(this is cut and paste from the main forum, I'm just doing this to increase the chance someone reads it / responds to it. Thanks!)
Hi. I'm a Canadian and new to the board. I struggle with 'voicelessness' in a really serious way, and due to living in part of North America where no professional psychologist i've encountered understands this issue, I shut down about it quite some time ago. All I've ever gotten from professionals in this field on this has been invalidation, judgment, "I don't understand what you are talking about so it must mean there is something wrong with you", rote dismissal, or accusations from a former GP/narc lackey of my father that I was the narcissist. I am living in a large city in western Canada, and I've just come to accept is that this ultimately is not my problem, it's just a really backward and unevolved place with way too many backwards and unevolved people. Most of these in positions of power over others.
So, because I'm new to talking about this subject, I'm just going to say whatever comes out today and whatever resonates with others, please just go with that if you choose to comment.
I grew up with a not very book smart father who was somehow a remarkably gifted manipulator of people and one of the two most gifted, effective narcissists I've ever encountered, and a doormat / closet narc mother. She has presented herself as a victim of him as well but part of me doesn't buy her story - part of me doesn't know what to believe of what she says. She presents as remorseful now but thats after years of me badgering her to acknowledge what went on. Regardless she is and was a complete doormat and the perfect foil for my father do to whatever the hell he wanted. He died several years ago (I am happy he is dead, and I don't feel bad about this) and in the period watching him die of cancer it was clear he was child until the day he died. I don't think he matured past the emotional age of an 8 or 9 year old his entire life, despite being quite successful in the business world. I also have one sister who has adopted my father's path, and who ended up marrying a much less messed up version of my mother but still with major doormat tendencies and he lets her walk all over him without compunction. His own father is an incredibly shallow narcissist himself, who is more shameless and obvious in his narcissism than anything. It's so obvious, he's a rather buffoonish character and difficult to take seriously. My father, and other narcs in my life, were much more subtle, harder to detect, and remarkably skilled at avoiding detection.
I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was 16, and had no idea why - my family did everything to cover it up - until I learned about how narcissism affects the victims sense of reality. Narcissists naturally distort reality to fit the world into the conception of it they want to be real, which, to me, makes them profoundly mentally ill to the point that when they are identified, they should be diagnosed with a dissociative identity disorder and locked up. My only sin was being open / trusting to these people and not knowing they were destructive and that I should not trust them. I now understand this event as a very understandable psychotic break due to the extreme unreality of my family environment. Other than chronic depression that has never gone away, I've never had any other psychotic "breaks" like this, for some unknown reason. I think it's more to do with the main defense mechanisms I used to cope for decades, which was profound denial and disappearance into other realms of life (obsession with collecting a variety of things, zoning out).
Narcissistic people like the ones I've known in my life are shells of human beings who I half seriously question whether they are even alive and not just some matrix like concoction of some messed up computer program. These people bring nothing but destruction into the world via their own profound unconsciousness, and the saddest part of all, there is literally no hope for these people. They are human write-offs. Too bad some insurance company can't allow us to cash on a policy and give us a real functional human being in return. Sometimes I take a Christian perspective to understanding these people's behaviour towards me and this has helped me a lot come to terms with understanding the gravity of their destruction and setting clear boundaries with them; these people to me are evil, pure and simple. While I do not consider myself Christian (not many Canadians are, one of the many ways we are a lot different than Americans
) I consider these people to be disciples of Satan, doing his bidding causing pain and destruction on earth.
My father had a brother who was the same as him, just another willy loman wannabe, who has a daughter who was also diagnosed with schizophrenia as well, but who's diagnosis continually shifted - its like they could never quite nail it down. It was this, it was that, it was something else as well. Knowing my family, the piece of the puzzle they are missing is the narcissist piece. My relationship with her ended several years ago not long after my father died. I contacted her to see if she was coming to his funeral and she never responded. I haven't heard from her since (6 years). I suspect she is lost to the unreality of her family's world. Her father, in his will, made his a-hole son in law (remarkably successful businessman) the perpetual executor of his estate to her such that she has to ask him for money even if she wants a coffee at Starbucks. This guy is probably worth $100 million dollars and he makes her do a song and dance for a $5 coffee. Last I knew, she was on welfare and had not worked in 15 years.
What I struggle with via my my heart, not my head, is how profoundly the destruction was that these people wrought in my life, and I have literally no one to validate my experiences or provide me any kind of emotional support. The most Ive gotten on this issue was from a psychologist during some emdr sessions that helped but didn't go really into this subject at all. Ive tried to access psychologists around the world who are experts in this subject for help with no success, until Richard graciously allowed me on this page to seek some support here.
I struggled with a great deal of shame, regret, anger, frustration, hopelessness and fear as a result of a life until my late 30's when everything I'd experienced until then started to come into perspective. I am 44 now. Economically the depression that resulted was devastating, I once made $75,000 a year, since then I barely make 20, although I am doing a lot better than I used to. I had a profoundly destructive situation at work from 2011 - 2014 where I was a whistleblower against a narc boss of mine, the second most destructive narcissist I've ever encountered in my life, and the company destroyed me for standing up against them (I was a social worker for Children's Services. What happened still blows my mind, the absolute last group of people you'd expect to act so disgustingly, but they did.) I resigned but what happened was an effective constructive dismissal. They made my life hell because I was a risk to expose one of their dirtbag employee's behaviour, and they needed to make me go away to make it all better. I understand in my head this is what large organizations do to people like me, but it's still very hard for me to deal with even now especially as it was for a organization that gets paid to care for and about others for a living.
I attribute my improvement to withdrawing from the world around me and ending all of my relationships (whether work or personal life) that were with narcissistic or otherwise destructive individuals. It was all of them except two people. The more I learned about it the more I started to see the patterns in my relationships. These people, through some unconscious process, are drawn to me like a magnet, and due to a problem with being too open and trusting (I believe I was trained as a child by my father to trust unworthy and manipulative individuals unquestioningly) I let them into my life and believed their BS sob stories. What I see is a pattern, pretty much unbroken, of narcissistic predators in my life. Ex wife. ex girlfriends. friends. bosses. their bosses. neighbours. and certainly family members, immediate and extended. I've learned these people are literally everywhere. I know so few healthy people, my girlfriend at present is one, but because I was so conditioned over so many years in these abusive relationships that I mistrust healthy people - they aren't f---ed up, so there's something wrong with them / with the situation. I know that's the exact problem, but I still really struggle with this.
The predators that still lurk around (my sister, my ex, whom I share a child with, my next door neighbour) treat me with an unfailing, detached politeness now (except my neighbour, who avoids me, which is great). It's almost seems like their way of admitting guilt but I know these people are too shallow for guilt, it's just them knowing they can't feed here anymore.
Anyways thanks for anyone who is listening or read all the way here (studies show most readers are done halfway thru the second paragraph of long posts like this). It would be nice to make some friends here who can empathize and share their own stories of how they came to terms with their own situations so that maybe I can pull something from it. I did thank Richard profusely for his essays, that's how I found this page - I read my experience of life in them. PS my family is most similar to the one who lied to Richard about his friends funeral time. Thanks
