Healing Loudly From Narcissist Abuse

I never wanted or expected to be a spokesperson for healing from narcissist abuse, but here I am. I read a statement recently that we should heal loudly so that others can use our experience for their own healing, and it’s been stuck in my head and in my heart, that I have some responsibility to help others heal. It goes counter to my programming and training to speak out, to really speak out with the truth, and I have to admit it’s an incredibly hard and frightening thing to do.

 

These last six months have been difficult, the realizations and the full context memories have literally knocked me on my ass a time or two, and the anxiety has been nothing like I’ve ever experienced – the fear and trembling of working out my own salvation. I was asked not to write about my abuse as it may hurt my abuser’s feelings, and for the last six months I’ve held my tongue, once again isolated, and working against my own best interests. Working against my own best interests was how I was trained, and the lies and pretense is the wardrobe I was expected to wear for the rest of my life.

 

I knew speaking out would cause others to turn their backs on me because that is simply the way it is when you grow up in narcissist abuse. Growing up as I did you have this entire world of pretense and lies thrown over you, and you are expected to uphold those lies to the world, and as the abuse started so early with me, you carry those lies and pretense just because that’s simply the way it is. You carry the pretense even when everything inside is screaming that it’s a lie, you put on a smile and face the world and pray no one sees the truth.

 

I am done, I can no longer pretend, and the truth is I was one of the scapegoats in my family. The other scapegoat was my oldest brother, and when he grew into a man, dangerous and unpredictable in our abuser’s eye, the role fell onto me, as I was just a kid and a very easy target.

 

I have avoided looking into the topic of narcissism for years, both consciously and unconsciously, knowing that once I opened Pandora’s box there was no returning to the way things were before. And strangely, there was a bit of a mourning period of letting those old illusions go, realizing that things were never the way they were presented to the world, and acknowledging that I was never the person my abuser insisted I was.

 

There are many kinds of scapegoats in the narcissist dynamic, and I am beginning to understand that I am the truth teller. The other types of scapegoats are the rebel, the caretaker, the problem-solver, the protector, the perfectionist, and sometimes another covert narcissist is born under the selfish and incredibly damaging abuse. Being a scapegoat is a very hard and damaging road to follow, and it is the scapegoat who carries the burden of all the frustrations of the family, and the blame anytime anything goes wrong. The energy has to go somewhere, and the scapegoat is the receptacle where all that gets dumped. 

 

The dynamic is very clear, written about in books, shown in movies, and yet I avoided looking into it for years, the fear of facing the truth almost greater than the pain of being scapegoated my entire life. There are several types of narcissist, and narcissism is defined as a personality disorder in which the narcissist is selfish, lacks empathy for others, has a sense of entitlement, a need for admiration, and an inflated sense of self-importance. People growing up under that dynamic are very damaged, both the golden children (the chosen favorites) and the scapegoats are damaged. No one does well in a narcissist family, except for the narcissist themselves, as the children have long been divided and conquered, and have learned the hard way that keeping the narcissist happy is the only way to find what resembles peace, but that semblance of peace is always short-lived.

 

Some may ask, why now? Why talk about it now? It’s in the past, it’s over, why dredge up the old ghosts now? But the truth is it’s not over until the injured parties say it’s over, and it sure isn’t over for me as I now have to wade through the years of my life, the traumas I swallowed as something I deserved, and consciously begin healing my mind and my body. It’ll be over when I say it’s over, and not a second before.

 

I was asked to hold my words, to not write the truth of my own life on my own blog, and to keep silent until the narcissist died, and I had planned to do that, but something broke. Something inside could no longer hold the pretense, my body was giving out, my body was rebelling against the lies. It is completely unjust to expect another person to carry lies, and the simple act of asking me to do so is just another textbook example of being scapegoated. Once again the comfort and selfishness of the narcissist becomes more important than my health, my recovery, and my entire existence. Once again the narcissist’s feelings outweigh everything else, including my own health, but that is nothing new to me as my medical needs were neglected in childhood by the narcissist. I’m not going to continue down the path that says I am less than, my needs less important because others, outside of me, deem it so. 

 

The answer is no. I told that person that I would write what God inspired me to write, but the fear of speaking openly held me back, fear of retribution, slander, and rejection. God has been pressing on me to heal loudly, to help others in what I am an expert in, and I will no longer remain silent to protect the feelings of the person who went out of their way to hurt me and make me struggle. I will no longer protect the person who deliberately and with intent made my childhood a living hell, and I will no longer pretend simply to appease others who are invested in maintaining the lies.

 

If my words can help one person, then I must put myself out there, no matter how uncomfortable and afraid that makes me. So for a while this blog will be dedicated to overcoming and healing from narcissist abuse, there are more of us out there than I ever imagined.

 

 

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On Abortion and Finding Ourselves Pregnant

With the murder of Dr. Tiller a couple weeks ago, abortion is once again a hot topic and the different sides are angrier than ever. Reading the forums the divisions are clear, we are turning on each other once again. We’ve been led like sheep into our 15+ minute hate session and we stand divided and angry. We feel compelled to state our thoughts, to provide our opinions and for some of us, to weep for the state of affairs in our world.

I, for one, am not a fan of abortion and I speak from only my experiences with being young and sexually active in the early 80s. The kids I ran with in those days were smart, well read, curious and sexually active since their early teens. In my three years in high school I supported the aftermath of three abortions, I was the friend that listened and the shoulder to cry on; I heard, in detail, about the regrets, guilt and nightmares.

When I found myself pregnant at 17 (funny phrase, huh? “found myself pregnant” – I was sexually active and rarely used birth control, it was really only a matter of time) I was encouraged, almost bullied, into getting an abortion by both my peers and the authority figures in my life. To say I was pressured would be an understatement, but I knew instinctually that what was growing in me, was not me. It wasn’t a group of cells, like a cancer, it was life and I could feel it, in times when I was relaxed and quiet, as a small warmth, pulsing softly.

My dad was an odd and frightening man, quick to temper and unpredictable. He carried a gun everywhere he went, even sleeping with one under his pillow and he was no stranger to pulling it out to express his opinion. My first concussions came from my father’s hand, so I knew that confronting him with my pregnancy could potentially be life threatening, but I also knew no one was going to make me do what I considered to be murder. My father, strangely enough, accepted my decision without arguments, chaos or trauma, but he made it clear I would be married in a week, as an illegitimate child was unacceptable.

The marriage was, of course, doomed to failure, we were both too young and immature, but my son was a gift that I will always be grateful to have received. To say life as a single mother was easy would be a lie, it wasn’t easy, it was hard, challenging and exhausting. To say it was a mistake would also be a lie, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. Having a child takes you outside of yourself; it’s no longer just about you. Suddenly, you must sacrifice, you must consider another person at every turn. I am a better person for having experienced it.

As I read the debates about abortion my mind returns again and again to that group of girls I was a part of in my youth and the lackadaisical way we viewed sex. As I read the well thought out discussions on the merits of abortion and how it is rarely used as a birth control method, my mind returns to those girls and others I have known throughout the years. For the girls I knew, abortion was a birth control method. With very few exceptions, most of the women I was acquainted with through my teens and twenties didn’t have just one abortion, but several.

I used to wonder to myself how they could make the mistake again and again, wasn’t the emotional toll from just one enough? I noticed, though, that as my friends grew into women, a hardness grew in them, the tears over their actions from their youth had grown into a solid wall of cynicism and abortion just became a weekend spent in bed.

When my son was young and I was working hard to keep a roof over our heads, I wondered if I would choose abortion if I found myself pregnant again. I understood the challenge of being a single parent, though, and I practiced birth control, protecting myself from having to make such an, in my view, unacceptable choice. I understand abortion is a necessary evil, but to say it is not used as a birth control method is simply untrue.

I think that one aspect that gets overlooked in the abortion discussions is the emotional toll a woman undergoes; I’ve seen the tears, the drinking binges, and the self-hatred women experience. I’ve heard the nightmares and regrets, yet this aspect of emotionality is often not mentioned. We are in control of our reproductive choices, yet, we are still women, emotional and nurturing and an abortion often alters us in a very real way that can’t be seen from the outside, but only felt inside.

We believe that we can alter biology with no repercussions, but it is my opinion that life doesn’t work that way. I believe all actions have equal and opposite reactions or what we put out into the world will come back to us in some fashion. The young girls I knew, 15, 16 and 17 years old had no concept of the suffering they would endure due to what is sold as a simple medical procedure. The grown women, now hardened and bitter, perhaps don’t see the correlation, but I do.

What often gets lost is that abortion is a business like any other, and to stay in business, a business must have customers. A wise woman, Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, author of the book, The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, once said that the purpose of subjects like sex education or drug education taught in our schools are not what they seem to be. She has claimed, after years of working in the Department of Education, that programs such as decision-making or critical thinking are simply brain washing techniques used to promote behavioral and attitudinal changes. “And basically the purpose of them is to do exactly opposite of what they say they are meant to do.”

We girls, back in the day, knew how to prevent a pregnancy, but we also knew the local Planned Parenthood was just a couple miles away and for middle class kids, the money came easy to us. Of course, Planned Parenthood was just as close for procuring birth control, but that was something we never did, we gambled, we took chances and we joked about it. We had taken our sexual education classes and we knew no matter what happened, we had a convenient way out.

In discussions of abortion it seems there are only two sides and both sides are angry. I understand many aspects of both sides of the debate and I know there are cases in which it would be untenable to carry a pregnancy, such as in rape, abuse, disease or incest, but let’s face it, those cases aren’t keeping the abortion clinics busy. We women say it’s our body and we will do with it as we see fit, we are empowered by our reproductive choices, but if we were truly empowered I don’t think we’d find ourselves on an abortion table. If we were truly empowered we wouldn’t be gambling with our health and our future in such a manner that we would need abortive services.

The issue of abortion goes far deeper than the right to have one and perhaps that is the reason the discussion grows so hostile. In focusing on abortion, we are distracted from the bigger picture, like why in this day and age, with all we have at our disposable, the technologies, the access to information, the medical breakthroughs, we still are “finding ourselves pregnant”.