In July 2020, eleven months since we first went no-contact, my father wrote me his own obituary.

Entitled “Who I Am on the Way,” my father described in the third person his early profound religious experiences (“[a]s if he’d written John 21:25” himself), how for him, “making love was a continuous, collaborative art form,” and even included a suspiciously short list of his flaws, such as his ability to “speak truth to power” and “yell without raising [his] voice.” Most disconcerting to me still is his choice of words when he wrote that he “shared Thoreau’s aim to ‘suck the marrow out of life.’” One thing is certain. My father always sucked the life out of me.

At the time, his latest attempt to hoover me back into a relationship with him was traumatic in the extreme. Reading it now, “Who I Am on the Way” is, more than anything, educational. Painstakingly self-aggrandizing (I can just imagine him hunched over the blue light of the laptop he claimed to hate, typing away with two fingers at three in the morning), my father’s obituary is an admission, an unwitting invitation to bear witness to the insecurities that corrode his soul. It is also – in all its entitlement, grandiosity, and lack of insight or boundaries – my original case study of narcissism and narcissistic abuse.

Contemporary research defines narcissism as a chronic set of personality traits characterized by significant impairments to interpersonal functioning, primarily resulting from insecure attachments in early childhood. Dr. Ramani Durvasula defines narcissistic personality disorder (or NPD) as a learned behaviour pattern that causes harm to others.[1] Unlike most personality disorders, in which the person most negatively impacted is the person with the disorder, narcissism has the most profoundly negative impact on those affected by the narcissist, as the traits they exhibit are, by definition, interpersonally antagonistic and damaging. Experts characterize narcissistic traits as including, but not limited to, entitlement, grandiosity, lack of empathy, validation seeking, superficiality, interpersonal antagonism, insecurity, hypersensitivity, contempt, arrogance, and poor emotional regulation (especially rage). [2] These traits act as shields against narcissistic injury (i.e., a narcissist’s hypersensitivity to signs and indications of feeling undervalued or unappreciated) and internalized shame. While they may succeed in the short term, these traits lead to considerable difficulties in making and sustaining healthy relationships as an adult.[3]

These traits further make pathological narcissism extremely difficult, if not impossible, to treat. Mental health clinicians agree that, so far, no empirical studies have successfully identified a reliably effective psychotherapeutic or psychopharmacological treatment for narcissism.[4] For one thing, narcissists’ bullying behaviour extends to their therapists, considering the unlikely event that they are willing to seek help in the first place. Giancarlo Dimaggio observes that:

“[Narcissistic] [c]lients may involve therapists in different maladaptive relational patterns, pushing them to feel angry, devalued, helpless and inadequate and to disengage from the therapy process…Very often patients barely accept they are in treatment to deal with their own personality issues and only ask for symptom relief. This is one source of impotence and frustration in therapists, who eventually ask themselves: ‘Is this person really suffering? And if he does, is he willing to helped?’”[5]

Bottom line, narcissists are so interpersonally difficult and so unwilling to accept responsibility for their actions that they alienate even trained professionals. It is my belief, therefore, that we should focus on prevention, not treatment, of narcissism, the most effective method being psychoeducation.

Psychoeducation refers to psychological or therapeutic interventions presented in an educational format. These interventions can take the form of ‘passive materials’ such as pamphlets, informational websites, social media posts, and email listservs, or more ‘active’ methods like group exercises, workshops, therapy sessions, and training.[6] Psychoeducation has been proven in many contexts to be effective in both treating and preventing mental disorders[7] and, in the case of narcissistic abuse, “may be the most important part of the treatment.”[8] As Durvasula notes, “[m]any clients just don’t know how narcissistic patterns work – they often fall unto attribution biases and blame themselves.”[9] Given that narcissistic abuse also occurs in cultural contexts where abuse, particularly of marginalized people, is often normalized and romanticized, psychoeducation in narcissism does the powerful work of de-normalizing these behaviours and uncoupling them from cultural images of power and success. As the Hans Christian Anderson story famously said, the emperor has no clothes.   

At the dawn of Donald Trump’s second U.S. presidency, we are entering a dangerous era of narcissists in power. Given that, I argue that we must include another component in regular discourses on narcissism: gender. Despite growing awareness of narcissism, issues of gender and misogyny continually go unaddressed and unchecked. In a recent profile of mass shooters on The New Yorker Radio Hour,[10] which cited drug use, access to weapons, mental health issues, and fame-seeking among some of the main factors in an individual’s propensity to commit a mass shooting, profilers failed to account for gender as the single biggest factor (99% of mass shooters in the U.S. are male).[11] Traditional masculinity, as this example illustrates, is so interchangeable with violence that we often fail to see it as the threat it undoubtedly is. As Clare Bielby notes, “because masculinity and violence so often mutually constitute each other, masculinity has tended to be ignored in discussions of so-called political violence and perpetration, functioning…as the unmarked gender.”[12] Yet violence is gendered, and until we as a global community challenge gendered concepts that devalue male emotion and vulnerability and overvalue power, our world will continue to be a violent place.

My father was a narcissist, but he was also a man. A man who had learned – from his father and his father’s father and anyone else who subscribed to the patriarchy – that vulnerability equaled weakness, dominance equaled strength, and that, as a husband and father, he was entitled to control the women in his life. And yet, he would have been so much happier, so much more loved, if he hadn’t. My mother, sister, and I, feeling safe, would have loved him.

In Lundy Bancroft’s Why Does He Do That, he says, “[t]he better we understand abusers, the more we can create homes and relationships that are havens of love and safety.”[13] Psychoeducation in narcissism is a crucial step toward that goal, and I welcome the difficult walk ahead.  

[1] Durvasula, Ph.D. “Don’t You Know Who I Am?”: How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility. (Post Hill Press, 2021), 5.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Flett, Gordon L., et al. “The Anti-Mattering Scale versus the General Mattering Scale in Pathological Narcissism: How an Excessive Need to Matter Informs the Narcissism and Mattering Constructs.” (Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, vol. 41, no. 6, 27 Oct. 2022), 621.

[4] Caligor, Eve, et al. “Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Diagnostic and clinical challenges.” American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 172, no. 5, 1 May 2015.

[5] Dimaggio, Giancarlo. “Treatment principles for pathological narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder.” (Journal of Psychotherapy Integration, vol. 32, no. 4, Dec. 2022) 409.

[6] Donker, Tara, et al. “Psychoeducation for depression, anxiety and psychological distress: A meta-analysis.” (BMC Medicine, vol. 7, no. 1, Dec. 2009), 2; Burman, Erica. “Fanon, Foucault, Feminisms: Psychoeducation, Theoretical Psychology, and Political Change.” (Theory & Psychology, vol. 26, no. 6, 1 Aug. 2016), 707.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Durvasula, Ramani. “Navigating Narcissism: Giving Our Clients a Compass.” (Psychology Today, 5 Dec. 2019), Paragraph 4.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Remnick, David, et al. “What Makes a Mass Shooter?” The New Yorker Radio Hour, 27 May 2022.

[11] Martin, Michel, and Emma Bowman. “Why Nearly All Mass Shooters Are Men.” All Things Considered, NPR, 27 May 2021, Line 6.

[12] Bielby, Clare, and Jeffrey Stevenson Murer. Perpetrating Selves: Doing Violence, Performing Identity. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 4.

[13] Bancroft, Lundy. Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men. (Penguin Random House, 2008), 36.

Photo by Scott Warman on Unsplash

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.

Sophia Rehmus

Going no contact can be one of the hardest decisions you will ever have to make. Severing ties with family is a self-determined and empowered step toward ending emotional, physical, and psychological abuse. The consensus is that the choice to go no contact falls into three distinct categories:

1. Limiting family connections and the amount of time spent with family or avoiding specific family members or events that are the most triggering and abusive. (This could be a first option before fully going no contact and might feel like the best long-term option for your situation.)
2. Deliberately choosing to go no contact and removing toxic family members from your life.
3. The choiceless choice – when the choice to go no contact is automatic, made for you, or when there is literally no other choice to make but to sever all contact.

You may find that one choice may feel too much, another too little, and one may feel just right. No matter where you are in the process of making this decision, it is never easy. Making this choice is much more consequential and important than porridge, or the comfort of household furniture, and should not be taken lightly. No offense, Goldilocks.

For many going no contact means cutting ties and having no interactions or communication with a dysfunctional family of origin or removing yourself and moving farther away geographically. Going no contact is an empowering step to take, but it is also challenging to navigate this kind of break from toxic family members and extended interpersonal relationships. The web of players, loyalists, and enablers can often work together to undermine your decision and cause more trauma, shame, and harassment, all in an effort to get you back into your assigned role within the family structure. The abuse you receive leads to the relief that abusers count on to manage their own demons. Losing you as the scapegoat, whipping post, and innocent vessel to project all their own anger, fear, insecurities, and mental health issues onto is a loss for them and their egos. However, unfortunately, they will generally find another person to traumatize and project onto if you cut ties, so they can continue to avoid and deny their own issues and revel in seeing pain and suffering play out in another.

Concerns might arise over the timing of your decision or you may experience invalidating and sabotaging thoughts about separating from family despite your own mental health needs. You may find yourself ruminating over the consequences, fallout, or backlash that you may suffer, or equivocating and negotiating with yourself to decide if the situation is “bad enough” to move forward with severing ties completely. If you find yourself normalizing or minimizing toxic behavior this could be a sign of trauma bonding and a way of avoiding this very difficult decision.

Trauma bonding is developed over time and lives within the nervous system. It is the glue that holds an abusive relationship together. Every time your fight/flight survival response is activated in conjunction with sustained trauma by an abuser, an adrenaline connection is established. Repetitive abuse coupled with a familial abuser or abusers can create a confusing narrative that muddles the boundaries between healthy and toxic attachment. When we are taught that mothers, fathers, and family in general are supposed to love us, but they hurt us instead, a psychological conflict or cognitive dissonance occurs that creates insecurity, shame, low self-esteem, and internalized wounding. This repetitive dissonance, abuse, and hormonal triggering can create a labyrinth of misperceptions that confuse abuse and neglect with love.

In my own experience, it was never a decision I made willingly. It was a choiceless choice. I felt lucky in some small way that the choice was one that was clear and made for me. My family, especially my mother, had pushed me to my limit. There were many growing and considerably toxic moments that had been coming to a head – and then the last straw broke. I was at a family event and my niece overheard a very degrading and hurtful statement that my mother said to me. My mother was usually able to hide her jabs and hateful actions toward me, but,  on this occasion, she was revealed. The look on my niece’s face towards my mother was absolute disbelief and disgust – and then she looked at me to see my reaction. My niece explained her outrage to me, as she was confused and concerned for me. I was so used to being treated cruelly and wasn’t sure what to say but was uncomfortable and overwhelmed by the fact that someone else was now in the toxic pool with me and had seen a small portion of what was going on. I was stunned. The level of shame I experienced by having a witness to my abuse was terrifying at that moment and is still felt today, and the tears that arise as I write these words and relive that moment are a time capsule of disgrace still held deep within me.

Although I am a minimalist, I found a thread of similarity when I realized that hoarders often experience a sense of feeling violated, left vulnerable, and exposed when their homes are cleaned and organized. The mountains of clutter, clothing, belongings, and random, everyday things are put in place initially to isolate themselves; hide behind feelings of embarrassment, shame, and pain; and shield and protect themselves from others and what they fear. I did not realize the full scope of my hidden feelings and triggered wounds at the time, but once someone else saw the truth of what was happening, the hidden hoard, you might say, I soon realized how exposed and vulnerable I felt in that moment.

There was always a big part of me that wanted others to understand what was happening behind closed doors, to help and save me, to find out about the abuse and neglect at the hands of my mother, and how she had recruited family members and others to her side as proxies and enablers. Yet, when my niece looked at me, I felt so much shame and humiliation that I was the one exposed and left feeling unprotected and completely devastated. It was as if the truth had been hiding behind layers of trauma and neglect that were now cleared away, and visible for all to see. While the truth was revealed so too was a level of shame that I could not abide. It was as if my own niece could now see my unworthiness, undeserving self, and unlovability. She could see that my own mother and family did not care for me or love me and treated me with disdain.

At that moment, as much as I love my niece, and knowing how much she loves me, I felt a breaking point within me and knew that I could not sit through another family event. I could never have her or any other person witness my degradation and abuse at the hands of my mother and family or see me exposed. I also realized what I had been putting up with, accepting, and how retraumatizing each encounter with my family was and would be in the future. This event was the last straw, and when it occurred, it was clear and severe enough to make my decision to go no contact. I knew then that I was done. It was never a solid thought or a statement that I made to myself. I don’t think I had even entertained the idea prior, but, at that moment, I knew I could no longer play the part I had been playing in my family or feel like a victim of their abuse one more day.

I ended up moving more than 2,000 miles away from my family, which included my extended and loving family of friends and the few members of my family of origin that I trusted. My new home was a place that felt like home to me from the first time I had driven into town and thereafter. I had visited this place frequently over the years and fell in love with the energy, beauty, space, simplicity, and response of my own personal feelings. It seemed like a great place to start building a new life. So, one day, when it felt just right, I hooked up my truck to a U-Haul packed with my belongings, along with my dog and two cats, and left everything behind in hopes of better times ahead.

I remember starting out in my new community and feeling free. It was as if someone turned on a bright light and said, “Now, go be authentically you.” I did not have to hide or wonder who I might know around every corner, or who was going to judge, ostracize, harm, or hurt me, or just do something randomly mean and demeaning towards me. The experience and freedom to be authentically myself had never been more realized than it was in my new town. My shame was nowhere to be found because no one had access to my past, my history, or my family that recruited others to join in abusing and hurting me. My family was well known in my hometown, so the feeling of freedom, peace, and relief that no one knew me in my new world was transformative.

My relationships continue to ebb and flow as all involved get older. I feel much more empowered and have developed very strong boundaries when dealing with family members, and others who push their limits with me, but there is still unhealed trauma that gets activated and boils to the surface. I struggle, heal, and fall again and again, but I keep getting back up. I write and share and listen and heal one Friday Edition and HeartBalm Healing podcast at a time. There is growth, expansion, and evolution that happens when going no contact and facing the next steps of rebuilding a life for yourself that is grounded in healing, self-loving actions, and an empowered HeartSpace that grows as we grow. It is an ongoing garden that needs tending, nourishing, harvesting, and a lot of love, compassion, understanding, rest, forgiveness, and gratitude.

Getting support from a trauma-informed professional can help make this transition more manageable and provide tools, structure, and a developed plan for moving forward. When you begin to remove toxic people from your life, you begin to understand that who you surround yourself with is entirely your choice. These empowered and positive actions support your own wellness and healing journey, and you begin to understand and embrace your own magnificent, deserving, authentic, and loving self. You nurture the ground you walk on and begin to find all the ways that you are deserving and that you are worthy of everything good!

I no longer look to my abusers with any expectation of remorse, apology, restitution, restoration, or relationship. I’m at peace, accepting that they won’t and can’t help me out of the mess they created. But,  I’m the best qualified for that job anyway and I’m happy with the job I’m doing.

— Christina Enevoldsen, The Rescued Soul: The Writing Journey for the Healing of Incest and Family Betrayal

For other helpful articles, tools, and topics visit the HeartBalm archives, and for healing-guided meditations please visit the HeartBalm Meditation Toolbox on the home page. To subscribe or to find out more information go to the HeartBalm website.

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.

Sunny Lynn, OMC

Sunny Lynn, OMC is a spiritual counselor, writer, poet, photographer, meditator, and nature lover on a mission of transmuting complex trauma through self-love, healing, and bringing balm to hearts everywhere. She has a blog and podcast – HeartBalm at heartbalm.substack.com that speaks on the topic of self-care and self-love, mindfulness and healing while living with CPTSD.

www.heartbalmhealing.com

This piece shall focus on what to do with the inevitable grief and guilt that often follows going no contact.

Part II – Going no contact with your family

Part I – Going no contact

Ways to Go No Contact with Your Family of Origin

There are many ways you can utilize when going no contact with your family of origin. Going no contact is to break away from your family and discourage them from reaching out to you.

One can expect the family to try to interrupt your determination to remain away by spreading rumors of how horrible you are or how sick you must be to “hurt them like that.” While these rumors are highly inconvenient and may cause you to want to lash out, it is critical to keep your wits about you and not respond.

You should block them from all your social media accounts, such as Facebook or Twitter, and your telephone. If you must, change your phone number and stay away from social media for a while to help you feel sane.

You might want to consider blocking friends of the family and other family and friends besides your immediate family as they might carry back to your family information you do not want them to have. Even innocent information leaked by someone can remind your family and spur an abusive person to reach out to you again or once again spread lies about you.

Be cautious about your accounts by adding a two-step authentication to your online account and apps, and in some cases, you may want to watch for attempts to hack your bank accounts. The best way to avoid problems is to change your passwords to something they cannot guess.

Dealing with Guilt When Going No Contact

Self-doubt and guilt often accompany going no contact with family members who have entangled in your life to cause you to be dependent upon them. They may have said they need you or have said similar to your friends who tell you about what they said. Their words and reactions to your going no contact may spur enormous feelings of guilt that is undeserved.

Lifelong guilt that has built up surrounding your interactions with your family members can make the going no contact process emotionally difficult.

However, there are four things you can do to lessen or destroy the guilt you might be feeling.

Make sure your needs are met. Make sure during the initial days of going no contact, and after that, you are doing your very best self-care and make sure you have what you need to help you get through this trying time. Using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, ensure you have all the components met so you can focus on being happy.

Focus on you. Now might be the first time in your life you have been on your own and responsible for only your needs and not others. You may never have been capable of embracing yourself without judgment without the drama your family of origin placed on you. Spending time with friends who make you feel good and lift you up and that you add interests to your life such as exercise or a hobby, is critical. Doing these things reconnects or connects you for the first time to things that make you happy and feel joy. Work on developing self-confidence and loving yourself unconditionally no matter what trauma your family has put you through.

Pay attention to how much better things are for you now that you have gone no contact. Since you have gone no contact, it is assumed that you have discovered and are remembering that you were abused and made to live in a toxic family environment. In the early days of no contact, you might feel you overreacted and worry about the people you cut off from your life thinking you are bad. It is vital to recall how bad things were when your family member(s) were treating you poorly and making your life a living hell. Pay close attention to how much better your days go without contact from your family and the peace you have found.

Allow yourself to feel guilty. While this may seem counterintuitive, allowing yourself to feel the guilt you experience will help you examine yourself better. Once you have acknowledged your guilt’s existence, you can find ways to work through it. Perhaps you are more empathetic towards your family than they were for you; if so, you can know that you are a good and loving person. The challenge is not to give in to feelings that can derail you by believing it wasn’t really necessary. You would not have gone no contact if it were not necessary.

Trust yourself and your decision.

Dealing with Grief When Going No-Contact

Often when people choose to go no contact, they feel grief for their actions, at least for a while. After all, the family you just disowned was all you knew for most of your life, even if they were abusive.

You might be experiencing feelings of betrayal from their treatment of you and a loss of family connection, identity, and support, although those attributes were not given freely or often. If you have begun the process of healing from childhood abuse by family members, you are highly vulnerable to feeling grief for the family you never had.

Your family of origin might be trying to use toxic shame on you to force you back into their dysfunctional fold, making you feel unreal and like you betrayed them when it was they who betrayed you.

You must challenge this toxic shame and the grief it brings to your life by having a more reality-based sense of positive self-identity, potential, worth, agency, and a harmonious relationship with yourself.

There are some steps you can take to minimize the grief you may feel after family estrangement begins.

Remember going no contact will cause grief. Acknowledge to yourself that you are typical when you feel confusion, frustration, anger, fear, hurt, and a myriad of other strong emotions. Use self-compassion to guide yourself through extraditing yourself from a harmful family situation.

Try to avoid fantasizing about abusive family members. If your family of origin was abusive and crazy dysfunctional, they would always be this way. You cannot change someone else; that is impossible. Don’t waste your time thinking they weren’t as bad as you thought as this trap can lead to emotional disaster.

Take time away from triggers. If you find yourself triggered into wanting to reconnect with your abusive family members, do not act at once. Instead, take time away from that thought and allow the triggered flashback to diminish. Remind yourself that the worst is over and that you are no longer in danger. These two realities will strengthen your resolve.

Grieving over the loss of a family, even a dysfunctional one, will happen because you are a good person.

Will I Need To Be No Contact Forever?

The simple answer to the above question is no. You aren’t required by any law or obligation to remain no contact. The choice is yours. Do you want to allow people back into your life that are harmful?

You must decide under what circumstances you would contact and interact with your family of origin after going no contact. Ask yourself some questions.

• Did you intend to go no contact forever?
• What do you do if there is a death in the family?
• Have you reached a point in your healing where you can handle the crap your family will visit on you?
• Have you reached the goals you wanted to, such as finishing therapy?

If you choose to return relations with your family, keep in mind you are not a helpless and dependent person anymore and do not need to play their games or allow them to play games with you.

Ending Our Time Together

Deciding to go no contact with your family of origin is a tough decision that should not be made lightly. Talk to your therapist and think long and hard about leaving before you do.

Weigh the pros and cons of going no contact and do not romanticize it. There is nothing glamorous about feeling the guilt and loneliness you will initially experience from cutting yourself off from the chaos because that is what you’ve always known.

“You are your own refuge
There is no other
You cannot save another
You can only save yourself.”
― Guillaume Musso

“If you want to be happy, you have to study people who are happy. You have to hang out with people that are happy. Life won’t go in the direction you want by simply trying to stay positive in a life you’re not happy with. You have to know what you want and why you truly want it so badly. When you figure that out, then you need to change your current identity in order to fit the type of person you envision would make those dreams come true. Happiness is not reliant on the actions or inactions of other people. It is your “courage in motion” toward your dreams.” ― Shannon L. Alder

Shirley Davis

My name is Shirley Davis and I am a freelance writer with over 40-years- experience writing short stories and poetry. Living as I do among the corn and bean fields of Illinois (USA), working from home using the Internet has become the best way to communicate with the world. My interests are wide and varied. I love any kind of science and read several research papers per week to satisfy my curiosity. I have earned an Associate Degree in Psychology and enjoy writing books on the subjects that most interest me.

www.learnaboutdid.com