Showing posts with label Narcissism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Narcissism. Show all posts

Friday, 29 September 2023

Generational Abuse

 



GENERATIONAL ABUSE


A case study of Narcissism as family dynamic.



What happened with Girls Mother from Guys perspective is he set a boundary which Mother, fair play to her, respected to his face. But she did not like it. So she lied to the family and claimed Guy had said things he had not said (1 mention of heroin, 2 calling her ‘unwise’). It positions Mother as vulnerable needing caring attention and positions Guy as nasty for having upset her by saying those things. 



1 He did not say those things.

2 He is allowed to establish boundaries. 

3 He not responsible for Mothers reaction.* 


*This is interesting because in the overall situation Guy is claiming how Girl is responsible for bullying him and for her ignoring the boundary he set to protect himself and their relationship from the bullying. Guy has described that as ‘Girl not listening to him’.


At cursory glance it appears to be a double standard on Guys part. However; 


Guy has repeatedly asked Girl to be responsible for her own behaviour. 

1 to stop bullying him, 

2 to respect personal boundaries. 


To go to other people to gripe about someone behind their back is not respectful of that person, it is both disrespectful and sneaky. 


To lie about what a person said is also disrespectful, is also manipulative. 



That this issue has been festering, repeating, causing ongoing damage for so long without being resolved is because Girl has not accepted what Guy is saying to be valid. 


Girl simply ignores that Guys ‘questionable behaviour’ is a reaction to her bullying, so she does not have to take accountability for her own behaviour. Girl does not acknowledge it all, so Guy is unsure whether Girl is aware she is doing it despite his attempts to communicate with her about it. 



It has come to a head now because of Girls Mother’s involvement.  


This has exposed the same behaviour seen in both Girl and her Mother. Now we recognise from where Girl has learned that behaviour. 



Transactional Analysis reveals it is the classical narcissistic cycle of abuse. 


1

To bully someone (by applying pressure and insults, coercive and controlling behaviour), 

and then when the person reacts by setting boundaries, 

2a

to ignore those boundaries, 

thus pressuring them further toward a more extreme reaction, 

2b 

and/or;

to say that the reaction is abuse and the person is abusive, * 

3

to deny accountability for bullying them in the first place by denying and ignoring that had happened at all, 

by technique of dominating the narrative to keep it focused only on the targets reaction, not on the cause of that reaction,

4 

to outright lie about what happened (manipulation), 

5 

to get attention = energy from anyone who will listen and support the bully who is now in vulnerable mode claiming to be the target,




*2b 

In this case, the target has gone into ‘Flight Mode’, needs time-out to stabilise. This is not the same as ‘avoidant attachment’ although by repetition it can cause it. 

This is also characteristic behaviour of autistic overwhelm. 



6 

Accuse the person who needs ‘time-out to stabilise’, as being emotionally and mentally unstable, unsupportive and emotionally unavailable.  


7 

to play ‘poor-me’ for being in a relationship with someone who is mentally and emotionally unstable, unsupportive and emotionally unavailable. 


The narcissistic cycle of abuse is characterised by maximum yield of sympathetic attention energy for the person who stirred up the drama, through non-accountability of their own behaviour, projecting at their scapegoat target.  



CONCLUSION: 


The dynamic is understood very differently based on one critical factor; 


Who has the dominant narrative? 


This depends entirely on recognition of the targets perspective of the experience being valid or not. 


This involves holding the bully accountable for their own behaviour which  originally created the drama cycle, instead of whitewashing that to focus instead on persecuting the target for reacting how our biologies and psychologies are designed to naturally react.











Saturday, 22 October 2022

CPBT






Somebody posted a slideshow which caught my attention 

to a Narcissism Recovery group on Instagram. 


I have copied it here. 


The pale yellow squares containing questions. 








This is practically the same check-list my ex had me go through with her. 


I’ve literally done this test and answered these questions. 


Here’s what I said:








1 I like you enough to want to make sure you’re okay. 

   Love is a huge topic we can dedicate our lives to exploring together in a best possible outcome scenario. 



2 Yes, I enjoy looking at you. 

   Would you have it any other way? 

   Do you ask because you want me to suggest changes?

   For example I prefer no make-up to make-up.  







3 We can grow together if we make the effort, 

   it involves changing in ways we trust each other to guide us 

   to become whatever each other require of each other.  

   Which is all about communication. 



4 Trust is built over time through shared experiences. 

   So, let’s share some more experiences. 

   Trusting our intuition is our direct connection to the divine. 

   My intuition tells me to gently lower my natural defensive boundaries over time 

   as we develop our trust for each other together. 

   I’m happy and willing to do that. 







5 I am only yours as much as you are only mine. 

   We both have children by other people.

   Our children but not the other parent should be our priority.  

   We’re in this together and it should not be a slavery for either of us, 

   even if we play with sub-Dom dynamics which inevitably appear in any relationship, 

   the foundation of that is equality of belonging with each other. 



6 I hope neither of us will cheat on the other. 

   We’re both as likely to be faced with temptations to test us. 

   Would it destroy what we have built if one of us did cheat? 

   Or are we strong enough to laugh about it and carry on positively with love? 

   I don’t want to cheat on you, if that’s what you mean by asking. 

   I certainly don’t plan to. 







7 No one person can satisfy 100% of the needs of another person. 

   It’s realistic to be realistic about it. 

   We are in this together and learning from each other. 

   Nobody is perfect all the time and that’s an impossible expectation to hold someone to. 

   Because we’re humans. 

   A normal relationship need for anyone is to support and be supported by loved ones, 

   by trying to understand what they’re going through and work to uplift them if necessary. 

   Is it likely to get so severe it’s more than we can handle? 



The answer is that it did. She is professionally diagnosed with histrionic narcissism after her ex before me had her checked out regarded endangerment to her child and other people. I can verify the accuracy of the diagnosis despite my not wanting to believe it for a long time before her mask slipped. When I confronted her about it she ripped it off completely and never made any pretence again. Hashtag Hostility. 


Which illustrates the sort of person who does ask their partner these sorts of questions on a second date over a bottle of wine which is her thing. 


She asked these questions as a 'getting to know each other session' under the guise of "building some strong relationship bonds with hope to a happy future together" (her words). 



8 Eligible for me?  

   If we fulfil each other’s relationship needs we will be eligible.

   It seems a strange way to express that although it’s direct and focussed. 

   Are you sure it’s the right word? 

   It invokes a lot of nuances. 

   What are the criteria for eligibility? 

   I’ll tell you yours if you tell me mine. 

   People pair up and bond for mutual emotional, mental and physical support. 












Friday, 21 October 2022

Coffee Card

Hey Jane, I found the coffee-shop gift card you kindly gave me last Xmas. 


Thank you. 


It was generous and thoughtful especially as it is my favourite coffee store and also because we hardly at all know each other. 


I felt obliged to get you a gift in return. In the usual Xmas hype what I gave you was a bit crap and I felt bad about it. 


It was from a pile of items I stockpiled for my son, nephews and nieces, extended family and friends kids. 


So, belated as this is, as I sit and enjoy a cappuccino, the best I can offer by way of a more worthy present is a story. 


I write and have had some stuff published so there's a skilled trade involved. 


It's not the best story. It might not even be a good story. But it is a true story; which always counts for a lot simply because truth has a lot of value in the good world.


In this case it's our story, which also counts for something. 


This is the story of how over-familiarity can affect people in unintentional ways, and also how that is not always such a bad thing. 



"Who is Jane?" asked my ex-partner. 


"I don't know." I rattled my brain for an answer. It was morning, I had not yet had my habitual caffeine fix to wake me up into a functional state. "My sons cousin is called Jane." I suggested. "She's twelve." 


"Why would a child have sent you this?" insisted my ex. 


"I don't know. What is it?" I asked nonplussed. 


"Its a Christmas card signed Love Jane kiss kiss kiss. That's a little intimate for someone you don't even know who she is." 


"Let me see?"


She threw an envelope at me the way a ninja throws a throwing star. 


"I very much doubt a twelve year old would be buying you coffee vouchers." she added as I read the Christmas card. 


"Oh, it's my neighbour Jane who recently moved in. Perhaps she's being friendly, what with it being Christmas and her working in customer relations she's probably all fired up with goodwill and seasonal cheer." 


"Three kisses? Love? What's going on?" 


"You're jealous because a neighbour who I hardly know gave me a Christmas card?" 


"She gave you a coffee gift voucher. It's excessive." 


"Well that's subjective. She works in a coffee-shop. She probably has loads of them. It's no big deal."


"No big deal? She obviously thinks she stands a chance with you. She knows I stayed last night because my car is parked outside. She timed this perfectly." 


"Babe, honestly it's nothing. You're reading into it. Please don't get so wound up about it." 


"Well she is clearly a narcissist to be pushing my buttons like this. Don't you see you're getting used?" 


"I see you're upset about something which someone else has done that's not really anything to do with either of us. She probably gave one of these to everybody on the street for all we know." 


"How well do you know her?"


"We've spoken socially-polite niceties twice perhaps three times? She's recently moved in next door so understandably she's paid lip-service to finding out who her neighbours are. One time she told me she works in a coffee-shop because I asked her." 


My ex did not drop the topic until new year by which time it was clear her obsession over my new neighbour was massively interfering with our ability to sustain a functional relationship. 


By January I was single again after a fifteen month relationship. The break-up was largely on the basis my ex is a histrionic narcissist. 


Sitting here eight months later, drinking a coffee from the voucher which finally I no longer associate with pressure, guilt and abusive controlling behaviour. 


I contemplate the massive favour my neighbour did by helping, albeit unintentionally, by getting my ex off my back. 


The gift of freedom is priceless. 


The gift of gratitude perhaps less so but nevertheless it is sincere. 


Thank you for coffee.





Friday, 23 November 2018

Shame/Narcissism/Feminism/Healing


Echo and Narcissus, John William Waterhouse, 1903,
commonly used illustration of how projected grids affect working context to the delusion and disillusionment of involved parties





Disclaimer: For the purposes of this text, specific gender pronouns are used. While it is equally accurate the other way around it is vastly more common in the community to encounter it the way specified here. This use of gender bias is done purposefully, it should become apparent by the end of the text why it is necessary in this context. This said; a core principle of the outline concept is that in most cases, 'it works two ways'. 



Shame/Narcissism/Feminism/Healing


The shame and guilt reflex. 
Trauma becomes behavioral patterns.
She needs to hear somebody say, I am sorry. 
And for her to believe it, to accept it. 

Until then, every relationship she has which can possibly be exploited into the shape required, for the partner to apologize to her. She has transferred the need. It is no longer the original person who needs to apologize for that to her, it is whoever is providing her supply/support. 

The trauma possibly originated in childhood from a parent or a caregiver, or from a significant other eg; spouse. In any case, it is the breaking of trust which is resulted in trauma and developed into personality disorder. 

A significant portion of the population carry versions of this around. People on the narcissistic personality disorder spectrum as a result of trauma, need their partner to apologize to them. So therefore they bully and belittle significant other until that person conforms and plays at the role for their healing. Whether the person has consented to this game or not, it is the closest possible in liminal terms because they are a supply, supportive of the person. 

It does inflict injury on the partner by the process of cajoling and positioning him into a situation where he feels apologetic. This subtle form of abuse is called recontextualisation and usually developed in stages but can occur in one fabricated situation in which the narcissist is moving the goalposts. 

What happens next, as the shame and the consequence, the pattern which is grown from the shame, is projected outwards instead of being faced up to, is it becomes toxic. This is the narcissist internal mechanism, it then becomes the context clouding the relationship. For the narcissist is the purpose of the relationship which is being used as leverage so that they do not have to face the same reflex but can still maneuver around it. That partner is the fall-guy being manipulated for that purpose. In most cases, neither of the partners are aware of it and in many cases because there is so much trauma in the community, both partners are playing at various levels of this. 

For relationship counseling; identifying personal shame and trusting your partner to work through those processes with you, should be something which occurs early on in the relationship preferably before engaging in sex because that further complicates matters although trust relationships being what they are… Are preferable than disposable sex partners. We will need sex that’s a given. It’s only a problem when games are played using sex as leverage.

What happens next is the relationship between the person needing to hear sorry and inflicting that position onto their partner, both fall within roles which are very easily misinterpreted. Smokescreens and distractions veil the underlaying energy structures. 

The partner feels targeted and put out, and recognizes this, is in a confusion of withdrawal for self-preservation with being exploited by routine behavior to respond to the narcissists reward/control system. It is much more complicated and confusing when sex is involved because then it functions on every level of our being and the entanglement is a much more complicated entity to untangle.

The narcissist on the other hand is not receiving the full support and supply required and which they are used to, decides their partner who is not reacting by apologizing, is useless and a waste of the time. 

From both directions, resentment grows. 

One of them decides to leave first, creating a vacuum space of misperception which cannot be healed by communication because there is none, hurt feelings and uncomfortable environment. Usually it is the provider who is the more badly damaged, who chases after the narcissist because, As a result of their independence and self esteem having been ground down completely, the relationship has become a reference on which the victims well-being also balances. 

The narcissist uses this, because after having emotionally ended the relationship, all the effort is coming from the target, trying to fix things while feeling apologetic regardless that they were the provider. 

The police see that chase as being the target is the troublemaker. Empathic Psychologists see that as the target is having a breakdown because of what the narcissist has done to them. Most of the time, relationship breakdowns involve low-level narcissism from both sides. That’s actually quite normal because we’re dealing with humans and not robots.

This situation is exploited by the narcissist who created and projects it, only to exploit it. The narcissist can identify the target as being the abuser, for not supporting them fully in the way they need it, and for harassing them after they cut their losses. 

The narcissists support/supply network encourage the narcissist to avoid the victim who in their collective network is a bad person who must be avoided and punished if possible, for the injury they have caused to the narcissist. 

The source of this injury is her unwillingness to face a shame and he’s not recognizing his role in replaying her past trauma to heal it and the drama which has resulted from it. She does not want to heal it, she does not want to face that and so she involves her intimate partners in the circle around it, creating a black hole into which the part of falls, so that she can label that person as the bad guy to seek her revenge on the original trauma while at the same time not having to face it.

She will repeat the pattern in every relationship she has until somebody says sorry. 

At which point, if she accepts it she will feel superior and healing process can begin. 

Narcissism includes domination, superiority complex, grandiosity and aspiration; a specific social position which she wants to achieve. If it’s not achieved she feels a failure all her miserable life, once she has achieved it she will use that authority to maximize the size of her supply/support network. 

The Societies infrastructural systems support the narcissists ability to achieve such position of authority within it. A mental belief that anybody who does not respect its structure system is a threat to the society, is the reinforcement of the righteousness of narcissistic control. 

Those who can see the whole for what it is, correctly identifies the situation and the necessary steps towards healing the people involved; both the victim of the narcissist and the narcissist who is claiming to be the victim of her victim. In both cases, apologies are needed and needed to be accepted as authentic rather than lines spoken by actors for the sake of convenience. Narcissist rely on face value fakery, they are believable lawyers and expert actors.

Identifying a persons relationship with their own sense of insecurity, inferiority, shame and guilt, is essential for the counselor. The counselor must himself dedicate an unusually large amount of time to analyzing and identifying those factors about himself so as to be able to accurately do so for other people. 

Traditionally we use the word ‘shaman’ for one who does this. Shame-man. The word also means shah as in noble and relates to chi as in energy. In the west the Society refuses to acknowledge shaman to be a real thing. Shaman are counselors and community healers, reminding everybody always to live in balance, to respect the harmony. The society does however except the role of a professional counselor, one who understands psychology and emotional psychology, who fulfills the role within the society of healing trauma.

The cycle is: those abused by narcissist develop narcissistic tendencies which are then exploited by the narcissists. Narcissism is a reflex personality, growing from a traumatic experience. There are covert and overt narcissists. When it replaces a persons authentic and original personality it becomes a social problem for the community. There are varying levels of narcissism, and there are many energy exploitation strategies although they do typically conform to only a handful of types. 

As always, projection of an analysis on to the situation for the purpose of path-working and healing, must integrate that there may be other invisible factors or other systems of analysis which are more accurate to individual cases. 

Despite being the best tool we have, ‘the versus narcissism technique’ context based on identifying shame-reflex, is limited; it involves extremism and fundamentalism, left-brain thinking which narcissists epitomize as reptilian calculus and which are useful in making sense of the world for people who have been emotionally and mentally destabilized by involvement with narcissists. 

Remember, the narcissists favorite trick is to go public about how their victim has been narcissistically abusing them, as soon as the victim recognizes that they are being victimized. The narcissist will become aware their victim is waking up to them even before the victim does. They are usually gone and involving themselves in support groups, blackening the victims name, even before the victim in the mess of a breakdown fully realizes what has just happened to them.


“She needs to hear somebody say, I am sorry. And for her to believe it to accept it.”

This can be very difficult for narcissist who primarily does not want to confront their own shame, to the extent of deleting it entirely from their being. They have invested a lot of time in the personality and behavioral routines which have emerged as a result of not facing that shame. The amount of emotion and empathic ability a narcissist deletes is what places them where they are on the spectrum. 

Narcissists have problem with authenticity. Narcissists reject, resent, hate, and persecute, genuine authenticity, wholesomeness, the integrity to do the right thing. They are experts at the face value act of “being seen to be doing the right thing” for their own public image and supply-reward system. The difficulty in helping an assist through the healing process is that they will not accept authenticity because they do not/cannot resonate with it at all. 

Therefore, were a person who abused the narcissist as a child, to step into the room and say “I am so sorry for what I did, and I mean it”; the narcissist would not accept that as a reality. 

The structure of their being relies on multiple supply/support , a structure of orientation which dissolves as soon as they accept “I’m sorry”.  For them to be able to progress is normal people, they need to hear those words from somebody who they can accept it from, which is unlikely to be the original abuser.

Another major factor under recognition is narcissists have a heightened sense of expectancy, so what they perceive to be an abuse toward them is in many cases, the failing of the world in general to meet their higher than reasonable expectancy. 

That “daddy did not buy her a pony for Christmas” has triggered her lifelong antisocial behavior personality, is interpreted by her as being an abuse because she cannot accept with the child’s mind which narcissists operate from regardless of actual age. Instead it is interpreted as willful and malignant nastiness inflicted upon her by somebody who was supposed to support her but let her down; this becomes the model for the concept of ‘love’ which she will repeat in various forms with every relationship she has. 

She will only level out and stabilize in her behavior when she has to maintain public image in the eyes of society, usually only when she has achieved that superiority status of her world being put to right, that she feels settled now. For her to be able to attain that, she needs to persecute somebody is who she has dehumanized not only in her own mind but in the community around them. 

Narcissist require victims and they will invent them to achieve their goal. Others recognize that goal as grandiosity, superiority, dehumanization of others, while those who believe the paradigm created by the narcissist, along with a narcissist who projects it, recognize it to be accepted and normal. 

It is normal that everybody should have a pony for Christmas, everybody has a pony for Christmas, there is something wrong with people who don’t. The narcissist is clever. It is not actually a pony for Christmas which is the topic here, they call it the feeling of safety and that target who was woken up to them, they call a threat. 

Thus, when the narcissist leaves a relationship in which they have exploited behind closed doors that partner, the narcissist says that the person is a danger and has abused her. 

On her say-so, her victim is prosecuted for domestic abuse and gains a bad reputation by her supply network, which is an extended abuse network who do not even know him, simply to satisfy her need to appear to be a normal person in the community. What she has achieved by this is to maximize her yield of support/supply. She can get more energy from 10 or 20 people looking after her occasionally, then she can get from one person who has exclusively dedicated himself to that. 

For many men entering into relationships, this is the situation they are facing. Men are sacrificed to this cause all the time in the name of feminism. It is why the phrase ‘feminism is cancer’ has been coined by those who are aware of what is happening to our communities. 

The “Internet cult of narcissism” is 5th Wave feminism using social media to indoctrinate the general female culture with a blueprint strategy of divide-and-control. 

Female supremacy is domestic terrorism. It recruits vulnerable members of society to become its agents. It recruits female narcissist to become its agents. It blurs the line between those two agencies.

The role of men in the community is not to reinforce the ‘divide and control’ by avoiding all females, which is the MGTOW rhetoric. Historically, men are designed to physically, emotionally and mentally to be protectors. 

At this time in history, men’s best way of protecting everybody is to identify the enemy is an extremist philosophy which is brainwashing women against men. 

Somehow, men have got to get women to see that is what’s happening and for women to decide that in a world out of balance, the only way any of us can attain balance is by working together for the harmony, doing so knowledgeably. That genders are not ‘opposite’ but in fact are ‘complementary’. We are physically, mentally, emotionally designed for union and when we do so, divine pleasure results. 

The man is not trying to abuse her by deconditioning her away from a cult which is designed to destroy relationships and communities. He’s trying to protect her from it and from her own destructive, negative tendencies. 

If feminism was worthy of being accepted, it would be teaching women how better to get on with men; not how to exploit and punish them for not being women. 

For women to learn how better to get on with men, open communication with men who are of their own mind is preferable than projecting strawman arguments at them.