Getting sucked back in–all about Hoovering

“Hoovering” is British slang for vacuuming, and the word is based on the name of the Hoover brand of vacuum cleaner. What do vacuum cleaners do? They suck stuff up, they suck stuff in…and when your narcissist starts trying to suck you back into contact or communication, when your narcissist tries to pull you closer as you are trying to separate or set boundaries, it’s called “hoovering.”

I’ve read quite a bit on hoovering, some of it very enlightening. But I had an ignoring NM, a mother who was very clear that she didn’t want me and who ignored me to the greatest extent possible. In fact, once I was an adult and out of her house, she sometimes ignored me for years at a time! And yet, I have been hoovered, both in the classic sense and in the peculiar way ignoring NMs seem to have, a way few of my resources acknowledge.

I get letters from people asking me what is up with an emotionally abusive narcissist who has suddenly become unaccountably nice. This, of course, is the classic form of hoovering: sensing that you are pulling away or that you are no longer as tightly bound to her as before, the narcissist begins a campaign to win you back. What they do is offer you what they know you want: attention, validation, love. They also offer you fake guilt and pseudo-remorse: either they are sorry for being such a bad mother or they play the “pathetic” card so that you feel guilty for wanting to distance yourself from them. The “pathetic” card can come in a wide variety of forms, from sickness (real or feigned) to “poor me, nobody loves me, everybody leaves me,” to guilt-trips (“oh, how much I have sacrificed for you…”) to outright pleading for your attention.

Narcissists are shameless in getting what they want, but one writer on the subject cautions against jumping to the conclusion that the Narcissist’s promises of better future treatment are conscious lies. According to Out of the Fog, “Many abusers and personality-disordered people really are sincere and really are trying when they also are hoovering. People who are hoovering you may not be consciously trying to manipulate you or deceive you. They may sincerely be trying, even hoping, to make it “better this time”. They may not be consciously lying when they make promises of change and put them into practice. They may be so convincing because they are so convinced, at least right now.”

But that doesn’t mean you have to swallow it hook, line, and sinker. And their sincerity-of-the-moment is really immaterial. Yes, she may mean it right now…but the minute it becomes inconvenient, is she going to keep her word? The minute a better offer comes along, will she ditch you again? Whatever it is she has to say, remember that the past is prologue: her history is your greatest guide to her future behaviour.

When you go No Contact or Low Contact, when you set boundaries or simply refuse some demand of your narcissist’s…outrageous or otherwise…hoovering is one reaction your NM may employ.

What is behind hoovering?
Loss of control. Narcissists think only of themselves and getting their own needs met. If your needs get in the way of meeting their own, you lose. And in any situation in which you don’t lose, then she resents your having prevailed over her…no matter how legitimate your “win” (they see everything in competitive terms). You see, losing control of a situation or a person is very threatening to a Narcissist because only if they are in control can they feel assured that their needs will be met. So the minute you take control out of your NM’s hands by going NC, LC, or laying down boundaries she cannot control, she feels threatened and she has to take some kind of action.

Classic hoovering, as discussed above, involves her trying to bring you back into the fold, to relinquish control and give it back to her. The tools she will use, if you successfully resist, can be extensive. She will appeal to your sentimentality or try to find you at a weak moment and exploit it. She will not only attempt to guilt trip or lure you back into her web herself, she will employ other people: parents, siblings, ex-boyfriends, family friends, grandparents and other extended family members, even your own best friend. “I am so worried about Sarah…I don’t know what has come over her, but she has stopped speaking to me and it is just breaking my heart. I sent her the most beautiful cashmere sweater for her birthday and it came back “undeliverable” from the Post Office. I am beside myself, I don’t know what to do. I am so worried, and you know my heart and my blood pressure just can’t take this…” What normal, compassionate person who doesn’t know they are being conned and manipulated won’t feel sorry for her and offer to intercede?

Don’t expect your friends and family members to be on your side when they help your NM’s hoovering efforts. They already think ill of you for treating your poor mother so badly, they aren’t likely to listen to your side of the story with any real empathy…they are already in her camp and have been turned by her into flying monkeys. You might want to resist the urge to defend or explain yourself because you can be guaranteed that your NM will hear every detail when the flying monkey reports back to her. This, of course, just gives your NM the information she needs to refine her campaign to bring you back under her control.

Ignoring NMs will leave you alone until they want something from you. You may think you are NC, but the silence exists only because it serves her purposes for the moment. When I was 14 I went to visit my father for the summer. As the summer drew to a close, we didn’t even know where NM was…she had taken off on a road trip with her boyfriend and I had not heard from her for several months. On the weekend before school started she sent a telegram saying I should enrol from my father’s house.

For the next year I barely heard from her. Then, nearing the end of the summer, she showed up at the door late in the evening and asked if I would come for a ride with her in the car. To my surprise, we got into the backseat and when I looked at the driver, I saw it was my old singing teacher, whom I had adored…but hadn’t seen in five or more years. We drove around for a couple of hours while my NM and her flying monkey, the singing teacher, worked on me. Every ploy was used on me from “a girl belongs with her mother” to “I’ve missed you so much” to even telling me she loved me (first and last time I ever heard the words from her) and eventually I was worn down. I went back to her house and it was just about the worst mistake in my life. Not only did it alienate my father and stepmother…who had always been there when I needed them, unlike my mother…the idyllic mother-daughter relationship I had expected never materialized. In fact, no relationship materialized at all. She put me on a cot in the kitchen instead of giving me a bedroom, expected me to keep the house clean, and pretty much ignored me except to take my pay checks and raid my closet. I was only 15 years old and she and her flying monkey, the singing teacher, hoovered me back into being her household servant, source of income (child support plus my pay checks), and general scapegoat.

She didn’t ignore me, however, when I tried to set some boundaries. To keep her hands off my pay, I tried cashing my checks at the bank but she thwarted me by saying she would rescind permission for my work permit and I would lose my job: since the job kept me out of the house and away from her, I didn't want that. I worked in the summer while at my grandparents and to keep her hands off my earnings, my grandmother took me shopping the weekend before my mother was due to pick me up. NM demanded the receipts so she could return the clothes, but grandmother told her they had already been burned. My few allies and I had to think up ways to get around NM’s predations because setting a limit enraged her. “How dare you?” was her stock phrase.

But when she thought it would work for her, she was not above melodrama. When I tried to argue against her taking my pay checks my senior year of high school, she literally put her hands over her heart and said to me, with a sad, pathetic look on her face “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is /To have a thankless child!” (From King Lear, Shakespeare.) Whaaa? Until that moment I had always considered that I was entitled, like all children, to a roof and food and clothing and medical care—now she was implying that I owed her gratitude and payback??

But she was an ignoring NM who had long-ago convinced herself that I was the source of all of her problems, so the moments of subtle manipulation and gentle persuasion were infrequent. Mostly, her form of hoovering was intimidation and bombast. She would do her best to scare me into compliance by threatening me and even hitting me. A long-time friend of mine has recently begun setting boundaries with her mother the most recent response was for one of her sisters to take on Flying Monkey status, insult my friend and question her mental health…as if saying “no,” at the age of 49, to one of her mother’s hare-brained schemes means she is mentally ill—a scheme, I might add, that the FM sister doesn’t want to take part in, but who quite implacably insists my friend must!

This, then, is the other aspect of hoovering: browbeating, demanding, insulting, threatening, bullying, intimidating, shaming, and/or manipulating you to get you back into your assigned place in the family structure so that the Narcissist has his/her needs met, regardless of how others feel or are affected.

In a nutshell, hoovering is all about keeping the Nsupply resources close at hand and under control. In times when the N has a particular need for his or her cup to be filled, like around holidays or special occasions, expect additional demands. If your NM is especially fixated on how she looks to others, for example, she may want to put on the “happy, devoted family” act for observers during these times. Charlie’s mother was a good example of this: after we walked out on the family Christmas dinner six months before we were married due to his mother’s outrageous, insulting behaviour, she ignored us for the next 11 months: no birthday greetings, no acknowledgement of our wedding, nothing. And then, just before Thanksgiving she called to invite us as if we had not just spent the last 11 months ignoring each other. It simply would not do to have us boycott Thanksgiving dinner…what would she tell her friends?? She was sweet and cheery and chirpy on the phone, as if she had not called Charlie those awful names, as if I had not stood up to her and backed her down, as if we had not gotten up and walked out the door in the middle of the meal. She hoovered us back into the fold with gaslighting: we all pretended the altercation at the previous family dinner simply didn’t happen and went on as if it hadn’t.

Regardless of your N’s sincerity, regardless of your N’s method of hoovering, all hoovering attempts have this in common: they are for the wellbeing of the Narcissist and not you. The better you are at enforcing your boundaries, the more desperate—and creative—the hoovering may become. I have heard of an NM sending or giving back decades old momentoes: your bronzed baby shoes, baby pics, graduation portrait, wedding pictures; I have heard of them having a family member call to say the NM has been diagnosed with cancer (when it’s not true); I have heard of the NM going to the ER with a simple headache, then insisting that the ER staff call one kid to tell of the NM’s presence there; I have heard of NMs booking holidays, cruises, hotels and including the adult child who wants to be NC “But you have to come with us to Timbuktu, Phyllis! The tickets are non-refundable and I already paid for yours!” I have heard of them boycotting weddings and christenings, and crashing weddings and funerals they were not invited to. Then there are NMs who show up at daughter’s weddings dressed in white and hogging all the attention to themselves…anything, just anything to get your attention and to get you to talk to them so they can suck you back in.

The good news is, after a year or so, they tend to get bored with trying to batter down your defences and go elsewhere for their Nsupply. The bad news is that, periodically, they will sneak up on you and try again. And whether they use sneak attack gifts and cards and declarations of love or whether they use the “How dare you turn your back on me, you little bitch!” approach, it all comes from the same place: they are angling to force you back into the role they created in the family for you, the role in which you did your NM’s bidding, gave her the Nsupply she wanted and ignored your own needs in the process.

Don’t fall for it.

For more information about hoovering, I recommend you check the following sites:
http://www.luke173ministries.org/629759
http://outofthefog.net/CommonBehaviors/Hoovering.html

What do YOU want?

The bulk of the work is done and off to the attorneys so I can start easing back into my real life again...

Thinking about what to write next, I realized that while I have some topics in mind, it occurred to me that I have never asked any of you what you might find interesting or enlightening or helpful. Argh! Those fleas just crop up everywhere, don't they?

So I am making this an open invitation, whether you read this now or months after it is published, to make a comment below and tell me what narcissist-related topics you would like to know more about. I can't promise to write on every topic that comes in, but I would certainly like to know what you would like to know and, if I can help, do something about it.

I don't mind if your question comes with a backstory...an experience you had that led you to the question...or if you want to know more about some of my experiences and feelings  (like in the 46 Memories), so please let your imagination and curiosity and your own experiences be your guides.

I look forward to hearing from you all!

I just want you all to know that I have not abandoned this blog nor have I forgotten any of you.

Right now I am putting in 50 hours per week preparing for a legal case: deadbeat tenants who damaged an expensive rental property. We have to put thousands into fixing the property (everything from replacing the kitchen stove they destroyed and the doorbells they stole to putting turf down where they smothered one lawn with paving stones and killed another one completely--nothing but bare sand left), and thousands more to pay an attorney to represent us in court. (These tenants have the audacity to want us to pay them R31000--$3100 USD--for "maintenance" on the property: it is costing us many times that to fix the damage they caused). Because we are expending money on two fronts, I am having to take on the responsibility of preparing the visuals for the trial so I don't have to pay for the lawyer's time to do it: so far I have 52 pages averaging 4 photos per page (plus explanatory captions) and am only about half finished. In addition to all of that, I have caught a bad chest cold and am on meds for it lest it turn into pneumonia.

So, I am just on a brief hiatus until such time as I have the prep work done for the lawyers and can have some time to myself again. When I return, I'll tell you all about it--it will not surprise you to learn the (former) tenant is most likely an N--and spiteful as all hell--and her husband a gold-medal quality enabler and flying monkey...

Hugs to you all...

Violet

It’s all about choice

I'm back after a hiatus involving a medical procedure on my spine, a lawsuit against some deadbeat tenants, and a much-needed holiday. I went on safari out in Kruger National Park and stayed in a bushcamp where we had no TV, no radio, no internet, and irregular (and very weak) cell signal. The nice thing about several days of that is that is forces you to turn back to yourself for entertainment...and one of the things I find most entertaining is thinking: I like to think and the peace and solitude of Kruger really facilitated that.

One of the things I began reflecting on were choices and our perceptions of choice. South Africa's legacy of apartheid has left many people, especially people of colour, thinking they have no choices, that they are doomed to live in poverty and their only opportunities to lift themselves out of it come from unlawful means. But these people have other choices and the guides and and workers in the park were a testament to what people can achieve when they recognize that there are other choices than to live in squalor in a tumbledown hut, begging or stealing to survive. It got me to thinking about choices in general, and our choices in particular.

One of the feelings we, the children of narcissists, share is the feeling of being “stuck.” Often we feel we have no choice but to submit to the narcissist, to endure her attacks and other hurtful behaviour. We may feel we cannot leave or, if already out of the house, we cannot stop her from continuing to hurt us. We feel helpless in the face of her behaviour, her expectations, her manipulations. And we feel hurt, angry, confused, powerless, trapped, even crazy, as a result.

Well, the good news is, you do have a choice! She is not in charge of your life, you are!

Let me repeat that: she is not in charge of your life, you are.

You don’t believe me, do you?

Well, believe it or not, if you are at least 18 years of age, you have the power to change your situation, whether your narcissist is a parent, a spouse, a boyfriend, or a boss. You have that power, even though you may not yet realize it. In fact, the distress you are suffering at the hands of your narcissist is the result of a choice you have already made…really!

If you cannot believe that you are capable of changing your life, that the narcissist in your life has you trapped, then you may be suffering from what is called “learned helplessness.” Learned helplessness comes from your beliefs: if you believe you cannot do something, that there is no way out, that you cannot succeed, then that becomes your personal reality, even though objective reality may be very different.

The Buddhist website, Unfettered Mind, describes learned helplessness thus: “One of the primary characteristics of learned helplessness is that the person feels passive with respect to the system [the family]. The passivity, however, is only half the story. Whenever we are subjected to abuse, physical, emotional or spiritual, two patterns form inside us: the victim and the abuser. Our experience of being abused lays the basis for the victim pattern. Our experience of how abuse can be meted out lays the basis for the abuser pattern. Both give rise to learned helplessness, though the learned helplessness manifests differently. In the case of the abuser, learned helplessness might manifest as “Something just took over; I didn’t mean to say or do that.” In the case of the victim, it might manifest as “I don’t know why I put up with it but I can’t seem to do anything about it.” In both cases, we are expressing passivity with respect to the patterns operating in us. In both cases, we are confessing helplessness.”

Can you overcome learned helplessness? Yes…but it is not easy. The Unfettered Mind says “The cost…is high. We can only undo learned helplessness by severing our internal connection with the system that gave rise to it…We must really want to live our own life and not one prescribed by our family, society, culture…We must be willing to endure pain, know from direct experience, act on what we see and receive what happens. We must yearn to experience what is without relying on anything to confirm our existence.”

What does this mean? It means that you are not helpless, you just believe that you are. And you must want to break away more than you want to stay. And that you must do something to make a change happen. As long as you keep doing, saying, thinking and living the same way, you will continue reaping the same reward, bitter and unsatisfactory though it may be. If you want something in your life to change, then you must do something to change it.

I know this is not what you want to hear…it’s not what I wanted to hear. When I was trapped in the learned helplessness of being the victim of narcissists, I wanted a magic key that would unlock the good, loving persons I just knew was trapped beneath the narcissist’s punitive exterior. I wanted the “right” words or deeds to bring them to the fore, to make my abusers realize how hurt I was and to evoke their compassion and empathy—and love. What I learned was that I was on a fruitless quest…there is no magic key, the narcissist does not have a loving, compassionate person trapped inside, fighting to escape into a loving relationship. Indeed, I discovered the narcissist doesn’t want to change except, perhaps, to become even better and more proficient at controlling the lives of their victims and getting what they want however they want it with no pangs of conscience or hint of remorse.

While there is no magic key to awaken compassion and conscience in a narcissist, there is a magic key to your freedom and happiness, and that magic key is choice. You have choices, even if you don’t see them. Learned helplessness can result in a kind of emotional paralysis and the way out of that paralysis is to simply make the choice you have been avoiding for so long: choosing yourself and your well-being and your happiness over that of the narcissist. Choosing to give up dreams of the impossible, like your narcissist will change and suddenly treat you with love and concern for your happiness. Choosing to see your relationship with your narcissist for what it really is; choosing to take the blinders off and look cold, hard reality in the face. Choosing to cut—and mourn—your emotional and relationship losses before they make you feel any worse. Choosing a new direction for your life and taking the necessary steps to realize it.

You have choices—but choices have consequences and right now, the life you are living is the result of choices you have already made and, in some cases, have made over and over again. Every time your NM hurts you, belittles you in front of someone else, puts you down, doesn’t invite you to a family dinner or tells your sister or your grandmother or your aunt “Oh, she wouldn’t want to be here…” and you continue on with your relationship with her like it never happened, you re-make the choice to let her do these things with impunity, to continue contact with her under those circumstances, to put yourself and your feelings and your right to be respected below hers. You make the choice to be your narcissist’s doormat every single time you allow him or her to abuse you and you not only don’t do/say anything about it, you don’t start making plans to do something about it, either.

You…and only you…may choose what choices you will make and consequences you will endure in life. Nobody else can make that choice for you because when you choose a behaviour, you choose the consequences. Let me say that one again:

When you choose a behaviour, you choose the consequences.

Right now, if you are enduring the slings and arrows of a narcissist in your life, you are actually choosing to do exactly that: endure the slings and arrows of that narcissist. That is your current choice…to endure. What is the consequence of your choice? The feelings that your endurance and his/her behaviour creates in you. You have other choices, but each and every one of them has a consequence as well. You may well be in the position of choosing the lesser of a host of evils, but you do have choice…it’s just that every one comes with a consequence, so maybe you have chosen, at least for now, to put up with NM and her nasty ways because the consequences of other choices, as far as you can tell, are worse.

If you are sitting there shaking your head and thinking “What other choices??”, then you just aren’t seeing them. Unless someone is forcibly holding you hostage, there are other choices you can make. If you live at home with Narcissistic Mom and Enabling Dad, you have other choices: first and most obvious, you can move out. “I have no place to go, no way to support myself!” you cry. Then start making a plan…get a job, even if it is minimum wage and move out, even if you have to move into a furnished room. If your comfort and cable TV and keys to NF’s car are worth the price you have to pay for them…NM’s abuse and your unhappiness…I am not going to sit here and tell you that you are wrong because only you can choose your life, only you can decide if living in the comfort of your parents’ home is worth the price they exact from you in narcissistic abuse. You decide what the value of living with them is, what it is worth to you…but you cannot make that choice and then complain about the price you pay.

If you are already out of the house, you also have choices: you have the choice of not communicating with her (see “No Contact pt 1” and “No Contact pt 2”), for example. “Oh no!” you object. “She’ll cut me off from my father or my sisters or my nieces and nephews…” or she’ll stalk you or tell lies to the FOO about you or a host of other retaliatory behaviours. You are right…she very likely will…which means you are choosing to put up with her abuse because you don’t want to bear the consequences of putting a stop to it…you think the suffering you are doing now is less than the suffering you would endure if you stood up for yourself and told her to leave you alone.

But what if maybe…just maybe…if you told her to stop calling you ten times a day and she did? My late husband Charlie had a dreadfully narcissistic mother who verbally abused him in front of me at Christmas dinner one year. I got up from the table (after yelling at her and telling her not to call him names), got my handbag and our jackets and said to him “I’m ready to go home. How about you?” We left…and we didn’t hear from her for eleven months…and when we did see her again, she never, ever said rude things to or about him in my presence again…and he refused to see her unless I came along. Sometimes it works.

Will it work on your narcissist? No matter how certain you are that it won’t, you cannot know for sure until you try. Remember, when you choose a behaviour, you also choose the consequences of that behaviour. When we sit silently through a narcissist’s tirades and character assassinations, when we smile weakly at their rude characterizations of others, when we follow the old dictum “to get along you have to go along,” we choose to be abused with impunity, to be disrespected, to be treated poorly. When we chose a different behaviour, we get a different set of consequences, among them what Charlie called “the most peaceful eleven months of my life!”

“But she will turn my family against me!” someone once said to me. Really? Has it occurred to you that that has already happened? When she abuses you, lies about you, assassinates your character, what is your family doing? Who is standing in your defence? Who is telling her “Stop that! That is rude and abusive and you don’t have a right to speak to her that way!”? If you have such a person in your life, how is your NM going to turn him or her against you, since this person is already championing you against her? And the rest of your family? Where are they? If they were on your side instead of hers, wouldn’t they be speaking up on your behalf? And if they aren’t, can you accept that they have already bought every ugly, nasty, lie and half-truth your NM has told them about you and they have already been turned against you? Because if you are going to be able to exercise your choices and get away from the narcissist in your life, first you are going to have to stare reality right in its ugly eyes and know who your friends—and who your enemies—are. If you choose to continue to refuse to believe your NM has already turned (at least some of) them against you, then you will stay stuck right where you are.

When you choose a behaviour, you choose the consequences.

Some may think this is blaming the victim. It’s not. It is making you look at and acknowledge a choice you have made…perhaps not consciously, but you have made this choice just the same. You have chosen to endure what your narcissist does because somewhere in your mind you have decided that the consequences…or your fear of those consequences…is worse than putting up with her abuse. And that is where learned helplessness comes in: your fear. You may be convinced that you cannot support yourself and therefore you must put up with the abuse in order to have a roof over your head. But that only means that your fear of independence—and the rigours of it—is greater than your fear of your NM: better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know.

But when you take that viewpoint, you choose to change nothing. You choose the miserable existence you have now…because it is familiar and you know what to expect…over the possibility that you can have more or better or both. Yes, it may also be a colossal flop…but if you choose the safety of your present, predictable life, you are choosing the abuse you live with and aren't even making an attempt to make it better. To change your life, you must change your choices, make new ones, head out into uncharted waters, do things differently. But first, you must wake up to the fact that the choices—to go or to stay, to tolerate abuse or not—are yours alone to make.

I hope you make the choice to spread your wings and fly…far, far from the abuse and into a life of your own choice and making.

Recommended Reading

I have added a new blog to the "Sites I Recommend" list and that is Caliban's Sisters. You may have seen some of CS's insightful comments on some of my posts...if you've enjoyed her comments, you are going to love her blog.

So often we feel very alone and isolated in our assigned roles in our dysfunctional families, but I have to tell you, we have legions of sisters (and brothers) out there whose lives and experiences are eerily similar to our own. Our NMs, even though they don't know each other, often behave like clones of each other, and this means that their children experience not only the same bizarre excuse for mothering that we did, those children grow up with many of the same doubts and fears and questions that we have. We are a vast community, we who were raised at the narcissist's knee. Caliban's Sister explores the experiences, the feelings, the doubts, and gifts us with the fruits of her insights and personal pain. She can also be extremely droll.

Some samples:

"...I think I'll keep her wondering whether or not I'll go, until maybe two weeks before the [wedding].  My niece [the bride] has told me I can make up my mind at the last minute, and that's what I'm going to do!  A few years ago, my sister blamed me because she felt stress about me being at her kids' graduation (that's right--I flew across country to watch her kids graduate).  I thought I was doing something nice;  she wrote me afterward and told me that I "was the source of all the stress in her life" (she and I have very little contact), and that the stress of it had made a bunch of her hair fall out. She blamed me for that.
Maybe if I wait long enough to decide about the wedding, she'll go bald...."

"I don't intend to make it easy for my sisters.  Their enabling behavior with my narc mother is inexcusable, and  I'm not going to just play along with their creepy Kabuki theater of silence."

"... the hammering over the head with the idea that you have to love these people NO MATTER WHAT is a lie that is imposed on us over and over again.  It is drummed into us as children, hammered into us as young adults;  the culture is complicit with its fetishizing of Norman Rockwell families who sit crammed onto a couch together, sharing popcorn and watching cable, with joyous smiles plastered on their faces.  Every product is sold as part of the familial "glue" that keeps the structure intact.  Generations of families who are conflict-free, overjoyed to be together, mindlessly blissed out as they gobble pizza, or mac and cheese, or drive along in their new minivan."

I urge you to pay a visit...you will be glad you did!

Loving the Imperfect

Many years ago I got very self-indulgent and bought myself a sports car. It was glorious, a little green Triumph TR-6 two-seater convertible. I loved loved loved that car! For 15 years I zipped through the highways and byways of Silicon Valley, top down whenever possible, totally loving the way the car drove, the way it felt, the way I felt driving it.

Of course, there was a down side. Being an English car, the electrical system was crap, and England is a lot cooler place than California, so the car tended to run hot. In fact, it averaged at least one trip per month to the mechanic, sometimes more…and some of those trips could be horrendously expensive. But I loved the car and in all the years I owned it, in all the years my pocket haemorrhaged money to keep it on the road, I never begrudged it a penny. It was the most fun I ever had on four wheels and it was worth every cent I spent on it.

Shortly before I finally sold the TR, I bought a registered Arabian mare. She was 12 years old and at some point in her life, she had been very well trained. But somehow she ended up as a brood mare and, after many years in pasture, she was purchased as the mount for a six-year-old child who had little riding skill. Unable to control the horse, the child was thrown and her angry mother put the animal up for sale at an auction where I got her, pedigree, papers and all, for a mere $125, the “meat price.”

Tia was a beautiful bay mare, with a soft, loving temperament…and she was afraid of everything. She had a lovely gait and was easy to ride (if you knew direct reining), but if you took her to the park, you had to avoid the picnic areas because the crowds freaked her out; bicycles on the trail freaked her out; mailboxes along the road freaked her out—and the entrance to the horse trailer really freaked her out. She hated water unless it was in a trough: a narrow, shallow stream, a rivulet of water running across the road, the horse washing station with a garden hose hanging from a pivoting beam—those freaked her out as well. She would stand passively for grooming and shoeing, never walk away from the saddle, never refuse to take the bit, and stood patiently for mounting. It took minimal direction either from my legs or hands to direct her…until something frightened her and which time she would slam it in reverse. I am telling you, that horse could back up the length of a football field! And if she didn’t back up, she bolted…and on any given ride, you could be guaranteed that something was going to scare her.

But I loved her, and I loved riding her. I got a trainer to help me learn how to get her to load up into the trailer without fuss; I learned to anticipate her antics with water and her reverse gear; I learned to bathe her with a sponge and bucket instead of the wash rack. I spent money on good shoes, I learned how to give her the quarterly worming treatment and immunization shots myself, and I drove up to the ranch to comfort her when the infrequent thunderstorm came along and the lighting and noise frightened her. And never did I think of her as a burden, but was proud to own and ride and care for such a beautiful, majestic creature.

My husband and I own a house in South Africa, an old, rambling brick dwelling with a gorgeously landscaped garden, a sparkling blue pool, and a leaky roof—and you would blanch at the list of other things we have had to fix in the last 2.5 years. The previous owner lived here seven years and did no maintenance at all, so we have inherited his deferred maintenance along with all the stuff that normally goes wrong with houses, like leaky pipes, burst hot water heaters, appliances that mysteriously stop working, and plumbing woes. Our first month in the house we spent enough for emergency repairs to cover two month’s worth of house payments and it escalated from there. And every time we think we have everything fixed, something new crops up. Fortunately we have two rental units on the property that provide enough income to make repairs without landing us up in financial hot water, but there is no denying that the house has sucked up a lot of cash resources that we would have rather put elsewhere.

One could easily hate a house that causes you say to yourself, at least weekly, “Oh, no! Now what??” From a broken suction line on the pool pump to water cascading down an inside wall from a roof leak, from a hot water heater pumping water into the attic and ruining ceiling boards to a kitchen stove that won’t get hot enough to boil water to a double oven that can’t maintain temperature, from an air conditioner that won’t cool to a motorized driveway gate that won’t function to leaking showers to five toilets that constantly run, this house has had its share of malfunctions, and not one of them cheap to fix! And yet, I love the house. It is rambling and spacious with big sliding glass doors onto a terrace and beautiful views of the garden from my bedroom and study, it has an airy, gracious sunroom and a sunken TV room that has become my husband’s lair, leaving the formal living room (lounge) a pretty and uncluttered room to entertain guests. It is brilliantly located, only 4 kms from his office and within 5 kms of virtually all of the shopping we need to do on a regular basis, the mature trees shade the house, the lush green garden cools the air and the breezes come through those sliding doors to provide natural ventilation. Yes, it has cost us time and money and aggravation, but I can’t think of a better place to live in this town and the house itself is the nicest I have ever owned.

By now, you should have picked up on the theme, the common thread that runs through all of these vignettes: things do not have to be perfect to be worthy of love. Cars, houses, horses…even people…do not have to be perfect in order to be entitled to, worthy of, love…but for some of us, this is a novel concept.

If you were raised by a narcissist, like I was, you quickly realized that just “being” was not good enough…you had to “do.” And whatever passed for love from your narcissist was given out based on your performance in whatever it was you were supposed to do. Now, before you say “she didn’t give me anything, no matter how I performed…” consider the phrase “whatever passed for love.” For some of us, that meant getting stuff—a doll, a lollipop, a quarter; for others it might have meant getting permission for something, like a trip to the beach or going to a friend’s house or calling Grandma; for others of us, it meant not getting negativity—no lectures, beatings, insults, maybe even getting blessedly ignored for a period of time. Whatever your NM did with/for/to you when she was not perturbed with you, that was what you, as a child, learned to accept as tokens of affection from her—or at least, a sign that you were not in imminent danger. Even if you didn’t get outright approval, the lack of overt disapproval was a sign in itself.

As children, right and wrong come from outside us: we learn it from others around us and we are controlled with external consequences meted out to us by those others. Goof off on a test, we fail; defy our parents, we get punished; steal from the corner store, we get the law involved. As we mature, however, normal people internalize those messages of right and wrong and we punish ourselves with guilt when we do wrong. Unfortunately, normal people who had narcissistic parents internalize the toxic message that we are imperfect, flawed, and unworthy of love unless we do something to earn it…and just as our efforts were never sufficient for the narcissistic parent, once the parent is internalized, our efforts are never good enough, not even for ourselves.

Have you ever loved something that is imperfect? I adore my Yorkies, and they are as imperfect as they come. As I sit here typing, one is barking to get my attention, another one is laying quietly on the rug by my feet…she is the one who poops on the dining room carpet when she is displeased by something. The little boy still pees on the bed, so he can’t be in the bedroom unless he is on my lap, under my direct supervision. But rather than disdain them for their faults, rather than withhold my love or approval from them because of their imperfections, I make adjustments to accommodate their flaws: I have a squirt bottle full of water for the barker when she won’t obey my command to stop; Puddin’ isn’t allowed in the dining room; Boykie can’t go into my bedroom unless he is being carried in arms. Is this more work? Is this more effort? Of course it is…but I love them and they are worth an extra effort to accommodate their little flaws.

And there you have it: I love them just as they are. I make allowances for their flaws rather than withhold my love and approval until and unless they conform to my rigid expectations. Yes, I continue to expect them to improve, but I don’t withhold positive feedback, petting, and loving until they improve because my love for them is not based on their performance: it is based on their being.

How are you doing with loving yourself? Are you waiting until you are perfect and therefore worthy of being loved before you love yourself? Are you withholding positive affirmations, kindness, patience, and love because you aren’t perfect? Who set that standard for perfection you aspire to (or despair of ever reaching)? Did you set it or did you just adopt—internalize—your NM’s expectations and standards? Has your NM set up housekeeping in your head and you continue to dance to her tune, even when you aren’t even speaking to her?

We must have expectations of ourselves. Humans do not thrive when they are directionless, and our expectations give us direction, something to live up to. But there is nothing in the book of life that says you must live up to the expectations of others if you don’t want to. In fact, you have every right—you have a true entitlement—to create your own set of expectations to live up to, and they don’t have to bear even the slightest resemblance to the expectations of your NM or FOO. They only have to work for you. And to work for you, they must be attainable.

And you know what? They don’t have to be cast in concrete, either! You can change those expectations if you want to. If they were too tall for you, or you achieved them already, or they just don’t fit you, you can fine-tune or even completely throw them out and start all over again. But there is one thing they all absolutely must contain: they must not demand perfection of you in anything. Excellence, yes…perfection, no. Perfection is unattainable and to set that as a goal is to set yourself up for failure…and a reason to keep on withholding love from yourself.

You set the stage for how others treat you by how you treat yourself. If you think of yourself as unworthy of love, others will believe you and will think of you the same way. When you love yourself unconditionally, you accept that you are flawed, human, and deserving of love for who you are, not for what you do. People who value you for what you do are not people who love you…at least no more than they love their car, dishwasher, or mobile phone: and to these people, you are just as disposable as these items when you stop functioning the way they want you to.

You don’t need to be perfect to deserve love, yours or anyone else’s. You don’t need to be perfect to deserve appreciation or approval or to feel good about yourself. You are entitled to it, no matter how flawed you may think you are. All you really need is permission—your own.

Isn’t it time you gave it?

Am I a Narcissist, too? All about fleas

Do you ever find yourself asking this question? Do you worry that, because you grew up in a household with one or more narcissist dominating it, you might have “caught it”? Perhaps you have caught yourself displaying some kind of narcissistic traits and you are suddenly brought up short by the fear that you, too, are a narcissist like your mother or father or other family member.

Let me put your mind at ease: the very fact that you are asking that question, the very fact that it concerns you that you might be a narcissist, pretty much proves that you aren’t. The psyche of the narcissist is so constructed that the simple act of self-reflection is highly unlikely, and rather than engaging in self-doubt, the narcissist will simply find ways to rationalize or justify those behaviours that have you worried you might be one of them.

It doesn’t mean you cannot be displaying narcissist-like behaviours, attitudes and traits, however. We learn at the knee of the narcissist, and we learn such fundamentals as right and wrong, good and bad, honesty and deceit…and if we learned them from a narcissist, our take on them may be a little...well…out of the mainstream. These narcissist-like behaviours, attitudes and traits, when displayed by the non-narcissist, are known as “fleas,” (narcissistic-like behaviour traits displayed by a non-narcissist, generally learned behaviours from having been raised by a narcissist and not knowing what is normal for the situation) and you get them from being around and adopting them from the narcissist, just like you get real fleas from laying down with a flea-ridden dog.

Most of us get our fleas from our narcissistic family members as we grow up, but we can also acquire them later on in life as well. Sometimes we acquire them subconsciously but sometimes, when we see certain behaviours or attitudes working for others, we adopt them consciously, wanting to get the same benefit. It is a kind of “follow the leader” or even “follow the herd” principle at work, and can lead to an attitude change in which something previously viewed as wrong eventually becomes seen as a right or entitlement, like stealing office supplies or spreading rumours about or bullying a co-worker. It is good for our egos because it makes us feel accepted, like one of the gang, and if we can set the standard for others to follow, it feels even better to be the trendsetter to whom others look for direction.

If you are a normal human being with a normal conscience, you are eventually going to feel bad about doing things you know are wrong. This puts you on the horns of a dilemma because the human psyche doesn’t like cognitive dissonance…and feeling guilty just doesn’t feel good. You basically end up with two choices: 1) stop doing what is making you feel guilty (which means you will have to give up the benefits you are getting from it) or 2) find a way to stop feeling guilty about it (which means you will have to rationalize and/or justify what you have been doing). Now, the difference between you and a narcissist is simple: the narcissist never feels guilty and never even considers #1—the narcissist automatically invokes #2. You may also invoke that second option, but your reason for doing so will be very different from the narcissist’s: you will be doing it to quiet your conscience; the narcissist doesn’t have a conscience to quiet, she feels truly justified in whatever she does.

I used to know a woman who took the most outrageous chances at work, chances I would never dream of taking because I just knew I would get fired for it. She often came in late to work, took long lunches, left early, even took whole days off on a whim and even though she was only an admin, acted like she was one of the managers. And you know what? Instead of counselling her to work the hours she was getting paid for, she got promoted! Sure enough, one of the other admins tried to follow the first one’s lead and wound up getting disciplined. When she tried to defend herself with “But Tessa has done that for over a year!” she was told “You are not Tessa.” Who told me this story? Tessa, laughing gleefully at the other woman’s predicament, not a shred of responsibility tainting her amusement. She found it hilarious that the other woman was disciplined for following her example, and in true narcissistic fashion, the incident reinforced her self-perception of being special and above the rules.

This happened years ago, before I knew anything about narcissists, but I remember being surprised and appalled at Tessa’s reaction. Putting my self in her shoes, I would have been chagrined at having set an example for my co-workers that resulted in one of them receiving disciplinary action, I would have felt bad about it and that would have motivated me to be more circumspect. The last thing I would have felt was amused at the other woman's plight!

We can pick up fleas anywhere. I have seen things on FaceBook, people saying really hurtful, mean things about LGBT people, about people of colour, about the poor and disadvantaged, about women, and they are absolutely shameless about it. Some of these people are narcissists, but others have picked up fleas from narcissistic politicians, pastors, or other authority figures they either revere or fear. Taken out of that environment and shown how their words and attitudes actually hurt other living, breathing human beings, some of these people will feel shame for what they said and the hurt they caused. Others will not, and they will rationalize and justify what they said, even blame their victims for their hurt (I have actually seen someone say that feeling hurt by the words of a bully is a choice, that you can choose not to be hurt and therefore what the bullies say and do is OK!): these people are most likely narcissists. Some of them not only have no shame or remorse for their unkind words and thoughts, they advocate violence ranging from beatings to rape to death. Those people are probably narcissists, too, but malignant narcissists who may be comorbid with another personality disorder like Antisocial Personality Disorder, which is “characterized by ‘...a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.’”

Fleas are things you usually acquire at home, as a young child, by accepting the values of your narcissistic parent and emulating her/him. It is possible, however, to get them from working with someone like Tessa and copying both her entitled behaviour and adopting her self-serving lack of compassion. We can suppress our guilt and our remorse through justification and rationalization, so if you find yourself acting like an N, you may need to sit down and think about how you really, truly feel about something. If you can’t penetrate the rationalizations and justifications, if you can’t see how something you did or said that caused harm to someone else was wrong, then you just might be a narcissist.

The key, then, is whether or not you are capable of feeling remorse. If you have a conscience, if you have empathy or compassion for other people, if you can feel guilt and remorse for actions you have taken that end up somehow harming someone else, then the odds are strongly against you being a narcissist and just as strongly in favour of you having a case of fleas.

And truthfully, if you even ask the question, you most likely just have fleas.