When I first started learning about narcissistic personality disorder, I was overwhelmed.
It’s hard for me to describe the range of emotion I went through one afternoon sitting in my cubicle as I read article after article describing my childhood. MINE!
I understood in a matter of an afternoon that there were reasons for my father’s behavior. That my emotional problems weren’t just figments or the result of a general weak character. I was made. I felt both profound sadness and great relief. It was truly a unique experience.
I put in a lot of time reading during the months that followed my discovery. In my search for validation and information and above all, advice, a kind of sickening feeling started creeping over me.
This whole adult children of narcissism was bordering on trendy.
No NO NO NO NO. It CANNOT BE trendy.
I don’t want it to be trendy. It will be trivialized. It will be scorned. It will be looked upon as ‘something people blame their issues on’.
I spent my entire childhood being scorned and trivialized by my father. This was man who was supposed to make me feel cherished, the man who was supposed to teach me how to have adult relationships. My father was supposed to make me feel safe. I reject, with everything I have, that the events of my childhood be lumped into some sort of ’emotional damage of the day’ kind of category.
There certainly wasn’t anything trendy about growing up with a narcissist. It wasn’t trendy to be more emotionally mature than my parent by the time I was 10 years old…and that was even with the emotional damage I suffered. It wasn’t trendy to have stomach pain and anxiety that has followed me into the outskirts of middle age.
I read a blog post the other day that was titled ‘Adult child of’.
The post asked, so..adult children of narcissist or alcoholics or <fill in the blank> is a thing?
It was dismissive.
I read it and could feel tears pricking the back of my eyes and I felt like I was going to fucking puke. How dare this person be dismissive of something that is so insidious and damaging? How dare this person minimize my experience?
I realized that my visceral reaction to the post was because it minimized my feelings…my feelings were being dismissed.
One of the worst things about being raised by a narcissist is learning at a vulnerable age how very unimportant you are. Your feelings don’t feed the narcissist and therefore they are not important. They are dismissed as annoying and shameful.
I wrote a blistering comment on this person’s blog. It was raw and angry and probably incoherent.
And then I deleted it. This is what happens when something is ‘trendy’. People start pointing fingers and talking about how it’s made up or an excuse or a truckload of other ill-informed statements. No doubt Tom Cruise will be issuing a statement about narcissistic personality disorder soon.
I’m sure the author of that blog is a lovely person. She has a right to her opinion. She has a right to blog about any subject she wants. Just as I do. I feel that she is misinformed and possibly a little judgmental, but I am funneling that opinion through many years of pain. It’s also possible that she is battling her own demons and the way to slay them is to trivialize what hurts her.
To each their own.
Yes, I realize that last sentence sounds dismissive. I’m leaving it in though. I’m not fucking perfect. I’m not above lashing out when I feel hurt and I’m done apologizing for my feelings. Even the immature ones.
It wasn’t necessary to post the comment. I don’t need to.
I know what my past is. I know what my pain is. Trendy or not, it’s still all mine. I will continue to do what I can to shed the damage and come to terms with my bad ass self. Opinions of others don’t get to sway me from my purpose anymore.
I want to be perfectly clear here, though…Yes! Being the adult child of a narcissist is definitely a motherfucking thing.
This really is a bew thing for me. But for this blog and a couple of previous posts I had no idea how bad it can be.
I’m glad you found out.
Don’t let the bastards grind you down.
I’m not! I’m coming out on top a little more every day.
You sum it up well for me. Relief – So THAT’s why I’m such a fuck-up! Thanks, Dad. (please note the sarcasm…) Anger – WTF?! So I’m just screwed and that’s the end of it? Validation – It ISN’T my fault and I’m NOT making this shit up! Then another kind of anger when I read some of the comments from those who don’t “get” it or dismiss it. Those that dismiss it – are they also Narcs? Am I seeing Narcs everywhere now? Are they really more abundant? It is such a cluster.
After being brainwashed my entire life it is very hard to know what is real. I try very hard to accept that I’m not taking on this label as an excuse – it is merely a revelation that had to occur before I could heal myself. And if anyone else has a problem with it – they can go to hell. (said with love) 😉
Rock on, Sister! We all kick ass – even if we ARE the “mental issue du jour.”
Love ya! <3
I think that bothers me more than anything. Trying to discern what is real and what is not..even in my own head. ESPECIALLY in my own head.
And it’s so funny you should mention seeing narcissism all the time now. I really have to keep myself from diagnosing people and lumping them into two categories. Those who are narcissists and those who are not.
This made we shed a tear or two. It worries me too! After the hell I’ve been through for the last few years I’m finally getting to grips with it all. I’m coming to terms with the past, my current situation and what is looking like a fairly grim and lonely future. The last thing I need is to have it all trivialised by NPD becoming the latest band wagon for people to jump on. As you say, scorn and trivialisation is what did the damage early on, undermining my own instincts and self belief. That is not something that can be waved away with a magic wand and I battle against the deeper effects on a daily basis. It is very disturbing however that the number of women who are battling to get away from abusive spouses who seem to definitely fit the parameters of this disorder seems to be very high. Is society breeding more socio-paths, or are people just better at spotting them?
Well, I don’t want you to cry and I REALLY don’t want you to be lonely. 🙁
It is disturbing to see how many people are dealing with it. But at least we kind of UNDERSTAND what is going on and that has made the difference for me. It’s upsetting to understand the work I still have to do..but I’m up for it. Look at it this way…the work we have to do to get past this is NO WHERE NEAR as bad as what we lived through.
We are bad ass motherfuckers.
My Dad was raised by a narcissistic mother-or as I call her, the Evil Grandmother. He was everything she was not–kind, caring, loving, etc. He loved his wife and all ten of his children. Unfortunately, he died young while Evil GM lived to be in her 80’s.
Michelle, I can tell that you are a kind and real person. You survived so much and came through, even with a sense of humor. You are an agent of change. Thanks for being real and for sharing. You help many people.
Thank you SO MUCH for your kind words. I’m sorry you had an evil grandmother..I did, too..but my dad followed in her footsteps. 🙁
I’m sorry you lost your dad…
Katie,
I just got a bit teary at your post. It sounds like your Dad found just what he needed, love and validation, in his ten children and his wife. Even his relatively short life would have been filled with a million times more love and happiness that your Grandma’s long and lonely one. It’s not how long we live, but how we live that counts.
I’m sorry you lost him.
Thank you, Lindsay. Everyone here is so kind…sniff sniff.
That’s one of the things I love the most! I also appreciate y’all putting up with my non narcissist related posts..
I think that if you can dismiss the ‘ACON phenomena’ as a bandwagon, or dismiss it in general, then your life must not have been affected by this disorder (either that or you HAVE NPD).
Whereas, if you begin to read and understand about NPD – what it is, how cryptic it is, how bewildering it is, how it makes you feel crazy and inadequate (even though deep down you just know otherwise), the injustice of it all – if this stuff starts hitting home, it is indeed a revelation.
To understand it is to begin healing. It is to find a toe hold instead of spinning in a constant eddy of not knowing your place in the world and not knowing what is real. When you find that toe hold, through information and through sharing your experience with others, you just want to grab on and start to climb out of this chasm that you were born into.
I think that this is why there has been such an explosion of people on the internet talking about this. Why it appears to be a ‘band wagon’ of sorts. We are hungry to understand and to share out experiences. To know which feelings are real and valid. Most of all, as adult children of narcissists we are hungry to have our feelings mean something and be acknowledged by others. It is so very important to us.
If you can dismiss this as a bandwagon, then that is fine. If it doesn’t resonate with you, so deep down that you need to read every scrap of information that you can, that is ok. You’re just not on our wagon ride. If your life is not affected by NPD and you are lucky! If you have NPD then it is likely that nothing can be done for you, and you will keep blazing your bewildering, manipulative, damaging trail, and you will never truly know anyone, and that is sad.
I am learning not to to care so much about what other people think. I like being on the wagon with you guys. 😉
This is so eloquently stated. Thank you for commenting.
It means the WORLD to have other people who truly understand what happened. The validation is worth so very much.
Sending heaps of hugs your way and feeling a whole heap of gratitude for my Dad who treated me like a child should be treated.
Have the best day you can !
Me
Thank you! I’m fascinated by women who have a good relationship with their dad. I wonder what it’s like and I’m jealous…
I’m actually having a good day. I’m suffering from my yearly days long migraine. I am pukey..but I’m good. I have a great family and I’m with people I adore.
I have a really good open relationship with my dad. I DO NOT understand people who are friends with their mothers. It is so foreign to me. It used to be very suspect, but I think I’ve gotten through that.
I am thankful for my mother. Funny..
It’s horrifying..but fascinating..wondering how if affects people..how different it must be for all of us.
I had an amazing relationship with my dad and I credit the fact that he and my mother divorced for that . I am fascinated with women who have good relationships with their mothers!
To Michelle with my sincere apologies
We all deal with our terrible parents and their effects on us in our own way. My dad was, and still is, the Center of His Own Private Universe. He screwed around on my mom from day one. He was too busy screwing some waitress the night I was born, to be present at the hospital. He still doesn’t know my birthdate. Or remember my kids’ names. He hit on and/or screwed every woman we ever came into contact with, and fathered kids with more than one of them (our neighbors, no less). He wasted every penny we ever had. He messed over everyone he ever met, and to this day, has no conscience whatsoever about any of it. As long as I can remember, the rest of us seemed to just be annoyingly taking up space around him, so he usually just absented himself to go “do his thing”.
He was a drunk, violent, self-centered narcissist who finally burned our house down in order to drive my mom all the way away, since she couldn’t get a hint, and it worked. Us kids were just collateral damage, I guess. Nothing trivial about it, then or now, though many have had much worse experiences than my humble story.
None of us has the same experience with narcs. I had a hard time getting past my past, and it nearly ruined my relationship with my now-husband, but it DIDN’T, and I guess just living my life and being happy with where I am now, and raising happy kids, is my revenge, and proof to myself that I am not my parents.
We all have stuff to get through in life, and we each deal with it in our own way and from our own angle, so yes, to each their own.
So sorry if it made your day worse; that was never, never the intent.
Thank you for this…I sincerely appreciate it.
I never understood WHY my life was the way it was…I just knew that I was confused and unhappy for most of my life. Putting an actual name to what happened…finding a REAL REASON that it happened, while difficult, truly was a freeing experience.
It’s been hard and I’m still very raw (obviously) and I tend to live on the skirts of defensiveness…which is something else about me that I’d like to address and change.
Honestly, anything I feel when reading other people’s work is entirely MY responsibility..not yours or anyone else’s. Obviously, that isn’t to say that I won’t REACT to it. 🙂
I really do appreciate your thoughtful response and my sincere apologies to you as well for reacting so strongly.
Although..that’s not a HORRIBLE thing…to have someone react strongly to something you write…getting an emotion from someone is the sign of some powerful writing..so there’s that. 🙂
Well…um…making people angry is always something that pretty much horrifies the hell out of me, which could explain why I tend to make jokes about EVERYTHING (sometimes at the reallyreally wrong time) but thank you; I appreciate your blog and your bad-ass-ness, every time. I wish I were more bad-ass myself, most days. At best, I’m a wuss in bad-ass clothing.
It totally made me cry a bit, that I inspired you to write this, since I never think of my posts as other than random off-the-cuff ramblings.
I also feel pissed at my dad for being my dad and causing me tears (again) today. Plus, reading all this made me late getting to the school just now, which in turn made me late getting my daughter to her music thing at her church, which got me in trouble with her, too.
So– I feel like I want to cry and hug you, all at the same time.
and yes, stop by anytime 🙂
Stef
Phfftt…I am a bundle of anxiety wrapped up in bravado. I get exactly what you are saying! I find the more I fake that bad assedness…the more real it becomes. Until it leaves me..which it does all the time. Then I find it and bring it back.
Here’s hoping that tomorrow we both have a good day.
🙂 me too.
It is *so* a thing and I am so glad to know that it isn’t something I am making up. I think our little community here (look what you started!! 🙂 ) proves that it’s real and it’s a relief and we aren’t effing crazy. I mean we are, but it’s not totally our fault. Hallelujah!
Are you kidding me? We’re fucking INSANE. 🙂
Hahaa…it’s REALLY nice to find some good in it as well…I fucking adore you guys!
“I don’t want it to be trendy. It will be trivialized. It will be scorned. It will be looked upon as ‘something people blame their issues on’.”
OMG YES! Soooooo YES!! Here’s the thing…I think that general feelings of unworthiness and “who do you think you are” are universal, narcissistic (or otherwise mentally ill) parent or not. There are universal fears/insecurities.
That said, there is huge relief in finding out that what we grew up in AFFECTED us…it wasn’t “normal” and claiming our stories around it, with the intent of healing, is what takes us out of the victim mentality that others may think they see.
And THAT said, I honestly believe that no one wants to be a jerk, an asshat, an idiot, a narcissist…I believe that, on some level, your father and my mother, and all the other people out there like them, for some reason, they forgot that they are indeed awesome and amazing people. They chose to believe that their lights could shine so brightly in a good way…
There is a HUGE relief in putting a name to your pain.
I guess you’re right..that no one WANT to be a narcissist or evil or a jerk..but goddamn..there are SO MANY OF THEM OUT THERE. If people don’t WANT to be that way, then why are so many of them that way?
Because they never had the ah-has we’ve had 🙂 and because the illness sorta kinda makes them think nothing is wrong.
“I don’t want it to be trendy. It will be trivialized. It will be scorned. It will be looked upon as ‘something people blame their issues on’.”
This is how I feel about my bipolar disorder and my sometimes crippling anxiety. Not too long ago, it seems like people were using some sort of mental illness, whether real or imagined, as a sort of bragging right. Its not something I would ever brag about. It ruined a huge part of my life. I self-medicated with alcohol for years just to be able to get out of bed. I can’t understand why anyone would want to take something so awful and turn it into a trendy little status symbol.
Rock on with your bad-ass self! Every day has potential to be a little better and the obstacles can get easier to overcome.
Thank you, sister..I appreciate that.
I don’t think feeling ashamed of our issues is helpful at all…but I agree..they aren’t a status symbol or something to brag about, either.
I think you are amazing…and I am glad you get out of bed every day. 🙂
There was a time I was horribly embarrassed by my diagnosis, but honestly, now its just a part of me I’ve come to accept, but not like. Getting seen by a doctor and getting medicated was a life saver for me- literally. Alcohol is something I enjoy for the taste of the drink now. I have a few beers (usually 2) at the pool hall on Monday nights, and occasionally one or two if we have some sort of gathering. We have win every few months. I haven’t been drunk in years I’m happy to say.
And thank you! I’m glad too. 🙂
I remember learning about Adult Children of Alcoholics and then noticing the term everywhere and also hating the feeling of trendiness. The first moments of realizing that someone else knew how growing up that way affected people was like a weight lifting off my shoulders. Later feeling like I was hopping on a bandwagon sucked.
I think that we’re just in a time when more people are willing to talk about their pasts and we’re all finding similarities. People our age (?) grew up with selfish alcoholic parents. The next gen will be talking about how they grew up with ADHD. I don’t think it’s a trend so much as what’s out in the public being talked about (hmmm. maybe that does mean trend).
I’ve gotten my head around it. It really doesn’t matter if it’s trendy. It’s still part of me.
And yes, I think a lot of us have similar stories. My dad was not an alcoholic, although, he did abuse pain killers later in life. His parents were both raging alcoholics, though.
My situation is different from yours because it isn’t a parent with narcissism that was the problem for me, it was an ex-boyfriend if he could really even be called that. But here is what I’ve learned and experienced myself, and I’m sure you’ve learned the same thing. (Stumbled across you via TheBloggess, btw! :)) Once you recognize it in your own life, yeah, you really do start seeing it everywhere and if you are at all like me, you start to scrutinize and question every last person in your life. Particularly the mutual friends my ex and I shared, in my case. Not every one of them is the same, but talk to enough people who have been victims of a narc in one way or another and you’ll find that it all sounds the same like they have a playbook or something.
You’ve got every right to be angry at people who minimize your pain. They have no right to do so, and if I had been in your shoes, I probably would have let the comment stand. If I had not choked down the anger to begin with. 😉
To be honest, I doubt Tom Cruise will be issuing a statement about NPD anytime in the future. Though I would not be surprised if it came out that he actually is a narcissist. I’ve come to believe that our society and culture has become a breeding ground for this crap. It’s why I’m doing my end of semester research paper on that very topic.
I am sorry for what you went through. I am sorry for what each and every person who commented went through as well. It is by no means a “fun” ride, parent or not. Hugs to all of you.
I am amazed by how many people are affected by this! I would be very interested in reading your research paper, if that is okay with you..
Thank you so much for your kind words!
I’ve found a lot of support and information on pages on Facebook. That is how I stumbled across narcissism to begin with and how it smacked me in the face that my ex was one. Quite a wake up call. I’m going to throw in a link to one of the best pages I’ve found. The people here, and on others like Narc-ology and My Emotional Vampire, have been amazing. It really helps knowing that you are not alone, regardless of the situation.
I would be happy to share it, once it’s done and I get the grade back. Speaking of which, I really need to stop procrastinating. It’s due tomorrow and I still have, oh, at least 10 pages to write before noon tomorrow. *facepalm*
And it would be helpful if I actually remember that link. Epic fail.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/After-Narcissistic-Abuse-There-is-Light-Life-Love/114835348601442
Ha! I follow that page already! It’s awesome!
You sound like my stepdaughter! I don’t think she’s ever started a paper until the day it’s due. 🙂
I can at least say it’s started. I just haven’t been able to get very far with it because of things going on at home plus the whole having to go to work thing. And I keep letting myself get distracted by Facebook and other things on the internet.
I do have a track record of not starting papers until the day before though, lol. 🙂
Funnily enough, I had forgotten about this blog, until I started following you on Twitter recently. Despite being a bit short on page length if memory serves, I still received an “A” on that paper. It was not quite good enough for publication in one of the campus undergrad journals, but I did submit it anyway.
I also did find out through the joy of therapy that the ex-boyfriend was not the only narcissist in my life, and really, he looks like a damn boy scout compared to my mother. I swear, us adult children of narcissistic parents (especially the smothering kind!) deserve medals for not going postal. 😛
Hahaha…I’m glad you got an A on that paper!!!