The Narcautism spectrum!

Posted on June 6, 2015 by luckyotter

So. Why not take the idea described in my last article to even more absurd extremes. Yes, it’s the Narcautism Spectrum!

This invaluable tool for study was tweeted to me by a blogger, Don “Dr.” Depresso, who was inspired to send it to me because of the article I posted earlier tonight.

All kidding aside, the chart does make sense, but I’m trying to figure out how “malignant narcissism” is where it is on the chart. I think it refers to the fact that MN’s have a high level of cognitive (“cold”) empathy–they KNOW how you feel, and use it against you. It looks like the “intersection” would be where non-narcissistic neurotypicals (most people) would be. The Schizoid is a complete droid–no empathy (either warm or cold) and no social skills.

Narcissism and autism–they go together, like rama lamma lamma ka dinga da dinga dong.

Manic Chart: Narcautism Spectrum
Narcautism Spectrum = intersection of narcissism and autism spectra, shown across two dimensions of empathy. Low affective empathy (not caring how people feel) is related to narcissism, while low cognitive empathy (not knowing how people feel) is related to autism. Chart not drawn to scale.

The idea to draw this chart came from reading the article “Do You Think of Narcissism as an Autistic Spectrum Disorder?” in Psychology Today.

Thx 4 reading,
Dr. Depresso

http://dondepresso.rujic.net/post/116940034025/manic-chart-narcautism-spectrum

Don Depresso, you rock my world!

“The Psychopath Next Door”

Posted on June 4, 2015 by luckyotter

Here is a very interesting but disturbing documentary featuring Dr. Robert Hare, the forensic psychologist who developed The Psychopathy Checklist (which is used routinely in courts of law and police departments to identify psychopaths.) Here, the focus is on the non-prison population of psychopaths, which includes a high percentage of financially successful people in business.

Psychopaths tend to rise to corporate stardom quickly because the qualities they have (ability to focus on a goal, risk-taking, cunning, ruthlessness, etc.) are valued in business, while the ones they don’t have (empathy, guilt, caring, love, etc.) are not. High-functioning psychopathy was behind the 2008 financial crisis, and it’s said here that many banks were actually using Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist to hire new employees!

The video also discusses psychopaths in relationships, how psychopathic brains differ from normal ones, and the causes of psychopathy.

I’ve often noticed how dead-looking the eyes of some of our CEOs and politicians are. It’s like they have no soul. It’s very scary that these are the people who have the most power right now. They are like reptiles. Snakes in suits.

Courtney Love, murderous psychopath?

Posted on May 31, 2015 by luckyotter

DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING ARE THE OPINIONS OF THE AUTHOR. THESE ARE NOT FACTS AND THERE HAS BEEN NO PROOF OF FOUL PLAY.

The two-decade long question of whether or not Kurt Cobain really committed suicide came up between myself and my friend today. It’s been bandied about for years, but it seems no one has ever bothered to take it seriously or re-open the case to further investigate Cobain’s death.

Even though Kurt may have been prone to depressions and shied away from the stardom he achieved as both an early pioneer of the Grunge movement and The Poster Child of Generation X, I never believed he really killed himself. Why would he? He had everything–talent, success as the frontman of Nirvana, a bestselling record, a baby daughter, and a…ahem…new wife who everyone believed was in love with him.

It’s his wife, Courtney Love, we need to take a closer look at here. Most people just take it on faith that Kurt killed himself because his music was dark and depressing and his poetry was dark and depressing, and because he rarely smiled. He had also come from an abusive home and suffered from lifelong depressions and severe stomach problems. Stories of his addiction to heroin abounded in publications like People and Rolling Stone, and on MTV, VH-1, and the nightly news.

But it was also said that he was getting clean when his girlfriend and fellow musician, Courtney Love, became pregnant. He didn’t want to be a drug-addicted new dad. Things looked rosy for awhile. He had several relapses and stints in rehab but heroin isn’t what killed him. If he was depressed, I doubt it was really due to the commercial success of Nirvana’s album Nevermind.

I think Love was gaslighting Cobain, which exacerbated his depression and drug problems. According to Wikipedia,

On March 18, 1994, Love phoned the Seattle police informing them that Cobain was suicidal and had locked himself in a room with a gun. Police arrived and confiscated several guns and a bottle of pills from Cobain, who insisted that he was not suicidal and had locked himself in the room to hide from Love. [italics mine] When questioned by police, Love said that Cobain had never mentioned that he was suicidal and that she had not seen him with a gun.

This is an interesting quote. The first thing that stands out to me is that Cobain felt he needed to hide from Love. Why would he tell police that if it wasn’t true? Sure, he could have been gaslighting her as the crazy one, but something feels off about that to me. Because in this same paragraph we can see that Love is a liar. She tells two different stories to the police: first, that Cobain had locked himself in a room with a gun, and second, denying that she ever said that and insisting Cobain had never said he was suicidal at all! Why would she change her story?

Kurt was found dead in his Seattle home on April 8, 1994, when his daughter, Frances Bean, was less than two years old. He had been shot in the head. Investigations found he had been dead for three days. There was a note, addressed to his childhood friend “Boddah” stating that Cobain wasn’t feeling the excitement of listening to and creating music anymore.

Although there was a note, it seems unlikely to me a suicide would be performed by such means, especially by a man who had easy access to heroin and other drugs and could easily have OD’d and died in a more peaceful manner. Also, why didn’t Love report his death? How could a newly married man with a child not be discovered by his wife for three days? Surely she must have known something.

On the tenth anniversary of Cobain’s death, in 2004, Love and Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain, was published. Its authors believe Kurt’s death could not have been a suicide and argued that the case should be reopened. According to the entry about the book on Wikipedia:

The book is based on 30 hours of revealing audiotaped conversations, exclusively obtained by the authors, between Courtney Love’s private investigator, Tom Grant, and her entertainment attorney, who both dispute the official finding of suicide and believe Cobain was in fact murdered.

The lawyer says on the tapes that she believes the so-called suicide note was “forged or traced.” The authors also interview Cobain’s grandfather, who believes Kurt was the victim of foul play, and Courtney’s father, who also believes he was murdered. In the book, a prominent forensic pathologist examines the known autopsy evidence and claims that the official suicide scenario was “impossible.” She claims that there is compelling and authoritative evidence that Cobain was murdered.

So even Courtney’s own father believes Kurt was murdered! Hank Harrison (Love’s father) couldn’t stand his own daughter (which was documented in the 1998 documentary Kurt and Courtney) and told RadarOnline:

I can’t prove she pulled the trigger, but I can prove her involvement to a high degree of certainty. […]She’s a psychopath, she has a sociopathic personality like I do.

Later, he published his book, Love Kills: The Assassination of Kurt Cobain, which argued that Kurt did not commit suicide but that his own daughter killed him.

According to Wikipedia, Nick Broomfield (the filmmaker who made Kurt and Courtney) decided to investigate Tom Grant’s claim that Cobain was murdered and had his film crew interview people associated with the couple, including Love’s father Hank Harrison, Kurt’s aunt, a former nanny for the couple’s daughter Frances Bean, and several others associated with the couple, including a bandleader named Eldon “El Duce” Hoke, who claimed he had been offered $50,000 by Love to kill her husband.

It’s also telling that Courtney’s overnight rise to fame occurred immediately after her husband’s death. She appeared at the funeral and interviews playing the part of the grieving widow quite well, but how suspicious is it that her band, Hole, released their bestselling album Live Through This FOUR DAYS after Kurt’s death?

Love’s public persona is very narcissistic and she seems to crave attention and adulation even more than most celebrities. She also appears to be emotionally unstable, although in recent years she seems less so. Perhaps her instability was due to drug abuse, but I think that in itself coupled with her unpredictable and prima-donna like behavior points to a personality disordered woman. Based on the way Love acts, I believe her father’s claim that she is sociopathic and that she probably killed her husband.

What would have been Love’s motive though? In my opinion, I think Love was pathologically envious of Kurt’s success, and wanted his fame (which she probably felt he didn’t appreciate) for herself. She hated playing second fiddle. She also knew that the death of a major rock star (at the age of 27 too–Kurt’s entry into the “27 Club” was probably not lost on her) was the best publicity stunt for herself she could pull off. She could play the grieving widowed new mom, garner pity, and ride on the coattails of that to sell her new album.

Tell me Courtney Love isn’t a sociopathic murderer and I’ll tell you Elvis is going to run for President.

Narcissists who love animals and their mothers.

Posted on May 30, 2015 by luckyotter

I’ve noticed something strange about some narcissists that I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere else. Some narcissists, though lacking empathy for other people, seem to have it in spades for animals. Even some psychopathic malignant narcissists are actually very good with non-human creatures. My ex is one of these. He cried like a baby when our dog, Daisy, died of a massive stroke in early 2013. He was always very kind to her and the cats. He used to be beside himself with worry when one of them got sick. The animals seemed to trust him and even preferred him to me! In spite of being No Contact (really, very low contact) with him, I completely trusted him when I had to recently rehome two cats and a dog, all whom I cared about very much (the pets are now staying with my daughter).

But that’s the only time you would ever see him be genuinely kind. Any “kindness” he showed other people was meant to be either manipulative or to impress.

A commenter on another post, discussing her psychopathic ex-lover who is still actively gaslighting her and generally being psychologically abusive, had this to say about him:

The guy I know loves cats. Many of the photographs he sent me have him in photos with kittens in his hands. The photos make him look very loving. Because you would think that any man that relates to cats and kittens in photos would be loving, gentle and harmless.
[…] His nickname for me was Kitty Kat.

This phenomenon is actually pretty common. It surprises me it’s almost never discussed.
So here is the conclusion I come to about why some narcissists can genuinely feel empathy for animals. The problem isn’t that the narcissist lacks empathy per se, but that they have shut off their capacity to feel empathy for other humans. They may feel it for an animal (or maybe for some, a lesser or non-mammalian animal because dogs and cats may be seen as “too human.”). Here are two surprisingly touching essays Sam Vaknin wrote about his relationship with a goldfish and a snail. The reason some narcissists have normal or even excessive levels of empathy for animals is because animals are “safer” to feel empathy for than other humans, who they have come to hate and devalue due to abuse they suffered at the hands of their parents.

Of course this doesn’t apply to all narcissists or people with an antisocial personality. We have all read of cases of serial killers and other sadistic criminals who spent their childhoods tormenting all living creatures, even the lowly ants and spiders of the world. But only some are like this. Most are probably indifferent to animals.

Mama’s boys.

I have also seen a related phenomenon that’s even more strange than the affinity some narcs have with animals. Some psychopaths and malignant narcissists (almost always male) who seem to live to abuse or even torment other people, at the same time seem to genuinely love their own mothers and even feel protective of them. You hear about serial killers who worshipped their mothers (but hate all other women), even though the mothers were almost always abusive to them. The movie “Psycho” illustrates this in Norman Bates’ relationship with his dead mother. Obviously the exceptions these psychopaths make for their mothers are rooted in severe codependency to the point most people see their relationships with them as “sick,” but it’s still an indicator of a more vulnerable, codependent side of themselves they show to no one else.

For both the seriously character disordered who love animals (because they’re safer to love than people) and those who love their mothers (because they have unhealthy codependency with them), it’s as if little piece of their true self somehow remains split off and immune from their otherwise impenetrable wall of narcissism.

How could someone even survive this?

Posted on May 30, 2015 by luckyotter

Credit: http://dark.pozadia.org

I just read a comment on a forum about narcissism that made me want to throw up.

A woman who had been scapegoated all her life by her malignant narcissist mother and had gone No Contact said her adult son had been found dead (she didn’t say what the cause of death was). She says her mother never had the slightest interest in her grandson because any child this woman bore couldn’t possibly amount to anything. She never sent him a birthday or Christmas gift, or even so much as a card. She had never even come to see him when he was born.

The woman received no condolences from her mother after her son died. Instead, three days after his death, on the day of his inquest, she found out from relatives that her mother had gone out to celebrate with other family members and friends. Although the reason for the outing wasn’t her grandson’s death per se, she was told by a relative that her mother said “that stupid bitch got what she deserved.”

Wow. Just wow. Talk about lack of empathy. How could anyone be that callous? Losing a child is bad enough (I don’t think I could survive if that happened to me and I marvel at anyone who doesn’t lose their mind after losing a child) but to have YOUR OWN MOTHER–No Contact or not–say something like that is just so evil it’s beyond my comprehension. A mother who would say something like that upon her own child’s bereavement doesn’t deserve to live. Incredible.

I think if that happened to me I wouldn’t want to live anymore. Driving her own daughter to suicide was probably this so-called mother’s intention.

MENTAL HEALTH – Shared Psychosis

Posted on May 29, 2015 by luckyotter

This is a really great article about the way psychopaths can manipulate others by inducing a “shared psychosis” with their victim(s) — otherwise known as trauma bonding or Stockholm Syndrome. Psychopaths are way too far gone to ever be cured. Don’t try to help one; you can’t. This well written article really drives home the evil and creepiness of psychopathy–and most are not even criminals. They achieve their desire to completely destroy another person or group of people (such as the followers of a cult leader) using perfectly legal means. No Contact is the only way to handle a psychopath (NC here could be expanded to to include malignant narcissists who are just under psychopaths on the narcissism spectrum, most garden variety narcissists, and yes, even a few very sick borderlines too).

Serial provokers.

Posted on May 24, 2015 by luckyotter

This is my ex to a T.

My insane narcissistic coworker.

Posted on May 23, 2015 by luckyotter

In my part of the country, good jobs are scarce, and it’s very difficult to find decent work, especially in the field of writing or publishing. So, to make ends meet (barely) I clean houses. Yes, I’m definitely underemployed (who isn’t these days?), but I’m really not ashamed of what I do — it’s actually not as bad a job as you might think. In fact, most of the time I rather enjoy it (though it’s certainly not what I had in mind as a career for myself and never will be). It’s physical, keeps my weight down, and most of the time I don’t have to interact with people much, which I like. I also get to see some beautiful homes and some customers tip.

When I work alone (which I prefer), I can zone out and let my mind wander as I clean. I barely have to talk to anyone at all. I hate office politics and having to socialize as part of my job. With this job I just let myself into a house, do what I need to do, and leave. I don’t have to sit in a stuffy office all day dealing with people I would never spend time with if I didn’t have to.

But I don’t always get to work by myself, and from one day to the next, I don’t know if I’ll be working alone, or with a partner, or if I have to work with a partner, who I’ll be working with. Aspies like me hate that sort of unpredictability. Sometimes I get to work with someone I get along with, but things don’t always work out that way.

Today I got stuck working with the company narcissist. Everyone hates working with this young woman, but they won’t put her by herself because she sucks and can’t be trusted. She also can’t drive. No one will ride in a car with her, because she can’t focus on the road at all. She texts while she drives, gets distracted, and almost wrecked several times. She also wastes time, and snoops through people’s drawers, closets and personal belongings (she hasn’t been caught stealing though). I heard an incredible story that in one customer’s house, she found a gun in a drawer and started waving it around in the air, saying “Hey, look at this.” She was reported for that by her partner that day but incredibly, she wasn’t fired. She also talks to customers about inappropriate things, but for some stupid reason, the company will not fire her. I have no idea why. She’s a ticking time bomb, a liability, and everyone hates working with her.

Here’s how my day went today. Initially I was to clean two houses by myself, and was packed up and ready to go. Then at the last minute, I was told I’d be working with a partner. My heart sank when I heard it would be this woman, who I’ll call Karen.

I told Karen straight out I would drive. She doesn’t like my driving so she took her own car (she doesn’t like anyone’s driving). That was fine with me because I didn’t want to have to spend time riding with her.

We got to the first house, one I’m very familiar with. She had never been in it before. She told me she would do the “dry” work (vacuuming and dusting) because she couldn’t bend over. I said that would be fine; I didn’t really care. I just wanted the day to be over with. I listened to Karen brag about how much all the customers loved her and how she never gets complaints.

I cleaned the bathrooms and kitchen. As I was cleaning the master bathroom, Karen loudly asked me who normally does the dusting and then complained that the person who was doing it wasn’t doing it right. I came over to look. There was a thin coating of baby powder on top of a dresser. I told her it was that way every week; the customers use a lot of baby powder. Karen argued with me, saying no, that couldn’t be it, the person who had been cleaning it wasn’t doing their job right. I informed Karen the person who was doing it was a supervisor and knew what she was doing. Karen still kept arguing with me, saying that supervisor needed to learn how to do her job right. I ignored her after that, and Karen started talking to the customer, who was working in his garage. As Karen always does, she started yammering to the customer about personal issues with her husband; I wanted to sink through the floor in embarrassment, but I said nothing.

We had no further altercations until after I finished cleaning the kitchen. Karen hadn’t even started vacuuming the downstairs yet. As always she was wasting time on bullshit, like spending 20 minutes arranging the tote of cleaning chemicals (she is very OCD too) and yapping to the customer who was obviously busy and just being polite. Instead of doing her job, she came into the kitchen and started cleaning it again.

I told Karen I had already cleaned it, and she said, “well if, you did your job right, blah blah blah…you missed, this, this and this.”
Whenever I had to clean this house (which I knew well) with anyone else, no one in a supervisory position over me ever had a problem with my work. I told her I resented her telling me how to do my job, especially because she hadn’t finished doing her own work yet and we had already been in the house far longer than we should have been. Karen’s response was, “Well, when you work with me, I’m your team captain and I’m supposed to check your work for quality.”

I found it hard to believe this incompetent, time wasting, snooping, yapping troublemaker would have been put in charge of anything. Besides, a team captain isn’t supposed to do their partner’s work over, just check it. But Karen was cleaning the entire kitchen which I had just finished a second time. I was livid. We had been in this house almost 2 1/2 hours; we should have been done an hour earlier. It never takes that long to clean.

Of course I started feeling victimized, wondering why the office would think Karen was a better worker than I was and putting her in charge, when no one else had ever complained about my work and no customers ever complained either. And although I’m not very fast (due to being older), I’m efficient and could have cleaned this entire house by myself in the amount of time we’d already been there.

I told her I didn’t believe her and was going to ask management if she was really put in charge of me that day. She shut up after that, and didn’t say another word to me, other than to tell me her back hurt and asked me to do her vacuuming for her. I conceded, while she sat in the car texting people and smoking cigarettes. I wound up doing about 75% of the work in that house, and we were there three hours when it should have taken less than two. To make matters worse, I would have to be sharing my commission with her instead of getting to keep it myself.

We finally made it to our second house but she was late, so I let myself in and started to clean it. I hoped she wouldn’t show up but she finally did. The customer wasn’t home, so Karen started looking at the designer shoes in the huge walk-in closet. I said nothing but made a mental note to tell management about that. Karen didn’t boss me around this time, but once again I wound up doing most of the work because she was complaining she didn’t feel well and had to keep sitting down. She left before the house was finished, leaving me to finish it by myself. I was actually glad to be rid of her. She was worse then useless.

I was still upset when I got back to the office and spoke to the manager. When I told her Karen had re-cleaned my kitchen and then justified that by saying she was my team captain, the manager cracked up laughing. She said, “Karen’s a troublemaker. I would never put her in charge of anyone.” I knew she had been lying, which was why she shut up after I told her I didn’t believe her and pretended to be sick after that.

I don’t know why they won’t fire Karen, but at least I know I won’t have to work with her again. My boss even said, “I knew I should have just let you work by yourself, so I’ll go ahead and pay you as if you did since it sounds like you did all the work anyway.” That was a big win, and I left work feeling much better.

I was physically and emotionally exhausted though, and when I got home fell asleep and didn’t wake up for hours.
That’s how narcissists can suck the life out of you.

Note: There seems to be a glitch in this post, with the large ad appearing at the top of the article. I don’t know how to fix that. I apologize if it looks tacky. It’s supposed to be at the bottom.

“Reclaiming My Life”– Michelle Mallon’s Story of Healing

Posted on May 22, 2015 by luckyotter

The following is a followup article to the one I linked to in my post After Narcissistic Abuse, in which Michelle Mallon talked about how her psychopathic therapist almost destroyed her life and stole her soul.

This is an important topic, because malignant narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths are so often in the “helping” professions, especially psychotherapy. They prey on vulnerable people who come to them in desperation, hurting and wanting to trust someone. These “mental health” professionals know this. After gaining a patient’s trust, evil-intentioned and sadistic therapists like Michelle’s therapist use the things their client told them in confidence against them, or even use them to threaten or gaslight them.

I’ll only post the first part of the article, which is long. But the journey back to feeling normal from PTSD caused by abuse is sometimes a long and arduous journey. There’s no way to describe this process in just a few words or even a few paragraphs. To read the rest, you will need to click on the link to Michelle’s article, which appears at the end of this post.

Reclaiming My Life
By Michelle Mallon, MSW, LSW
In this article, Michelle Mallon discusses her healing journey following abuse by a psychopathic therapist.

Recovering from therapist abuse is hands-down the most painful experience I have ever gone through in my entire life. Healing was incredibly difficult for so many reasons, some of which make me very angry and some of which have brought me great insight. Because of the impact healing from therapist abuse has had on my life, I find it impossible not to want to reach out to others who have been hurt by mental health professionals. Some people have told me that this is because I am unable to “get over” what happened. I explain to them that there is a difference between “getting over” something terrifying and callously moving on, leaving so many others behind knowing that you were very lucky to have ever healed. (I usually say this right before I tell them what they can go do with themselves.) The reality is that for most of us trying to overcome therapist abuse (regardless of whether it is sexual, emotional, spiritual, etc.), very few other people have any idea what we are going through (even the mental health professionals we finally get up the courage to see after the abusive ones to try and pull ourselves back together). And because of that, healing can be significantly more difficult than it should be.

Just recently, I began reading the Your Stories page on this site. I was immediately reminded of the isolation and fear I felt as I tried to find my way through the aftermath of therapist abuse. I drafted a message for the Your Stories page and then I immediately felt like it was just not enough. I then asked Kristi if I could write a piece that would hopefully reach more survivors. I have found the path to healing. I don’t really know how I ever found it because, looking back, I can see just how carefully hidden the path is. I don’t know if my path to healing will be similar to yours. In the hopes that there will be some similarities, I want to identify the things that helped me find my way through this in case it can help even one survivor.

This time last year, I was just beginning to feel my “old self” returning. I was finally able to leave my house for short periods of time without having panic attacks or near panic attacks. I was beginning to be able to focus on something other than what had happened in the years before. And I have to tell you, I couldn’t have been more relieved. The truth was that for a very long time before this, I wasn’t sure I would EVER recover from what I had been put through. In fact, I truly believed I was broken beyond repair. It was the most frightened I have ever been in my life.

Nurse Ratched, the sadistic psychopathic nurse/therapist in the movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

This year, my life is very different. I look back at the woman I was a year ago and I can see tremendous growth. However, I can also see that even as I was beginning to re-find myself under all of the manipulation and destruction I had been through, I still had a long way to go. There were times when I first started out on this journey where I was making progress, but I didn’t realize I was making progress. I would frequently begin to feel stronger only to be dealt a cruel blow of fear and confusion that would set me back for days, sometimes weeks. If I would have known then that this was how the process went, I don’t think the journey would have been nearly as frightening. And perhaps, this time next year, I will look back and see that I have continued to grow, even from this year. It’s impossible to say. This journey to healing has been nothing short of miraculous. Just when I think I have “uncovered” all of the insight this journey has to offer, I am humbled by another incredible phase of insight. I don’t know if this growth and self-discovery will ever stop. Perhaps if I viewed all of this more as a journey and not as simply reaching a destination, I would have found more peace in the whole process. But to be perfectly honest, as I started out on this journey there was nothing peaceful at all about any of this.

The truth is that the very start of my journey, like many of yours, was incredibly painful—almost unbearable at times. I felt completely lost. I really didn’t know how I had gotten to where I was, and I really had no idea how the hell to get back to where I was before. Some of the worst parts of the journey to healing after therapist abuse had to do with trying to make sense out of what happened with the abusive therapist. And because I still missed him, I was convinced there must be something wrong with me. For almost a year after I refused to see him any longer, I replayed everything that happened during the time that I knew him, trying to make sense out of what happened. I tried desperately to understand what I could have done differently to prevent the relationship from crumbling the way it did. I would look at certain aspects of what happened and think, “He must have cared about me and just lost sight of what he was doing.” And I would be at peace with that thought for a few days. And then nagging doubts would creep in, “But if that were true, why did he just leave me to fall apart on my own? Why, after I told him just how much this had harmed me, did he choose to remain silent and not help me find closure?” A person who cares doesn’t leave someone they hurt (even if it was unintentional) to self-destruct in the aftermath. It seemed like no matter which way I looked at what happened, I could not come up with a “reason” for what happened that made any sense at all. And for that reason alone I was doomed to continue to replay the events in my head, searching for an answer I might never ever find. How else could I feel safe against something like this happening again in the future? The only way I could move on was if I understood what happened and why. And the person who needed to help me understand all of that made it very clear that he had no intentions of ever helping me get to that point. And because of that, it felt like he completely controlled my recovery from this.

And then it happened. Driven by a relentless desire to understand WHY, I had searched tirelessly online for something that would help me understand what the hell happened. I had been seeing a new therapist for about nine months (and I have to tell you, doing that took all of the courage I had in my body!). There were so many times that she seemed just as confused as I was about what happened with the abusive therapist. I was trapped in a cycle of reliving everything that happened over and over again, searching for answers. It was driving me to the point of insanity. As I learned more and more about this thing called “Narcissistic abuse” I began to realize that there was a reason why I had been spinning my wheels trying to understand what happened. There are people who exist who lack any ability or desire to feel any empathy or remorse. Even worse, they lack a conscience. They can cruelly destroy people who are loving, caring and honest and not feel a bit guilt or sorrow for having done so. In fact, in many ways they appear to be “annoyed” by the fact that the people they have hurt are making such a big deal out of what happened. Even worse, they are masters at making themselves out to be victims. Oftentimes, people like these leave behind them a trail of broken bodies and wounded souls as they continue on their destructive paths.

I began to learn new words—words like grooming, gaslighting, trauma bonding and soul murder. These were words that I either had never heard before or had never truly understood until I lived them. These words—words that described things that I experienced but couldn’t put into my own words—were a vital part of my healing. Suddenly I felt a lot less alone. I knew that if someone came up with these words and the definitions that explained my story, somebody, somewhere understood.

But learning these words and reading about Narcissistic abuse was really just the start of my journey. Taking all of it in was a different story. I would frequently find myself wanting to read as much as I could about Narcissistic abuse and then I would experience times where I didn’t want to look at anything at all about it. At first I would get angry at myself because I thought I needed to go through this process a specific way and it was not always the same way that I was feeling. I would get so frustrated with myself as I would read pieces that helped me begin to move forward in my understanding of what happened, but then feel like I was moving backwards. I remember thinking that maybe I was just making myself believe that I was feeling better and that I was really not making any progress at all.

It turns out that understanding and reprocessing what I had been through happened in phases. This wasn’t like any learning I had done before. In the past, if I wanted to understand something I would read about it and integrate it into my way of seeing things. With Narcissistic abuse, there were so many “layers” of understanding that were essential to my healing that this linear process of learning that had worked for me in the past was ineffective with this. There were many times where I would read an article or a book about healing from Narcissistic abuse and feel as if I had taken all of the important insight that the piece had to offer. And then later, I would stumble upon the work again and be shocked that there was insight in it that I hadn’t noticed before. It wasn’t that the piece had been edited. It was because my brain was allowing me to take in more of the picture of what I had been through. That brain of mine, that part of me that I thought had surely been destroyed in the abuse, was actually guiding me carefully through the process of slowly taking in what I could handle. In fact, I can remember times where my brain would almost “compel” me to read more about Narcissistic abuse and times where it would want to do anything other than reading about Narcissistic abuse. I slowly learned to listen to my brain and do what it seemed to be urging me to do whenever it would do this.

And there was another aspect to understanding what I had been through. As I began to understand what my abusive therapist had put me through I began to realize that I had seen this kind of abuse before in my life. In fact, many adult survivors of Narcissistic abuse eventually come to learn (if they can find the path to healing) that they have been primed by previous Narcissistic abuse to tolerate later Narcissistic abuse. For me, like so many other survivors of this type of abuse, I found myself not only healing from one emotionally destructive relationship, but several. The grief was overwhelming.

From 50 Warning Signs of Questionable Therapy or Counseling.

Perhaps one of the more difficult aspects of the abuse that I had tried to understand was where in the relationship with the abusive therapist that things went wrong. For a while, I believed that the therapist had somehow changed, since he seemed so competent for a long time before the abuse actively began. And I found myself searching for some point in time where I should have stopped trusting him. I think I believed that knowing this was important so I could have understood at what point my “screaming gut” was right. It wasn’t until a good friend of mine pointed something out to me that I hadn’t thought of before. He told me that there wasn’t any point in time when I should have trusted the abusive therapist. He said to me, “Michelle, he’s a predator. The only reason why he seemed so competent and trustworthy for so long at first was to gain your trust so he could effectively lure you away from your comfort zone. Tell me, would you have allowed him to say many of the things he said to you if he had started the relationship out doing that? No, your inner alarm bells would have been going off like crazy.” This was a pivotal moment for me because I had not given any thought at all to this possibility. I would never imagine hurting someone like that. It was finally starting to click in my head that I didn’t understand what happened for a reason. In fact, I never saw any of it coming because I never imagined anyone would ever treat another human being like this. My own profound compassion and deep empathy for others was something I assumed everyone else had. I am finding that many survivors of this type of abuse “suffer” from the same naiveté because of their own inner compassion and empathy.

Read the rest of Michelle’s story here: http://www.survivingtherapistabuse.com/2015/03/reclaiming-my-life/

Also, please read this article: 50 Warning Signs of Questionable Therapy or Counseling.
If your therapist does any of these things, they are red flags. Be wary or find another therapist.

My son’s father turned from a loving dad into a monster.

Posted on May 19, 2015 by luckyotter

My son at about 9 months. His dad doted on him then.

Turning on a child who was initially loved and doted on is not unusual for malignant narcissist parents. If the child proves to be sensitive, highly intelligent, or can see through the parent’s agenda, they may find themselves suddenly turned into scapegoats. Betrayal of a child means nothing to a narcissistic parent. The child was never a child even before the betrayal, just supply.

My son (who I’ve been calling Ethan on this blog but that is not his real name) was born in October 1991 and initially was very much wanted by his father. During his infancy his father appeared to love him very much and it wasn’t unusual to find my beautiful little boy snuggled up against his dad’s chest. Though Michael (also not his real name) was showing signs of the abuser he would soon become, the abuse was directed at me, and didn’t happen often enough in those days that I was that concerned.

By the time Ethan was 3 or 4 he was showing signs of being a highly sensitive (and very creative) child. He cried frequently and was given to tantrums when he sensed discord, anger or chaos around him. He was always very sensitive to his environment and didn’t react well to everyone and he hated change. He still remembers himself as being an extremely nervous child, but those nerves were due to his high sensitivity. I was much the same way when I was his age. I could always identify with my son.

I remember when he was two, when we were moving from New Jersey to North Carolina. Because we didn’t have a lot of money for a long distance mover, we moved most of our stuff (except large pieces of furniture) in a U-Haul and a car over five separate trips. During the time the house was being slowly emptied, Ethan began to act very strange. He stopped eating, looked pale and his eyes looked too big for his face. He hadn’t really started talking much yet, but did this strange “parroting”–he’d repeat “Hi Mommy! Hi Daddy!” over and over, in a strange high pitched voice. It was creepy. His doctor said not to worry, but he just wasn’t himself. Then it finally dawned on me: a very young child sees things disappearing and doesn’t understand why (he hadn’t come on the moving trips to see where the things were going). His two year old mind deduced that eventually his parents and baby sister would disappear too, leaving him alone, so the nervous parroting of “Hi Mommy, Hi Daddy,” was to make sure we were still there and weren’t going to leave him. To a sensitive child like Ethan who hated change as much as he did, watching the things in his environment disappear must have been traumatic for him. I asked him about this recently and he still remembers it. He told me my suspicions had been correct. He was afraid we would disappear!

Third birthday. He received a cake with a blue toy car on it.

Michael saw this high sensitivity as soon as it became apparent, and suddenly his affection toward his son came to a screeching halt. He began to pick on and belittle him, calling him names such as stupid, idiot, “faggy,” pussy, baby, and loser. As young as Ethan was, I could see how his self esteem was already taking a beating. Soon he became nervous and awkward around his father but of course this just fed the abuse.

Soon Michael began to physically abuse Ethan, spanking him almost every day just for being who he was. Whenever I criticized or questioned Michael about why he was treating Ethan this way, he just said he was trying to “toughen him up.” (this from a man who called himself a feminist–go figure that one out!) I told him his aggressive behaviors toward Ethan to “man him up” were not working because Ethan wasn’t built that way, and besides they were very unloving. I told him I was afraid Ethan would think his father hated him, but of course my concerns were dismissed and I was called wrong, stupid or crazy. We had many fights about this, but the abuse never stopped. In fact it kept growing worse.

Michael constantly made fun of Ethan, imitating his speech, his walk, his awkwardness. Ethan was bullied at school for a time, just as I was, and my heart broke for him. I loved my son so much, and couldn’t bear to see the way his father treated him.

Ethan at about age 8, around the time his father destroyed his car collection.

The incident that I remember with the most anguish occurred when Ethan was about 8. He had a collection of about 15 or 20 collectible cars his grandfather had given him over several years and Ethan was very proud of them. He displayed them on a 5-tiered shelf in his room. One evening Michael came raging into his room for one reason or another (he was often drunk and some of his rages seemed to be caused by nothing) and knocked over the stand, sending all the beautiful and expensive replicas crashing to the floor. All of them were destroyed beyond repair. Ethan burst into tears and begged him to stop, but Michael was relentless and began pounding on him, calling him a stupid faggot crybaby, and demanding to know why he couldn’t “man up.” I was in the room at the time, desperately trying to push him away from Ethan but to no avail, because Michael was much stronger than me, and by then I was myself afraid of his rages.

This incident haunts me to this day. It’s hard for me to think of it without my heart breaking, because of how painful it was to see my brilliant, creative, sensitive little boy’s car collection destroyed for absolutely no reason at all — and my son’s self esteem taking such a beating from the man who had once seemed to love him so much during his first few years.

Fortunately, Ethan was always much stronger than he seemed, and smart too. He chose to live with me after we divorced instead of his father. Kung Fu lessons paid for by my father (which he stuck with for 3 years and got as far as brown belt) and an Outward Bound expedition for his 8th grade trip began to change him and help him rebuild his self esteem.

Age 15.

He came out as gay at age 17, and since then has become a happy and well liked young man with many interests and talents who is making good choices in life. (He also chose to live hundreds of miles away from the family but I can’t say I blame him for that). While it’s sad he lives so far away, I’m happy that he’s happy now and that after everything he went through, he may be the most mentally stable member of the immediate family. He is the only one of us who doesn’t appear to have a personality disorder.

Today at age 23, living on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Not all children who were turned on and scapegoated by a malignant narcissist parent were so lucky. Many were psychologically destroyed or even killed. Ethan was one of the lucky ones.

See also:
My Son Didn’t Escape Unscathed: https://luckyottershaven.com/2015/05/11/my-son-didnt-escape-unscathed/
My MN Ex’s Weird Attitude to His Son: https://luckyottershaven.com/2015/02/24/my-mn-exs-weird-attitude-to-his-son/