Personality Disorders: The Controllers, Abusers, Manipulators and Users in Relationships--Part 1

This is a powerful article written by a retired therapist. It very clearly explains Personality Disorders in general and NPD in particular. It is rather long, so I am presenting it in three parts. Herewith, Part 1.

By Dr. Joseph M Carver, PhD

http://www.drjoecarver.com/

 (Reproduced by permission)

Chances are, you’re dealing with an individual with a personality disorder somewhere in your life — whether it’s your spouse, your parent, your co-worker…even your child. Dr Carver’s introduction to personality disorders in relationships puts the reality in plain English; more than just a list of diagnostic criteria, this explanation describes what it’s really like to be dealing with a personality disorder and offers tips for victims.

Who are these people that damage us emotionally, financially, socially, and even spiritually in relationships? Some are con artists like Victor Lustig (1825) who sold the Eiffel Tower not once, but twice. Some remind us of "Alex Forrest" in the movie "Fatal Attraction" (1987) who screams "I will not be ignored!" In mental health terms, they are Personality Disorders. This article describes the four Personality Disorders that create the most turmoil, damage, and emotional exhaustion in our lives.

Personality Disorders: Who Are They?

Who are these people? In romantic relationships, they are controlling, abusive, manipulative partners who can ruin not only the relationship, but our self-esteem, finances, and reputation. As a parent, they can put the “D” in Dysfunctional Family and be the parent that abuses, neglects, ignores, or psychologically damages their children. As a friend they may be irresponsible, selfish, unreliable, dishonest, and often create significant problems in our life. As a neighbour, they spread rumours, create disharmony in the neighbourhood, and steal our lawnmower. As a family member, they maintain themselves as the centre of attention and keep the family in an uproar, or they may be the 45 year old brother who has never worked and remains dependent on the family for his support. They may be the brother or sister who verbally bullies and intimidates others with their temper tantrums. As a co-worker they are manipulative, unethical, dishonest, and willing to damage co-workers to achieve their employment goals. On the street they are the criminals, con artists, and people-users who purposefully damage others, then quickly move on to avoid detection.

In over three decades of experience of dealing with victims, it’s clear that the majority of emotional victims I see in clinical practice are actually victims of an individual with a “Personality Disorder”. The “Personality Disorder” has been around for many years. For several centuries, professionals working with all types of people recognized that some individuals clearly thought and acted differently — without “normal” feelings, attitudes, behaviours, and interactions. In 1835, Dr. Pritchard suggested the term “moral insanity” to reflect the fact that these individuals were not insane by the standards of the day, yet had significant differences in their behaviour, attitudes, ethics, morality, emotional expressions, and reactions to situations. Despite their significant differences when compared to others in their culture, the individuals exhibited little emotional or social distress.

Personality Disorders are individuals who have a long history of personality, behaviour, emotional, and relationship difficulties.

Personality Disorders are individuals who have a long history of personality, behaviour, emotional, and relationship difficulties. This group is said to have a “personality disorder” — an enduring pattern of inner experience (mood, attitude, beliefs, values, etc.) and behaviour (aggressiveness, instability, etc.) that is significantly different than those in their family or culture. These dysfunctional patterns are inflexible and intrusive into almost every aspect of the individual’s life. These patterns create significant problems in personal and emotional functioning and are often so severe that they lead to distress or impairment in all areas of their life. (Source: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition)

Personality Disorders are divided into three groups, or “clusters”.

• Cluster A personality disorders are individuals who have odd, eccentric behaviours. Paranoid, Schizoid, and Schizotypal Personalities fall into this cluster.
• Cluster B are personalities that are highly dramatic, both emotionally and behaviourally. Antisocial, Borderline, Narcissistic, and Histrionic Personality are in this group.
• Cluster C are personalities characterized by being anxious and fearful. Avoidant, Dependent, and Obsessive-Compulsive Personality fall into this cluster.

The Relationship Destroyers: Cluster B

In considering individuals who create the most damage to social and personal relationships, the abusers, manipulators, “players”, controllers, and losers are found in Cluster B. For this reason, this article will focus on the behaviours associated with Cluster B personality disorders.

In the general population, the largest number of personality disorders fall in the Cluster B group. The four personality disorders in Cluster B are:

Antisocial Personality

A pervasive pattern of disregard for the rights of others and rules of society. The Antisocial Personality ranges from individuals who are chronically irresponsible, unsupportive, con artists to those who have total disregard for the rights of others and commit criminal acts with no remorse, including those involving the death of victims. In clinical practice, the Antisocial Personality has near-total selfishness and typically has a pattern of legal problems, lying and deception, physical assault and intimidation, no regard for the safety of others, unwillingness to meet normal standards for work/support/parenting, and no remorse.

Borderline Personality

A pervasive pattern of intense yet unstable relationships, mood, and self-perception. Impulse control is severely impaired. Common characteristics include panic fears of abandonment, unstable social relationships, unstable self-image, impulsive/self-damaging acts such as promiscuity/substance abuse/alcohol use, recurrent suicide thoughts/attempts, self-injury and self-mutilation, chronic feelings of emptiness, inappropriate yet intense anger, and fleeting paranoia.

Histrionic Personality

A pervasive pattern of excessive emotional display and attention-seeking. Individuals with this personality are excessively dramatic and are often viewed by the public as the “Queen of drama” type of individual. They are often sexually seductive and highly manipulative in relationships.

Narcissistic Personality

A pervasive preoccupation with admiration, entitlement, and egotism. Individuals with this personality exaggerate their accomplishments/talents, have a sense of entitlement, lack empathy or concern for others, are preoccupied with envy and jealousy, and have an arrogant attitude. Their sense of entitlement and inflated self-esteem are unrelated to real talent or accomplishments. They feel entitled to special attention, privileges, and consideration in social settings. This sense of entitlement also produces a feeling that they are entitled to punish those who do not provide their required respect, admiration, or attention.

The majority of clients with difficulties related to their childhood find a Personality Disorder as a parent.

When encountering the victims of emotional and physical abuse, the Personality Disorder individual is already present in their lives as a mother, father, sibling, spouse, partner, or relative. The majority of clients with difficulties related to their childhood find a Personality Disorder as a parent. For many, they have found themselves in a romantic relationship or marriage with a Personality Disorder. Others discover they are working with a Personality Disorder as a co-worker, supervisor, or supervisee. A smaller group finds they are victims of the severe behaviour of a Personality Disorder and have been assaulted, robbed, traumatized, or manipulated.

Personality Disorders are present in 10 to 15 percent of the adult population, with Cluster B accounting for approximately 9 percent based on research. At such a high percentage, it’s important that we learn to identify these individuals in our lives. A failure to identify them may create significant risk. While most of our contact with a Personality Disorder may be brief, the more involved they are in our lives, the higher the risk of emotional, social, and other damage. For this reason, it’s helpful to identify some of the characteristics of a personality disorder.

Article originally accessed at http://counsellingresource.com/therapy/self-help/understanding/

Self-sabotage: Parts 4 through 8

Continued from yesterday:

“4. Pick fights. This is an excellent way of ruining a relationship with a romantic partner [or friend or family member]. Once in a while, unpredictably, pick a fight or have a crying spell over something trivial and make unwarranted accusations. The interaction should last for at least 15 minutes and ideally occur in public. During the tantrum, expect your partner to be kind and sympathetic, but should he or she mention it later, insist that you never did such a thing and that he or she must have misunderstood what you were trying to say. Act injured and hurt that your partner somehow implied you weren’t behaving well.

“Another way of doing this is to say unexpectedly, “We need to talk,” and then to barrage your partner with statements about how disappointed you are with the relationship. Make sure to begin this barrage just as your partner is about to leave for some engagement or activity, and refuse to end it for at least an hour. Another variation is to text or phone your partner at work to express your issues and disappointments. Do the same if your partner is out with friends.”

Exercise: Write down 20 annoying text messages you could send to a romantic partner. Keep a grudge list going, and add to it daily.

There are other ways as well: social media is a great place to humiliate your adversary in a public forum and has the particularly favourable aspect that if she doesn’t respond, it looks like she is behaving passive-aggressively, refusing to speak to you. If she does respond, then you both have a forum, with lots of witnesses and sympathizers, for feedback and sympathy later. Add that it is etched forever on the internet, you both can go back to it, ad infinitum, to stoke up your indignance, anger, or hurt feelings and experience it all over again.

As ACoNs we tend towards hypersensitivity. It is a protective mechanism we developed while under the thumb of a despot, something we cultivated to help us keep safe. But we aren’t trapped little kids anymore: we are adults and we have the ability to walk away, so that hypersensitivity no longer serves us. It is like, because we once had a broken leg, we now believe we cannot walk or run or dance. And, because instead of stretching and exercising and using the leg, we have cosseted it, we have crippled ourselves far more than the original broken leg did. When we set ourselves up and then blame something other than our choices for the outcome, the only difference between us and our NMs is that they are hurting others by indulging their chosen lifestyle while we are hurting ourselves by not ridding ourselves of a huge flea.

“5. Attribute bad intentions. Whenever you can, attribute the worst possible intentions to your partner, friends, and coworkers. Take any innocent remark and turn it into an insult or attempt to humiliate you. For example, if someone asks, “How did you like such and such movie?” you should immediately think, He’s trying to humiliate me by proving that I didn’t understand the movie, or He’s preparing to tell me that I have poor taste in movies. The idea is to always expect the worst from people. If someone is late to meet you for dinner, while you wait for them, remind yourself of all the other times the person was late, and tell yourself that he or she is doing this deliberately to slight you. Make sure that by the time the person arrives, you’re either seething or so despondent that the evening is ruined. If the person asks what’s wrong, don’t say a word: let him or her suffer.”

Exercise: List the names of five relatives or friends. For each, write down something they did or said in the recent past that proves they’re as invested in adding to your misery as you are.**

Because we don’t have that inherent grounding is what is “normal,” it can be really tough for us to discern the difference between someone who is actively seeking to hurt us and those who are not. Add in complicating factors like personality disorders, neuroses, and just plain bad manners, and it can be tough to figure out, for certain, what is motivating another person’s behaviour or attitude.

It is intellectually lazy and disingenuous to leap to worst possible conclusion about a person without adequate supporting evidence…and if you have that supporting evidence, why are you still hanging around a person who gets something from hurting/humiliating/insulting/or otherwise abusing you? Thinking everybody who doesn’t agree with you or support you is automatically an enemy is just as bad. It is a false dichotomy of the type at which our NMs excel…and it should be no surprise that we can do the same because, after all, who raised us? Who did we have to model our thinking and attitudes on? We may have rid ourselves of our NM’s signature behaviours, but have we rooted out those pernicious attitudes that make us feel picked on whenever we don’t get or hear what we want? It took me a long time and a lot on conscious effort to change how I thought and how I interpreted what others said…

One of the things that you can do to control this is to not make assumptions and ask questions. The technique of “Active Listening” is very helpful here: instead of assuming, ask…and ask by repeating what you thought you heard. “Did you just ask me to move out?” “I interpret what you said to mean that you want me to choose between my dog and you…is that what you meant?” “I hear you telling me that what your mother thinks is more important than my feelings…is that was you are trying to say?” Find out for sure, before you react, so that you are reacting to reality, not a miscommunication.

“6. Whatever you do, do it only for personal gain. Sometimes you’ll be tempted to help someone, contribute to a charity, or participate in a community activity. Don’t do it, unless there’s something in it for you, like the opportunity to seem like a good person or to get to know somebody you can borrow money from some day. Never fall into the trap of doing something purely because you want to help people. Remember that your primary goal is to take care of Numero Uno, even though you hate yourself.”

Exercise: Think of all the things you’ve done for others in the past that haven’t been reciprocated. Think about how everyone around you is trying to take from you. Now list three things you could do that would make you appear altruistic while bringing you personal, social, or professional gain.

Most of us surely recognize our NMs in this…shallow and transparent to those of us who know them well, we can see their selfish motives in the blink of an eye. What we may have a harder time seeing, however, is our own hidden agendas in the good deeds we do.

Have you ever hooked up with a “walking wounded” sort of person, determined to help him, love him, nurture him (or her) back to wholeness? Why? Because you are such a good person? Or, just maybe, by focussing on someone else’s problems, you are distracted from your own? Maybe, in pairing up with someone more obviously troubled than you are, you can feel healthy and wise by comparison? Perhaps, in the conflicts inevitable in such a relationship, you subconsciously expect sympathy and support from others for the torment s/he puts you through?

We are not always the innocent lambs we want to believe ourselves to be. When we jump out of the frying pan into the fire, even though we are legitimately being abused by our new tormentor, WE are the ones who chose to leap before looking without our rose-coloured glasses firmly in place. Abusers abuse…that is what they do. So why are we in yet another situation in which we are being ill-used? What red-flags did we ignore? And what is our lemming-like rush to secure ourselves a lifetime of oppression really all about?

“7. Avoid gratitude. Research shows that people who express gratitude are happier than those who don’t, so never express gratitude. Counting your blessings is for idiots. What blessings? Life is suffering, and then you die. What’s there to be thankful for?

“Well-meaning friends and relatives will try to sabotage your efforts to be thankless. For example, while you’re in the middle of complaining about the project you procrastinated on at work to your spouse during an unhealthy dinner, he or she might try to remind you of how grateful you should be to have a job or food at all. Such attempts to encourage gratitude and cheerfulness are common and easily deflected. Simply point out that the things you should be grateful for aren’t perfect—which frees you to find as much fault with them as you like.”

Exercise: Make a list of all the things you could be grateful for. Next to each item, write down why you aren’t. Imagine the worst. When you think of the future, imagine the worst possible scenario. It’s important to be prepared for and preemptively miserable about any possible disaster or tragedy. Think of the possibilities: terrorist attacks, natural disasters, fatal disease, horrible accidents, massive crop failures, your child not getting picked for the varsity softball team.

We can easily see our NMs in this one, can’t we? My late husband’s mother and brother fit this point perfectly. At Christmas one year, BIL opened a gift from the NM and instead of graciously thanking her for the sweater she spent time and money on, he castigated her in front of the assembled guests for her execrable taste. This was a man with pots of money, a lucrative business, all the costly toys a person could want…and his sense of entitlement (which he habitually perceived as being unfulfilled) was such that he could not just say “thank you” and then quietly exchange it for something else.

His mother was no better. She informed us that we were not to give her gifts for her home anymore…she wanted personal things. Considering that the GC was a millionaire and we were blue collar, we knew costume jewellery and things off the sale rack at Macy’s weren’t going to make her happy but we couldn’t afford to compete with GC bro’s diamond earrings, cashmere sweaters, and round trip plane tickets to Paris. Not only was she ungrateful for anything we had given her to date, she was now setting up a scenario in which we either failed to “earn” her gratitude or went bankrupt trying. This, of course, kept her perpetually unhappy with my husband…and raised the GC’s stock in her eyes because he could afford to give her costly personal gifts…and he did.

So what do we do that keeps us ungrateful and miserable? Anytime we put those things with which we are unhappy and dissatisfied ahead of things that could make us happy and satisfied, we are guilty of choosing to be ungrateful. And the repercussions can be startling in their scope.

In California in 1972 a little boy named Steven Stayner disappeared. He remained missing…and no body was found…for years. Steven was not an only child, but his parents came to focus on his disappearance such that his older brother, Cary, “…felt neglected while his parents grieved over the loss of Steven.”  Nobody can say for certain what caused Cary to step over the line into committing murder, but the fact is, from the time he was 11 years old, Cary Stayner felt largely invisible to his parents because at first they were focussed on Steven’s disappearance, then his near miraculous return in 1980, followed by the tragedy of his sudden death in a road accident in 1989. Throughout this, Cary felt alienated and neglected by the attention his parents focussed on his brother.

When we focus on what makes us distraught and unhappy, we neglect things outside that focus. In the case of Cary and Steven’s parents, they lost focus on their other son; in Cary’s case, he focussed on his neglect and isolation to the exclusion of other things, things that could have been positive in his life. Did the Stayners lack gratitude for having a healthy son still safely at home? Did Cary lack gratitude for the return of his brother? We will probably never know for sure, but Cary himself has expressed feeling neglected by his parents after Steven’s disappearance…is there any reason to disbelieve him? And while it certainly does not excuse him going on to become the Yosemite Killer, it certainly did give him the attention he felt deprived of in childhood.

Speaking for myself, I found gratitude very difficult while I was wrapped up in my own misery. I often found mundane ordinary things like grocery shopping and washing laundry, to be intrusive on my misery. My misery defined me and it was not until I found myself sitting on the bed with a gun in my hand, ready to put it to my temple, that I got a little glimpse into just how deeply I was sunk into my misery. It defined me to the degree that I not only was not grateful for offers of help (even though I thought I was) I was actually resentful that people thought they could know how I felt. Ironically, the closer they got to really grasping my pain, the more I resented them, as if they were trying to take it away from me. My misery was all I had to claim as my very own, at that time, and as much as I superficially appreciated all of the suggestions and insights and offers of assistance, in truth I resented their intrusion, their presumptuousness, their desire to take from me that which I was clinging to like a lifeline…the pain that was my only remaining link to emotional connection.

Sometimes we aren’t as grateful as we might at first think we are…

“8. Always be alert and in a state of anxiety. Optimism about the future leads only to disappointment. Therefore, you have to do your best to believe that your marriage will flounder, your children won’t love you, your business will fail, and nothing good will ever work out for you.”

Exercise: Do some research on what natural or manmade disasters could occur in your area, such as earthquakes, floods, nuclear plant leaks, rabies outbreaks. Focus on these things for at least an hour a day.

Nobody likes a wet blanket. There is a difference between rational scepticism and pessimism, just as there is a difference between rational optimism and fool-hardiness. Too few of us, I think, recognize and embrace those differences. Why?

Well, I suspect rational optimism, because it is rational and requires us to do a little research and critical thinking, is work. It also might put a leash on our impulsiveness, something that could lead us to not taking an unwise risk when we really, really want the reward. The same can be said for rational scepticism: if we invest the time and effort to do some research and critical thinking, we may have to acknowledge that our pessimism was misplaced and thereafter feel forced to take a risk that might actually change things…and why would we want to do that and change our comfortably familiar little habitat of misery?

Besides, if we can infect others with our pessimism, we don’t have to be entirely alone in our misery, we can create a little community of fellow sufferers who will pull us back into the soup if we happen to get infected with a little optimism. Misery, after all, does love company. And the foolhardy among us can leap with both feet into the fire, blaming the fire for the burns rather than his ill-considered choice to make the leap, rather like blaming the spoon or the ice cream for our weight gain rather than our choice to eat a two-litre tub at one sitting…

My grandmother, an eminently pragmatic old woman, used to tell me “Plan for the worst, expect the best, and whatever happens, you’ll be ready.” I suspect the old lady was on to something…

 
Tomorrow: Parts 9 through 11

She is insanely defensive: Characteristics of Narcissistic Mothers Pt 13

 The black text is a shortened version of an original work by Chris, The Harpy’s Child. Original at https://sites.google.com/site/harpyschild/  Copyright 2007, all rights reserved

[There are two basic types of narcissistic mothers, the ignoring type and the engulfing type. These may—and often do—overlap but most NMs have a basic style and will be primarily one or the other. Some of the following points may not apply to your NM simply because they describe an engulfing characteristic when your NM is an ignoring type—or vice versa. But our mothers are not the only narcissists we will encounter in our lives. In fact, being raised by a narcissistic parent actually sets us up to be prey for more of the self-centred emotional vampires as we go out into the world, from girlfriends who are anything but friends to lovers who love themselves best to husbands who are the mirror image of dear old mom. So, whether something looks like it applies to your NM or not, read and consider it carefully—it may give you the awareness necessary to avoid the predator lurking around the next bend. As ever, my comments are shown in violet. -V]

It's about secret things. The Destructive Narcissistic Parent creates a child that only exists to be an extension of her self. It's about body language. It's about disapproving glances. It's about vocal tone. It's very intimate. And it's very powerful. It's part of who the child is. ~ Chris

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
She is insanely defensive and is extremely sensitive to any criticism.

Narcissists must always be right…their sense of self depends on it. Many narcissists I have known tend toward “black and white” thinking, so if they are to acknowledge they are wrong on anything, then they must be wrong on everything. So, any kind of criticism must be vigorously defended because their entire being feels at risk. They don’t conceptualize that being wrong on “something” doesn’t mean they are wrong on “everything.”

I suspect this comes from a deep inner knowledge that the person they project to others is not their authentic self, and so their lives are a house of cards and that the smallest jostle can tumble it down, revealing the real person they try so hard to keep hidden. If they weren’t so destructive to others, one could almost feel sorry for them. But, despite their inner damage, narcissists have a choice and that they choose to hurt others to salve their own wounds makes them rather like psychic cannibals and beyond the pale of compassion.

I ordinarily advocate giving people the benefit of the doubt and to act with compassion and empathy towards others. In dealing with narcissists, however, I withdraw that advice. Narcissists are the people who see your compassion as weakness and your empathy as condescension. It provokes them to defensiveness (which is sometimes embodied in offensive or aggressive tactics); in your compassion they feel you pity them, in your empathy they feel you mocking them because, lacking compassion and empathy themselves, pity and mockery are all they have and so they assume the same of you. Pitiful people are, in their world, to be exploited and weak people to be mocked: their interpretation of your compassion and empathy is that you see them as pitiful, weak individuals to be mocked and exploited, just as they would see you, and so they become defensive.

Criticism is viewed much the same way: in order to be legitimately criticized you must be wrong; narcissists cannot be wrong, therefore they cannot be legitimately criticized—which therefore means if you criticized the narcissist, you are wrong. Only weak people are wrong, so if you are wrong, you are weak and therefore vulnerable to attack. And nothing shores up a narcissist’s sense of self like beating someone else at something, even if it is a 6 year old playing Monopoly for the first time or a well-meaning person who made what he thought was a helpful observation and was verbally excoriated for his trouble.

The bottom line is, narcissists cannot be wrong and if you try to show one s/he is, you open yourself to a battle they cannot allow you to win…their very lives depend on it.

If you criticize her or defy her she will explode with fury, threaten, storm, rage, destroy and may become violent, beating, confining, putting her child outdoors in bad weather or otherwise engaging in classic physical abuse.

There are self-appointed “experts” on the web who maintain that true Ns never engage in physical abuse of their children; they claim that if a parent engages in physical abuse, s/he is not a narcissist but suffers from some other problem, like Anti-social Personality Disorder.

Don’t you believe a word of it. Narcissism seldom occurs in a vacuum and it is most likely that your NM’s disorder is what the shrinks call “co-morbid” with another disorder including the Anti-social Personality Disorder noted above. In other words, while your NM may be largely narcissistic, she can also be a little bit BPD (borderline), a little bit HPD (histrionic), and/or a little AsPD (Antisocial). There is nothing in the psychiatrist’s Big Book of Personality Disorders that says a person cannot have more than one personality disorder at a time so, if your narcissistic mother beat you or put you outdoors in the snow or otherwise physically abused you, she probably has some AsPD along with her NPD. But she is still a narcissist.

I never criticized my NM because I was afraid of her. She was physically as well as emotionally abusive. I am not sure how non-malignant NMs respond to criticism from their kids, but I can tell you that my NM brooked none from anyone except, maybe, her own parents. If my father objected to something, she blew up into a towering rage and she would try to get her own way through bombast—intimidating and trying to back him down. And then, no matter how her rage and the ensuing fight turned out, I suspect she just went and did what she wanted, no matter what. She did seem to be a bit subdued in the presence of her own parents, but only when they were physically present. The snide remarks to me never stopped, they were just delivered quietly and menacingly when Nana wasn’t nearby.

Defiance, however, she saw at every turn. Any time something was not done exactly to her liking (even if she had never bothered to set out parameters or demonstrate how to do something to her liking), she blamed it on defiance—there was no quarter given for inexperience, ignorance, youthfulness, or the natural immaturity of a child—no, if it wasn’t done properly, whether it was a chore or simply how I spoke, it was because I was defiant.

Truth is, I wasn’t defiant, I was terrified. Whenever I opened my mouth around her, I stood a good chance of the wrong thing coming out, or at least something she could twist and use against me. So, if I spoke, I got skewered with my own words; if I was silent, I was defiant. There was no way to win—which, to me, meant to be safe.

I have previously mentioned how, when she took The Strap to me, I would often grit my teeth and try to endure the beating without making a sound. This was because I didn’t know if she wanted me to scream or be silent, and it was very hard to stop screaming, once I started…and to keep sobbing or hiccoughing or sniffing once she commanded silence was to ask for more. But if she was in a mood that she wanted to hear me scream, my silence was “defiance.” But if I screamed when she hit me and didn’t stop all semblance of sound when she commanded, that was defiance as well.

Defiance was a punishable offense. And it didn’t have to be (and usually wasn’t) real defiance either, just anything she could identify as such. And while other NMs might rage and bellow and scream,—or go into a sulk—mine got physical. Why should she break something she owned in a rage? (Although she could blame me, I suppose—I often heard “Don’t make me hurt you,” from her, so certainly a broken tchotchke could be blamed on me with “Look what you made me do!”) I suspect throwing dishes against a wall would not be as satisfying as beating her child into a quivering pulp, so she skipped the starters and went straight for the main course—me.

I have often wondered why she didn’t see defiance in my younger brother when, in fact, he really was defiant! The kid was always in some kind of trouble or another—but I generally got punished for “letting” him do whatever it was he did. He was not a stupid child and this was not lost on him…since the consequences for his misbehaviour was invariably meted out on someone other than himself, he had no incentive to behave himself. He knew enough not to openly defy NM to her face because she might not ignore that…but he was certainly smart enough to exploit her weaknesses as well as mine.

Narcissists loathe being thought of as being wrong. For some reason, many of them think a tantrum, a meltdown worthy of a sleep-deprived 2 year old, is an appropriate way to deal with someone who has had the audacity of implying they are not perfect in every way. Back them down with bullshit, teach them with terror not to make the mistake of thinking a narcissist is anything but utterly perfect. Never let a crack in the defences show—how very narcissistic of them!

Next: Part 14. She terrorized.