Continued from Part 2: https://cptsdfoundation.org/2024/09/19/the-weaponization-of-ambiguity-a-call-to-rename-npd-to-support-victims-of-sociopathic-violence-in-a-world-of-rising-narcissism-part-2/
In an oversaturated language, I ran out of words to describe the extent of the damage. Psychological murder and mental rape seemed more appropriate, but using spiritual, metaphysical descriptors in a secular world is challenging. You’re treated like you don’t know the strength of your words; you’re covertly tagged as hysterical. And yes, I am sensitive to that treatment, however inadvertent. It’s reasonable that any survivor of narc abuse would be. My ex’s treatment would have broken anybody, and I’m no longer available for conversations about how I could’ve handled it better.
Analogies have proven helpful: descriptions of the dark spider web I was living in are most proportionately responded to when I describe my narc as “less Taylor Swift, more Ted Bundy.” It illuminates his superficial charm and the unease and chaos that follows. Yes, people can be that improvisationally manipulative, down to their precognitive skeletons, reflexively transactional, even in their best attempts at loving and being loved. The conversations in recovery groups and with practitioners who don’t balk when I use words like sociopathy and violence (even though my ex never hit me) are markedly safer and more productive.
Back to mushrooms: they each have their taxonomy institutionally sanctioned as distinct from all the other mushrooms’ excellent works. Yule log mushrooms will not understand the coercion experienced by a zombified ant. They won’t relate to the alchemy that Cryptococcus neoforman wield. The zombie ant fungus spore babies did nothing wrong, but the ants need convalescence after their heads split if we expect them to return with their stories from the other side and rejoin the work force.
Even after having the mechanisms of NPD shoved down my throat for the last time, it broke my heart that people with NPD are institutionally abandoned, that their suffering is forfeited, and abuse acquiesced to. In contrast, because I had already shouldered violent amounts of blame-shifting, it further broke my psychologically assaulted brain to be told there was nothing I could do but metabolize it. Professionals told me they were baffled; that my ex (and formative family members) would never see it; and sorry, good luck. Stay hydrated.
Meanwhile, institutions collectively take on these patterned behaviors. It drives us to near extinction. As a student of global power dynamics, this parallel keeps me from accepting the radical acceptance stage. If one “can’t get well in the environment that made you sick,” how am I supposed to get well in a world where collective narcissism is running rampantly unchecked? It’s scary to let go of hopes for accountability; where does that leave my god- and grandchildren? (And the philosopher’s quintessential quandary: Why do we do anything without hope for change?) Radical acceptance is a powerful tool for protecting oneself in a damaging world. But the world is becoming one big rug, under which room runs out for things to be swept.
I’m not the only one at this trend’s mercy: I see it in the desperate relief of people in survivor groups. Self-accountability is essential in healing, but it’s too much to ask those already humiliated and repeatedly mortally wounded to bear the exclusive brunt of rectification while their brains (bodies) are functioning at an all-time low. Narcissists, being narcissists, will exploit this, and so on. It’s a societal extension of scapegoating that keeps suicide rates disproportionately high in narc abuse survivors. We are watching this socio-epidemiological snowball in real time. It turns voting polls into circuses. It lines Taylor Swift’s bank accounts with fur: fans crying at concerts, relieved that someone sees it… or is she embodying it? The whodunit is juicy.
Thoughtful choice of words is not diplomacy at cocktail parties; it’s our lifeblood. In a world quickly becoming a compassion vacuum, I was enduring a strange formula of social endemics like rapists and cults that were officially weaponized as only my burden, and recovering from severe abuse under the guise of love. I barely endured the aftermath of unremittingly brutal spiritual assaults (in part) because we’ve made too much wiggle room. During my attempts to not turn against myself this time, I have engaged with group after group of disoriented victims who gather. They hope to re-learn how to validate what was first dismissed by their formative caregivers, secondly, dismissed by their abuser(s), and thirdly, dismissed by society at large, yet is somehow officially only their responsibility. We are being told to run and hide from the air we breathe.
In interviews with narc abuse survivors, especially those entrenched in legal battles, one piece of advice repeatedly pops up: write everything down. Keep a log. Date it. Keep a journal of intuitions you don’t know where to place yet. Keep two paper copies. Fight dirty and record conversations, with or without consent. Even if it’s not legally admissible in court, it will ground you in the fact that you’re not going crazy. Ever notice how some folks get when they’re about to be inexorably caught red-handed? It’ll tell you everything you need to know about a person. We need to accurately get this behavior on the record. Ink is magical in this way.
Narcissism isn’t the word that should be attached to NPD abuse anymore. That’s not what happened. I needed that word to be stronger. I needed to be able to walk into a doctor’s office under Medicare and say, “A narcissist has attacked me,” and not have them look at me like I had been listening to too many true-crime podcasts. Fewer and fewer of us have access to gurus, homeopathists and publicly appointed attorneys that will understand this wavelength. I want those at highest risk for narc abuse who are emerging from having their childhood traumas subjugated to recognizance, coerced, lied to, puppeteered, tricked, then subtly raped, hollowed out, fed upon, then their faces rubbed in it like a bad dog to be able to walk into a medical office and say, “I have my suspicions that I am in relation with a sociopath.” They walk among us and don’t look like they belong in Taylor Swift’s music videos. I am beyond my attempted gestures of inclusive understanding being met with taunts of how history belongs to the victor.
Anything said will be bastardized if you lack the muscle to understand the need for gray spaces, grace for others, and reasonable interpretation. Not having the bandwidth for others who have explicitly expressed the need for support in enduring society’s cracks is not the same as cheekily weaponizing a disregard for transgressions of known boundaries. It’s why some people can’t stand that it’s not PC to say certain words anymore. They are sans the muscle that sees that they’re “allowed” to say these words, but there are harmful repercussions to vulnerable populations that have been begging people to stop for decades; it’s reactive abuse. It’s the basis of NIMBYism: that ideals are good in theory until someone must make a sacrifice that doesn’t directly benefit them. Accountability is being DARVO’ed in our collective ethics. “Consent” is being reduced to an annoying digital box we check to get to a main page. A new strategy is needed.
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Bonni Benton is a multimedia artist and student. She has a BA in Theatre from Hunter College (CUNY) and will hold an MA in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies from UNM at the end of this year. She put her roots back down in her home state of New Mexico in 2020, where she and her two rabbits currently live in a tiny house in the mountains.
Thank you for articulating this so well and I’m sorry you’ve had to.
Thank you for reading, and I’m sorry you know what I’m talking about, too. Now that I’m outside of it in my closest relationships, I’m trying to make some sense and figure out what this has been good for. When the conclusion of the essay comes out, I hope you’ll consider sharing any alternatives for language around NPD (and abuse) based on your own experiences. Be well!
I think you have a really great argument here. I wish you could dumb it down a bit for those of us recovering from covert narcissistic abuse. I used to be fairly intelligent, but after 25 years of mind games my brain is cluttered and disorganized. Reading, which used to be something I loved to do, is a slog now. I have to reread sentences, double check intent, look up definitions etc. To thoroughly understand this post I would sacrifice an entire day of what little ability I’m left with. Sad.
Thanks for that thought, Maureen. I understand how covert narc abuse can leave someone’s cognitive functions scrambled, and I’m sure that wordiness here is partly because I have taken a hit in my sequential thinking and ability to focus, too. (I can’t imagine 25 years of this; that takes unimaginable strength. I wish you good healing.) But this has also been one of my main frustrations with explaining narc abuse (and, as you are very right to point out, specifically covert narcissism): it is so subtle, sneaky, and byzantine, then expertly dispersed and buried, that of course no one around me believed how severe it was or had the time to listen to it all. It becomes exhausting to explain, which is part of why the behavior is a growing trend. Whenever I write about this, I still feel like I’m leaving out a million relevant details; I think this is why we find comfort in group recovery, where you don’t have to start from the beginning and can group behaviors into mechanisms. Either way, I really appreciate the reflection about a target audience’s ability to engage with the writing. Psychological abuse may be hard to prove, but as we know, it is quite literally incapacitating!
Good article – only those who have experienced narcissistic abuse could understand the extent to which you write. I just recently figured out that I was raised by a narcissistic mother – and to think she “intentionally” knew what she was doing – and made me the scapegoat of all my family’s problems – is what makes it difficult for me to try to process and wrap my brain around it. Looking back, I’m blown away by her behavior, how she turned my brothers and sisters against me, and how I have had encounters with others along the way while not realizing I was dealing with another narcissist – apparently, I seem to attract them???? So, more soul searching to see what’s behind it and need to figure out how to stop the cycle and figure out how to heal from it! Mercy sakes!!! Talk about being caught up in a whirlwind!!!