Head’s Up! Narc Attack!

This morning I received the following email:

“You are not who you say you are. You do not live in South Africa. You live at 3126 Oak Road, #420, Walnut Creek, CA 94597 from 10/13 to present since you are divorcing Eric H. Janssen. Your home was foreclosed on 7/27/15 and sold by trustee sald 15-12800. Original loan $365, 500 10/28/94, parcel 149-304-026-3 with transfer value $214,000 for a 1,162 sq.ft., 3 br, 1 bath home built in 1947. You are do not have a narcissist daughter or son. You have a minor child living with your ex. You have 4 traffic offenses in Contra Costa, CA. I could go on. You get the point. Either take this fake blog with lies down or I will post all this information and anything else I may have in my possession on the internet for everyone to see. You also need to close your FB group The Narcissist's Child or I will reveal your ruse to the world! You messed with the wrong people this time.”

I—and this blog—and the Facebook group—have been targeted by an internet troll.

This troll has taken my Facebook screen name, done an internet search on it, and found some hapless woman in California with the same name—but for her it is her real name—and decided to “blackmail” me with the information found in the search.

Anybody who has been around this blog—or the Facebook group—for any period of time knows that I use a screen name. I started with the name Sweet Violet back in the mid-90s as a tribute to my grandmothers: one, actually named Violet, died in 1992; the other, who collected Japanese post-War china in the Sweet Violets pattern (of which I am now the proud owner), died in 1994. Sweet Violet as a screen name seemed a fitting honour to them both. Unfortunately, I woke up one morning a year or two back to find that Facebook had frozen my account and would not thaw it out until I gave them a real-sounding name: they weren’t buying “Sweet” as a first name or “Violet” as a surname (they should visit South Africa where you can meet people with names like “Education January”). Since everybody on line knew me as Violet at this time, I opted to keep Violet as my first name and added, for a surname, the name of a street near where I was living at the time…and like magic, my FB account was restored and I was back!

One of the problems narcissists have is an inability to see beyond what they perceive: if they believe it, it must be true because they cannot be wrong. This is a form of arrogance, for which narcissists are well known. My troll, labouring under the delusion that her perception was truth, obviously spent a great deal of time and effort—and possibly even some money—to find out the “truth” about who I am. Unfortunately, she found some poor woman in California whose real name is the same as my screen name—and who seems to be having a real tough time of it just now—and has convinced herself that the California Violet is me…and that by having all this internet-generated information about that Violet, she has some kind of power over me.

I tried to respond to the email, to set the troll straight with some truth, but the troll used a Gmail email address that no longer exists. I am guessing she opened the email account, made her attack, then closed the account. This is what I call a “drive by”—a person spits out a malicious message then takes an action that prevents the target from responding. It is designed to prevent the other person from providing information that might run contrary to what the attacker believes: it ensures that not a single grain of truth might penetrate the attacker’s self-righteous—but incorrect—beliefs. It is also designed to frustrate the victim by depriving him of a means of defence and to make sure that any witnesses (usually members of the attacker’s crew) don’t get infected with truth from the victim.

What kind of person does this? Somebody who simply cannot be wrong. Somebody who is petty, spiteful and vindictive. Somebody who doesn’t care about truth, only about creating the illusion that she is right, even when she knows, deep in her heart, that she is wrong. By utterly destroying her victim, the troll wipes out any chance that a) anybody ever finds out she is wrong and b) she might have to acknowledge that she is wrong—because acknowledging she is wrong destroys her self-perception and makes her vulnerable.

Anyway, I tried to set the troll straight lest she do some harm to the California Violet, so I sent this email and it bounced back: “Apparently it hasn't occurred to you that 1) there might be more than one Violet Janssen on the planet and 2) Violet Janssen might not be my real name.

This is a perfect example of how internet research can lead you to faulty conclusions. It exemplifies everything that is wrong with believing everything you read and how an otherwise rational person can be led to absurdly false and embarrassingly incorrect conclusions. This is how anti-vax people get sucked into junk science: they start with a faulty premise and then seek information (regardless of the validity of the source) to support it rather than seek to discover the truth—which might be contrary to the premise they are trying to validate—through bona fide sources. If you start with a false premise and then seek to prove it, no amount of information can truly validate it because the initial premise is false in the first place. And that is exactly where you have gone wrong here: you have started with a false premise and all of the time and effort you have put into your research has brought you to an incorrect conclusion.

I hope you realize that the behaviour you are exhibiting is spiteful, vindictive, and narcissistic in nature. If you aren't seeing a therapist right now, I recommend that you do so. If you ARE seeing a therapist, I recommend that you tell him/her what you have done and discuss it and your need for vengefulness. And if you feel reluctant to do so or you are indignant at my suggestion (because how dare I suggest that you might be wrong!), I strongly recommend that you explore that reaction because that means you know your behaviour is wrong but you are unwilling to acknowledge it...another behaviour common to narcissists.

Just a word of warning, though—if you try to take any action against the Violet Janssen in Walnut Creek who, according to your research seems to be pretty hard up against it anyway—you could be committing a crime. She doesn't know who you are or why you would be targeting her and if you are in a different state, your crime could be federal in nature (because it crosses state lines). Don't let your arrogance lead you to believe what is not true: that you have found the “real” Violet and have acquired the power to destroy her.

I would like to thank you for this email and your threat because I have been searching for a topic for my next blog entry and here you are, handing it to me on a silver platter! Blackmail only works when the target has something to hide...and I do not.

Hugs and love,

Violet”

So, by now everybody has to be wondering what prompted the troll attack. The last sentence in the email to me gives the clue: “You messed with the wrong people this time.” This clearly references some interaction between me and the troll (“people” instead of “person”—the troll is puffing up like a cat to make herself look bigger and more intimidating). It comes from a recent dust-up in the Facebook group.

Membership in the group is by invitation only. You get an invitation by contacting me and demonstrating to me why you would be a suitable member of the group. I do this because I get lots and lots of requests from people who are not ACoNs, people who have a narc sibling or boss or ex or neighbour, people who are narcs themselves and are butthurt that their adult kid had gone NC, narcs who perceive themselves victims, and even Lookie-Lous—people who get their jollies through the pain of others. These people have to be screened out to maintain the integrity of the group. Once past that, each potential member is emailed a copy of the group Boundaries indicating the basic rules of the group: confidentiality, respect, taboo topics (and the reasons they are taboo), etc. An invitation to join is conditional on accepting and agreeing to abide by the Boundaries. So, every person in the group presumably knows the rules and has agreed to observe them before being granted entry—and a copy is posted in the group Files section if anyone needs to refresh their memories.

One of the things the Boundaries limits is recommendations to members of the group. While there are no limitations on what a member may believe or practice in her private life, there are limits as to what can be brought to the group. Specific to this prohibition is such things as junk science, alternative medicine, and other modalities that are not scientifically validated. Again, if you think detoxing your eyelashes with blue paint enemas works for you—go for it. But don’t bring it to the group. Another Boundary has to do with privacy and confidentiality: if you violate the Boundaries or if you have an issue with a Boundary, that is to be a private issue between the member and me. Nobody should be publicly embarrassed by the group leader announcing that Suzie Queue has broken a rule and needs to get her shit together: that is public humiliation and Suzie’s counselling/reprimand are none of the rest of the group’s business. And people are free to dislike the Boundaries but that is not a topic for the group because it is a distraction from the main focus of healing from the legacy of being raised by narcissists. Boundary discussions are supposed to be private with me and, if you can present me with good reasons for changing a boundary, I will consider it.

A member violated the rules. I sent her a message asking her to remove a prohibited reference. She ignored me so I removed her post (FB doesn’t allow me to edit other people’s posts, so in such a circumstance, I can only delete the whole post). This prompted additional rules violations and considerable lashing out. We had a Private Message (PM) conversation in which it became abundantly clear that the member believed some conspiracy theories and held her own internet “research” to be superior to the research done in bona fide studies and published in peer-reviewed journals. And she became quite indignant at my refutations of her beliefs in both the conspiracies and the junk science (I reiterate--that was ALL done privately so the member was not exposed to any kind of embarrassment in the group).

While I was asleep here on the other side of the planet, this member violated yet another rule, the one against recruiting members of the group for anything and she specifically stated she was timing her message to hit the group while I was asleep and could not delete it for several hours. She then deleted herself from the group and blocked me on Facebook, taking a few witnesses who were also junk science believers with her, one of whom had had a similar tête-a- tête with me some months earlier. This member was angry because I refused to endorse her pet alternative modality and accused me of “secrecy” (implying nefarious intent on my part) for the privacy policy.

But leaving in a high dudgeon and dragging those few acolytes with her wasn’t enough. She began sending emails and PMs to members of the Narcissist’s Child group, trying to recruit them for a new group she was forming. This prompted a flurry of email and PMs to me from angry and alarmed group members, complaining about the rules violations. It was clear that she was intent upon on destroying the group.

So why is she so angry that she is out to destroy me and the blog and the group? Because somebody who has credibility could see right through her and would not allow her to violate the boundaries with impunity. Because somebody said “no” and made it stick. Because she was unable to come to a way to be in control…and that is what she is still trying to do…get control because when she is not in control, she is vulnerable. The big narcissistic rage has two reasons: 1) to intimidate and 2) to vent her frustration at being unable to prevail. She is afraid: she is projecting that I will do to her the same kind of thing she is trying to do to me: to silence her and, in doing that, take away her power—and without power, she feels vulnerable and afraid. And only by taking away my voice in this blog and in the Facebook group does she feel safe from the retaliatory attack she is sure will come.

At some point she must have taken the prohibition against voicing junk science in the group as a prohibition to mean she cannot believe what she wants; that, or she decided that she is not bound by the Boundaries, that somehow she and her message were sufficiently important that it was ok to violate them. But at no time is any member ever prohibited from believing whatever they want to believe in their lives outside the group…the only limitation is what is brought into the group. Think about it this way…if you are invited to the home of a non-smoker, is it appropriate for you to light up in their living room? Or do you respect their house rules and refrain from smoking in their home? Does this mean you cannot smoke in your own home or car? Obviously they have a bias against smoking…does it mean they have a bias against you, personally?

And if you light that cigarette in their house anyway and they ask you to either put it out or leave, are they out of line for enforcing their house rules? Or are you out of line for violating them? What if you take the attitude that your belief that you have a right to smoke wherever you want, even in the home of a person who clearly does not like it—what if you think their rules in their home don’t apply to you? Well, that is absolutely textbook narcissistic behaviour, to believe that you are the exception, that you are so special that you are exempt from the same rules that apply to everyone else.

The troll failed: out of nearly 300 members in the group, fewer than 2% left and many of those who left emailed to tell me they were leaving due to the instability the troll had caused, not because they were following her. Expecting a mass rebellion, the troll got a few disgruntled or easily swayed souls and nothing more. Obviously this was unsatisfactory and did not satisfy her desire for vengeance or her need to silence me, so Phase 2 was launched: internet blackmail.

The only problem, however, is that for blackmail to work the blackmailee has to have something to hide and I don’t.

So here it is: this is what the troll plans to use to destroy my credibility on the web. The only problem here is that my real name isn’t Violet Janssen and that has never been a secret.




FYI--the troll cannot appear on this blog: all comments to the blog are moderated so you don't need to worry about the troll attacking here.

The Facebook Group: Basic Tenets

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.

¹ http://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/24/science/sad-legacy-of-abuse-the-search-for-remedies.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

² http://narcissistschild.blogspot.co.za/2015/01/triggeringgood-for-you.html