Quote:
Originally Posted by Fish In The Water
As you said, we all have issues but it seems incredibly sad when we are unable to rise above the trauma so as to avoid having it dictate our entire lives.
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Oh, absolutely.
I've said it before but if you google "Narcissistic Personality Disorder" you'll have the best possible overview of what we dealt with all those years. I was tipped off by the psychotherapist who ran a dream study group I used to go to... something about a lot of the stuff that came up with me and another person there clued him in that we might both be dealing with an NPD individual. He recommended some reading material and it was nothing less than a revelation. It validated all the stuff we'd gone through and been constantly told (by her) was nothing but stuff we were imagining or making up deliberately to disparage her. And it made me understand exactly what has to be done to a person to make them that way and how devastating an experience that is.
The truly tragic thing about NPD is that it involves an enormous amount of denial - denial that anything one does or says is inappropriate or unethical or insensitive, denial of the actual things one has done and said, and - the worst part - denial of the original trauma itself and the possibility that those who perpetrated it might have been in the wrong to do so. People like my mother rarely get help because they are unable to admit they need it... it's everyone else that has a problem, not them. They persist in that belief to the point where everyone else gives up and walks away in self-defense.