Messages

Thank you for all of these observations.  They're giving me something to think about.

Only a few weeks ago, a close friend suggested that I was "protecting" my uNPD mother, despite everything she'd done.  My friend expressed frustration, suggested that I might work a bit harder to access my anger.  Of course, I wouldn't be expressing it at anyone – so, Trace, the point is not to be heard. 

Until then, I'd not understood my inability to be "appropriately" angry as a form of protection.  So what is it?   A habit?  Dutch Uncle, I'm not so sure in my case.  I've been NC for more than twenty-five years, and patterns of interaction have long become dormant.  Mourningdove, I see your point about the remnants of childhood dependence.  But it's also something else, at least for me.

I've told myself that I also feel sorry for members of my FOO. My parents had pretty hard lives early on, or at least I'm sure my father did and suspect that my mother was a CSA victim (unacknowledged by her).  So I sometimes explain away their behavior.  Is that a form of protection?

I think people protect narcissists because narcissist actively refuse to take the blame. They are emotionally blind, so it becomes a lot easier to believe that somehow they are the victim. The truth is that they simply don't know what they are doing; the problem comes in when people cannot criticize their actions, reject them, establish boundaries, talk about how to deal with them, or feel differing emotions at time including anger.

When the response is black & white, it often stems from an inability to distinguish a flaw with their actions and how to handle it. It needs to be confronted, talked about, & deal with. A lot of times people get weened into the emotionally blind person's dynamic of relationships as with all relationships. You become comfortable & accustomed to what they do, and the false narratives they believe in ... from an egotistical standpoint on their end. They truly believe the world revolves around them, and what they say goes.

So, to them, "freedom" means the ability to defy collective reasoning—and to modify collective reasoning as much as possible—rather than there being a much more concrete, coherent, and empathic form of handling reality one-on-one with everyone.

A child may grow up under the narratives the narcissist weaves for them, and they believe it. For instance, a child may create a piece of artwork and the parent may take that artwork, startup a gallery, place the child's name on it, and then keep the funds. Now, the parent may start a business with these funds and the child's artwork & style as it grows, including handling a community that arises. The child may grow to feel powerless & unworthy, told that they are just a child and their artwork was just for pleasure.

Eventually the child becomes an adult who believes they are worth nothing, and that there is a world "above them"; that is, "those who sell & do—and those who produce and produce and get cheated". They believe in it and protect the narcissist because they were too powerless to do anything about it. It feels comfortable to be lazy and believe the lie; this is the trauma.

I grew up with a "Christian" home of narcissistic parents who just basically criticized and abused.

The narcissist is emotionally blind inside; mammals are different than other species in the sense that we have evolved a higher ability to stick together. On the great scale you have the Holy Spirit (the whole spirit/species); this dancing organism is our larger self.

But being warm-blooded is fairly new, and many people are simply born with varying degrees of ability to sense this spiritual force. So, you end up a lot of times with people who don't feel love, but they pretend it and steal the fruits of it.

A narcissist can suck people dry and move on because they are incapable of feeling emotions—only exploiting & reenacting them. He is emotionally blind.