narcissism

Fallout from my Troll post=I keep fighting

The trolls, of course, got upset with my exposing their tweets to the world the other night, as was expected.  I discovered a new (to me) troll account in my notifications the next day, with a whole bunch of scolding tweets.  Instead of reading them, I blocked her (which made them all vanish) and reported her.

Just trying to choose five tweets while reporting her to Twitter Support was nerve-wracking.  These people are monsters.  If she thinks I’ll read all her book-long tweets to/about me, she’s deluded.

While glancing over and choosing the five tweets, I noted that these (and other) trolls complain about their “targets” asking for help reporting them.  They remind me of Trump and his cries of “presidential harassment.”

Victims of Twitter bullying often find that Twitter Support is no help, so they need to ask their friends in an attempt to get Twitter to pay more attention.  This is our survival mechanism–so of course the bullies try to turn it around on us, gaslight us, and project their own harassment onto us, for using the best means we have to get online justice.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the concern trolling I saw in those tweets.  “She blocks us for telling her the truth!”  No, I block you for being a bunch of bullies and a$$holes who can’t accept that other people can come to different conclusions than the ones you want them to…

And I block you for being creepy.  Like, seriously creepy.  Frickin’ stalkers who go digging for info on complete strangers.

One said to me yesterday, “We know everything about you,” and used my first name for her Twitter handle.  These trolls have done this to me before–specifically “Darcy,” three years ago.  It only confirms that they found my Facebook back then and were the ones sending me at least some of the weird friend requests coming in back during that time.

And yet–I never gave them my real name.  I never connect it to my online handle.  I don’t know how they got it.

Why bring these things to light? Why bring their wrath on my head every time I expose them for what they are?  Because these trolls have hurt a LOT of people over the past five years; a few of the people hurt are my friends.

People who do their best to track you down and learn “everything about you” when you refuse to give them that information, are stalkers, and no one to give any sort of credibility to.

That’s the kind of people these trolls are: bullies, stalkers, bunny boilers, psychopaths, abusers.  They’ve hurt countless people over the past 5 years with their harassment campaigns and refusal to allow people to come to their own conclusions.

This is what narcissists do to keep their victims under control.  By refusing to play along, we thwart them and their schemes over their victims.  By refusing to play along with the trolls, I become a threat to the triangulation campaign they have been running for years.  And by keeping my own mind, I’ve watched their claims fall to pieces–same as with everyone else who’s tried to control me in the past.

These trolls keep trying to bring me down because I’m a threat to them.  By standing up to them, I take their power away.  And that makes them angry, so they have to find ways to make me feel frightened or small.

You know what?   So what.  The more abusers try to shut me up, the louder I say it.  I proved this to Richard and Tracy eight years ago.  The more these trolls try to scare and ridicule me, the more I speak out.

Lots of people have deleted tweets and closed accounts to get these trolls off their backs.  I just keep blogging and tweeting.  (From my grandpa’s eulogy, it runs in the family. I also have Scottish ancestry: They’re fighters.)  Same thing on Facebook: Most comments are supportive, but I get laughs and snarks as well on my political posts. But that just makes me post more because our democracy is at stake and I’m trying to wake people up to it.

 

Sovereign Citizen Movement and a Guy we used to know

Several times over the past decade, I’ve written on here about a guy we encountered in the SCA 20 years ago.  He was apparently sociopathic and caused a lot of trouble in our shire.  Years later, he went to jail for taking naughty pics of an underage girl.  He’s been in and out of court since.  I summarized our whole history with him, what I learned afterwards, and a criminal case which hit legal websites and Youtube, here:

So I googled a sociopath from my past

Take a minute to read that and you’ll know everything you need to keep up.  I describe the weird language he used to protest that he’s not a citizen of the US (Inc) but of the US.  Oh, and just as he finally resolved the case I describe in that post, guilty but time already served, he was busted–AGAIN–for violating the sex registry requirement.  This time, though, he didn’t take as long, didn’t go through all those lawyers, and just went ahead and pled no contest.  That was finally resolved last week.

Well, tonight’s newspaper has an article, “What is going on with Gbaja-Biamila’s language?”

The article explains:

“i man known as (Muhammed-Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila) am in the state of ‘man’ now: past: forthwith,” the handwritten note filed with the Brown County Clerk of Court reads in part. “Not a Defendant: Respondant  all benefits: maybe: waived by i.”

If you were the judge in the former Packers player’s divorce proceeding and received that note, you might be more than a little puzzled about what you were being asked to do.

But the peculiar language that Gbaja-Biamila and his associates have been using to baffle the Brown County court system and confuse the public in recent months is straight out of the “sovereign citizen” playbook born out of the white supremacist movement of the 1960s and 1970s, according to an expert in the subject.

Gbaja-Biamila’s associates, or “brothers,” as he refers to them, have filed equally cryptic documents in Brown County Circuit Court, where they are accused of carrying concealed firearms into a children’s Christmas pageant put on by Providence Academy, a Christian school that three of Gbaja-Biamila’s children attend.

Later on, the article states:

The language is a variation of the “sovereign citizen” movement, started 50 years ago by extremist groups like the Posse Comitatus, said Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow with the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism who has been studying the movement for 25 years.

At its core, the language is intended to deny the authority of police and courts, which proponents of the sovereign-citizen movement say have no jurisdiction over victim-less crimes and civil matters.
The movement started as anti-government ideology by white supremacists and anti-Semites in the United States in the late 1960s, Pitcavage said. Through natural attrition, those people began to die off, but the movement continued to expand across racial and ethnic boundaries and spread overseas, to other English-speaking countries.
…Proponents claim the U.S. government secretly enslaves its citizens by establishing them from birth as corporations rather than private individuals, by putting their names in all capital letters on legal documents — everything from birth certificates to driver’s licenses.
…Gbaja-Biamila told the Green Bay Press-Gazette recently that admitting to being a “person” rather than a “man” is to accept the state’s illegitimate authority. And like the sovereign citizens that Pitcavage talks about, Gbaja-Biamila believes police, prosecutors and judges have no business charging people with victim-less crimes.
…“Sovereigns believe that if they can find just the right combination of words, punctuation, paper ink color and timing, they can have anything they want — freedom from taxes, unlimited wealth, and life without licenses, fees or laws, are all just a few strangely worded documents away. It’s the modern-day equivalent of ‘abracadabra,’” the law center wrote in an article on its website.

The weird “i man” language is a new variant; the basic point is using language to make it sound like you’re not subject to the courts, and rejecting legal documents.  This all sounded familiar, so I went back to the bizarre document written by the guy I knew 20 years ago–let’s call him “J.”

Especially at the beginning and the end of J’s document, you can see the sovereign-citizen-style language.  I recall reading in the newspaper back around 2010 that J doesn’t have any documentation, despite being born a US citizen, and that’s on purpose to relinquish the control of the state over him.  It also made it difficult for the police to figure out who he was (he has a bunch of aliases).  I wanted to pull that up for you, but it looks like old articles have been purged.

J even filed a complaint against Scott Walker (and a bunch of other people), stating that

Scott Walker used his position as Wisconsin Governor to cover up acts of domestic terrorism, while criminally violating the due process and other rights of [J], effectively denying [J] his First Amendment guarantee to “redress of grievances” and access to various state and federal courts, to a jury trial, and litigation of the merits of [J]’s criminal RICO claims.

Ummmmmm….oookayyyy…..

From Wikipedia:

Writing in American Scientific Affiliation, Dennis L. Feucht reviewed American Militias: Rebellion, Racism & Religion by Richard Abanes, and described the theory of Richard McDonald, a sovereign-citizen leader, which is that there are two classes of citizens in America: the “original citizens of the states” (or “States citizens”) and “U.S. citizens”. McDonald asserts that U.S. citizens or “Fourteenth Amendment”

citizens have civil rights, legislated to give the freed black slaves after the Civil War rights comparable to the unalienable constitutional rights of white state citizens. The benefits of U.S. citizenship are received by consent in exchange for freedom. State citizens consequently take steps to revoke and rescind their U.S. citizenship and reassert their de jure common-law state citizen status. This involves removing one’s self from federal jurisdiction and relinquishing any evidence of consent to U.S. citizenship, such as a Social Security number, driver’s license, car registration, use of ZIP codes, marriage license, voter registration, and birth certificate. Also included is refusal to pay state and federal income taxes because citizens not under U.S. jurisdiction are not required to pay them. Only residents (resident aliens) of the states, not its citizens, are income-taxable, state citizens argue. And as a state citizen landowner, one can bring forward the original land patent and file it with the county for absolute or allodial property rights. Such allodial ownership is held “without recognizing any superior to whom any duty is due on account thereof” (Black’s Law Dictionary). Superiors include those who levy property taxes or who hold mortgages or liens against the property.[20]

In support of his theories, McDonald has established State Citizen Service Centers around the United States as well as a related web presence.[21]

Writer Richard Abanes asserts that sovereign citizens fail to sufficiently examine the context of the case laws they cite, and ignore adverse evidence, such as Federalist No. 15, where Alexander Hamilton expressed the view that the Constitution placed everyone personally under federal authority.[20]

Some sovereign citizens also claim that they can become immune to most or all laws of the United States by renouncing their citizenship, a process they refer to as “expatriation”, which involves filing or delivering a nonlegal document claiming to renounce citizenship in a “federal corporation” and declaring only to be a citizen of the state in which they reside, to any county clerk’s office that can be convinced to accept it

It all sounds like not only is Gbaja-Biamila part of this sovereign citizen movement, but my husband’s old “nemesis” J is as well.  It’s all frickin’ nuts!  People wonder if G-B was knocked in the head too many times (he used to play for the Packers); I wonder the same about J….

 

Cuddling, narcissistic recovery, and nonsexual affection:

I read a few posts over the weekend that I want to share.

The first is Where Are You in Recovery? on the One Mom’s Battle blog, a post written by Sandra L. Brown, MA, Director of The Institute for Relational Harm Reduction & Public Pathology Education at saferelationshipsmagazine.com.  The 2016 article written in 2016 addresses not just recovery from narcissistic abuse but the role of narc bloggers:

For instance, of course, one must disengage from the relationship, one needs pathology education to know what kind of relationship they are healing FROM, and one needs to recognize their symptoms of trauma in order to know what to work ON.  But these are first steps in what we consider the ‘early’ recovery level on the path to healing.  75% of survivors of narcissistic abuse develop a trauma disorder like Acute Stress, PTSD or CPTSD. Despite this, many and sometimes MOST survivors never get beyond early recovery.

In the past, I’ve been confused on whether I had PTSD or CPTSD, or if that’s supposed to be for, say, shooting survivors.  But this confirms that I most likely did have such a disorder.

The narcissistic abuse field is relatively young. Many survivors don’t realize that this field is only 11 years old. When you consider how long it took the domestic violence to get up to speed with their theories, and trainings, and therapists trained, 11 years is a drop in the bucket. The first information about narcissistic/psychopathic relationships and abuse was in the 1st Edition of my book ‘Women Who Love Psychopaths’ (Sociopaths & Narcissists) in 2008. There has been theories to work out and research to do and treatment approaches to figure out. We are just getting around to a formalized therapist training in a Model of Care in 2019. There hasn’t been much in the way of trauma therapists that understood these relationships for treatment. But what has been prolific, is survivor’s manning-up with books, blogs, and social media.  Survivors have had to rely on other survivors in the absence of a trained psychology field.  …In the absence of a trained psychology field, most survivors find information in a blog or social media site and stay, never progressing to the next stage of recovery because of so few trained trauma therapists in pathological love relationships (PLRs).

So it’s no wonder that I never heard of narcissistic abuse before 2010, even though I knew the word “narcissist” (as in lover of self above all others) and knew a lot about abuse: The information just wasn’t out there yet because even the psychologists didn’t know much.  And we bloggers have been a crucial part of getting the word out and helping others, because we have firsthand experience with such people.  But so many of us are still “stuck” because, again, even the psychologists don’t know enough about it.

We also hear a lot about empaths and codependents.  Empaths sound kind of New-Agey to me, so I have cast that a wary eye.  Also, codependency seems to make YOU into the pathological one, as if you’re somehow to blame.  So this part was interesting:

A pathological relationship happened because of your personality trait elevations which are part of your hard-wired nature and are ‘targeted’ by pathological partners. Our research with Purdue University on your personality made that abundantly clear, that you have high-normal personality traits that are a perfect fit for a pathological partner. As opposed to what you may read, this is NOT simply about ‘empaths’ and ‘codependents.’ Those labels are not research.  The true research shows you have personality trait elevations BEYOND mere hyper-empathy (and over 60% of you did NOT test as codependent), that are impacting your risk factors called ‘Super Traits.’ Since your personality is hard-wired, and these traits are always targeted by pathological partners, it makes sense that you need to understand your own risk factors and how to guard those traits in the future. Once trauma symptoms are being consistently and successfully managed by you, education on your Super Traits is the next step of recovery.  A mental health professional works educationally with you about the researched and known personality traits and their FACETS that are known to be a risk factor in you. (If they are suggesting you are an empath, you are in the wrong place and they are not educated.)

…We can see that this level of recovery is necessary for prevention of future PLRs because your personality and its risk factors will always be with you. Without understanding HOW Super Traits work in your thinking, feeling, and behavior there is nothing to prevent another PLR when your personality tries to do what it has always done with incoming information and red flags.

One reason many of us are still “stuck” is the lack of trained help:

We are well aware of the scant few trauma therapists trained in PLR Recovery. An online course for their training is currently being developed and when done, will house a database of therapists trained in this Model of Care approach for your use. Survivortreatment.com

I don’t know anything about this institute, so I can’t recommend or endorse it.  However, I hope that this will turn out to be a breakthrough for survivors of narcissistic abuse.

Along with this, came two other blog posts which helped validate my experiences in narcissistic abuse.

The first was Dad Goes Off On Wife And In-Laws After They Tell Him To Stop Cuddling His Teenage Daughter.  He posted on Reddit to find out if he was the a**hole or not; the overwhelming response was that he was not, that there is nothing “sexual” or “inappropriate” about cuddling.  A similar conversation came up over on the Love Joy Feminism blog, when a post about a 19th-century book brought up the question of what was considered normal and platonic behavior and touching (such as cuddling or hugging or stroking hair).

Both conversations made it very clear that the common restrictive view on cuddling in America is neither the rule in the rest of the world, nor healthy.  Supposedly even Americans used to behave a lot more freely, before the 20th century, so when we read a 19th-century book on girls cuddling (or about Frodo and Sam holding hands) we think “OMG GAY” when it’s not.  And some–just as I have in the past–wondered if our lack of cuddling/other nonsexual touching is the reason why people in America have so many pathological issues (such as shooting up schools).

The Love Joy Feminism discussion also touched on the fact that modern Americans get hung up on the idea that close emotional connections must be romantic/sexual, so if two teenage girls become BFFs they start thinking they might be gay–when it’s just a normal, straight friendship.  Not knocking the fact that many people are actually gay or bisexual, but most people are not.

In my childhood, people saw demons and Satan everywhere; nowadays, they see sex everywhere.  Maybe this is also why people have gotten so hypervigilant about opposite-sex friendships, when 20 years ago, the common thinking seemed to be that opposite-sex friendships are normal and jealousy is bad.

Quotes from the comment section:

Single adults, definitely – one (bad) reason that people can end up desperate for a relationship, and cling to unhealthy ones, is that so many of us have a natural desire for touch and intimacy, and we’re only ‘allowed’ to have an outlet in romantic relationships.

 

Platonic yet intimate female relationships make my marriage work. Another reason society would be better if we stopped sexualizing all overt emotional expressions and physical affection. We all have different needs and to expect all those needs to be met by one person in our life is a tough order.

 

Because so many shows right now are really irritating me with that. We get connected to a character that identifies as straight, she gets a good friend, and boom they’re an item. Not every female magically becomes bisexual when they develop close intimate friendships with the same sex. In fact most don’t. I get that they’re trying to increase LGBTQ presence in the media, but it still seems to be developing as a titillating plot point. Not one that represents real life. Which is why they probably don’t do the same with males. Two females kissing is a fantasy for many adult males and that’s why they use it. It also confuses kids way more than helping them. I’ve actually had to help my youngest understand that just because she notices how attractive a girl is doesn’t make her gay or bi. It’s not that I care if she was but she’s not. And some of her friends have actually made fun of her for being supportive of her female friends. Like she’s not allowed to be complimentary or something unless she’s gay.

 

Oh my gosh yes. That’s my only real pet peeve with the increase in LGBTQ relationships on TV. It seems with girls (and only girls, never boys) that once a certain level of intimacy sets in, they evolve to a romantic relationship. And that’s just not accurate in real life. I actually am quite affectionate with my best friend both verbally and even physically. Lots of hugs, lots of I love you’s, etc. My youngest daughter has the same type of relationship with her best friend. Always remarking how cute she is, how much she cares, lots of physical affection. Right now they are both in fits because they have no classes together next year. They’re both straight though. Emotionally intimacy and general physical affection is a lovely thing IMO. Not everything has to be seen through the lens of sexual attraction.

Quotes from the Reddit thread:

This is a result of America’s puritan bullshit and had actually led to “cuddle starvation” across the nation. Look it up. It basically means that people become depressed because of a lack of cuddling and affection since we reserve it for romance.

 

Let me guess, you’re American? Americans always sexualize things that have nothing to do with sex. Why the hell should a daughter not be alowed to cuddle her father if she wants to?!

 

Also sleeping on people while watching a movie is just one of the best feelings in the world. I do it with close friends regardless of gender (and am somewhat well known for my inability to stay away during movies). Ive fallen asleep with my head in a cousins lap during many a post thanksgiving meal football game. If you’re both comfortable with it – why would it be weird?

 

I hate to bring up the concept of “Toxic Masculinity” everywhere but this is a pretty textbook case of the inlaws trying to push it I think. This disgusting idea that men shouldn’t be affectionate is so goddamn damaging on both an individual and wider scale, and sadly we’re still in the stage where normalizing touching and all that is a fight.

I don’t want to rehash why this last part is especially meaningful for me, but longtime readers of my blog will know.  Basically, I have had my motives maligned and sweet, beautiful, platonic expressions of affection turned dirty, and it was very psychologically and emotionally damaging–and abusive.  For a time I had begun to open myself up to others more with physical affection, but this scared me back into my shell.  Meanwhile, I see others do the same thing with friends, or here online I read about them doing that, and it’s okay for them to do it!

But these three blog posts have been very comforting for me the past few days.  And in the current state of the world, comfort is good where you can find it.

 

Reblog: 7 Gaslighting Phrases

Shahida Arabi recently posted 7 Gaslighting Phrases Malignant Narcissists, Sociopaths and Psychopaths Use To Silence You, Translated

I found much familiar there.  For example:

First phrase: “You’re crazy.”  I got this one from Richard and Tracy (“you’re not all there”).

Translation: You’re not the pathological one here. You’re just catching onto who I really am behind the mask and attempting to hold me accountable for my questionable behavior. I’d rather you question your own sanity so you believe that the problem is really you, rather than my own deceptiveness and manipulation. So long as you believe you’re the one who needs help, I’ll never have to take responsibility for changing my own disordered ways of thinking and behaving.

There’s also a bit about narcissists provoking jealousy, and “Manufacturing love triangles and harems are a narcissist’s forte.”  I saw this more than once: There was Richard, who I now realize made a habit of provoking people to jealousy, whether it was romantic partners or platonic friends, because he got off from people arguing over him.  He once boasted that he got three best friends to hate each other because he was dating all of them at once.  Then there was Phil, who constantly tried to make me jealous, while then accusing me of jealousy.

Third phrase: “You’re too sensitive.”  I got that one from Richard.

Translation: It’s not that you’re too sensitive, but rather that I am insensitive, callous, and unempathic. I do not care about your emotions unless they serve me in some way. Your negative reactions provide me stimulation and pleasure, so please, do keep going. I enjoy putting you down for having legitimate reactions to my abuse.

Fifth phrase: “You need to let it go.  Why are you bringing this up?”

Translation: I haven’t given you enough time to even process the last heinous incident of abuse, but you need to let it go already so I can move forward with exploiting you without facing any consequences for my behavior. Let me love-bomb you into thinking that things will be different this time around. Don’t bring up my past patterns of abusive behavior, because you’ll then recognize that this is a cycle that will just continue.

The post notes that this is a way of forming a trauma bond:

This form of abuse amnesia adds onto your addictive bond to the abuser, also known as “trauma bonding.” According to Dr. Logan (2018), “Trauma bonding is evidenced in any relationship which the connection defies logic and is very hard to break. The components necessary for a trauma bond to form are a power differential, intermittent good/bad treatment, and high arousal and bonding periods.”

I’ve experienced this now and then; it also features prominently in my work-in-progress, a novel about a time-traveler who puts a young girl in a trauma bond that neither of them can break.

Sixth, “You’re the problem here, not me”:

Translation: I am the problem here, but I’ll be damned if I let you know it! I’d rather subject you to personal attacks as you bend over backwards trying to hit constantly moving goalposts and arbitrary expectations of the way I think you should feel and behave. As you spend most of your time trying to fix your fabricated flaws while always coming up short of what I deem “worthy,” I can just sit back, relax, and continue to mistreat you the way I feel entitled to. You won’t have any energy left to call me out.

I’ve experienced this repeatedly.  There was Tracy, with her constantly changing expectations that it was impossible for me to meet, and my “flaws” which she made up.  There was Phil, who at first was the One, my perfect man–then turned into the abuser, never satisfied with me, always yelling at me for every little thing I did or didn’t do, and then accusing me of being the one with the problem (story here).  Then there was the Avenger, a BBS troll who bullied and abused others (including me) while insisting that they were the ones with the problem, that she was just avenging herself and others.  Then when she discovered I wrote about this on my website, said I had an “interesting perspective” on what happened–basically invalidating and gaslighting me.

Then seventh, “I never said or did that.  You’re imagining things.”  This one suggests that you keep records of everything the abuser does or says, and learn to validate your own perceptions and recognize red flags.  Through all the abuse I’ve experienced from various people, I’ve held onto my own perceptions, which helps keep me from thinking I somehow “deserved” it.

Getting space from your abuser is essential. Be sure to document events as they happened, rather than how your abuser tells you they happened. Save text messages, voicemails, e-mails, audio or video recordings (if permitted in your state laws) which can help you to remember the facts in times of mental fog, rather than subscribing to the distortions and delusions of the abuser.

I’m certain that some of my abusers–Shawn, who complained that I wrote about everything in my diary, and Richard/Tracy, who tried to make me feel like a creepy stalker for saving e-mails and letters to/from friends–did this to try to gaslight me.  If I couldn’t remember what exactly happened or was said, then they could re-write each incident in my head.  But because I held onto my records, I could look back at them later and say no, that’s not what happened!

Once again, the post is 7 Gaslighting Phrases Malignant Narcissists, Sociopaths and Psychopaths Use To Silence You, Translated

Comments are turned off here so you can put them on the original post.

Oh, by the way, also on that website, I found a post by [redacted].  Seems she hoped her narcissist abusers would find her website on narcissism, so she could confront them without violating her No Contact rule, and–maybe, hopefully–help them see what they did and change their behavior.  Instead of that, she got legal threats.  But it shows me I’m not the only one who wanted to tell her abusers what they did, but in a safe way.  She wrote,

While the debate still rages whether one should or should not inform narcissists of their Narcissistic Personality Disorder, I’m glad I did it and here’s why:

  • I notified them of why I, their “loved one” suddenly went No Contact. I owed them at least that much.
  • I confirmed their narcissism via the “litmus test” for my own peace of mind.
  • I gave them the tools for informing and educating themselves about narcissism.
  • I gave them the opportunity to change and become better people.
  • I gave them the data to diagnosis the problems in other dysfunctional, painful relationships.
  • I loved them enough to share a list of cancer cures.

Whether you inform the narcissists in your life that they are narcissists is entirely up to you. There are a lot of considerations. Are they violent? Are they vindictive? Will they use that information to turn your shared children against you via Parental Alienation? Are there a lot of flying monkeys about?

Are you doing it to benefit them? Do they honestly want to know? Is there a chance for them to change? Do you owe them that chance?

Do you owe it to yourself? Can you live with yourself if you don’t tell them? Can you live with yourself if you do tell them? What does your character demand? What will give you the most peace of mind, the clearest conscience?

…

So far, I see no evidence that they’ve accepted the “core dynamic,” learned, benefited nor changed. In fact, their continued actions continue to confirm my diagnosis of narcissism. I hope I’m wrong. I still hope against hope. At the very least, I put a bug in their ear. Perhaps, someday soon, they’ll look into it. Perhaps they have already! I hope so.

But, until then, I did what I thought was right and my conscience is clear.

I feel much the same: In the past, I had directly confronted abusers, who turned it around against me, making it fit their narrative that I was the crazy one.  In Richard/Tracy’s case, I still felt the need to confront them with what they did and that it was abuse, that I didn’t deserve any of it, but could see no way to directly confront them–especially after what had happened with other abusers.  My website was a way to get it all out.  And of course, it went badly…and yet I don’t regret it.  My reasons are similar to this blogger’s.

[BTW, update 12/29/20: I DO NOT recommend this person’s new blog.  Her old one was fine, but she has transformed the new one into a total Trump-worship website.  I guess she has replaced her narcissist parents with the biggest narcissist cult of our time.  I wonder how she can’t see how she’s being abused, manipulated, lied to, and gaslit all over again, or that she has become part of a legion of flying monkeys.  This is why I won’t name her blog or give a link to the post up above, which no longer works anyway.]

A couple of notes: Spanking and No, the new girlfriend did NOT change my abusive ex

A couple of quick notes on things that I have seen today while, as usual, sucked into the Web when I’m supposed to be doing other things:

First:

Elizabeth T. Gershoff writes an opinion piece, The era of spanking is finally over, based on the announcement yesterday by the American Academy of Pediatrics that

recommends that adults caring for children use “healthy forms of discipline” — such as positive reinforcement of appropriate behaviors, setting limits and setting expectations — and not use spanking, hitting, slapping, threatening, insulting, humiliating or shaming.

…”In the 20 years since that policy was first published, there’s been a great deal of additional research, and we’re now much stronger in saying that parents should never hit their child and never use verbal insults that would humiliate or shame the child,” said Dr. Robert Sege, first author of the policy statement and a pediatrician at the Floating Hospital for Children at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.

…The statement goes on to describe how several studies have found associations between spanking and aggressive child behavior, depressive symptoms in adolescence and less gray matter in children’s brains, among other outcomes.

Gershoff hopes that the new statement will finally cause massive change in how parents discipline children, and notes changes that have already been made over the years.

She writes,

There are practical reasons to stop spanking. The main one is that it does not work. Some parents may say, “But it does for my child.” A child may cry and stop what she is doing in the moment, but numerous studies involving hundreds of thousands of children show that spanking does not make children better behaved in the long run, and in fact makes their behavior worse.
It is hard for parents to see this in their day-to-day interactions, but the research is clear: We consistently find that the more a child is spanked, the more aggressive he or she will be in the future.
Spanking also teaches children that it is acceptable to use physical force to get what you want. It is thus no surprise that the more children are spanked, the more likely they are to be aggressive or to engage in delinquent behaviors like stealing.
…The majority of us who were spanked by our parents think we “turned out OK.” Perhaps we did. But maybe we were lucky that our parents did other things, like talking with us about what behaviors they wanted to see us do in the future, that helped us develop self-control and make good behavior choices.

Of course, I see so many people say “I was spanked and I turned out okay” that I doubt the change will happen so fast.

It’s especially ludicrous to hear, on one hand, “They don’t let you spank these days and the kids are out of control,” but on the other hand read studies that say MOST parents still spank their kids.  Okay, so it’s more likely the kids who are out of control actually ARE spanked.   I’ve seen this for myself, a family where the kids were spanked and shamed and slapped over the back of their heads, but the kids still were out of control.

And well, I don’t actually see kids being any worse now than they were when I was a child.  Because yes, I still remember how we were.  I think people of my generation and older often have rose-colored glasses of how we acted.  But we were not angels, despite spanking at home and paddles in our principals’ desk drawers.

Just remember, back when harsh discipline was considered normal, what we had in the world: torture, Nazis, employers ordering troops to fire on their own striking Greek employees, burning or hanging people for being witches or heretics, racism, lynching, sexism, slavery, wars, military brutality (such as whipping for infractions), rape, murder, stealing, lying, piracy, etc. etc. etc.

Obviously, spanking children did not stop them from doing horrible things as adults.  These things did not suddenly appear in a world where spanking was banished.  And you can bet that the people performing these acts were spanked or otherwise hit as children.

Filmed in German and released as Das Weisse Band, Eine Deutsche Kindergeschichte, or The White Ribbon: A German Children’s Story, the film deals with a group of children who will become adults around the time of the rise of the Third Reich. This ‘children’s story’ seeks to discover what it was in German children’s background which may have caused them to support and assist the Nazi party when the time came – much the same questions, and conclusions, once offered by the late child psychologist Alice Miller, who drew a controversial connection between harsh child rearing methods and a tendency toward violence and the acceptance of tyranny. –Monica Reid, Twin Fascist Fables: The White Ribbon and The Childhood of a Leader

And also remember, today’s narcissists were probably spanked as children.  I know several of them who certainly were.  Sure didn’t drive the narcissism out of ’em.

Second:

And speaking of narcissists, more news on abusive ex Phil:

To recap, in the summer, I discovered that his own sister temporarily filed a restraining order against him.  I’ve also learned that she and his mother were involved in a lawsuit with him last year, with him as the plaintiff, though the details are not online.

From his Facebook profile, I learned that he was engaged.  His profile has been quiet ever since, and he did not respond to a question from me (simply “how are you”), though  I know he saw it.  But from hers I’ve learned all sorts of things:

She is around the same age as his controlling mother–whom, by the way, she writes that he finally broke free of about a year or two ago.  (Makes me wonder if she was a kind of replacement for his mother.)

She identifies as an empath.  (I don’t know if that’s a real thing or pseudoscience, but narc blogs commonly say that empaths attract narcissists.)  She believes in Christ, but also in various New Age things like astral projection.

(I’ve noted that Phil tends to have girlfriends who believe in New Age: One ex channeled a spirit in the middle of a makeout session.  I believed in Charismatic sign gifts and other psychic phenomena in those days.  Persephone is a Wiccan who’s written spell books, though in those days she told everyone she was Methodist.  Phil showed no sign of believing in such things himself, so I believe he looks for this in girlfriends as a sign of gullibility so they can be manipulated.  He manipulated my psychic beliefs severely, weaving a web of deception that lasted for many months.)

The engagement ended over the summer when she learned that he was diagnosed with Bipolar II and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (though Disorder is more likely, because he’s neither deformed nor retarded).

It was a mutual decision, because he hadn’t been taking his medication so his brain was heavily damaged; and under the influence of the disorder, he had turned manipulative and probably worse.  He has been in and out of a mental hospital on suicide watch for months.

She didn’t want to leave him, but neither did she want to be abused.  She was still supposed to stay in his life and support him–but then he cut her off.

She has been in a terrible state since then, very familiar as I was once there myself.  She has blamed it all on the diagnoses; sounds like there are several, though she only named two.  She has said that the real him wouldn’t hurt a fly, and that the disorder causes the bad behavior.

But there’s been a change recently.  She speaks of being blind, duped, used, of learning truths she didn’t know before he got sick.  (She’s also been posting memes and videos about narcissists.)  She talks as if she was more in love than he was, despite all the flowery words he told her once upon a time.  Flowery words which, by the way, he said to me some 24 years ago.  I can even tell you when, and what we were doing, because it’s in my memoir.  And her, she has a Facebook post which he wrote saying all those things.

I’m sad and hurt for her.  I’m angry at him.  I see it all happening all over again.  I remember my friends telling me what it was like seeing my relationship happen all over again with the girl he ended up legally marrying (1996-2007).

For a time, I thought he would change.  I thought this woman could do it.

I wondered if everything he did could be pinned on the FAS, if the real him was truly not responsible for the abuse, if he was truly Dr. Jekyll while Mr. Hyde was an illness beyond his control–but that could be eradicated by doctors.

I thought that because of the diagnoses and care of the doctors, which none of Phil’s exes ever had (he was diagnosed in 2010), Phil would finally turn away from his abusive behaviors.

But no.  Take this as a lesson to you: They simply don’t change.  They aren’t “different” with the next girlfriend.  She won’t “save” him.

And it isn’t your fault.  The abuse is not your fault.

It’s all his.

This is a lesson I, too, have been learning, trying to take it into my head and abolish all the lingering doubts, put there back when Phil insisted I was to blame for it all.

This knowledge is helping me to heal.  Hopefully it will help her as well.  She’s a sweet person who deserves much better than this.

Also see:

Abusive ex Phil has a new bride

Is this why my ex Phil was so abusive?

So Phil, my abusive ex-husband, is back in the hospital

Abusive Ex: Blame it on him, not mental illness

 

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