I’m Still Standing

 

 

            You have three choices when you finally realize you are a narcissistic enabler: accept a life of misery and abuse, become a narcissist yourself, or change yourself into a healthier person.

            The first choice will give you Karen’s life of servitude.  The second will condemn you to the same inner hell all narcissists live in.  The third will take everything thing you have to achieve.  It will require you to face your own shortcomings, to reconsider your core beliefs, to examine your actions and reactions.  It is not for the weak or the fearful, but for the resolute, because you will fall many times in this battle.  The key is to remember that you are indeed only human and that you only truly fail when you fail to keep trying.

            So, where does one start this fight to be a real person and not an object?  A good place is with a certified counselor or therapist.  But don’t pick just anyone out of a book.  Talk with your church officials, your friends who have been in therapy themselves, the local crisis center.  Do a little research.  There are guideline published, which can help you in finding a therapist who fits your needs.  If after a few visits, you feel uneasy around the therapist even while discussing normal things, ask to be referred to another one.  It may just be a conflict of personality, but a good rapport between you and your therapist is essential for your progress. 

            The point of therapy as I see it, is to give you a chance to examine yourself and see what misconceptions you may be carrying around in your head.  The therapist is only there to guide you and give suggestions.  You have to decide what will and will not work for you, but you also need to be willing to give their suggestions a chance first.  If it doesn’t work, then tell the therapist and see if you two can figure out something that will.

            There are some books out that can help you greatly also.  I suggest the therapist first and foremost; because like incest victims, personality disorder enablers have a great deal to sort through.  If you are under the care of a therapist, ask them to recommend a book or two.  When my original therapist realized I like to research things, he actually “prescribed” some book to me – Toxic Parents by Susan Forward and Healing the Shame that Binds You by John Bradshaw.  One good book I found on my own, which isn’t as much about therapy as it is about dealing with other people, is The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense series by Suzette Haden Elgin.  And as I mentioned a few chapters back, The Mythic Path, by David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner, was very helpful in continuing the efforts of my formal therapy.

 

            “But,” you may ask, “how did these things help?  What did you actually learn from them?”  I learned that just because I was trained to cater to narcissists, didn’t mean I could not change that.  I did not become one out of weakness – I become one out of ignorance.  We are talking about a mere 6% or so of the total populous, it is unreasonable to expect people in general to have the knowledge and experience to make this decision reasonably.  So, I can’t blame myself for not knowing what I was really doing to myself.

Everyone can change.  In fact, it has been stated that a narcissist can and will change if circumstances force him to.  It is not a matter of ability, but of desire.  Many of us forget; however, how powerful desires can be.  We want to believe ourselves above them, which often makes us even more susceptible to their influence - like a sailor ignoring the current - and we end up caught in the eddies without a clue of how we got there.  Then a real battle lies before us, for not only do we have to fight the natural consequences of our actions (or lack of), but we must also fight the forces that put us there in the first place.

Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist who studied human evil and courage by interviewing Nazi doctors, Hiroshima survivors, Vietnam veterans, and political and military prisoners, concludes that people possess an innate faculty capable of assuming varied shapes, forms, and purposes at will, in response to challenge and peril. Lifton considers the ability to transform experiences symbolically as "the great human evolutionary achievement".

This change wasn’t easy for me.  I first had to accept that I was indeed in an abusive relationship and that I was carrying around some emotional wounds that needed to be healed.  We like to think that emotional hurts can just be shaken off, except in extreme cases.  But one should not ignore a cut, just because it’s not a severed limb.  As a friend of mine who suffers from Disassociated Identity Disorder once told me, “Cuts that are allowed to become infected can kill you just as easily.”

The nasty part of emotional wounds is that they just won’t go away if you ignore them – a fact I really find inconvenient.  I thought I had not been emotional affected by the actions of my high school counselor, who refused to help me enter into college because I wasn’t pushing myself as hard academically as she thought I should.  Latin, physics and chemistry weren’t good enough in her opinion, I needed to be in all honor classes, which I didn’t have the time and energy for - even if the tests showed I had the aptitude.  I blew her off back then and told myself I didn’t care what she thought.  So, I was quite surprised at my reaction, when I saw her on television over a decade later, campaigning for mayor.  Before I could consciously remember how I knew her, the words “That bitch!” exploded from me.  I clapped my hands over my mouth in horror as I realized that I hadn’t really forgiven or ignored her after all.

Sadly, burying things only preserves them, which is why archeologists have jobs and it is possible to find carrots with preserved centers that have been in the bottom of a landfill for over twenty years.  Nothing can decompose something like fresh air and sunlight.  Even worse, you actually have to take time and feel those emotional wounds, before you can heal them.

This why blanket forgiveness doesn't work.  As I mentioned, I have an anonymous website dealing with the toxic parts of my life.  Every so often, I have someone email me that I should forgive and forget and then everything will be all right.  I appreciate their concern; however, I spent over a quarter of a century doing just that and ended up destroying myself.  Finally, I realized my problem - I was denying the damage those acts did to me.  You cannot forgive someone while you are lying to yourself.  You cannot heal a stab wound by pretending it didn't happen.  When I have acknowledged the truth of my pain and grief, I can heal it, and once it is healed I find that forgiveness for the act often comes on its own and I am more compassionate towards the offender.  It is easier to hide from pain than it is to deal with it, but you feel so much better after it’s gone - and it does get easier after awhile. 

Another reason why you just can’t ignore emotional hurts is because whatever emotional pains you do not heal, you pass on.  I have found this stated in one form or another in several books, and after much personal experience, I find that it is very true and insidious.  Even now, I am still amazed at how emotional pain can affect someone's actions and decisions.  It’s like the scenario of a man who is yelled at by his boss at work. He comes home and his wife is late fixing dinner.  He berates his wife for not keeping things under control and his wife scolds the children severely for being difficult and causing her to be late with dinner.  The kids then blame each other for the disturbance.  The youngest kid kicks the dog.

Now, there will be days when dinner is late and berating someone won’t change that.  There will be times when children are unruly and a scolding is necessary, but the severity is not.  Your children learn from your example.  If you deal with your hurts by hurting someone else, don’t be surprise to see them do the same thing.

We have all been guilty of this, in one form or another.  As my sacrilegious brother once said, “Show me someone who’s perfect and I’ll nail him to a cross.”  Now, I find my brother’s disrespect for deity offensive, but the heretic does has one valid point here (though it may or may not be the one he meant) - we are all mortal and this means that we are not perfect.  If we were perfect, we would be gods.  As Carlyle said in his work, Heroes and Hero-Worship, “The greatest fault of them all, I should say, is to be conscious of none.”  I would add that the second greatest fault is to ignore the ones you are conscious of.

So, I acknowledged my emotional wounds and realized I couldn’t just ignore them, what helped me to heal those wounds? 

Journal writing, for one.  My journal helped me to see what was actually going on in my life.  Seeking knowledge allowed me to have an idea what was dictating the abusive patterns found in my journal and gave me other possible ways of dealing with them.  But the most powerful thing that helped me was visualization exercises.

Many people use fantasy as a means to escape and avoid the problems in their lives.  I’ve never been very good at that.  To me, fantasy is a laboratory or a computer simulation where I test things and see what happens, not a resort or hideaway.  I believe that problems were meant to be solved.  In my mental laboratory, I examine concepts at different angles and imagine many alternate scenarios.  I find it more invigorating than relaxing.  And sometimes, after a very fruitful session, I feel like I just won a marathon - tired, weak, but very happy.  But I make it a point to remember what can and cannot be translated into real life.  I may step in and out of character, but I always remind myself that I am not my characters.

In the appendix of this book, I have included a few of the exercises that I did for myself, so you may have a better idea of what I am actually talking about.  I have no intention of replacing a proper therapist; I only intend to share my own experiences.  If they benefit you, then I am grateful, but everyone is different and I don’t pretend to have all the answers.

 

It is my firm belief that everything deserves respect and an opportunity to develop itself to its fullest potential, especially you.  Why especially you?  Because you are the only one who can change how you see yourself.  No amount of outside mirroring can override how you perceive you as an individual.  Granted, it can have some effect, but as long as your self-image has gapping holes, no outside influence is going to do you much good.  In short, you need to ask how you need to change to make your life better, because you can’t change anyone else.  Loving your neighbor as yourself requires you to love yourself first.

We always have choices in this life. Some of us choose to inflict our pain onto others, and some of us choose to heal our pain and offer love. My goal is the second, but if I cannot keep myself from doing the first, I pray that I inflict the guilty and not the innocent.

Today is yours.  What you do with it is your choice.