narcissistic injury

Brett Kavanaugh’s Narcissistic Rage episode, DARVO, and why we don’t speak up

The Kavanaugh debacle is triggering for many women.  Seems like every woman in my Facebook/Twitter feeds is being triggered.

And in a case that–for now–is he said/she said, how do we tell who to believe?

First of all, reporters have been doing more work than the senators apparently, digging up alumni and evidence all over the place.  For example, see the following:

Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer’s compelling story here.

Kavanaugh accuser’s friend says she has told him she needs more than one exit from her bedroom

A classmate who originally said that the incident with Ford was well-known at school, before retracting

The classmate’s original Facebook post on the subject

Affidavit from Accuser #3, accusing Kavanaugh and friends of predatory behavior

Kavanaugh Classmate Tears Into His ‘Blatant Lying’: I’ve Witnessed Him ‘Stumbling Drunk’

How we know Kavanaugh is lying

Old friend of Kavanaugh’s claims that his depiction of himself is a lie

As I watched the opening statements yesterday for both Ford and Kavanaugh, I paid close attention to their body language and demeanor.  Because yeah, I may have trouble with such things, but I’ve been studying narcissism/sociopathy for years now, and how to spot a predator or an abuser claiming to be the victim.

Ford was timid, terrified, quiet, on the verge of tears.  Like someone who has been attacked and traumatized and is scared of it happening again.  Even Fox News commentators and even Trump are saying she seems credible.

Kavanaugh, on the other hand, was on the attack: loud, raging, gesticulating, snarling.  Complaining about how this affects him–but never a thought to how it has been affecting Ford.  Instead of welcoming a full investigation, he evades the question, and derides the whole fact-finding process–a process which, if he’s innocent, should exonerate him.  Cold, dead eyes and a terrifying snarl.

Images of Kavanaugh are subject to copyright, and I don’t have $300 to pay for the rights to use one, so I don’t have images of him to clip and paste here.  So click on these links instead:

https://goo.gl/images/3aRGdB

https://goo.gl/images/cJ1T6G

https://goo.gl/images/aKwngR

https://goo.gl/images/e7AKoj

And then look at this:

Brett Kavanaugh's Narcissistic Rage episode, DARVO, and why we don't speak up 1

Genchi.info

And then this:

Brett Kavanaugh's Narcissistic Rage episode, DARVO, and why we don't speak up 3

Genchi.info

 

Look familiar?

Kavanaugh’s snarls are not the face of an innocent man defending himself/his family from attack.  They are the face of a predator whose prey has just exposed him.

My post on DARVO has been getting a lot of hits the past couple of days, especially after it was shared by somebody on Facebook.  It quotes Jennifer J. Freyd, who writes,

“It is important to distinguish types of denial, for an innocent person will probably deny a false accusation. Thus denial is not evidence of guilt. However, I propose that a certain kind of indignant self-righteousness, and overly stated denial, may in fact relate to guilt.

I hypothesize that if an accusation is true, and the accused person is abusive, the denial is more indignant, self-righteous and manipulative, as compared with denial in other cases.

Similarly, I have observed that actual abusers threaten, bully and make a nightmare for anyone who holds them accountable or asks them to change their abusive behavior.

This attack, intended to chill and terrify, typically includes threats of lawsuits, overt and covert attacks, on the whistle-blower’s credibility and so on. —Violations of Power, Adaptive Blindness and Betrayal Trauma Theory

DARVO means deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.  It was done to me by Richard and Tracy in their e-mail here.  It was done to me by my abusive ex Phil.  It has been done countless times throughout the ages to victims by abusers and sexual criminals.  This frightening power play keeps countless victims from seeking help, as well, because they are terrified of what will happen to them.

One of the excuses used to not believe and to attack Kavanaugh’s accusers is that they didn’t say anything before.  That there should have been a police report if it really happened.  But girls and women who are victims of sexual assault or harassment are often too terrified to tell anyone.

If you want to know why they’re so scared, just look at accusations made against Ford:

“She shouldn’t have been at a drinking party.”

“She was going around in a bathing suit.”  (1, it was one-piece, 2, a bathing suit or bikini does not mean “rape me,” and 3, it was covered by her clothes.)

“Why was she in that room?”  (She just wanted to go to the bathroom, but got pulled into a bedroom.)

“Look how long she took to tell!  She’s just doing this for political reasons.”

She’s being blamed.  She’s being accused of lying.

Just like happens countless times when victims do speak up.  So often, we just stay quiet.

I never told my parents anything that happened to me in school, either.  My mom didn’t know that I stopped wearing dresses to school because a couple of boys lifted up my skirt and laughed one day.  My parents didn’t know that my high school ulcer and TMJ came from boys sexually harassing me in class and in the cafeteria.   They thought that going to classes about stress relief would help.

They didn’t know that–similar to what happened to another accuser, Ramirez–one of the boys pulled out his penis and put it next to me on the table as I ate my lunch, that I think I felt it brush my hand, though I refused to look at it, that the other boys laughed.

They didn’t know how one time, in the line to leave the cafeteria, the boys were harassing me so badly that I crumpled up against the wall to try to protect myself.  I don’t even remember what they did or said.

I also didn’t tell teachers about this.  I was too shy, too terrified of strangers in general, even though my friends were witnesses and told me to tell.

(That’s why friends should do the telling and not leave it to the traumatized victims.)

My parents didn’t know that my ex Phil tried to force me into anal sex, making me feel raped at least once, or that he forced me into oral sex when he hadn’t even bathed.  And no, I never reported it.

No, I don’t remember every detail.  I don’t remember who the boys were in high school, or what all they did or said.  But I remember it happened.

And I do remember exactly which teacher ridiculed and sexually harassed me in class.  There were witnesses.  But I never even thought to tell the principal.  I just switched classes the following semester.

As for Phil, I told a few friends some of what happened.  I don’t remember telling them everything.

I told his new girlfriend, Persephone, about it.  I hoped she would be appalled that her boyfriend would rape a girl.  Instead, her dismissive reply seemed to suggest that if I were telling the truth, and weren’t just being hysterical or hyperbolic, maybe even looking for attention, that I would report it to the police.

But I was too terrified to tell the police.  There was no physical evidence, so how could I prove it, for one.  (And this is often the case.)

For another, I didn’t know if a rape charge would hold up in court since I had agreed to have sex–I just had not agreed to have anal or oral sex.  I also didn’t want my parents to know we had had sex, because they were fundamentalists who didn’t know about our spiritual marriage, and were definitely against me having sex before marriage.  Even when your parents are not abusive, a combination of old-fashioned ideas and parental disappointment can be frightening.

Another reason to stay quiet is hearing “Get over it already!”  I’ve been seeing a lot of this in reactions to Kavanaugh’s accusers, when even WOMEN have been saying, “It was 36 years ago!  It was just a touch!  How can she not have moved on?”  or “All teenage boys grope!  Who cares?  It’s not a big deal!”

(You don’t forget.  You don’t move on.)

I had my own version of this a year after Richard’s friends sexually harassed me in a chat room.  He saw the whole thing, and how vile their words and behavior actually were.  Yet his wife treated it like it was nothing at all, and then Richard tried to mansplain me into believing that I was being “ridiculous” for still being upset over it (and over his continued friendship with these people) a year later.  He said it “wasn’t real” and he thought I understood that.

The only one being “ridiculous” here was Richard.

The Kavanaugh hearings are triggering for many of us because we see our own traumas being relived in the accusers, our own fears realized as the accusers are treated just as we were, or as we feared we would be treated if we spoke up.

We see nothing changed, even after decades of feminism and then the #MeToo movement.

We see men treating the hearings as a charade, even going into self-righteous tirades about it: not just Kavanaugh, but Lindsey Graham as well–who seems to have conveniently forgotten how Merrick Garland’s appointment was blocked by the Republicans.

And there was absolutely no legitimate reason to block Garland, while Kavanaugh’s temperament and character have already been proven to be narcissistic and dangerous.

Because yes, what we saw in Kavanaugh yesterday is known as narcissistic rage.  This happens when a narcissist or sociopath is called out on their crimes.

So I believe he is guilty.

Trudging Through Five and a Half Years of Hell…..Do I See Light Up Ahead? (Surviving Depression After Abuse)

I thought I had found a religious and spiritual mentor in my search for the True Church, and a best friend here in my own town instead of far away, one who would always be there for me throughout life.  But I believe this is what really happened:

I fell prey to a con man who eventually decided my husband and I were of no further use to him and his wife.  He used to be a Mafia thug, and was easily provoked to violence.  He hypnotized me without my knowledge.

They wanted to get political connections, but we were too “liberal” and not politically driven; he kept getting money and stuff from us, but the economy tanked and we had money trouble; I was his confidante of his wife’s abuses of him and the children, so she, who has a family history of personality disorders, smeared me to him to drive a wedge between us; and I spoke up against the way they both had been treating their kids.

So instead of addressing the real issues, they made me a scapegoat, made up offenses and kept me always jumping over hoops.  Then because we no longer had much money to give them, I started doubting Richard’s wild stories, and I had let them know they abused their kids, they started treating my husband and I both very badly.

They found an imaginary complaint to skewer me over, so we would break off the friendship in disgust, but they would still be able to claim that it was my fault and not theirs.

Richard threatened my husband with physical violence and intimidated him.  Then in 2010, I was proven correct about the abuse, when Richard choked his oldest daughter until she passed out.  He plea bargained and served a year of probation.

I have often wondered why it has taken three years to get through this depression after abuse, despite functioning normally by carrying on with life, traveling, making new friends, reconnecting with old ones, taking care of my child and house like normal, helping out with my church.

It took many months for the occasional tears to stop, but they did stop eventually; however, I still feel sad often.  I have been depressed in the past, but it would pass within a year or two.

Then I remembered: This depression has not lasted for three years.  It has lasted for five and a half years, six years this December, and I know when and why it began:

My Hell began in the middle of December 2007, a few weeks after Tracy arrived in my house, when her fangs began to show and I saw that Richard’s claims of verbal abuse of him and the kids were true, along with the occasional smacks on his arm and a disturbing possessive and vindictive streak.

What seemed like a special friendship with Richard, a very dear friendship, began to deteriorate as he stuck up for not only his wife’s various snarks and other nasty behavior toward me, but her abuses toward him and the children, contradicting what he had told me before.

I felt alone, abandoned by the person I thought cared and had my back, like all my other closest friends through life had my back.

With my other friends, even though we disagreed on occasion, I could count on them sticking up for me whenever somebody dissed me.  But Richard joined in, not only allowing the dissing, but constantly criticizing me as well.  Nothing I did or said was right.

The depression began then.  I remember breaking down in tears more than once while they lived in my house.  I cried often during our friendship.

I spent a weekend in tears and sobs shortly after they moved out, because the way they were screwing me over made me think I had to break off my friendship with Richard.  My husband tried to ease my mind by making the decision for me, and saying I would not break it off.  (No, he’s not controlling; he was trying to help.)

I don’t want to go into detail because it’s all in my blog, and especially in the long version of the story.

But that weekend was repeated other times as well, as well as a time when I could barely get through walking my son to/from school without breaking into embarrassingly public tears on the sidewalk.

In between those times were constant tears, sadness, or resentment of Tracy’s lack of apologies for her nastiness.

This proves that the toxicity began in December 2007, dooming the friendship from the beginning of Tracy’s time in my city, because I was targeted by two very selfish, self-centered, abusive people, manipulators and users.  I thought Richard was a good person, but he, too, was toxic.

After my husband and I could not take the abuse anymore and broke things off, I had to tell my friends everything, so I could drain out the poison Richard and Tracy had filled me with over two and a half toxic years.  Also, for five years I had told Richard about things that upset me, but I no longer had him to talk to.

I vented on Facebook.  I told Todd everything.  I told high school friends.  I told college friends.  I told a few new church friends.  I told people on my favorite forums, begging for answers on how to keep in Orthodoxy, and how God could allow this.  I told my family.  I told my priest, starting back in December 2007.

I read and posted on blogs about narcissists and abusers, which showed me that my feelings and difficulties in healing, are all perfectly normal, that it often takes years to heal, that seeing the abuser again is traumatic.

I leaned on my husband, who recovered much more quickly because he was not the main target of abuse, but who became enraged at Richard and Tracy for putting me through this.

What our friends kept telling my husband and me: These people are toxic, manipulators, moochers, abusers, narcissists, a**holes; people on a couple of Orthodox forums used the word “evil” to describe Richard’s actions (choking his child).

But two and a half years of abuse, including both covert and overt verbal and emotional abuse, especially without physical abuse you can point to as proof, essentially gaslights you.

You wonder about your sanity, if you saw things correctly, especially when the abusers will tell you one thing then contradict it later on, and when only a few of their friends see the real them.

Every day I pray for Richard and Tracy’s children, that they be kept safe from abuse from their parents, because I worry about them and fear that the system has failed them by sending Richard back home with them instead of putting him in jail.

Richard’s lawyer ran for city council and won, but not with my help: I refused to vote for her, because I wondered about her character, getting such a sweet deal for him.

I have no way of knowing if CPS forced Tracy into counseling for abusing the kids as well.  I have no way of knowing if CPS finally convinced her that what she was doing to them was evil and would scar them for life, would cause them to want nothing to do with her when they grow up, just as she hates her own mother for treating her the same way.

If she doesn’t shape up, and if Richard doesn’t stop his own physical violence and narcissism, then their kids are going to grow up and write blogs of their own about Richard and Tracy.

I am an intensely analytical person.  I must know the hows, whys, whats.  Being targeted by narcissistic abusers is extremely hard to figure out, especially when you don’t understand why a person can act that way, how they can live with treating someone that way.

I am certain I have been depressed for five and a half years, starting in December 2007.  I am also fairly sure that I have had a form of PTSD, or a similar stress disorder, for the past several years, caused by the abuse and gaslighting of Richard and Tracy.

It was starting to heal, until they found my blog and began gaslighting me anew, adding threats as well, so I plunged back into the pit–in a year with several new emotionally traumatic experiences to add to the stress disorder.

Unfortunately, as a middle-class housewife and mother of a young child in the middle of the recession, with no health insurance provided by the husband’s job and no money to pay for it, and with heavy debt–professional diagnoses and trained counseling have been an impossible dream, at least during the worst of the depression and stress disorder.

All our money had to go toward physical necessities.  (This also explains why my 13 years of research into NVLD and Asperger’s has to suffice for now, because getting an actual diagnosis for NVLD is beyond our means.)

You can’t expect a pastor to know how to treat stress disorders.  My family and most of my friends live far away.  I have had to do this the hard way: by myself.  I’m sure that’s one reason why it’s taken so long to get through this.

Also, when you’re being abused, you don’t want to go to therapy to help you feel better about being abused.  First, you want the abuse to STOP, and justice of some kind to be done; then you can work on feeling better about being abused.

My abusers still justify their actions and haven’t stopped spying on me.  Rather than somebody telling me how to feel better about it, I want somebody to tell them to STOP, and to tell them their actions are wrong and sinful.  Not just me, but someone they’ll listen to.

That’s why, if they were to start going to my church full-time, I would be forced to request mediation from my priest or someone else in the church.  Because no one can expect you to be in the same church with your abuser/stalker for years on end without it causing all sorts of stress and anxiety disorders.

Not to mention, sharing the Eucharist with that person, contaminates the Eucharist.  There are Bible passages on how seriously we are to treat taking the Eucharist, lest we bring condemnation on ourselves.

Or is it depression now so much as it is anger, disappointment, and sadness?  Disappointment that as a shy introvert with NVLD/Asperger tendencies, I thought I had finally found a friend, one who lived here in my town, someone to talk to about everything and hang out with, only to find that friend was narcissistic, abusive and probably conning me the whole time?

I recall spending the entire 90s pondering and writing about the abuses of Peter, Shawn and Phil, analyzing everything, writing my college memoirs.  Then in the 2000s I would post about Phil on forums whenever the topic of abuse came up.

Maybe I’m at that stage now, moving out of wanting reconciliation, but figuring out what happened, labeling it, analyzing it, just as I did with my college abuse experiences, long after the trauma had passed.  Putting it into fiction or poems, posting memoirs, but seeing it as part of the past instead of the present.

Or, rather, it would be the past if my abusers would do as my past abusers did: make peace with me instead of stalking me, especially if their church closes.  [Update: Their church did close, but they did NOT start coming to mine after all.]

People disparage blogging, but sometimes that’s all you’ve got to really dig into what happened.  Not everybody can just go to a therapist, and even then, a therapist only gets an hour with you at a time.

(I also had a disappointing experience with counseling in college: I only had 6 sessions free, an hour each, and while I wanted to work on getting over Shawn‘s sexual and psychological manipulations and breaking free of him and Peter, the counselor kept talking about my shyness and how to fix that.  I didn’t go there to fix my shyness!)

People also don’t always realize that the Internet is the only way some of us have to communicate about these things, especially transplants into small cities where everyone has known each other since high school, and doesn’t think of inviting you out for coffee because they already have their circle of besties from Kindergarten.

Where, when you finally found someone to be your own bestie and go out for coffee with you, you were treated like a f—ing whore by that person’s spouse for wanting to go out for coffee, so even that concept brings back bad memories.

It’s the reality of modern life in a disconnected age where even neighbors don’t know each other: It takes time and breaking through cliques to get to the point of sharing such intimate details of your life with people.

So many of us have to use Facebook and e-mail to communicate with old friends, rather than just going out for coffee with a new friend to tell them everything you’re going through.

And even those friends don’t want to hear about it after a while, so if you don’t have a therapist, you have to get your emotions out somehow.  And sometimes even therapists recommend blogging; I occasionally visit an ACON (adult child of narcissists) blog which was started because the blogger’s therapist recommended it.

It’s also worth it when you see comments such as this one just posted on Paula’s Pontifications:

To Paula, Anonymous, and others who have described what it’s like to be subject to emotional abuse:

You are putting words to experiences that are most difficult to explain and it is immensely helpful to all of us trying to grapple what we’ve been through and why we weren’t able to understand what was happening at the time; how our vision was shrouded and our judgment systematically deluded by sociopathic influences.

Recognizing that the reactions of others have parallels to our own alleviates feelings of guilt or shame, and also, sharing your experiences helps us realize that we are not alone or impossible to understand and believe.

Thank you all for your efforts! You are making a big difference in the world.

Blogging is an outlet.  The names are changed because it’s not about revenge.  It is exposure, but if the subjects don’t out themselves, no one knows who they are.  (My close friends and some others know who the subjects are and what they’ve done, but they have not read the blogs.)

No, it is an outlet, a way to pour out all those feelings which bottle up inside, without annoying your loved ones.  A reader can read as much or as little as he/she likes, but be helped by whatever he/she reads.

For me, as a writer, blogging is also working through various ways of saying things until I find a gem: a book, a blog post with a thousand hits, a poem.  My blog is a writing journal, where the best way to figure out how to express a thought, is to keep writing it different ways until you find the best one, the best metaphor, the best wording.

I often repeat myself in my blogs as I think of a better or different way of expressing something, an insight I did not have previously, or just something that springs to mind that was not there when I wrote about this a year ago.

I see this in my old diaries as well, where I wrote endlessly about my experiences with Peter, Shawn and Phil until I finally got them out of my system, then later–when writing my memoirs–found these records valuable.  I would come across a passage or poem written 20 years before, and think, Dang, that’s beautiful.

I will write a post which gets a little attention, but not much.  Several months later I’ll write another one on a similar topic, which will get all sorts of hits.  It’s trial-and-error, see what works, what doesn’t, so that if I decide to turn all of this into a published book, I’ll know what to use.

Also, this record will be invaluable one day if I turn the emotions from this experience into fiction.  When writing stories for The Lighthouse, which drew on my college relationships for inspiration, I tried to, for example, write Jenny’s love letter to Scott, but could not write it authentically.

So I pulled out letters I wrote to Peter, and adapted them to my needs.  The result was an authentic-sounding love/grief letter.

If I wish to turn the Richard/Tracy experience into fiction as well, then these blog posts will help me write true emotions which readers can feel and identify with.

We blog because narcissists and abusers get their tentacles down deep into your psyche, so deep that it takes an enormous amount of work to pull them back out again–without damaging the rest of yourself in the process.

It takes an enormous amount of work to peel away the layers of two and half years of abuse and gaslighting, to figure out what criticisms may have been genuine, and which may have been the products of a (Tracy’s) deranged and/or personality disordered and/or bipolar mind (made that way by abuse, then spreading that abuse to everyone nearby).

It takes an enormous amount of work to get through the sadness of losing your closest friend due to betrayal, when everything around you reminds you of this person, so you have to give up beloved music/movies/activities which remind you of this person.

It takes an enormous amount of work for your heart to catch up with your head, for you to reconcile what you thought was a pious man, with the reality of his threatening your husband with physical violence and his almost murdering his little girl; and to do this while being endlessly stalked and threatened by this person because you dared to speak the truth and say it loud.

It takes an enormous amount of work to survive when every day you fight just to keep from stepping in front of a bus, and you fight this solely because your child needs a mother.  (It took me many months, possibly a year, to get past this stage.)

But I see the end coming.  I see the light up ahead.  I see the strength returning.  I’m beginning to stand and walk instead of crawling toward it.

I think it helps to write about it and to have confronted my abusers in this way, to have a church family, to realize my true friends are still there for me and love me, to have reconnected with a few old friends, to have made two new friends, to go from a daily walking/exercise bike routine to strength training at the gym, to buy a bike which widens my range of travel without a car.

It is coming.  I just have to keep going forward.

Maybe my faith will return as well.  Maybe that light is God’s beacon to me, leaving His light in the window so I don’t miss my destination as I fight through the darkness.

(As I titled another post which has long since been taken down, but was written in fall 2011, “The Light is Shining Through.”  I was going to revise it, but forgot about it.  But if you click on that link, you will see the revision I finally made in August 2013.)

Some time ago I answered a comment in which the commenter noted that the feelings surrounding the narcissistic injury still hurt after a considerable period of time.

That has had me thinking about why these injuries hurt us so deeply.  There are many kinds of hurt in our lives and people do mean things almost regularly.  Why do these seem to last longer than others?…

So, you see, there are several reasons why the pain continues.  Like a sore that never quite heals, narcissistic injury can last a long time.

But how do you move on then? …

You can move on with your life, even though the memory of the offense still brings pain. —For the answers to these questions, read Why Does It Still Hurt? by David Orrison.

Unfortunately, this is how many of us learned how to get through the tough times. We have learned to use denial as a coping mechanism. What we fail to realize is that the very method we thought was helping us is really killing us inside…..

When something hurts in life, we typically avoid it. We rarely think of it as something we are meant to learn from. In fact, we immediately try to find a way to get rid of the painful feeling. We run away thinking we can avoid our reality, but what we don’t realize is:

NOTHING EVER GOES AWAY UNTIL IT HAS TAUGHT US WHAT WE NEED TO KNOW.

We can lie to ourselves or run all we want, but the lesson will keep returning in different forms and manifestations until we learn what it is trying to teach us about our reality.

The very first noble truth the Buddha points out is that pain is inevitable in human beings. It is part of the human condition. We cannot avoid it.

We must accept pain and open our hearts to look at what we can gain by facing it. Only then can we discover that the very thing that terrifies us is in fact a way for us to reconnect with our true self and experience a rebirth.

Facing reality shows you who you are and what is true. Confronting our pain and fear tells us something about ourselves. We must get to know fear, become familiar and intimate with it.

It teaches us something. When we stop running and don’t act out, repress or blame, we encounter our true self. –Lisa E. Scott, Experiencing Your Rebirth After a Narcissist

Links to help for abusive friendships

There’s plenty of help out there for abusive romantic relationships, but what about friendships?  Here are some links:

Friends with a Narcissist

What makes a friendship abusive?

Coping with a verbally abusive friend

Joyful Alive Woman’s “My 32-year friendship with H – A Woman with Early Narcissistic Injury and Many Narcissistic Traits”

Scroll down to ‘A “Christian” Abuser in Action’

I have had two abusive friendships.  The first was Shawn; story here.  The second was Richard and Tracy; story here (summary, which leads to the book-length version if you are so inclined).

Shawn and I eventually came to peace, but Richard and Tracy have been stalking me for the past year; you can follow the stalking story starting here, and especially here.

The Difficulties and Rewards of Breaking Ties with Narcissists

(This is one of my most popular posts.)

Here’s a good post by One Angry Daughter, on reasons to go no-contact with a narcissist: Why a “Healthy” Relationship with a Narcissist is Not Possible

Her reasons are so true.  I have learned in my own life, dealing recently with two people with Cluster Bs (narcissistic, borderline, histrionic, high-conflict personality disorders), that they do not change, do not accept responsibility, will just keep blaming you for everything wrong if you stick around.

I felt guilty for so long for cutting these Cluster Bs out of my life, often wondering if I did the right thing–

–but as I discovered a couple of years later, they were still blaming me for everything wrong, still justifying their own Cluster B rages and abuses, still crossing my boundaries of insisting that I be treated with respect and kindness.

While a layman can’t make an official diagnosis, a layman still has to deal with the behaviors of abusers, whether the abusers ever get diagnosed with Cluster B or not.

And if all the behaviors are there, the abuser must be treated as if they were officially diagnosed: In other words, cut them out of your life and don’t look back, without feeling guilty.

An official diagnosis only gives an official stamp on the behaviors of this person; it does not create them.  An undiagnosed Cluster B is still a Cluster B, still causes destruction, and his victims need to act as if he had been diagnosed.

Or to put it another way, an abuser is an abuser no matter what’s driving his actions.

As Shrink4Men’s Tara J. Palmatier puts it in the comments here:

Diagnosing an individual with a personality disorder can be difficult for several reasons:

1) PD’d individuals tend to lie/minimize/blame others/portray themselves as victims to therapists. They can be very proficient at playing the sweet, injured party and as such, are able to fool a lot of people, even well-trained therapists.

2) They often refuse to acknowledge their problems, blame others and drop out of therapy once the therapist starts to recognize the real issues and tries to make the PD’s behavior the focus of treatment.

3) Many therapists, even when they strongly suspect/believe the individual has a PD, do not give them the diagnosis for a variety of reasons.

This video, “NPD and BPD” by [email protected], on the differences between NPD (narcissism) and BPD (borderline), makes Tracy sound more narcissistic than borderline.

It even goes into breaking the BPD’s rules without knowing what they are–which sounds very familiar.

It also says that when you break up, the BPD is more likely to try to get you to reconsider, while the NPD is more likely to say “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out” (Tracy’s reaction).

Many of my clients and participants on Shrink4Men comment on the overlap of narcissistic and borderline behaviors in their wives, girlfriends, exes, parents, and siblings, etc. This is because narcissism is very frequently present in individuals with BPD. –Dr. Tara, The New Face of Borderline

I had my own experiences and the testimonies of Richard and Todd to go by before, saw how well they fit in with all the traits of Cluster B.

But now I have proof because Richard and Tracy began stalking and trying to intimidate me, sent me an e-mail which made it glaringly obvious that they are both Cluster Bs, no doubt left about it.

I did the right thing in cutting these people off, sized them up correctly.  If I had stuck around instead of ending the relationship with them, they would just have continued their abusive behaviors, and sucked my soul away.

I see clearly that I lost nothing of value, that Richard was no true friend.  Now, without them–and knowing that I was correct about them and did the right thing–I can go on with life, much happier without them.

Because of the psychological “spell” which narcissists put you under, you begin to think you can’t live without them.  Maybe they are your lover, your mother, your best friend, or some other such relationship which you feel you can’t break off.

But it isn’t true.  It may hurt for a time, just like cutting off a diseased limb, but eventually it will get better, life will return to you.

For example, I felt forced to cut my best friend out of my life, only to discover later that his character was not what I thought it was, because of a horrible, violent act he committed (choking his daughter to unconsciousness) and was convicted of after the friendship breakup–

–and the lack of remorse he showed for this act, in the e-mail he and/or Tracy wrote to me.  The truth of his character was forced to my notice.

My husband Jeff says Richard is afraid of me because I know about this and so many other things he’s said and done, and that he wants to keep me under his thumb.

Not only am I much happier not dealing with his wife’s constant dramas, but I am now making friends with a person who has many of the traits I so admired in my former best friend–but none of the narcissism.

This is a fellow parishioner who has the piety and zeal of a convert while being cradle Orthodox, and knows about our faith’s theologies and oddities such as the toll house controversy, is someone I can talk to about such things.

He posts quotes from various saints on Facebook.  He listed Goth music in his Facebook “likes.”  But he is against getting too concerned about outward form such as headscarves and pews.

He’s shown no signs of extremist politics; he posts about religion, not politics, on Facebook; he voted the same way I did the other day.  As far as I can tell, he has no violent past, and eschews violence.

Through him I’m also making new friends who interest and amuse me, who want to convert to Orthodoxy, so we can relate to each other.  I feel my zeal for God returning.

It’s almost as if God is telling me, Don’t worry, I really am here, I just needed to get this false friend out of the way so you could make much better friends–and reconnect with your true, old friends.

I go to parties or get-togethers with old friends, meet up with my old roommie, and it’s fun.  People are free to be themselves; nobody judges me harshly for being a shy, quiet person with little oddities.

One friend will flirt shamelessly with me, and his wife and my husband just laugh at the silliness of it all.

My old roommie does social work and is a liberal; she can relate to my outrage over child abuse.

Another old friend is a preacher, but also a liberal with a huge heart, and very silly at times; he’s fun to chat with on Facebook.  I can tell him I just watched a Muppet movie, and thought of him.

Another old friend told me he used to be passionately in love with me back in high school but never had the courage to say anything.

I’ve comforted someone who was dealing with an abusive marriage.  I’ve connected with a cousin (by marriage) who went through a painful breakup with a narcissistic girlfriend at the same time I went through this painful friendship breakup, and who has Asperger’s, so we relate to each other in many ways.

For a while, Hubby and I went to SCA dance classes in the neighboring barony, before they moved on to fighter classes instead.

We’ve traveled.  My husband found a new, fun group with which to play D&D.

My husband finally found a good-paying job, with health benefits, right here in town.  I’ve been making friends with other parents at my child’s school.

Though for a long time it seemed like I could not go on without my former best friend, like I just wanted my life to end, I’ve slowly been breaking free of his narcissistic hold over me.

Which is good, because recent events have shown me that he is a full-blown narcissist, not a true friend at all, not capable of being the kind of friend I once thought he was.

Here is a blog post written by a guy who used blogging to realize what really happened during his relationship with his probably borderline ex, and get over her.  He’d been so beaten down by her that it took this step for him to remember the truth.  Some quotes:

Finally, one thing that this exercise also helped me with was confronting false nostalgia.  “Maybe it wasn’t that bad. Maybe I was really to blame after all.”

When those thoughts come into your head (and even now, they still do for me, occasionally), go back and read the story you’ve written. Remember, this is your narrative – not hers.  Things were that bad.

You’ll remember that pretty quickly—and you’ll never want to let yourself fall into that trap ever again.  Write it out.  And remember: You get to….

As I write this, I’m approaching 2 years of no contact with the ex. I am by no means “all better.”  I don’t know if I ever will be. But if I’m not “all” better, I’m at least better than I was two years ago at this time.

I hope this post and other posts I contribute will be more like postcards from the voyage. I want to say “the voyage back to wholeness,” but that would be an assumption.

It may seem impossible now, but you must cut off that Cluster B, regain your own memories of what happened, research Cluster Bs, learn how to reject the abuser’s words and cuts at you (such as Tracy’s rages at me) as mere sewer sludge to be washed off.

Eventually, you will get to the point where you can say to your bully/abuser, as Sarah did to the Goblin King, “You have no power over me!”

I can now laugh at Tracy and Richard trying to call me crazy, knowing that I’m actually quite sane and that life is again good.

The comments in this blog post (May 3, 2009 post) by One Angry Daughter are very reassuring; one poster wrote,

Angry, I love this blog, you, the whole concept of blogging to “get back” at selfish people anonymously, get it out of your system.

Sometimes I just tell people in your situation, You gotta’ blog, get support on the web, there are people in your EXACT situation. And here you are, doing it.

But maybe there’s a direct way to get to them, too, a therapeutic approach for all of the fam. I just started reading so if that’s impossible, don’t get angry 🙂 at me. Just sayin, people can change, it can take a while, no doubt.

OAD writes in “My Man” (Update: probably in the comments, which are not archived) the reason for her blog–and it’s the same as mine:

I think venting about NM (narcissistic mother) is a good thing, but perhaps look for a different outlet for that venting besides DH (dear husband).

A journal, blog or one of the DONM (Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers) message boards are a great place to get it all out. I started this blog to spare my DH and my friends. I know they are supportive, but I think the topic gets old and there comes a point to move on.

Your Abusive Female Friend or Relative–What to do about it by Joyful Alive Woman: This link sounds very much like Tracy.

From Ben Leichtling’s Stop Toxic, Bullying, Abusive Pseudo-Friends:

Toxic, righteous, controlling, bullying, abusive pseudo-friends usually don’t change.  The relief and freedom you feel when you clear them out of your environment tells you that it was worth the effort.  You’ve reclaimed your spirit and your life.

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