My father finally died a few months ago. Survivors will understand the word finally. I thought he would never die. Billy Joel’s song “Only the Good Die Young” was certainly true in this situation. I had gone no contact about seven years before, but the shadow of power this man wielded over my life continued, whether I was in contact with him or not. I even moved all the way across the country to put space between me and him. Space between the present and the past. The constructed reality he demanded everyone agree with, the dominating presence where no voice save his was heard, the judgmental pronouncements of doom and gloom over your life, the complete lack of understanding or empathy. These were just a few of the ways his brainwashing impacted me. 

These were just a few of the ways his brainwashing impacted me. 

And when he died, instead of the relief I felt at my mother’s passing, a terrible door that had been shut for over sixty years was opened. The parts of me from childhood that had split off and carried the load felt free to come forward, and it was hard. Hard to face them, hard to talk to them, and hard to become an ally to them instead of an enemy. 

There are no words to describe the damage and loss that occur when your parents choose the path of narcissism. To their very grave, my parents never had the slightest inkling of self-awareness or took any personal responsibility. In fact, my sibling and I were “disinherited.” The old threat to keep me within my father’s orbit finally came true. For me, I could understand it; I walked away years ago. But for my sibling who provided for my father financially and took care of his ex-wife, our mother, who otherwise would have been homeless, it was a low blow. Yet again, the narcissist showed his true colors. It did not matter what you did for the man; he did not know how to do anything other than hurt us. His final message? “You are worthless.” 

But I survived, and guess what? My father was wrong. It took everything I had to slog through the twisted spider web of lies he had spun. I spent decades trying to understand, reaching toward the truth that seemed to dissipate into mist at the slightest stress. To quiet the dissonance in my mind, heart, and soul. I used every technique and read every book I could get my hands on, but you know what? I made it. I have written a new chapter, established new relationships, and I walk in truth. What does the Bible say? The truth will set you free? Yep, that’s what it says. I can wonder at the joy in life, pursue dreams and goals I never thought reachable, and more than anything else, I can finish well, leaving a legacy of peace, encouragement, and kindness to my children. 

I pity my mother and father. They never knew how wonderful life could be. It is still hard sometimes, I suppose I will always bear the scars to a certain degree, but I made it. I made it out, and I am so thankful I did not give up. Defy trauma, embrace joy. It is worth it.

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Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Rebekah Brown

Rebekah Brown, a native of the south, now resides in the Great American West. Surviving a complicated and abusive family system makes her unique writing style insightful as well as uplifting. Rebekah is the proud mother of two and grandmother of four.

Grandma Clare, my stepmother, is a narcissist. Over the past decade, I have set boundaries and distanced my family from her emotionally abusive behavior.

“It would be weird for the average person to invite their twenty-two-year-old granddaughter, who still lives at home with her father, mother, and younger sister, over for a birthday celebration while not inviting the rest of the family,” I acknowledged. “But unfortunately, it’s classic Grandma Clare behavior. She doesn’t typically consider other peoples’ feelings.”

“So, should I go,” Harper asked. “I’d like to see Grandma and Grandpa; it just feels strange going by myself.”

I encouraged my daughter to go to dinner and spend time with her Grandparents since she wanted to see them. Even though my stepmother was self-centered and manipulative, Harper’s had a decent relationship with them over the years, and I always fostered that for her sake. Harper was the first-born grandchild, so Clare was fond of her. Sadly, the novelty wore off when my second daughter, Abby, was born, and Clare has mostly ignored her.

When Harper came home from dinner, she had half a birthday cake.

“Grandma insisted I take the rest of the cake home,” Harper told us. “I told her no thank you a few times, but she pretty much forced me to take it.”

Harper filled me in on some updates about her cousins and said it was mostly an enjoyable time, with a handful of awkward silences. I smiled and told her that I was glad she enjoyed the dinner.

After Harper left the kitchen I looked at the half-cake sitting on the counter with a lump in my throat. Clare makes that cake for everyone, for every birthday. It was the cake I had for each of my birthdays throughout middle school and high school. And even though I am the one who opted to go low contact with that side of my family, looking at that cake brought me to tears.

It triggered a mix of emotions in me. I felt hurt and anger from being reminded of my tumultuous teenage years growing up without my own mother, who had passed away, and being raised by a stepmother who didn’t care much for me, to put it mildly. I also experienced resentment because I’d done a lot of work to heal and grow, putting boundaries in place to protect myself and my family, and it could all be shaken by something as absurd as a cake. I was surprised by grief, a sense of mourning the loss of my relationship with the family I grew up in.

My husband walked into the kitchen as I was about to leave, “Are you okay?”

I told him what was going on and said, “I don’t want Harper to see me upset, I’m glad she has a relationship with them. It just hurts to see that cake, the cake that was a part of the family that I used to be a part of, but I’m not anymore.”

Harper was coming back towards the kitchen and overheard us talking, and a few days later, she approached me. We talked about the cake and Grandma Clare.

“At first, I thought Grandma was just trying to be nice by having me take the cake home,” Harper said. “But after hearing you and Dad talk, I had a conversation with my friend Emma about it. You know Emma’s a psych major, right? She said it sounded like triangulation.” Harper went on to tell me she looked it up and read about how triangulation is used to play favorites and pit one person against another so that the manipulator feels a sense of control and supremacy.

“I think Grandma may have had me take the cake home on purpose to get to you,” she disclosed. “I know that sounds like a bit much, but I tried to tell her I didn’t want the cake, and she literally made me take it home.” Harper continued, “And then hearing how it did upset you made me think that may have been her intention. I know you don’t really talk to her anymore, so the only way she can bother you now is through other people. I’m sorry, Mom.”

“Harper, you have nothing to apologize for,” I reassured. “Her psychologically abusive behavior is the reason I opted for low contact all of those years ago. She tends to pull in her favored kids and grandkids close while snubbing the ones she doesn’t like as much. Sending you home with cake certainly could have been her way of showing me what I’m missing. Her using you to bring something home that would get a reaction out of me does sound like a triangulation tactic,” I admitted. “But it’s also a good reminder that we can engage with her if and when we want to, yet we do not have to succumb to her ploys of manipulation. Doing what we’re doing right now, communicating openly with each other, will hopefully shut down future attempts to influence us. Instead, we can dismiss them as her pitiful attempts to feel superior to others.”

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Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Sadie Montgomery

Sadie Montgomery was born and raised in the Midwestern United States, where she currently resides on the shore of Lake Superior with her husband and children. She is the award winning author of Atlas of Scars, her debut memoir on Complex Trauma. “I write to connect with survivors, advocate for the community, and raise awareness.”

www.sadiemontgomery.com/

Mushrooms are notorious for only being distinguishable as poisonous by the elite. It’s how they collectively protect themselves. If our individual and collective personalities continue to proliferate in such a disordered way, we would be wise to proactively develop a counter strategy. We must develop a new approach when compassion and flexible thinking are exploited. In no uncertain terms, when it is safe to do so, some of us need to hold the line in small ways—in this case, calling a horse a horse.

The lifeblood of language is only possible through relinquishing power: when a word leaves one’s mouth and reaches another’s ear. “Grey-rocking” and “no-contact” advice have their time and place; for me, they echoed the agency-stripping accommodations I’ve been forced to swallow too often. I couldn’t do it; I was filled to the brim. My body is metabolizing intense bouts of word salad: when someone says words in sequences that follow syntactic rules but rapid-fired so you can’t stop to notice they have no meaning. Word salad is strategic, a mechanism of misdirection. Direct language is an antidote to narcissism, a non-black-and-white intersubjectivity that never guarantees dominance or falsely proselytizes “truth” but is 100% honest. Exacting direct language is, at least, a surefire way to get a read on the person you are dealing with in flesh and blood at any given moment: Can they tolerate an external consensus that places restrictions on them? Can they accommodate others even if there’s nothing in it for them? Or do they balk at the request for adjustments? Is “no” enough?

I have read enough articles about triggers as superpowers for a lifetime, about sensitivity being like a carbon monoxide detector, and about how our bodies are trying to tell us something. I keep waiting for this steady collective strength to appear in all its terrifying glory, like the unveiling of a game-changing map. They say pain and fear are messengers; we are wise to listen, but I am no longer interested in protecting myself alone.

I’m not asking for compassionate or PC alternatives to official NPD naming, but ones that are precise and on the record. (After NPD abuse, my knee-jerk defense is to rename it “black-hole broken-cup disorder” or “soul-raping joker-faced syndrome.”) I am asking for suggestions on language that will distinguish the everyday usage of narcissism from when you realize too late that you’re deeply entangled with someone who doesn’t have the capacity to hold back harm. For when you require intervention more urgently than the time it takes to rewire every one of your childhood trauma responses.

Here is my call to this community of resilient deep thinkers: what do you wish was said instead? What language did you develop that you wish you had from the beginning to describe this bizarre exploitation style? Or are words offered by elders along the way that someone in the white-hot thick of it might not remember available? How do you explain this behavior to your children or prepare them for this dynamic in the world? During your recovery, did you feel a pit in your stomach as the word narcissist was casually thrown around? At the same time, maybe you calculated the personal-danger/societal-progress ratio of hearing the word aloud in public spaces. Hopefully, it wasn’t just in pop culture but in poli-sci theory, legislature, medical settings, schoolrooms, and good company with people learning to reflect on the first person and the collective impact.

Any suggestions on what else we might name it for those who find themselves in chat rooms at 3 AM, pouring over “dark triad”/cluster-B literature, drained, on the brink, watching their brains attempt to make sense of bizarre nonsense… clinging to lifelines of writings that use phrases like psychological murder and mental rape, praying that the accurate usage of this extreme language won’t be judged as “dramatic” by people from which they are asking for help and harbor? Suggestions for what to call it when this energy follows you (maybe because you’re now able to see what was always there) … but don’t know what to call it and can’t call it by its name… but can’t tolerate it anymore, either? We get to decide. Language is arbitrary, and form follows function.

Suggestions for alternative names to NPD are welcome in the comments below from experiences as affirmed by the victim of a fun house “love” that engaged in recon to target your weakest spots. “Love” that left you wondering how to compost your murdered self without accurate language. Relationships that whipped you in the same place twice when you attempted to describe them accurately.

Nuances in NPD diagnoses would benefit from reference manuals recognizing variants like covert, grandiose, or malignant, but a new paradigm could also be modeled off a five-alarm or def-com system. Could a renaming honor that little zombified ant? Or, maybe, in the tradition of Greek mythology, instead of Narcissus, Orpheus—master instrumentalist and enchanter? Orpheus lived out a tragic story: he loved, or at least he tried. He went to the depths of hell to rescue his beloved Euripides and succeeded because he was intelligent, charming, and determined. But it didn’t occur to him to ensure that Euripides was also in the light before looking back to unravel it all. From then on, he was a broken man. He was later cannibalized alive by the women to whom he could no longer connect while attempting to rest and grieve his losses.

I look forward to doing what the intersection of my life’s greatest griefs has brazened me with the capacity to do: metabolize how it is both about me and not about me with an understanding of consequences, object permanence, and shreds of compassion even after my most outlandish moments. (I am returning to myself.) I am curious about what language was harmful, helpful, or an absurd replication during your recovery from NPD abuse or what language you prioritize for the next generations. The more survivors I speak to, the more I realize that it irrevocably alters the way one sees. I aim to use my strange afterlife to call upon institutions (like mental health diagnostic manuals) to call horses by the name we gave them: to call pop stars and assholes “narcissists”; and call NPD something more nuanced amidst this evolution.

Bonni Benton

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.

I want to preface the following with a distinction between “a narc” and abusively narcissistic patterned behavior because this is so much bigger than any one individual. People who suffer from NPD (as opposed to narcissistic jerks) are so deeply traumatized and will take it as a reflection on them… but it isn’t. I’m not wishing to incite violence, but the idealism of “becoming the change I hope to see” doesn’t hold water when what I hope to see has been reverse-victim-ordered.

NPD has a high correlation with misogyny, racism, xenophobic discrimination, and all the other ailments of the world we are regularly told can’t be fixed. When the man to whom I was trauma-bonded (but didn’t yet comprehend had NPD) projected by screaming at me until he was sweating and his eyes were black that I had a personality disorder, I was naively trying to care for him and his sprained ego, ahem, I mean, ankle… and reacting to being snapped at that I “could stand to get him a cold drink”. He later made me apologize for suggesting this happened. At that point, I was hooked by a web of stealthy lies that reflected everything I had ever hoped for and belittled through the grooming of incremental boundary-testing, so my broken spirit acquiesced. My pupils were probably large and black, too, from fear.

A year and a half into our relationship, after much talk about his “very observant, quick-learning, self-aware and progressive path,” he grinned while he tested me with “suddenly realizing” who my closest friend was (he was attempting to suggest a threesome) and the sudden information about his possession of U.S. Confederate memorabilia. My gaslit bleeding heart tried to respect this complicated ambush of cultural heritage and sexual pseudo-liberation and told him, “Just don’t be hateful to people” and “yeah, I don’t need you two to be close”. In retrospect, it was the same grin that he had while I frantically searched for items I’m fairly certain he intentionally hid from me and, to this day, still has in his possession.

I would have said anything at that point so he would stop trapping me. Looking back, this fueled the entrapment. Then again, once the funhouse music and coercive rage started, there was nothing I could do. There was no appeal to logic or facts, no appeal to empathy. Even abrupt no-contact would have had severe consequences for my life, but I was also naively trying to get back to the great love that was first sold to me. Once the funhouse music started, I would apologize for things he did so he wouldn’t scream at me then he would scream at me for apologizing too much, mocking my lack of self-respect. He kept coming back because I had something he wanted, something to which he felt entitled, but it was pure sabotage.

Based on what I now know about my ex’s reputation (that was strategically hidden from me) and how furiously he screamed that I had “ruined everything” the first time I confronted him, I believe I was recruited to prove to everyone that he could keep an LTR. This was why he was on such deceitfully good behavior in the beginning. Today, the recovery advice relating to brainwashing and cult leaders has been most relevant. And since I proclaim honesty, there is a part of me that realized halfway through our relationship that I was deep undercover. Every day still, talking myself through the ambiguous grief of being in love with a man who never existed takes up most of my calories.

During my attempts to get anyone in a position of authority to hold my ex accountable for his psychological violence, half the officials told me, “I’m so sorry that happened to you, that’s incredibly abusive, but unfortunately that’s not how the law works.” The other half said, “I’m so sorry that happened to you, and that’s not how the law usually works… but I see what you’re saying. Where are you in the process? I’ll tell you what I know.” I followed their advice as far as I could.

I was then repeatedly told not to say the word narcissist in a courtroom because it’s style of abuse is notoriously difficult to prosecute, and the precedent varies from state to state for its connection to the intentional infliction of extreme emotional distress. In my highly triggered state, this struck me as a chicken-and-egg dilemma, so I took a page out of his playbook. I proceeded to fight my way into courtrooms and get the word on any record as often as possible, even if it had to be mine. Today I still can’t, in good conscience, say that I disagree with myself. But I admit it was a messy process amidst an insufficient status quo.

Nowadays, I reassure myself about my worst reactions by noticing that this is not a pattern in any other of my relationships. I understand that it’s my responsibility to work through the shakes that making even simple decisions gives me after having my sense of self gutted by being regularly screamed at for being a “stupid, useless little girl that shouldn’t trust my body or judgment”. I wake up every day with a restraining order on my name because the reactive abuse was effective and remind myself in the mirror that I didn’t ‘lose it’; it was taken. Keep your chin up, kid. I tried to take the shame and secrecy out of what was already happening since there was no higher road.

But I still stand in front of judges who’ve heard decimated versions of the saga (but ask zero contextualizing questions) and simply accept the consequences. I go to therapy twice a week, plus domestic violence support groups plus EMDR for the laundry list of intrusive thoughts from the distorted intimacy. I’m resilient and adaptive, and I see leaps and bounds of the hallmarks of health since denying the continuation of this treatment. Every morning, I remember the most bad-ass advice I’ve been given so far: that my best revenge is to prosper.

More importantly, in these therapies, I accept my part, realizing that fawning is manipulative even when rooted in fear, and yes (go figure) I didn’t get enough unconditional love as a child. I was tenuously glued back together when my abuser met me, and he smelled it on me. Since he scapegoated my past for everything, it kept me reluctant to admit that all of these are true. I think it is a good sign that I am even considering my part and how to prevent it in the future. I’m proud to take what’s mine, but I am not strong enough to take it all, nor do I deserve to. I’m not willing to “get on with my life.” I’m actively discontinuing this tradition of complicity.

Suppose our best guess about the root of NPD is stunting around the developmental stage of object permanence (peek-a-boo age). In that case, I defer to all the mothers who contain their toddlers’ outbursts on playgrounds: letting kids live out Godzilla fantasies without repercussion isn’t healthy. It isn’t healthy (or loving) to let a toddler feel entitled to that behavior. It gets murky when the toddler is in an adult body with a credit card and voting rights. By the time they’ve grown into an adult body, it’s far too late.

We need to teach kids this discretion as early as possible before sending them back out onto playgrounds (and workplaces, and sacred contracts of intimacy) where sadistic Godzillas will repeatedly bludgeon them. It is a slippery slope to collectively tell others that it’s now their responsibility to metabolize violence far beyond interpretive doubts. I can live with my sandcastles being swallowed by the tide or stomped on by bullies; I can’t tolerate being assaulted behind the swings and then denied the language to accurately describe what happened.

The perks of constant interconnected global conveniences and entertainment come with a responsibility to exercise this hard-earned discretion, part logic and part intuition. If violence is cyclical, we need to find a way to support the wrenches in the wheel who have first-hand knowledge of how enough has become enough and connect them to developing little minds. We need to intervene because narcissistic traits are running rampant like bullies on playgrounds, except now they exact policy through the offices they hold or through their 200 million Instagram followers that enact their word like Gospel. And with so many networks, most behavior has gone covert.

It will be one of the wildest rides you will ever go on to call out narcissistic behavior, be it individual or institutional. Do so judiciously and take care of yourself during the backlash. Men in uniform will choke on their best attempts at trauma-informed language, gate-keeping your recourse. They may tell you the threats you made against coveted models of cars are more valid than what you endured with your body and psyche. Strangers (who know half the cherry-picked version of what happened) will scream at you in the street. People you’ve known since birth will tell you that “good girls don’t talk about that kind of thing.” Connecting your story to the bigger story will get you shamed (and forget to mention how it can be both). You’ll somehow be simultaneously selfish and at fault for giving too much. You’ll be “over-reactive” when it’s convenient and told your trauma is nothing special if you start making sense. They are shades of the same playbook.

However, it will be a rock-hard reclamation of self and reality. People will vet themselves, and flying monkeys will drop like flies when they know they can’t play you like a violin anymore. Some may say that fighting fire with fire makes the world burn, but we are already burning, and self-defense has long been distinguished from preemptive strike. Sauter it with precision.

Participation in this style of resistance calls for deep discretion. In recovery groups, I spoke with mothers who couldn’t fight back because they had kids they were protecting from their exes. I also interviewed someone who told me they wished they had fought back seventeen years earlier in their marriage to get their abuser to back off. (This account single-handedly helped me start sleeping better amidst the consequences of my body’s reasonable reactions to my ex’s gaslighting and reactive abuse.) If you need to get to safety before you use this hard-earned knowledge to fight a dark societal trend, let that get you up in the morning. Let that guide you to a centered safety one day at a time. We need you. We all need what your body now knows.

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Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Bonni Benton

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.

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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Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Bonni Benton

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.

The natural world is rife with much richer analogies than our “higher” cultured structures. We have been strategically separated from the knowledge that mushrooms are awesome. They are resilient, adaptive, adept at divvying up decomposition, and taxonomically distinguished amongst the many types. Consider three examples: 1.) Mushrooms that grow on New England Yule logs (morels, oysters, lion’s mane) are iconic, delicious, and indispensable to the ecosystem. 2.) Cryptococcus neoformans fungi are doing a different alchemical work: metabolizing radiation thirty-eight years after the man-made nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl. 3.) Deep in tropical forests, a spore called Ophiocordyceps unilateralis (zombie-ant fungus) infects ants’ brains to alter their behavior. The fungus drives an ant to the top of a hill, where there is sunlight that the fungus can’t otherwise reach. It then releases spores for reproduction via the ant’s exploded head. (Plus thousands of examples of fungi soldiers in between!) Yet even in the natural world, parasite populations sometimes get out of balance.

Trauma is everywhere; the more humans there are on the planet, the more trauma there will be. A vast majority of us are living in a triggered state, and only some of us admit it. We also foster minds that can navigate the nuances necessitated by spectrums, strengthening our non-black-and-white thinking in an exponentially complex world. We are tending to those historically kept out of conversations or that need triage because of an immutable past. Institutional sanction may “seem like a trivial issue to some,” but although I didn’t have a say in the need for triage, my privileged access to narc abuse research was undeniable. I accessed it via sanctioned definitions plus survivor’s accounts.

Defending the farthest ends of imposed destruction is essential. In the mid-20^th century, the philosopher Jacques Derrida watched his non-binary deconstructionism weaponized by Holocaust deniers. It was a quick adaptation, one which he himself waded in. Comparisons aren’t logical in trauma-informed arenas; we cannot let it turn into an Olympic sport. First-person accounts are invaluable; they are tools against didactics. If “power over” is the enemy, let it burn. We will benefit from listening to those who have been to the far side: they embody a cipher, attuned to the most damaging collective dynamics.

I would never claim to know the trauma of someone chained in a basement for a decade. To an analogous but empirically lesser degree, it was maddening to hear people say they were “triggered” by things for which they have distaste or “gaslit” by someone who disagreed with them once. During the last chapter and harrowing afterlife of my NPD narcissist, my evenings resembled an Apocalypse Now hotel stay. The mechanisms found when local labor is coerced into performing its own resource extraction are not far off from what drives domestic violence, but it is not the same as the discomfort caused by calling someone out on their bullshit. All of these can be covert, blatant, or have spectacle. It is up to us to navigate the shades in between.

You can’t gaslight someone once or accidentally; it is a method, a grooming process. It is based on a pattern, and keeping a log of this pattern before throwing the word around would serve us all well. Trauma bonding isn’t what occurs when two people become friends by sharing accounts of their trauma, however true and deserving of recognition (think: Stockholm’s Syndrome). You don’t have PTSD from stressful experiences; you have PTS. Love-bombing isn’t over-zealous, misguided courtship, though the pattern of suspicion by its recipients is illuminating. The idealization phase isn’t a “honeymoon period” (think objectification). And the lyrical, colloquial usage of the word narcissist doesn’t do justice to the factions of survivors clamoring to get well in an environment made of this stuff.

It was a year into my recovery from acute NPD abuse before I found therapeutic environments where I could use the word sociopath, which was the accurate word. A year to find spaces where clinicians heard me say: “I’m not sick, I’m injured.” There is growing research that NPD abuse causes literal brain damage, cognitive severance based on coercive depersonalization, inflammation, increased cortisol and adrenaline, and a weakened immune system. Anecdotally, every hellish microsecond of my burning nervous system concurs. Without this patient narrative, my doctors were mistreating me for an inaccurate condition.

By then, I was regularly calling suicide hotlines because my support system was exhausted or my abuser had triangulated them. I cut ties with the rest because of their unnuanced judgments. My tolerance was at an all-time low, and I was realizing similar traits in the people with whom I surrounded myself: they were used to me allowing this behavior, too.

For a while, knowing narcissism is prevalent and underreported, I tried to stay with people’s best commiserative offerings. I believe in this practice of respectful witness but, exhausted from fighting for validation (mine and precedence), my stripped psyche has retreated. I will return. These days, I hold a policy that I won’t discuss “narcissism” with anyone who hasn’t done basic research into the condition.

 I spent a year navigating significant neurological and physical dysfunctions like sequential reasoning, short-term memory, debilitating fatigue, loss of coordination, vision impairment, constant pain and inflammation, sleep disruption, and seizures. My community insisted that eating well, stretching, and forgiveness meditations would help me feel better. I am absolutely not knocking the first two; recovering from narc abuse has taken more physical stamina than I knew I had. But because of the underestimation from all outward appearances, being asked to take better care of myself at that early stage was like asking someone to perform their own appendectomy. I was then criticized for not doing it quietly enough.

I still defend against forced premature forgiveness, though. Insistence on it is dismissive and minimizing. I’m grateful to now be in companies that don’t see it as a prerequisite for my recovery and acknowledge that it may never be possible. I don’t yet talk to many people from “the before times” because the level of sociopathic abuse I experienced is not well-represented by the public’s definition of narcissism. Few aspects of my life that are unscathed by it, about which I can chit-chat. I appreciated the sentiment to take better care of myself and extended grace to their confusion. But thinking positively was not going to cut it. So, I fought my way through.

Recovery coaches recommend not defending yourself to conserve energy. Paradoxically, however, I couldn’t get the treatment I needed without defending the gravity of the situation. I spent taxing amounts of energy defending myself against “breakups are hard” rhetoric. (Several times, my abuser manipulated my closest friends into relaying this message to me. Hearing his echo through them was spooky, but it taught me much about them. I was then ostracized for this accurate paranoia.)  I’m not saying the outlandish reactions that followed were justified (I was as surprised as anybody by them) or that the lack of narc abuse awareness caused them, but it made me significantly lonelier, angrier, and gaslit by proxy. I spent a year putting out some fires and stoking others — because my dangerously empathetic heart sees how this isn’t just about me or my ex — before getting to the actual work. The delay was (partly) due to a lack of shared vocabulary.

Part 3 will be published on Wednesday, 9/25/24

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Bonni Benton

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.

In 1980, the DSM-III first added narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) to its diagnostic manual. It incorporated the trait of passive aggression, which applies primarily to covert/vulnerable NPD. We don’t diagnose passive aggression anymore because most people are, to some degree, passive-aggressive. The term has desaturated. Today, the DSM-5 has yet to distinguish between malignant and grandiose pathological narcissism, while practicing behavioral therapists do.

In 2015, the WHO issued guidelines on best practices for naming infectious diseases. Dr. Keiji Fukuda, Assistant Director-General for Health Security at WHO, highlighted the importance of accurate, culturally attuned language around public health: “This may seem like a trivial issue to some, but disease names really do matter to the people who are directly affected…(It) can have serious consequences for people’s lives and livelihoods.”

In 2022, pop mistress Taylor Swift qualified narcissist with the word covert in her mega-hit “Anti-Hero.” In 2023, gaslighting was Merriam-Webster’s “Word of the Year”. (The top contenders were oligarch, omicron, raid (as in police maneuver), LGBTQIA+, and queen’s consort.) TikTok regularly debates #NarcTok: over 2 billion accounts have engaged with the social media tag to date. This increased awareness is a double-edged sword: language is an instrument for our natural human desire to relate, but it is also volatile and amorphous. Collectively, we have established the vernacular of the narcissistic playbook but have growing pains around the necessary discretion about the degree of severity.

Narcissistic traits to the point of NPD are rare, officially occurring in 1-3% of the population. That’s equivalent to a median of 1.75% of every breakup song you’ve ever heard being caused by a qualifiable spiritual rapist. Paradoxically, however, the disorder is underreported because, at its core, it is an inability to recognize fault or seek treatment. While healing from all nine diagnostic qualifiers during later lied-about private moments, I found myself more qualified than my abuser to name it.

Ordinarily, this is problematic: intersubjectivities should be honored, and advocates have long fought for patient’s rights to validation. But this wasn’t ordinary life: it was dragged-through-hell-backwards-by-a-sociopath land. NPD differs in this bizarre “logic” even from other cluster-B disorders, though comorbidity can exist. It’s natural to have blind spots to one’s patterns, but narcissists/narcissistic collectives occupy a sinister corner because they are the dead-last person/group qualified to recognize their faults or be trusted to hold themselves accountable. Narcissus was doomed to only love his reflection, but the scariest thing about NPD is that there is no center of self to reflect upon, thus the constant need for external supply. While we foster safe spaces in society, it is important to outline when somebody has a diminished capacity to do so.

The following entries are aspects of my reflection as I (like everyone) move through a dangerous world in my overlapping roles. My formative years were spent under a regime of religious and regional patriarchy. Relatedly, but rarely stated in black and white: I was repeatedly raped as a child. My caregivers didn’t have the language to ask me why I was so sullen and numb, so of course, I didn’t either, and I was heavily medicated. I survived, adapted, and grew up. I was then repeatedly sexually assaulted as an adult.

Today, I am actively in recovery from domestic violence by somebody who claimed to love me. I have ample evidence of his vicious narcissistic abuse, but nowhere to put it. After he discarded his broken toy, I went rogue in retaliation. I was fueled by our collective lack of awareness about and institutional replication of the situation’s severity and received a slew of contradictory messages from a recovery culture that encouraged me to return to my intuition. I took full responsibility for it. Today, as a post-graduate researcher, I’m knee-deep in our messy global history and the philosophies on whether our current collective state needs to be so dire.

I have collided with the rising prevalence of this patterned behavior from deflective black holes. I have borne repeated witness to humans asking to be gods without knowing how. I am not in the business of prescriptive false prophecy, but contrary to my less-than-perfect record disqualifying me from this conversation, it has been the main consideration through every breath of my life.

When I was breaking down from my profoundly projective boyfriend’s reactive abuse (plus getting a handle on “the playbook” and calling his bluff), he convinced me that I had a personality disorder, and I deep-dove into research on the condition’s dynamics to keep from bursting into a million pieces. The relief from hearing others put language to the strange, inverted mechanisms that my ex used to break my mind, body, and heart was indescribable.

As I emerge from the typical narc abuse rabbit hole, these questions keep me up at night: What happens if two people gaslight each other? What happens if two institutions gaslight each other? How do you differentiate between demanding accountability and a projection? And why exactly is DARVO so effective? I appreciate reminders that profound losses of self come in different forms. It would be ridiculous for me to suggest my relationship with a narc was a thousand times more traumatic than your break-up. But I do not hesitate to say it was a thousand times more bizarre and convoluted than anybody gave it due. My recovery was from a distinct experience, the exact function for which we invented language.

Many therapists won’t work with NPD folks because therapy is futile without reflection. I hope to learn more from those who are willing. I must admit to derailing my recovery when I discovered some narcs do know that they’re narcs. Many of these channels are under suspicion of convincing satire. Contemporary therapeutic efforts primarily aim to help survivors re-personalize since NPD is difficult to treat (read: how to get a qualified narc to recognize their condition in the first place). NPD treatment is one of the universe’s perfect knotted paradoxes protected by bleeding hearts, flying monkeys, and narcissistic institutions.

In keeping with the prioritization of recovery and prevention, I intend to formally petition the American Psychiatric Association (who will publish the DMS-6) and the World Health Organization (who will publish the ICD-12) to consider these shifting dynamics. My call here is two-fold: to support each other in disclosing non-consensual sadistic patterned behavior when it is safe to do so and (relatedly) to create a language describing the extent of narcissistic abuse that occurs at the hands of people with NPD. It should be distinguishable from the increasingly acceptable narcissistic behavior. I would love to hear suggestions on an alternative to present to the institutions that be. Further down the road, I hope to incorporate these reflections in developing early education awareness programs.

While we work to get NPD individuals to admit a need for healing alongside us and prepare children for a world entrenched in narcissism, my proposal for an alternative to the official name of narcissistic personality disorder aims to extract the pop psychology usage of narcissism, giving another tool to those on fire from its unique style of fallout. If the official name is changed, narcissists will remain narcissists in the colloquial sense, and we should continue to engage with that rising implication. There is no reason to throw out the baby of this common usage with the bathwater during this learning curve. No cancel culture: we should be “allowed” to say the word… but we need to know what it is that we’re saying.

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

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Bonni Benton

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.

They walk like us, they talk like us, and they may even have pristine reputations in their communities. However, nothing can prepare a victim for the way her life will change once a psychological abuser “picks” her.

A psychological abuser’s goal is to utilize mental tantalization to break a victim’s psyche down over time, make her appear crazy, and isolate her from mutual connections without leaving a trail of evidence. After you’re discarded from a relationship with one of these personalities, the abuser will spit seething venom at you, disempowering you and removing your humanity and self-worth. They don’t care who you were before, during, or after your relationship with them, as they utilize hot and cold behavior to make you question your reality. You’re not a human being; you’re a commodity to be exploited in their game of life. To these personalities, everything is your fault. No matter how many nice things you do for them, nothing is good enough. No matter who you are, what you say, or what you do, your existence enrages them. If you look them in the eyes, there’s nothing there — almost as if they have no conscience. Even being given the “death glare” or “sociopathic stare” by one of these people is enough to transfer that intense hatred of you into yourself and make your body shake. Their sadism lurks behind a facade of innocence.

Who is the Psychological Abuser? 

Psychological abusers are emotional toddlers in adult bodies. The abuse doesn’t have to happen in a romantic or familial relationship, as is most commonly discussed. Abuse can occur in any type of relationship or environment—schools, workplaces, churches, or any communities where humans gather. Abusers have plenty of experience — they typically have multiple victims. While psychological abuse can be so crafty that the victim might even question if she is really a victim, they know exactly what they do to you, and they enjoy it. But the words “abuser” and “bully” are the last words they would use to describe themselves. They don’t think they are doing anything wrong.

While it isn’t possible for victims to diagnose these types of people, just be aware that they have serious pathological issues consisting of narcissistic, sociopathic, and psychopathic tendencies. I don’t typically subscribe to using the word “normal” to describe human behavior because of the history of the word being used to ostracize people who do not conform to groupthink. However, I’m fine with using the word “normal” to describe healthy people in relation to these abusive personalities. Psychological abusers live in an entirely different reality than normal people do.

Who Do Abusers Target? 

Abusers target people who have something they do not or cannot have themselves. Since nothing is ever good enough for them, they envy those who are content with themselves. They typically target empaths — people who have an innate joy and genuine gratitude for life, see every human being as worthy of love and tend to see the good in others. Their animosity toward empaths comes from a place of not being able to fathom how another person can have that much joy regardless of life circumstances. 

Abusers can work alone or in groups. Typically, they eventually rope “flying monkeys” into their games — minions who either overtly or covertly help the abuser perpetrate the abuse. Often, these flying monkeys do not even know the victim personally. Since the abuse is so insidious, even these flying monkeys might not understand the full extent of the torment inflicted on the victim. If these supporting actors could see the full extent of the abuse, they may stop being pawns in the abuser’s destructive game. Unfortunately, most of these flying monkeys don’t want to understand the harm they’re complicit in, but they want to be part of the group and win the abuser’s praise, and they get their own power trip satisfied in the process.

For reference, The term “flying monkey” comes from The Wizard of Oz. The Wicked Witch of the West puts them under her spell.

The Average Person Does Not Understand Psychological Abuse

Psychological abuse can be an amorphous force, very difficult for an outsider to detect. Abusers often charm other people close to their victims, so these people have no reason to believe that the abuser is doing anything wrong to them. Outsiders may even ask, “What did they even do to you?”

It’s sneaky. As the victim, I couldn’t even fully put it into words myself. This is precisely why abusers utilize psychological abuse as their weapon of choice. They are crafty enough to know that if they did it in any other way, they would “get caught” by outsiders. The victim may be told that she’s “overthinking it” or that it’s “just how she’s perceiving it.” The power dynamics, manipulation, hot and cold behavior, gaslighting, and mind games form a Stockholm Syndrome-style trauma bond, which makes the victim believe: “Maybe they’ll eventually give me closure.” The victim may come across as “unable to move on” from the relationship when, in reality, she is wrestling with that trauma bond as she tries to fathom what is being done to her after the discard and seek a resolution to the tension. 

The mind games taunt the victim with a false hope for closure and an ending to the sick games, but that closure never comes. If victims question what’s going on, perpetrators use tactics like gaslighting and denial to pretend like nothing is happening and boomerang the blame back onto the true victim, further making her question her own reality. They may even try to convince others, and even themselves, that they are the victims. Don’t be fooled. They are not victims.

Abusers want their victims to spend their time wondering what they did wrong, but the only thing they did “wrong” was threaten their inflated ego by simply existing in their vicinity. Their tactics come from a need to control their environment and manipulate the people around them so that their world is centered around the one and only thing that matters: themselves. 

Some Mental Health Professionals Misunderstand Psychological Abuse

During my years in the mental health system, I tried bringing up some of these situations to the clinicians I saw, believing that they would be able to help me understand the painful symptoms I was experiencing in my body as a result. What I learned, though, was that many medical professionals don’t understand this type of abuse and will even go as far as to blame and retraumatize the victim further. 

After these gut-wrenching experiences with professionals I opened my heart to, I took active steps to seek out experts trained to handle victims of psychological abuse. The professional I started working with was so helpful, and she was open about being a survivor herself. 

Having felt victimized by other mental health professionals when I first met with her, I still wasn’t sure if what I had endured was abuse or if I was truly a victim. I had a list of all the things I had experienced as a result of what I had been through, many of which the medical system had previously written off as “all in my head,” giving me outlandish diagnoses. I also “confessed” all my reactions to the abuse along the lines of fight, flight, freeze, and fawn reactions. Some of those trauma responses were made out of dissociation. I felt so guilty for these reactions, and I felt like this professional needed to know how “awful” I was for making my abusers uncomfortable with my attempts to reconcile the tension. In my case, I was not a victim of just one psychological abuser. I was a victim of more than one perpetrator, and they banded together to target me, feeding off each other. 

After going through my laundry list of symptoms and reactions with this professional, I put my notebook down and looked up at her with eyes full of tears. I waited for her to tell me that I was a horrible person and that I had done everything wrong. I waited for her to laugh at me. I waited for her to tell me I was crazy. I waited for her to tell me that perhaps I was the abuser myself. And I waited for her to kick me out of her office since I was probably too much to deal with. 

She paused for a while and looked me in the eyes, saying, “You did nothing wrong. And it’s not just in your head. Everything you’ve shared tells me that you were targeted by psychological abusers.” 

Getting that validation was incredible for me. As a survivor herself and an expert researcher on the subject, nothing phased her—she had heard it all. She reassured me that everything I was experiencing was perfectly normal. I felt so seen, validated, and heard for the first time in so long. It often takes someone who has survived the same thing to truly understand where a victim is coming from, and I finally received that validation from someone who understood. As I looked into the eyes of another survivor who had been in my exact shoes, even though she was a trained professional much older, both of our eyes teared up, and we shared a humbling moment of our hearts touching one another. My work with her was transformative in understanding the reality of what I had been through and overcoming my self-guilt. 

Many Do Not Understand It, But Psychological Abuse is Insidious

Psychological abuse is real, and it is insidious. There are times when flashbacks and emotions still come up for me, but I implement grounding and nervous system regulation tools to remind myself that I am safe.

Survivors, while you may feel incredibly isolated in healing from this despicable form of hidden abuse, know that there is a community of C-PTSD survivors who have been or are in your shoes. We are all healing together. From one survivor to another, you are so strong, and I believe that you can overcome it.  

Photo by Lil Artsy on Pexels

Guest Post Disclaimer: Any and all information shared in this guest blog post is intended for educational and informational purposes only. Nothing in this blog post, nor any content on CPTSDfoundation.org, is a supplement for or supersedes the relationship and direction of your medical or mental health providers. Thoughts, ideas, or opinions expressed by the writer of this guest blog post do not necessarily reflect those of CPTSD Foundation. For more information, see our Privacy Policy and Full Disclaimer.

Natalie Rose

My name is Natalie, and I am a survivor of about 13 years of absolute psychological torture from Complex PTSD symptoms. For the longest time, I thought I was inherently sick and broken beyond repair. I spent over a decade running around in circles in the medical system trying to figure out what was “wrong” with me and how to “fix” it.

♡ What is Complex PTSD? ♡

Complex PTSD symptoms come from severe, prolonged, and numerous incidents of trauma, typically of a relational nature. Symptoms can come from any type of trauma, though, and the trauma doesn’t necessarily have to stem from childhood — adults can develop CPTSD as well. Trauma can damage the brain and shrink the hippocampus, causing many of the symptoms of CPTSD. I decided to go public with my story to be a voice for the voiceless. There are too many survivors being told CPTSD is a lifelong sentence, and they are not being given the tools they need to overcome their symptoms.

♡ My Story ♡

I endured multiple types of traumas starting at around age thirteen, including numerous situations of both individual and large-group interpersonal cruelty. Some of these situations forced me to switch environments. My body couldn’t fathom what was happening, and my nervous system shut down. I saw danger everywhere, operated in a panicked survival mode, and lived in fear, anxiety, and isolation. I did my best to appear “normal” on the outside, keep a smile on my face, and control what was happening on the inside, distracting myself with extreme workaholism and doing nice things for others. I took active steps to keep branching out in confidence again, but these traumas kept piling onto each other and overlapping. I wasn’t ready to give up yet, though, because I knew my family and friends would be distraught if I did. The most difficult and heartbreaking part of my story is that the two communities I set out to seek healing in—religion and the medical system itself—caused further trauma when some religious leaders, congregation members, and medical professionals chose to take advantage of my vulnerability for their own motives. In most of these situations, I didn’t even realize I was a victim until outsiders pointed it out for me and that my vulnerability made me a target of malicious people. Each future situation of being targeted was just salt on the wound of the original incident.

♡ My Struggles to Find Answers ♡

What I went through all those years was so severe, and my symptoms and physical body reactions as a result were so excruciating that I went as far as to see a neurologist, concerned that my symptoms were the result of some sort of nervous system disorder. However, he returned with no paperwork in his hands to inform me that there was nothing wrong with me but that I was simply completely traumatized, and my body reacted accordingly. I finally realized that my symptoms were not the result of an inherent mental or physical illness and began to take a trauma-based approach to my healing after many years of believing that I was “sick” for the rest of my life. My true progress began when I finally rejected the lies that were told to me that I would have to manage my symptoms for the rest of my life and made the decision to believe that I was fully capable of healing from my excruciating pain.

♡ Finding My Own Healing ♡

I am excited to share tips for natural, somatic, and holistic healing that have helped me overcome things like dissociation, flashbacks, sleep challenges, anxiety, hypervigilance, and more. I began to pursue unique methods of healing after many years of not seeing much progress through westernized care, and this was the catalyst for fast-tracking my healing. I aim to help survivors overcome their feelings of self-guilt, blame, and humiliation and help them realize that their bodies had normal reactions to abnormal situations.

I’m so glad I didn’t give up when my pain felt unbearable. I know what I’ve survived. I know the work I’ve put in to overcome it. I am finally living a life of consistent peace and contentment, and I am sharing my story from the other side. I hope to encourage other survivors that there was never anything wrong with them to begin with and that they are capable of living healthy, happy, and fulfilled lives. I aim to live my life in love of both others and myself, understanding that everyone has a story of their own. I am grateful to the CPTSD Foundation for giving me an opportunity to share my story.

♡ Personal Blog ♡

To learn more about my healing journey, please visit my personal blog, “Little Cabin Life,” at:
littlecabinlife.com

NPD is a complex mental health condition characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance, a need for excessive attention and admiration, and a lack of empathy. People with this diagnosis also display unhealthy emotional patterns that may include a sense of grandiosity, entitlement, and preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, and ideal love.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, 5^th Edition (DSM-5) places NPD in the Cluster B Personality Disorders category. Left untreated, NPD can lead to significant challenges in relationships and work.

Understanding NPD requires moving beyond common misconceptions and stereotypes. Myths about narcissism result from a lack of knowledge – leading to stigma, misunderstanding, inadequate support, unfair treatment, and prolonging the time they and those close to them have to live with the adverse consequences of an untreated medical condition.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder – a Deeper Dive

NPD is a condition that goes beyond slightly exaggerated self-confidence or occasional self-centeredness. The DSM-5 defines NPD as a person having a grandiose sense of self-importance, exaggerating achievements and talents, and expecting to be recognized as superior even without commensurate achievements. Individuals with this diagnosis can also exhibit a preoccupation with fantasies of success, power, beauty, and idealization.

Mental health professionals look for a combination of behaviors and attitudes before assigning an NPD diagnosis, such as:

• an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance;
• indulging in fantasies of great success, power, brilliance, or beauty;
• establishing relationships with high-status or prominent people;
• arrogance and haughtiness towards others, or
• grandiose expectations of recognition and praise far beyond what they deserve.

These traits are deeply ingrained in NPD sufferers, consistently influencing their behavior and interactions with others. They help to mask their fragile self-esteem, which is highly dependent on external validation.

A lack of empathy opens another window to understanding the narcissist. They find it difficult, if not impossible, to understand or relate to the emotions and experiences of others. This lack of empathy often comes with a lack of accountability and a transactional approach to relationships.

Despite their outward display of confidence, individuals with NPD are highly sensitive to criticism and perceived slights. They may react angrily or go to great lengths to avoid or discredit any perceived sources of criticism. They may appear charming and charismatic, but these social skills are deployed to gain approval and admiration, rendering personal relationships to a superficial and transactional status. They may become envious of others’ successes, where competitive and resentful behavior places a strain on relationships.

Like many psychological disorders, narcissism is a spectrum disorder. It can range from healthy self-belief to pathological narcissism. At the mild end of this spectrum lies what can be termed ‘healthy self-belief.’ This involves a balanced sense of self-worth and confidence. People who possess this are capable of empathy, can form meaningful relationships, and can handle criticism constructively.

Narcissism can be considered a spectrum disorder, ranging from healthy self-confidence to pathological narcissism. On the lower end, people can have a balanced sense of self-worth, develop meaningful relationships, and accept constructive criticism. Moving further along the spectrum, symptoms may be noticeable but not debilitating. Individuals with subclinical narcissism may exhibit self-centered behaviors and a desire for admiration.

NPD sits at the pathological end of the spectrum, and behaviors associated with it reflect a profound dysfunction that affects one’s ability to maintain healthy relationships and to function effectively in society.

Finally, at the extreme end of the spectrum lies malignant narcissism. This is a severe form of narcissism that combines the traits of NPD with antisocial behaviors, paranoia, and aggression. Malignant narcissism is characterized by a profound lack of empathy, a propensity for cruelty, and a willingness to harm others without remorse.

Understanding Differences Between Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder

There is also an important distinction to be drawn between NPD and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Both are Cluster B personality disorders; however, they have distinct characteristics and should not be confused with one another.

As we have discussed, NPD is primarily characterized by grandiosity, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration. Individuals with NPD view themselves as superior to others and may exploit relationships to achieve their own ends. Conversely, BPD is marked by emotional instability in relationships and within their own self-image. Individuals with BPD experience intense emotional fluctuations, fear of abandonment, and difficulty maintaining stable relationships.

There is a contrast when assessing emotional responses as well. Those suffering from NPD may display superficial charm and self-assurance but are prone to feelings of anger or rage when their sense of superiority is threatened. In contrast, individuals with BPD often exhibit intense emotional reactions and mood swings, including periods of depression and anxiety. These may be heightened when there is perceived rejection or abandonment.

A final key difference can be viewed through the prism of relationships. NPD-influenced relationships tend to be one-sided, with individuals seeking admiration and control. BPD-influenced relationships are often tumultuous, with a pattern of intense and unstable interactions.

Dispelling Myths About Narcissistic Personality Disorder

By debunking common myths about NPD, we can remove bias and unfair generalizations from the conversation about this disorder. Some of the most common are listed below.

• Myth: Narcissists are Just Self-Centered or Egotistical – a common misconception about NPD is that it is simply an exaggerated form of self-centeredness or egotism. This characterization oversimplifies the complexities of the disorder. NPD involves pervasive patterns of behavior that deeply affect an individual’s interactions, self-perception, and emotional regulation.
• Myth: Narcissists are Always Successful and Charismatic – while some people with NPD can be outwardly charming and may achieve success in certain areas, this is not universally true. NPD can manifest in a variety of ways, and not all individuals with the disorder exhibit the charm and success often associated with narcissism. Many struggle with interpersonal relationships, work instability, and emotional turmoil.
• Myth: Narcissism is Incurable and Untreatable – this misconception stems from the belief that individuals with NPD are incapable of change due to their lack of empathy and resistance to acknowledging their flaws. However, while NPD presents significant treatment challenges, it is not beyond the reach of effective therapy.

Psychotherapeutic approaches, particularly those focusing on long-term behavioral changes and emotional regulation, have been shown to help individuals with NPD. These options are discussed in more depth below.

Causes and Risk Factors Associated with Narcissistic Personality Disorder

NPD can affect anyone, but certain segments of the population are more likely to be affected based on their physical attributes (genetics) or life experiences.

Certain genetic predispositions could make an individual more vulnerable to developing personality disorders, including NPD. While not determinative on its own, this link suggests that genetic factors play a role in who gets diagnosed with NPD.

Childhood is an essential time for laying out healthy emotional patterns and behaviors. Trauma, neglect, and inconsistent or excessively critical parenting can significantly impact a child’s emotional development. A child’s experiences of excessive praise or criticism, or parents who exhibit narcissistic traits and behaviors, can lead to an unhealthy sense of self-importance or a profound lack of self-esteem. These may be precursors and lead to the development of narcissistic traits as a form of psychological defense.

While we can’t say with certainty what causes NPD, we can say with confidence that the condition is treatable.

Treatment Options and Approaches for Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Psychotherapy remains the gold standard for treating NPD. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is often employed to help individuals with NPD recognize and alter maladaptive thought patterns and behaviors. This approach focuses on challenging grandiose thinking and improving empathy. Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is also effective, particularly in teaching skills for emotional regulation, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness.

Prescription medication administered in partnership with a healthcare professional who can monitor, gauge, and adjust it as needed can be beneficial for managing conditions such as depression, anxiety, or mood disorders that appear alongside NPD. These medications can also clear a path for a more effective therapeutic intervention.

Finally, the importance of support networks and access to resources play a critical role in the treatment and recovery of individuals with NPD. Supportive relationships with family, friends, and peers can provide stability and encouragement, fostering an environment conducive to positive change. Where these relationships are lacking or are a contributing factor to ongoing NPD, self-help groups can offer essential support.

Key Takeaways

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a medical condition, and it is treatable. The hope is that after reading this blog, you will have a better understanding of NPD, how it is defined, how it manifests, and how it can be treated.

Perhaps the most crucial point is the understanding that individuals with NPD need those around them to approach them with empathy and a willingness to understand their struggles. There is no doubt that the behaviors that come with NPD can be challenging. But hopefully, you can now appreciate how individuals with NPD often grapple with deep-seated insecurities and a fragile sense of self.

A powerful stigma, unhelpful labeling, misunderstanding, and prejudice by those who don’t understand NPD keep people from seeking help and receiving appropriate support. By educating ourselves and others about the nuances of personality disorders, we can foster a culture of acceptance and openness, encouraging those affected to seek the help they need.

Promoting mental health awareness not only benefits individuals with personality disorders but also enhances our collective ability to support one another in navigating the complexities of mental health challenges. In doing so, we pave the way for a more compassionate and informed society where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

We believe in the resilience of the human spirit, and that survivors deserve to come out of the fog into the light. The goals of Scars to STARs (Survivors of Toxic Abusive Relationships) and TAR Network™ include helping survivors to find awareness, transformation, and self-love; both aim to educate, empower, and energize people as they reclaim their sense of self-worth, rebuild their lives, and emerge stronger than ever. Our international programs are here to support you every step of the way, while breaking the chains of transgenerational trauma.

TAR Anon™ is a global fellowship dedicated to supporting STARs (Survivors of Toxic Abusive Relationships). As a program of the TAR Network, a 501(c)(3) global charity, TAR Anon provides a safe and supportive community for people affected by narcissistic abuse, trauma, and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD), and caregivers in high-conflict situations.

STAR Network

STAR Network, is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization committed to Support, Treatment, and Prevention of Narcissistic Abuse and Attachment Disorders. Narcissistic abuse is one of the most devastating triggers for CPTSD, robbing survivors of their authenticity. STAR Network empowers STARs (Survivors of Toxic Abusive Relationships) with its transformational program, TAR Anon™. STAR Network is the leading global trauma support network, offering free resources to heal individuals and families impacted by trauma, PTSD and CPTSD. Their mission is to transform lives, reduce relapse rates, and create a lasting, inclusive community of support.

https://starnetwork.org/

https://drjamie.com/

https://taranon.org/

https://tartales.org/