We are the sum total of our experiences and define ourselves by what we do and who we love.
My identity has been forged by a number of things. Life was not kind to me as a bi-racial female growing up in the Texas Panhandle in the 60’s and ’70s. Not only was the environment inhospitable to say the least, but my family was also plagued with mental illness, turmoil, and dysfunction. The life script I was given was tragically flawed, and I lacked the knowledge, resources, or support to effect positive change. I carried this toxic programming into adulthood where I repeatedly chose partners who were similarly incapable of providing anything healthy or long-lasting. …
Unpacking 4 Chilling Tools of Narcissistic Torture
The smirk is a provocation to mislead you by thinking the narcissist must know something you do not know. It originates from all of the fuel you are providing which in turn fuels the narcissist and signals that they have control. The lesser and mid-range narcissists do not know what they are, but the smirk is an unconscious manifestation of what they are doing. They are not aware they are being manipulative or lying, so they don’t understand it. Their disorder causes them to believe something radically different from what they think they are doing. The smile is not there because they feel any kind of happiness. It is a learned way to keep the fuel flowing. …
Paralyzed by fear, she won’t let go of our predator-persecutor
Narcopath: I am happy since I left you, and I’m glad I got out. For the past 16 years we were married, I was just afraid I’d be broke or alone, but I never really loved you.
Translation: I am delusional, maladapted, and guilty of revisionist history, blameshifting, and denial. I can’t give any value to our relationship because it might make me look bad for what I did to you.
Take-away: What you are seeing is the true nature of a Cluster B individual with their behavior on full blast with no fucks given.
Question: Why would a smart, compassionate, beautiful person stay with someone who is clearly incapable of being a decent human being and remain for years only to receive a steady dose of reward and punishment, gaslighting, exploitation, and humiliation? …
Why You Must Die for Him
A partnership with a personality disordered narcissist has an expiration date. And at the end of the cycles of narcissistic abuse, the only way it can end is with your death.
A narcissist is not gender-specific, but for the purposes of this discussion, I will refer to the narcissist as a male.
First of all, let me name that narcissistic personality disorder, or NPD, is a delusional disorder. Many have asserted that people with NPD are incapable of self-awareness, but I think that misses the mark. They are self-aware but have impaired perceptions. They know that they are different from others, but their inflated egos, grandiosity, and sense of entitlement causes them to externalize the freakishness factor and assume the position that others are merely envious, inferior, and misinformed. …
Three Primary Objectives
The narcissistic-sociopath with a Cluster B personality disorder desires three essential things required for survival.
The National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) suggests that approximately 9.2% of people in the United States meet the criteria for a personality disorder which includes narcissism and anti-social personality disorder, also known as sociopathy. Often the conditions exist together as co-morbidities, hence the new term narcopath. It is imperative that we understand the underpinnings of this disorder in order to recognize it and steer clear of it.
Narcissism exists on a spectrum and most of them are unaware of the logistics that make them tick. Acknowledgment of these inner mechanisms rarely happens because it would require some degree of self-reflection and honesty, and the Cluster B disordered person is not capable of either. But there are three common things that every narcopath (narcissistic-sociopath) requires simply to survive. …
Recovery from abusive relationships with disordered partners can be a long and difficult journey, but unlike the narcissist or sociopath, we can actually heal and become whole.
The only closure you get from a narcopath is the one you give yourself.
I dressed up with my little black dress and matching bag, channeling my Audrey Hepburn minus the Breakfast at Tiffany’s big hat. I arrived early and took my seat just a few rows back from the orchestra pit. I sat in eager anticipation, clutching my program, fiddling with the tiny string of pearls as if they were rosary beads.
I waited. Then I waited some more.
But the curtain never lifted, and one by one, the crowd dissolved until I was the only one in the huge performing arts center. Something had gone awry. The performance could not go on. …
Understanding the Hunger Within to Achieve Wholeness
Both the empath and the narcissist have the hunger, but they deal with it in very different ways.
One of the first things that bound me to my narcopath was the familiar hunger we both carried with us. It was as if our lives consisted of always standing outside the banquet hall, starved and emaciated, freezing in the rain and snow, not understanding why there was never space at the table for us, always needing nourishment but receiving only crumbs. I knew he understood that hunger. I thought we were the same.
But I am an empath, and he is a narcissist-sociopath. …
The person with a narcissistic personality disorder never leaves home without it
There are many tools in the narcopath’s toolbox. Weapons of mass seduction, pity plays and victimhood, smearing and blame-shifting, the list goes on and on. But one thing is for certain. The narcissist sociopath always wears a mask and never leaves home without it.
I sometimes think about Darth Vader.
About the ugly, shriveled, pathetic mass of trembling, quivering goo that lived behind the all-powerful, intimidating mask. He created an omnipotent super-persona to compensate for the injured, damaged, destroyed person who once existed inside the empty cavern. …
Contempt is Deadly in the Devaluation and Discard Stages of Narcissistic Abuse
In the beginning, when everything is new and sparkly idealized and infatuated, the narcissist is the most charming knight in shining armor one could ever hope for. Even they believe they have found the perfect person and the perfect relationship to make them feel full and complete and whole. But after they have fed off of you, assimilated your identity, and hijacked every part of your life, they begin to devalue and ultimately discard. They will find fault, pick up the loose ends and frayed and tattered parts of the relationship, and you will quickly lose your luster. To them, you have failed them. You have failed to deliver the rescue they hoped for. You have failed to feed them and make them full. …
This is how your world ends when you love a partner with NPD — Letting them go is not a choice if you want to survive.
In T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Hollow Men, he describes a world filled with empty people. These straw men roam the earth in something that could best be described as a Twilight Kingdom — a foreboding place that resembles the underworld.
These empty souls pass among us and move around us seeking to be reanimated (from the Latin animus meaning breath) but too soulless to become real in any sense of the word. The living can only temporarily breathe life into these hollow men. So they must constantly seek this fuel, this gift of living breath, in order to feel alive.
I loved my narcopath who consumed me completely. In the end, there was nothing left. I felt it coming. In his indifference, his cold apathy, and the way he stared at me as if capturing a mental snapshot to carry with him when it was time to go. The cold black glittery eyes that burned holes in my soul the night he took off his mask as he sat across the room from me in our a little Airbnb in Portugal. I don’t know what the devil really looks like, but I’m pretty sure that he captured it quite accurately at that moment. It was pure evil and murderous intention. It’s as if he were overcome with some derisive kind of pleasure in imagining the torture that he would soon inflict upon me. I couldn’t understand what was happening. But it was the face of abject evil. And whatever Luciferian entities entered him took over at that moment. This was the same man who was so awesome and kind and wonderful and sweet and soft-spoken year after year after year of our marriage. After episodic periods of distrust and insecurity, and after 16 long years sprinkled with joy and bliss, ignorance and denial, I think I actually believed that he would always be by my side. I told myself it was just a rough patch. A bumpy spot. It was just a momentary lapse of reason. It would certainly pass. The signs were there, and the writing was on the wall. But I refused to look or listen. …
About
