Part 5 of 5. Read the previous post here: https://cptsdfoundation.org/2024/10/09/the-weaponization-of-ambiguity-a-call-to-rename-npd-to-support-victims-of-sociopathic-violence-in-a-world-of-rising-narcissism-part-4/
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 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.
We could start with violence and criminal. Those two words accurately describe my experience
One of the most helpful YT channels I have found is from Dr. Jay Reid. Why, you ponder? Because he was one of the first content providers I found who focused on the Scapegoat instead of on the narc. “Why they do what they do, what makes them ‘tick,'” etc. Honestly, who gives an excrement?
I would rather we focus terms of the abused. And also, differentiate between narc abuse between siblings, between adults and between a child and caregiver / parent. I do not in any way mean to negate anyone else’s experience, but it is different to experience the abuse as a totally powerless and dependent child than as an otherwise autonomous adult with self-agency.
Maybe it wasn’t pre-1950s or in areas where women tend to not drive, read or have jobs and careers.
At any rate, I’d rather focus on the victims of the abuse, not the abuser. That said, I do realize that we have to ‘characterize’ the abuser in some manner. I tend to appreciate the simple perhaps archaic old-school phrase “Morally insane.” Sure, morals vary, but most people can agree over the millennia that taking pleasure from being the cause of another’s non-consensual pain, loss of self, job, reputation or life is morally wrong. There’s something ‘wrong’ with people who do that.
My abuse happened in the 70s and 80s where beating your child was accepted, and acting defiant / hateful towards one parent was considered ‘normal teen angst.’ My children were not nearly as defiant as I was. I was that way because I was forced into and out of relationships, forced to take on beliefs that I didn’t want, forced to act in ways against my own integrity and forced to take blame for being forced into doing those things.
I again mean to not negate physical sexual assault; it’s real, it hurts and it can change your neural networks permanently. I know that for a fact.
I characterize my mother’s treatment of me as “Life rape.” Because someone forced their will on me and forced me to live in a way that I had to adapt in order to stay alive and somewhat sane. That’s effectively what rape is.
I made decisions well into my adulthood for the sake of getting her to stop nagging me / trying to control me. I married complete scumbags, because it made her happy (to see me miserable and being abused by proxies). Plus, she had the hots for one of them, calling him her ‘soul mate’ in front of me.
I tend to like things simple and blunt. Such as “Child of an abuser.” “Partner of an abuser.” “Sibling of an abuser.” We do tend to be the ‘identified’ patient and the one most likely to see psychological intervention for own issues.
There is a belief that you can be abused by a narcissists as an adult even if you were never abused as a child…but I contend that there had to have been ‘something’ that happened that made you vulnerable to them, blind to their evils.
Something that made you accept the ratty pair of mittens they offered you on a cold winter day, the same old pair they offered to everyone else; you had no mittens and were freezing, so you saw value in them. While everyone else already had their own warm, fuzzy mittens and didn’t need the raggedy ones the narcissist had to offer.
We must ask ourselves, “Why didn’t I have any of my own mittens?”