i have one in my life (my mother) and she has done all she could to destroy me; still is. my old psychiatrist explains it this way(she was also his patient for a few yrs so he knows her well), not only that she is narcissist but that, somehow with me in particular in the family, she hates me as i am kind to her. so, the more kind and loving i am, the more she cannot receive it and the more it burns...hurts her and increases her wrath toward me. which then cause her to think up ways to injure me.

so complicated. so important for me to stay away from. she can do it to me without my ever being anywhere around her - she does. she creates stories and calls family and stirs up things - it doesn't seem to matter much anymore on my end of things as she has estranged them from me for so long now.

i would be able to live a life that proves otherwise except i am sick so much and don't have a car or way to get to visit them. for a few yrs i didn't have a driver's livense because the stress from her.. stuff and my inability to deal with it caused me to have seizures. all this worked well for her and her stories. my sister was good at following along with hateful things to tell about me - mostly my brother in law. back then, my aunt told me when he said things about me. he would say awful things and they would all laugh. the things weren't true, my aunt knew they were not. that was when my aunt knew she did not like him, the bil. he is ugly, i don't think a narc,just unhappy and filled w/shame.

yes, i do know what it is like to be stripped down to nothing self-esteem wise by a narcissist. realising she did this to me my whole life, only in different ways.

i think the most difficult thing of all, is believing it ourselves. it is so unbelievable, unthinkable what they do to us.

we can be here for each other in this, that is a good thing

Aww lily I'm so sorry that person is your mom and that her little minions are just as bad. I have no doubt the crap they put you through and am so happy you are here, with us, with them left to their own devices. I have a "selfish" mom, she can't take criticism nor be accountable or wrong on anything and I know the effects that has had on me. Playing other people against me was a pretty uncontrollable feeling which helped me distance myself, not completely and I truly hope it doesn't come to that for myself but I completely support and understand you needed to be safe. Good on you! My siblings on the other hand are exactly like my mom back in the day was, needing a scapegoat and pointing at everyone else but themselves...which is similar to the person I'm dealing with now.

I'm hoping that with this post and it becoming easier to pinpoint who these people are it will make avoiding them possible in the future. When you grow up getting unfair treatment it's easy to see why you continue choosing these types as adults. Of course the familiarity seems normal but hopefully with the acceptance that it's my role of choosing them, or vice versa who knows, I can retrain myself to choose wisely from here on out. My ulterior motive is to halt this skepticism and cynisism I'm developing with each passing year with these types in my life. I want to be kind and not so defensive and hypersensitive to the treatment I receive. Trust is the goal for sure.

xo

I've met one in real life...I'm almost certain of. Jim. I met him through my ex husband. First time we met, he went on a rant about how his then girlfriend loaded the dishwasher. A year or so after that, my ex actually roomed with him for a year...it did not go well.

Another friend Howard tried to get a hold of my ex to ask him to be best man in his wedding. Jim never passed on the message. Jim never passed on ANY messages. Everyone took to hanging up when Jim or the answering machine answered. Jim thought that all of the calls were from me. So...he tried to get me in trouble with the police. Since my ex, Jim, and my landlord all worked together...it got a little ugly.

Oh and the police said that since my ex lived there...that it didn't matter if I called a hundred times a day...unless my ex complained...there was no issue. (And I wasn't calling a hundred times a day...my ex was all but living with me.)

Fast forward about 20 years. Mutual friends brought the subject of Jim up. Apparently his daughter had stabbed him in the face and she was serving time in state prison. I was never able to confirm that, but...the people talking weren't the kind to lie.

Oh and the red flag that alerted me...

That venting to a near total stranger (me) about someone personal to him (his then girlfriend, later wife).

Second red flag:
Blowing things WAY out of proportion. She loaded the dishwasher...be grateful. The specific complaint was that she put the sharp knives in...with sharp side up. Okay, I actually agree, sharp side down...BUT..on a scale of 0 to 100 (with 100 the most important), this is about a 0.2 in importance.

And made me immediately wonder what else he might be controlling about.

Thanks for your post. I have been learning and reading a lot about narcissist as my therapist has recommended. My Mom is a grandiose narcissists so I have had that pattern, through friends siblings etc in my life. Google fragile narcissist, that is really interesting and harder to see
I am fairly good at detection, only took me 6 decades lol, but they usually trigger me and I get knots in my stomach. Or I can't feel the ground and know I am talking to one. It takes a lot of energy to talk to them, they require a lot of attention..toxic

I think another one would be their believing no rules apply when you ask them to leave you alone. If you say don't contact me again, that it's over and they send you daily emails or call you or show up at your house then it goes to show that it's what they want and on their terms only. Having zero respect for you but craving your attention...which doesn't make any sense at all to me. Not remembering lies they tell and either they aren't intelligent enough to realize or they really believe you are that stupid you wouldn't see it.

They are a strange breed indeed. I'm just thankful the one in my life is far away, I feel bad for those of you who are in close proximity. Thanks for your responses and an even bigger sorry that you had/have to deal with these types. Blinders being open is the first step to getting these types out of your life. Thank you all again.

Yeah as I read what you just said that is so true, no boundaries and always being right and controlling. They will leave the relationship when they want to, you do not get to decide that. What an odd disorder NPD is. I feel they do not suffer but those around them do, so in many ways they are lucky. They just do not care about anyone...wonder what that would be like. I really can't imagine as I am the opposite, trying to tune into others and please them.
Get your phone and block them now so you don't have contact and don't open your door when they come

You're right, it must be nice to be oblivious but to go from a person who cares to that would be impossible so no, wouldn't happen. I wish I was more tech savvy and knew how to block emails, I spent the better part of the morning trying to figure it out to no avail. It's a good lesson on self discipline sending them straight to trash. I love silver linings lol. Have a great night everyone.

I think what I've got to contribute from being raised by a mentally ill narcissist is the realization that he, my dad, was incapable of empathy. So my mom covered for him literally by scripting emotional responses for him according to each situation he'd be in.

He was a minister, and in love with the sound of his own voice in the pulpit, where he put on performances. But his chats with people at church were performances, too. He could not do small talk; he practiced it with my mom. She was his handler, his manager. They wound up having a sick relationship on both sides.

As a kid I thought, as kids do, that if I just loved him or pleased him enough I'd get him to respond to me emotionally. Adult therapy taught me that he just could not do that.

I also learned in therapy that, like most narcissists, he lived in constant anxiety about getting "caught" about that. As a minister he was supposed to have lots of empathy. Yet he couldn't even imagine what the feelings of others were like, not even those closest to him in his family. My mom had to script them for him in their codependent relationship.

I've found out since then that narcissists often do, then, have this deep insecurity in them for one reason or another. They need others who will help cover for them, but they resent that help and those helpers as much as they need it and need them. Which is why my dad was so abusive to us in his family. He hated himself for needing us that way, so he hated us, too.

It was hard to accept in therapy that I could never, ever, ever fix him or fix our relationship, and that this hatred I felt from him in spite of himself was real. It helped, though, for me to realize that as much as he hated me for needing me to connect him to the feelings of others, behind all of that narcissism there was the contradiction that he hated himself even more.

That's when I let go of him to live my own life and not take on any more guilt or responsibility about it. What mattered most was not to become a narcissist myself.

That's awful muji, im so sorry for the card you were dealt, he sounds pretty scary. Whether it be through therapy or your natural ability, it's easy to see you're nothing like that.

you worded it perfectly, scripted. I remember when the blinders were lifted this one time at a social gathering. They were talking about Mexico and my mom pipes up that she loved it except for the begging children. She found them a nuisance rather than felt bad that these kids weren't in school but begging on the streets. I remember seeing the shocked look on a woman's face and it hit me that she doesn't even understand why this woman is shocked.

Did yours bare his teeth during rages? That's a distinct memory for me.