapist cannot heal you, neither can members of the
group. All we can do is reassure you, give you alternative points of view, fill
in gaps in your knowledge, and give you a couple of hundred sympathetic ears to
vent to and shoulders to cry on. But we can’t fix anything.
And neither
can you if you don’t change.
What do you
have to change? Well, that depends on you and what survival mechanisms you have
put into place to survive growing up with an Nparent or two. Undoubtedly there
is denial going on, erroneous beliefs like you are at fault for everything, and
a belief that you have a supernatural power to change other people if only you
could find the perfect word or deed to make that person see how worthy you are
of his/her love. Mostly, however, you are going to have to give up hope: hope
that she will change, hope that you can find that magic word or deed, hope that
she will feel sorrow for her mistreatment of you once you’ve unlocked the door so
that she can really see just how much she has hurt you. You have to change the
way you think, things you believe—including the belief that your hurts will be
magically healed once she “gets it”—hope that there is a future for you in her
life as anything other than what you are right now, this minute.
Healing
hurts. It is painful, ugly, and it involves a lot of crying and sobbing. It is
wet and sticky and snotty and it hurts right down to the very core of your
soul. But years ago, when I was in group therapy, the facilitator told me “The
only way out of the pain is to go through it.” It sounds counter-intuitive, but
I found out she was right. The only way to purge the pain from your system is
to embrace it, do the crying, do the hurting, do the grieving—for that is what
it is, grieving the loving parents you never had, grieving for the child who
never had a childhood—until is it all cried out of you. It hurts, it takes
time, it sucks, but there are no shortcuts, no matter what the internet tells
you.
a.
There are no shortcuts: This
group does not endorse “shortcuts to healing.”
There are thousands of websites,
gurus, life coaches, shamans and other self-styled experts hawking an endless
variety of alternative techniques, concoctions, media, and practices, all promising
miraculous relief from your pain. From “tapping” to crystals, from angels to
cleanses, from 12 step programs to metaphysical mumbo jumbo, they all have one
thing in common: they do not lead to the end of your pain.
Nobody wants
to hurt and these purveyors of empty promises grow wealthy on the pain of
people like us, people who want a way to end the ache of being an ACoN without
having to go back and experience the visceral pain of our childhoods yet again.
We buy their promises, their assurances, their DVDs, their capsules, all
because we do not want to have to hurt even more than we hurt right now.
Unfortunately,
many of these techniques—some of which are practiced by legitimate
therapists—do nothing and some of them are actually harmful. A few of them tap
into the placebo effect, leaving you temporarily feeling better, but without
addressing the cause of your pain. And without addressing the cause, it can’t
be eliminated.
b.
We do not support dysfunction: We
will support you but not your dysfunctions.
The
objective of the group is to help each other heal from the legacy of
narcissistic abuse. Some people come to the group thinking they want to heal
but soon show themselves resistant to change. They will refuse to let go of
their denial, or become upset or angry when challenged, or seek sympathy while
fault-finding and rejecting suggestions for change. This does not work. The
most basic fact of healing is this: in order for your life to change, you must start doing some things differently.
There was a
group member who was very insistent that her mother was not a narcissist
despite many stories from her that looked very much like she was. The member
would get angry and defensive if suggestions were made that maybe her father
was not the only source of difficulty in the family. She was very invested in
believing her mother was blameless, even though her own tales about life with
dear old mom revealed a deeply selfish and insensitive woman.
I declined
to admit a person whose request to join included the information that she had
lived with a narcissistic man for 16 years, had four daughters with him, and
her narcissistic mother lived in their basement apartment. She was very clear
that she was looking for ways to “make this work” in such a way that her
daughters did not “lose their family.” She did not want healing, she did not
want to give up her victimhood, she wanted a Greek chorus validating and
sympathizing with how awful her situation was. She wanted to be rescued while she
sat passively on the sidelines.
We don’t do that here. We help
each other heal. We give each other perspective and support and validation and
suggestions and, sometimes, brutal truths. We do not enable our dysfunctions,
we seek ways to overcome them, to replace them with healthy outlooks and
beliefs and behaviours and feelings. That
is what this group is all about.