 Anyone struggling to recover from emotional abuse has probably been told, “Oh, just forgive, forget and get over it!” What a slap to the face! As I chronicle my own journey of healing from narcissistic abuse on Narcissism Meets Normalcy and the Huffington Post, pissed-off readers post comments like this frequently! I bet you’ve heard it a lot too. So let’s chat about it, shall we?
Get Over It!Let’s say a drunk driver hits you head-on and you’re in hospital recovering from multiple injuries. A family member waltzes into your hospital room, hands on hips, sportin’ a ‘tude, a perturbed impatient expression on their face. “Snap out of it!” they say. “Chop, chop. Out of that hospital bed! Forgive, forget and get over it!” How cruel, you say! That’s inhumane! Yeah, it is. So why is it okay to say it to victims of emotional abuse? Click to read the full article!
0 Comments
 Happy Valentine’s Day! Today isn’t just about loving your honey. It’s about loving yourself too and self-care is one of the main ways we love ourselves. But first, have you read Part 1 of this article?
What Is Self-Care? I define self-care as anything that cracks the catatonic shell protecting your heart and allows you to feel your feelings, to weep, to feel empathy for yourself and to heal. For me self-care is anything gentle, tender and beautiful that releases the floodgates of tears, without effort. It may be a birdsong. The glimpse of a rainbow. The fragrance of a flower. You’ll know it when you feel it. It’s a feeling like no other. Click here to read the full article on PsychCentral!  Those who attack victims always have an agenda. Victimizing someone is bad. But revictimizing a victim by shaming them for being a victim. Wow! That’s low!
Revictimized is defined as when “a survivor who has removed his/herself from an abusive environment is harmed again by perpetrators.” The victimizing started when I was a baby. I didn’t ask to be victimized. I did nothing to cause it. I didn’t even know it was happening. No child of a dysfunctional home does. It’s not their fault.To imply otherwise is to revictimize them. Click here to read the full article on PsychCentral!  When I think back on all the thousands of parental criticisms made "for my good" over thirty years, my blood boils. Hundreds, nay, thousands of 'em. It sta, not because I was bad, but because I was 15 and that's the time narcissistic parents start feeling nervous because their kid is growing up and they might, just might, lose control. I was 14 and shocked by all the criticisms suddenly blind-siding me. They ranged from making me believe I was an (almost) slut to something as vague as, "Shake my hand and commit to 'try harder.'" To this day I wonder how much harder I could try. I already had a 4.0 GPA. And the blind-siding hurt worse than the criticisms themselves. But no one (except my husband, Michael, and God), and I mean no one, is going to criticize me, lecture me nor shame me anymore. It's done. Over! I'm damn near 40 years old and frickin' fine the way I am. In the words of Star Trek's Captain Jean-Luc Picard, "The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!" Or in the words of comedian Eddie Murphy, "It's my [blog] and if you don't like it, get the frick out." Click here to watch that hysterically funny moment! To read the full article on Huffington Post, click here!  I’ve got the leakiest tear ducts on the planets. Seems like I’m always sniffling about this or weeping about that. If it’s not adorable videos of babies making my eyes well up, it’s videos of ecstatic dogs welcoming their master home from serving overseas. Any sentimental YouTube video can get me hullabalooing into my hankie in no time. It came as quite a shock to my husband when we married in 2012. Now he thinks I’m both hysterical funny and extremely soft-hearted. There’s only one scenario where my tear ducts dry up. My own pain. I simply cannot cry for myself. Tried it. Made all the right noises. Huffed and puffed. Nothin’. Eyes remained dry as a bone. And it’s a huge problem. Tears aren’t just salty water. Their chemical compositions vary depending on the emotion that stimulated them. Even their structure when seen under a microscope is vastly different depending on the scenario. Personally, I can feel my heart aching behind my eyes. It’s a kind of burning, kind of pressurized sensation behind my eyeballs. Only tears release the pain in both my eyes and my heart. It feels like tears purge the toxic chemicals in the tears, but perhaps I’m just being fanciful. Which brings us back to the original problem. I can’t cry. And too often my original pain becomes translated into the secondary emotion of anger. Click here to read the whole article on PsychCentral!   I’m never alone. Denial is my constant companion. She wakes me in the morning, stays close by my side all the day and sings me to sleep at night. I’m never free of her. Never alone. Never totally at peace.
Click here to read whole article!  Maria von Trapp sang, "Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start," in The Sound of Music. So I figured, the place is to start is to define what a narcissist is, from my viewpoint and experience.
To read what I came up with, click here! http://blogs.psychcentral.com/narcissism/2016/01/what-is-a-narcissist/  WOW! I'm overwhelmed by all the "Me Too's" in your comments on my blogs this week. And now, thousands more can join our ranks in healing from narcissistic abuse together. Introducing "Narcissism Meets Normalcy" on Psych Central.
Click here to read my introductory blog! Be sure to subscribe to receive daily updates by email! blogs.psychcentral.com/narcissism/ |