Five women

Five women are on a path, a steep and winding path that leads to the top of a fog-shrouded mountain. They have heard that, should they walk the path to the top, there they will find an end to all of their sorrows.

Each woman believes she walks this arduous path alone, for none can see any of the others. Each one started her journey at a different time and each originated her trek from a different location.

The path is steep and treacherous, rocky and rough, strewn with boulders and pocked with holes. Some holes are small and easily stepped over while others block the path and force the traveler off the path to go around it. The edges of the path are even more treacherous than the path itself: bogs, mires, sheer drop-offs into seemingly bottomless chasms are constant companions, along with a swirling, persistent fog. Along the way they each see evidence of other women who have faltered and failed to make it to the top: cast off shoes, walking sticks, backpacks, even the occasional tell-tale hump of burial dirt.

The First Woman, after much frightening and painful work, reaches the top of the mountain and, indeed, as she steps out of the fog and into the sunshine at the top of the peak, her sorrows are lightened. She has climbed the most perilous path of her life, risked both life and limb, and while she basks in her new-found sense of self and relief from her life sorrows, she sees that the fog has cleared and that she has an equally perilous path down the other side of the mountain. From her vantage point she can see women who have gone before her, some of them striding confidently into the unknown, others gingerly picking their way down the rubble fields and slippery rocks that mark this half of the journey and it occurs to her that the journey down the mountain and the integration of her new Self back into her old community might be easier if she didn’t have to do it alone.

And so she sits down to wait, her lap full of grasses and weeds and the occasional wild flower which she begins to plait.

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The Second Woman climbs past the hazards and the signs of those who failed and, with her last ounce of strength, collapses on a rock just meters from the top. She grits her teeth stoically, certain she can crawl those last few meters, but her muscles refuse to obey, her eyes cannot find the handholds or the footholds she needs. Despairing, she leans against the rock and, feeling sorry for herself, dreading the climb back down and the humiliation of her defeat, she desperately cries out “Help me!” To her great surprise, one end of a rope made of weeds and grasses and the occasional wildflower drops through the fog and into her lap.

“Grab on,” calls a woman’s voice from above her. “Wrap it around your waist and I will help you up.” And she does and in a few moments she, too, is standing at the top, above the fog. After resting and some sustenance, the women compare notes and learn that they are sisters under the skin, women who, while different in outward circumstance, are very much the same inside.

“Shall we go down the mountain, now?” asks the Second Woman, eyeing the path on the other side. “I thought it would be smooth sailing from here but this path is just as bad as the path leading up.”

The First Woman nods. “The path does not get smoother,” she tells her companion, “We just get stronger and wiser and more experienced, making us more able to trod it with greater ease.” They talk a while longer, plaiting more ropes from the grasses and weeds that grow around them, and ultimately decide to go their separate ways, the Second Woman setting off down the unknown path to her destiny, carrying with her the ropes she and the First Woman had woven together.

But the First Woman sees a different destiny for herself and she starts back down the way she came, her pockets stuffed with weeds and grasses and the occasional wildflower. She scavenges the discards and backpacks she finds, collects the abandoned walking sticks and shoes, and as she makes her way down the mountain path, she plaits the grasses and weeds from her pockets into her own ropes which, as they grow in length, she carries in one of the backpacks she has found.

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The Third Woman is struggling up the path. She is crippled by a huge, heavy bag that she carries across her shoulders, the burden of a lifetime that she cannot find the courage to put down: the bag is filled with her collection of a lifetime of things given to her by people she loves and she believes herself obliged to keep and carry them all. Around a bend she spies a person coming down the mountain towards her, a woman with spring in her step and a rope of grasses and weeds and pretty flowers in her hands. They approach each other and come to a halt, a deep and crumbling hole in the path separating them.

 “Did you come up this path?” the Third Woman asks the first.

“I did,” she replies.

“How did you get past this hole?” the Third Woman asks.

“I leapt it.”

“But I cannot leap so far,” the Third Woman complains, shifting the burden on her shoulders.

“You can if you take that bag off your shoulder and leave it there.”

The Third Woman looks shocked, even angered, at the suggestion. “I cannot do that!” she cries indignantly. “This bag contains gifts from my loved ones. Let me show you…”

She opens the bag and drags out dented cups and chipped dishes, frayed towels and stale, half-eaten biscuits. Each item is, in its own way, tarnished or broken, flawed and without redeeming value. A small whip, with which the Third Woman almost ritually beats herself, is the last of the treasures she unearths.

The First Woman points out that these items are without value, that they are castoffs, refuse, not gifts of esteem and value. “Are your loved ones poor, then?” she asks.

“Nay,” replies the Third Woman, gesturing proudly to her hoard. “They are rich. See that cup, the one with the broken handle and dented lip? Solid silver! And that plate with the big crack glued together? That rim is real gold!”

“But they are dented and broken and cracked and damaged!” the First Woman points out. “They are not whole or even in good condition. Why do you treasure their refuse, their rubbish?”

“Because this is what they gave me,” the Third Woman cries. “This is what I have and it is surely better than nothing at all, which is what you would have of me. Well, it won’t work! I won’t let you take it all away from me! I won’t!”

And the Third Woman gathers her treasures and stuffs them back into the bag, snarling at the First Woman, “I thought you came down the mountain to help me, not to wound me. I have enough of that in my life and I don’t need it from you, too!” And she shoulders her burden and turns around and heads back down the mountain from whence she came.

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The Fourth Woman is scrambling up the path in a great hurry, she is in a frightful state, looking back over her shoulder as if she is being pursued. She clambers over obstacles and leaps great holes in the path, panting for breath as she flees her terrors. She rounds a bend and bumps smack into the Third Woman, making her drop her bag. The Fourth Woman falls to her knees and clasps her hands in supplication, babbling heartfelt and panicked apologies. The Third Woman, at first indignant, takes pity on the girl and helps her up but stops her when she sees that she is headed up the mountain.

“You don’t want to do that,” she warns.

“Why not,” the Fourth Woman asks. “Is there no easing of sorrows at the top?”

“I don’t know,” answers the Third Woman. “I was not allowed to go all the way to the top. My path was blocked by a woman who would not let me pass with my bag. She said I must leave it behind and when I showed her the treasures it contained, all of the gifts from the people who love me, she disparaged them. If she is what is at the top of the mountain, if I must give up everything that is dear to me in order to have the burden of my sorrows relieved, then I will continue to bear those sorrows so that I may have the gifts. So beware, she will exact a toll from you and that toll will be what is most precious to you.”

The Fourth Woman, eyes vigilantly fixed on the path leading up to her from the base of the mountain, whispers “I cannot go back. I could not survive it.”

The Third Woman shakes her head. “This path is perilous. You may not survive it. There are many places where you can see that people gave up, threw away their treasures, sat down and just died. That could be you. At least back there,” she tilts her head towards the foot of the mountain, “you know what to expect and you can keep your treasures.” When the Fourth Woman fails to respond, she adjusts the sack across her shoulders, turns away, and resumes her lumbering descent back down the mountain, leaving the Fourth Woman sitting alone on a rock, afraid of moving either forward or back.

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The Fifth Woman, eyes firmly on the path ahead of her, trudges past the Third Woman as they meet on the path, stopping only when the Third Woman detains her to tell her tale of woe and mistreatment at the hands of the First Woman. The Fifth Woman simply nods, then turns her attention back to the path and diligently hikes upwards.

She ignores the perils alongside the path, giving them cursory attention only when they become obstacles to overcome in attempting to overcome even bigger obstacles on the path. She happens upon the Fourth Woman, weeping piteously while clinging to her rock, and she stops to inquire.

“Are you injured?” she asks.

“I am not injured,” the Fourth Woman replies.

“Are you too exhausted to carry on?” The Fifth Woman asks.

“No,” says the Fourth Woman, “I am not exhausted.”

“Then why do you sit here weeping on a rock when enlightenment and the end of your sorrows is just up the path?”

“I am afraid,” the Fourth Woman weeps. “There is a woman ahead who will make me give up my treasures before I can go on to the top,” she cries.

“What treasures are those?” the Fifth Woman asks, looking about. “I see no treasures here and I have no treasures to lose, only the reminders of the bondage of my heart and my soul, the privation, the crumbs from the banquet table. What are these treasures you so fearfully cling onto, that hold you back, that have you sitting her on this hard, cold rock, paralyzed with fear of both going up the mountain and going back down?”

The Fourth Woman continues to weep, unable to answer, because the Fifth Woman’s words have revealed to her that she, too, has no treasures, only the same legacy of pain and privation as the Fifth Woman. And yet she remains afraid to move.

“Nobody is coming to rescue you,” the Fifth Woman tells her. “You must rescue yourself. Now you can come with me,” she holds her hand out, “or you can stay here until you become a part of this rock, but I am moving on.”

Timidly the Fourth Woman takes the proffered hand and rises from the rock and they begin the rest of the ascent together.

And something miraculous happened. When the Fourth Woman’s feet began to bleed from her barefoot flight, they rounded a bend in the path and there, on a log beside the path, was a pair of shoes. When the path became steep, a pair of staffs were found leaning against a tree just ahead. When they came to the chasm where the Third Woman had balked, they found coils of rope, rope made of grasses and weeds, interspersed with the occasional flower.

Beyond the chasm they found a raging wildfire blocking the path and on the dirt in front of them lay a backpack. Inside was only a note which, because the Fifth Woman was mesmerized with fright by the fire, the Fourth Woman extracted and read. She then returned the note to the backpack and put it pack back down on the path for the next person to find. She turned to the Fifth Woman, who was now wide-eyed and trembling with fear at the wall of fire burning brightly before them. The Fourth Woman held out her hand and recited the note: “The only way past it is to go through it.” The Fifth Woman looked longingly back down the path and then with trepidation toward the wall of fire—then she took the Fourth Woman’s hand and stepped into the flames.

It was like stepping through a threshold. Immediately upon taking that step through the curtain of fire, they found themselves on the steepest ascent on the path but unlike the path on the other side of the wall of fire, their needs were increasingly catered for. The fog was now cool and refreshing rather than oppressive. When they were tired, a place to rest appeared, when they were thirsty, a skin of water lay near the edge of the road, and when they reached that last out cropping and collapsed exhaustedly just a few meters below the peak, a friendly face and a daisy-sprigged rope popped over the ledge above them and in short order they, too, stood on the pinnacle and felt their burdens lighten as they left the fog behind.

And so the First Woman and the Fourth Woman and the Fifth Woman sat together at the top of the mountain, enjoying their feeling of freedom. The Fourth Woman and Fifth Woman looked down the path to freedom that they still had to tread, wondering about the perils they might encounter while the First Woman sat plaiting rope and gazing down the path they had just come up. The First Woman stood to make her way back down the path, to return the shoes and the staffs to their original places, to refill the water skin, to work on the rope bridge over the chasm that was currently served only by ropes. As she took her first step, however, the Second Woman arrived at the pinnacle, back from the path she has taken down the mountain after being relieved of her sorrows.

“Those who wish to continue down the path will find it no less treacherous than the path you came up,” she said. “It will be full of obstacles and you will find new sorrows and be pelted with stones of derision and shot full of arrows of discontent and disapproval. You will journey through pockets of fog, some of them dense. But you will know that each trial you face, each curtain of fire you walk through, each bag of tarnished and tainted gifts that are thrust upon you and you refuse to accept, simply makes you stronger.”

The Fourth Woman turned to the First and said “I am very good at plaiting grasses and flowers, I shall go with you and help you guide people up the mountain.”

And the Fifth Woman turned the Second and said “I am strong and determined, I will stay with you and help people navigate the perils below.”

And the Third Woman stood in the foggy shadows at the base of the mountain, at the place where the many paths converged on the upward path, and cursed the First Woman and the mountain and the path and the fog. She spread out her hoard of treasures and told her tale of woe to all who would listen and never took another step to help herself. Or anyone else, for that matter.

Narcissistic Rage: Not always a firestorm

If you have a narcissistic parent, you’ve experienced narcissistic rage. But because narcissists are as individual as anyone else, you may have experienced it without recognizing it for what is really is.

When someone says “rage” we tend to think of someone screaming and yelling and waving their arms and being loud and angry. We are probably also familiar with the quiet rage…the seething but controlled anger that manifests as clenched fists and jaws, giving the fear that the person could burst into some kind of physical fury at any moment.

But with narcissists there can be yet another kind of rage…the silent, subterranean rage that simmers, often for years, before being released…and the release can be in a long-planned and carefully executed manner.

What provokes a narcissist to rage? On the surface it may look like a lot of different things provoke a narcissist, but the fact is, only one thing does it: narcissistic injury.

Freud defined narcissistic injury as occurring when “…a narcissistic individual is confronted with a situation that counter-argues their firmly held beliefs about themselves.” Narcissist injury leads to narcissistic rage:  “This wound or blow that threatens their firmly held set of beliefs is likely to elicit a violent outburst of anger, known as narcissistic rage. The rage has a variety of forms and can be very mild or severely extreme.”

So what constitutes narcissistic injury? The short answer is “virtually anything.” This is the reason that living with a narcissist feels like walking on eggshells…you just never know when something you innocently do or say will set the narcissist off. That is because what is innocent and innocuous to you the narcissist may perceive as challenging or defiant or even intentionally attacking. Why that perception? Because whatever it was you did or said the narcissist finds it threatening to the delicately balanced house of grandiose cards she has built as her perception of herself.

You can know that certain things are guaranteed to set off your narcissist…you will have gained experience over time that certain behaviours or opinions or words will light the fuse. But there is always, always something else…something you don’t know about that will start things. You may think that always agreeing with the narcissist will guarantee peace but not only will this make you feel like a fraud, at some point the narcissist is liable to tip to it and say “Wait a minute…are you just humouring me, like I was some kind of senile old goat?” and then the rage game is on.

The narcissist will tell you that you have no one but yourself to blame for her rages because you provoke them with your contrariness, your defiance, your insensitivity, your cruelty. And for a long time, we may believe this because the fact is, you did do something the narcissist found provoking. But analysed from a greater distance, you have to acknowledge that the narcissist has no right to hold you, your feelings, your actions hostage to her perceptions, she has no right to deny you your autonomy by using rage and hurt feelings as a weapon to beat you into submission and back into control. You may have provoked the outburst, but you were no more in the wrong that the concentration camp inmate who, attempting to escape, provokes a guard into shooting at him.

Narcissistic rage, then is both a reaction on the part of the narcissist, and a tool used to control and manipulate others. I can remember saying to my brother “Don’t do that…it will make Mommy mad.” Mommy’s anger was a palpable, fearsome thing to be avoided at all costs and it was a weapon she consciously used “Are you trying to make me mad?” she would ask. Her rage was unpredictable in terms of what she would do with it, but predictable in its being a response to anyone doing anything that she did not like…and I mean anyone and anything.

Interestingly, her rage was often expressed differently, depending on who was the target. The more power a person had, the less overt and explosive her rage, and the more manipulative, subtle and vindictive…as if, by denying her a temper outburst, you earned a deeper, more lasting expression of her rage. When I was a child she would scream at me until her voice was raw, and hit me with anything handy until her rage was purged. This often left me sobbing and curled into a defensive little ball which, curiously, could act as yet another narcissistic injury: the reality that a beaten child will cry and cower away from her abuser was not acceptable to her and her response to my perfectly normal reaction would be to tell me to shut up or she would give me a real reason to cry. And any time I cringed or flinched in her presence was enough to set her off as she did not want other people to see it as it would give them the “wrong impression” of her.

She would not, however, use such overt means to rage at people who had more power than a child. She was capable of long-term planning and incredible spite. And, like so many other narcissists, she was glib and charming enough on the surface to convince others that her treachery was actually a good thing.

She would never rage at her mother or father…but she behaved in such a way, from her teens onward, as to cause a scandal in their tiny rural town such that the reputation of the entire family was damaged. Then, when it was clear that nobody found her cute or amusing anymore, just so shameful they didn’t want to soil their skirts by even walking past her on the streets, she packed up her children and moved 1000 miles away.

She had visions of an upper middle class lifestyle and convinced herself that the little Eichler-style house she nagged my father into buying was the first step on that ladder. So secure was her vision that she couldn’t see the impact of the dirt road, cesspool that backed up into the bathtub with high tides at the nearby bay, chronic cockroach infestation, lack of sidewalks or even trash collection tarnished the vision. No, the thing that brought down her property values and was the scourge of the neighbourhood was the next door neighbour who, as a war widow, had no husband to maintain the house and, as a nurse working night shift, kept “suspicious” hours. When NM’s demands that the woman spruce up her house and front yard fell on deaf ears, she took on a narcissistic rage that consumed her. In the end, NM convinced the neighbours that the woman’s job as a nurse was a convenient cover, that she was really a prostitute using the hours of her nursing job (where NM claims she stole drugs and was an addict) as a cover, that she beat and starved her children and kept a filthy, unsanitary house. The woman almost lost her job and custody of her children over NM’s accusations and ultimately sold her house and moved away. NM got what she wanted: a quiet English couple with a penchant for gardening bought the house and fixed it up. Throughout this campaign, NM’s family heard the towering rages about the woman next door, the woman who dared defy my NM and refuse to give her what she wanted. Superficially it was only a small thing…most lower middle class neighbourhoods have a shabby house or two, but NM took it as a personal affront that she lived next door to one (even though it was in that condition when NM bought our house) and the owner would not succumb to her demands to clean it up. Living next door to the shabby house damaged NM’s grandiose vision of herself living a genteel suburban lifestyle, which was her narcissistic injury, and she quite determinedly retaliated against the woman. Rather than go to the house and have a screaming fit in the woman’s face…which would make her the “bad guy” instead of the offending homeowner, NM undertook a campaign of undermining and sullying the woman’s reputation and creating an environment so hostile that the woman had to move away or lose her job and her children. That was one form of narcissistic rage at work.

“Symptoms of rage may be mild and non-violent, such as displaying visible irritation, vocal disagreement with the situation or head-shaking. More severe symptoms of narcissistic rage include outburst of physical violence, directed at both objects and people, and vocal outrage. In general, a person that frequently displays narcissistic rage symptoms is often labeled as selfish, spoiled and a sore loser by their peers. Unlike regular anger, narcissistic rage is unwarranted and is caused by neutral events that will not provoke reactions in non-narcissists. Persistent episodes of narcissistic rage may result in the perpetuation of rage cycles: patterns of rage behavior that frequently repeat day after day.”

The key to identifying a narcissistic rage is ascertaining if a non-narcissistic person would be outraged by the same thing that triggered the narcissist. If you tell your mother you are going on a two week vacation to Greece and she flips out, you are dealing with a narcissistic rage. A non-narcissist might ask a few practical questions like “do you have travel insurance?” and “has the political situation calmed down there?” whereas the narcissist could do anything from scream at you about wasting your money or traumatizing your dog by putting him in a kennel to inviting herself along to actively sabotaging your trip by falling “ill” or even causing something costly to happen to your house or your car so that you can’t afford to go. Narcissistic rage is not confined to temper outbursts and overt expressions of rage…narcissists are perfectly capable of the “slow burn” kind of rage that manifests in an extended period of retaliation, and that retaliation can be small and childish, like calling and hanging up the phone to big and devastating, like blackening your name among family, friends, and neighbours and making herself look like your victim.

It all starts with that narcissistic insult, that little injury that most people would not even perceive as an injury or insult. You have a choice of living your life walking on eggshells in an attempt to avoid causing that injury or you can decide that if you N gets his/her nose out of joint by something you do or say, that’s not your problem. If you decide you won’t be controlled by a narcissist’s tantrums or your own misplaced guilt, then you are prepared to set and enforce boundaries with your Ns, including getting restraining orders against them if nothing else works. You cannot control them but you can control yourself and what influences you allow in your life.

I read a line the other day that said when it comes to narcissists, you must weigh their influence on your life: if they bring you more joy than difficulty, then find ways to live with them but if they bring you more pain than joy, then you must let them go. It didn’t make exceptions for elderly narcissistic relatives or mothers or even narcissistic adult children: it simply said that if they bring you more pain than joy, then you must let them go.

Sounds like good advice to me.