Take away a narcissist's power and they can become the nicest people in the world.  Give them an inch of that power back and they will take that inch and try to run a mile with it.  They will use that tiny bit of power to control, manipulate, degrade, humiliate, threaten (or however else they get their kicks) their scapegoat(s).  Narcs crave power: the power they have over others and over themselves.  They hate to be controlled, but will bow down when it suits them to do so. 

Always remember this one thing when dealing with a narc: every single thing is a manipulation.  Even if it's not meant as one in the moment, it will become one later on when it suits them to use it against you. 

Say you're having drinks with a narc (or just having fun).  You both are laughing, having a great time.  You think "This isn't so bad!  They can really be awesome sometimes!"  So you let out a little more info than you would if you weren't having so much fun.  The narcissist may reply in kind, letting their own guard down and saying things they normally wouldn't.  You may feel like you're actually bonding with them for once.  Even if the narc feels the same way in the moment, know that later, they will regret what they said to you and then tell others what you said and/or make fun of how you were acting with them on said night. 

Once, many years ago, my ex-SIL (though I was married to her brother at the time) and I were laughing our asses off, having fun, being silly, and really having a great night while on vacation together.  We were laughing so hard we were crying (which is always a sign of a fun time).  A few days later she said to me "I only ever talk to you because I feel bad for you.  You were having so much fun I couldn't let you down by telling you how dumb you were acting." 

Now, she was actually having fun, but she felt stupid so she had to make me feel stupid, too.  She went around to her family and told them how dumb I was acting and how immature I was.  Maybe she feared I would have done the same to her so she did it first so nobody believed me?  It's quite sad to think how much these narcissists act out because of their own insecurities.  It must really suck to live inside their heads. 

Once my mother told my entire family at a family reunion (I wasn't invited to) that "I have no idea why she had never achieved anything in life.  What a waste." (referring to me).  My mother relayed this info to a mutual friend of ours who told me about it.  This was back when I started this blog (2013 I think?).  Then earlier this year (2019), her doctors messed up her meds for her essential tremor and she had to go without it for a month.  It was horrible.  It got to the point she couldn't swallow due to her tremors.  During this time her depression hit an all-time low and she said things to me she normally would not have told me.  One thing she said was "I am not worth anything.  I haven't achieved one thing in my life at all.  What good am I?"  When I heard her say that, I instantly knew she had been projecting her insecurities of feeling worthless onto me.  And not just for that day she said I hadn't achieved anything, but for my entire life. 

Not that it makes that behavior okay.  Of course, it still makes her awful, but after hearing this, I realized I don't have to take it personally anymore.  

Think about it, this blog has come full circle.  The reason I started it was because of what happened during the time of her saying that about me, and now she's finally cleared it up for me six years later.  Not on purpose, mind you, had she not felt so horrible she never would have said a word to me about that.  But guiltily, I feel like it was a bit of a blessing to have it all happen (though I honestly wouldn't have wished what happened to her to happen to anyone, it was quite horrid).

Within a few days after, she got back on her meds and WOW did she have some making up to do.  She felt so vulnerable and horrible that she had shared her private feelings of inadequacy with me that she had to take it out on me with full force with the guilting and shaming and manipulation again (though it didn't work this time). 

See?  You take away their power?  They have nothing left and may break down.  But the minute their power comes back?  The game is right back on. 

In that moment, where she shared these horrible feelings about herself with me, I didn't fall for it.  I felt bad for her, yes, but I didn't think it was some monumental moment that we were sharing that would change both of us forever (like they do on TV shows or movies).  I knew better.  But I did feel grateful.  She never got to understand that her mother's treatment of her was her mother projecting all her own feelings of worthlessness.  But I got to see it firsthand with my own mother.  I got to hear the words she used against me to try to make me feel worthless being spoken about herself.  So it really was a monumental moment for me.  Not for us and our relationship, mine and mother's.  But just me.  I got to take all the horrible, mean, awful, and derogatory things she's done and said to me throughout the years and put them right back where they belong: in her heart.  They don't belong in mine anymore.  I refuse to carry my mother's pain.  She can have it all back (or better yet, I can just let it fall away so everyone can be rid of it). 

Think of Pain as Sand

I am not a narcissist, therefore I have the ability to understand myself and others and empathize with them.  I get why people are the way they are.  And I understand that when a narcissist has no idea where to put their pain they will get out their sand toys (like the type you play with on the beach when you're a kid), stick their little shovel in their bucket-of-pain and throw it at anyone who they think it will stick to.  They can't deal with it spilling all around at their own feet (because who likes sand in their shoes?), so they try to empty it on others.   Think of all the narcissists in the world as a beach filled with toddlers.  Nobody is playing fair.  Everyone is sweaty and screaming.  And that one is dumping their bucket of sand on other one's head.  Where are their parents? you may ask.  Who's watching these little bozos?  Oh, if they're still alive, they are on the beach too, with their own toys, dumping their buckets on their kids' heads.  It's a fucking shit show.  There's sand in diapers, in their hair, embedded in their cracks and crevices.  And everyone is crying.  And they have no idea how to grow up and play nice.  So there they are, forever on the beach of pain, being two years old, and screaming when someone touches their beach toys.

So your job in all of this? 

Is to leave the fucking beach.  

Let the toddlers continue to throw sand at each other.  You can quietly brush off the tiny grains of withered earth your parents threw on you and put it back int their buckets where it belongs.  That sand?  Is as old as your family line.  It was sand that their parents threw on them, and they on them, and so forth and on and on and on.  It's all the same fucking sand. 

So now, you have to make a conscious choice not to throw that sand on your kids' heads.  Or at anyone else, for that matter.  Learn how to clean yourself of it and transform it when you can.  When you put sand from the beach in your hands, what does it do?  It slips through your fingers, right?  But when we're wet (which is our sadness and sorrow and anger), it sticks to us.  So dry yourself off and let it fall to the ground where it belongs. 

So, how do you do that?  

For one, make a list.  Make a list of every single thing you feel bad about yourself that your parents made you feel.  Mine looks like this:

• bad at math (she is the reason I have math anxiety and failed math constantly as a child)
• bad handwriting (she makes a huge deal out of not being able to read my handwriting, still to this day which gave me a horrible complex about it for most of my life)
• makes poor choices (according to her, every choice I make is stupid or wrong, even if she does the same things--which are good choices when she makes them)
• has dumb ideas (see above)
• is a child (she treats me as a child even though I am in my 40's, so I end up feeling like a child in most situations in my life)
• is incapable (even if I do something awesome, it is ignored, but when I can't do something or something fails, a big deal is made so I remember just how incapable I am)
• is a bad parent/pet owner (this one does not resonate with me, but it's definitely something she had tried to make me feel--if I can't afford something for my dog, then I am a bad pet owner, but she will flat out refuse to take care of her pets if they need something--so much projection there)
• is a liar (she believes nothing I ever say...though she has made it so I have to lie to her about things that are none of her business)
• is lazy (she will accuse me of sleeping all day and make "jokes" when she calls and says "Did I wake you up?" even though it's 3pm)

I love when someone says "It's all in the past" or "It's time to move on", as though there's a special time limit on trauma, PTSD/CPTSD, or pain.  This is a term my mother uses frequently whenever I bring up the past.  It's a dismissive way to say "Oh god, you're overreacting again" or "Why do you dwell on things that are no longer happening?"  Talking about the past makes people uncomfortable, especially if it's filled with pain.  Bringing up your pain makes other people fear accessing their own pain.  So they dismiss your pain as a way to dismiss their own.

Like when I told my mother I was raped at fourteen years old, I accessed her pain of being raped at that age, which I was unaware of at the time.  When I told my mother about my own rape, she ignored me and said nothing at all and just kept driving.  We just sat in silence.  I was confused. And very, very hurt.  But years later, after I went no contact with her this last time, she met with a psychologist who got her to talk about her own rape.  After that, it was all she could talk about but she still denied my pain and acted like what happened to me hadn't happened at all.  That's her narcissist side creeping out.  She was allowed to be raped.  I was not.  It's a very gross and disgusting way of saying "My pain counts.  Your pain doesn't exist."

But if I were to bring this up, she'd say "It's all the past, why don't you let it go?"  That was a phrase I heard a billion times after having to be forced back into my mother's life again after over a year hiatus.  She refused to acknowledge my abuse as a child and just repeated this phrase to me over and over again.  I remember wanting to snap and just scream at her, but once again, I was in the grips of her bullshit without a way out: we were stuck with nobody else after becoming homeless and losing everything we owned, even our car.  We did eventually get some of our stuff back, but not a car.  We were stuck using hers just so my husband could get a job and get to work.

Now everything is a little different, but we aren't completely 100% yet.  We still suffer in many ways and those that know us well, know this about us.  But then today a family member told me on a post from last year that came up in my feed and I talked about how awful last year was, "So just be glad that rough part is in the past and leave it there."  

It's just another way to say "Stop living in the past" or "Let it go".  When you suffer from PTSD, the "rough part" is not in the past.  The roughest part maybe, but you relieve it on a regular basis.  Now, this doesn't happen to me as much anymore, waking up and thinking I am still there.  This used to happen quite regularly.  So I don't quite live in that space anymore.  But I do feel the pain of what we lost almost on a daily basis.  She then added, "Smile, because you came out on top!"  

This woman is notorious for plastering platitudes on everything she says to me.  She has no idea how to access her own pain.  Her own mother, who happens to be my family member too, is also a narcissist, is crazier than my own mother.  She had some deep pain she can't access, so she always throws on a smile and pretends everything is hunkydory, and makes excuses for why people treat her badly.  I care about her, but she's also a woman that forgot my 40th birthday (the next year she sent me a card, only after letting her know how much her forgetting my birthday hurt me, where she copied another card's sentiments instead of writing anything personal).  Forgetting my 40th is kind of a jacked up thing since were pretty close back then, but I can't dwell on people's mistakes (well, I can, but I shouldn't).  But anyway, my point is she has no idea how to say I'm sorry, or to really ask how other people are doing.  She can't access real feelings in those ways.  So I get it when she said these things to me today.  I get that she doesn't get what dealing with trauma (esp. that of having you and your family abducted by some crazy person in Missouri) looks like.  It probably makes her very uncomfortable.  

But still, I can't get over the whole "leave it in the past" line, which is triggering for me.  Maybe it's me.  It probably is.  But at the same time, I feel dismissed.  I feel my feelings have been dismissed.  "Smile, everything's better now!"  No, it isn't.  I still feel it every single day.  I still remember it.  I don't have the visceral flashbacks anymore.  I can't smell her apartment anymore.  I can't close my eyes and for a moment freak the hell out because I forget I am not being abused by her anymore.  But I'm still there at times.  I still remember and it still lives with me almost daily.  

I get that people don't get that part.  People who can't access their pain will never have those issues.  They can't feel things, so they shut them out and pretend everything is okay.  But dismissing another's feelings, even if not meant that way, isn't okay.  The last time I was going through a hard time and I was posting negative things on my FB page she decided to lecture me.  Told me I was "spiraling out of control", which was an overreaction as I was just talking about my pain.  But to her, that was spiraling.  But she didn't grow up with my parents.  She has no idea what "spiraling out of control" really looks like.  She didn't have a father drink himself into his grave all the while abusing his wife and child.  That's spiraling.  

Growing up with a narcissist mother taught me how to access my feelings because I was a spiteful child who wanted to never give in to her bullshit.  I wanted to talk about what I was going through whereas my mother wanted to pretend it never happened.  After my father died my mother "spiraled out of control" trying to drink herself into an early grave and then started physically abusing me as an adult (she learned fast and quick that I am not a person she could victimize in such a way).  Me bringing these things up on FB (and mind you, I only have my immediate family and very few trusted others on my page, not hundreds of friends) was not "spiraling" anything.  I was angry, yes, but I was dealing with my crazy mother who was abusing me at the time.  

So my family member lecturing me was just a way for her to get me to shut up.  So when she posted this today, I can't tell if she's being sincere (although misguided) or just shushing me and feeling I am "spiraling" again by dwelling on our trauma.  But it was only a year ago.  In actuality, it's practically the anniversary of the day we left.   Around year ago today we traveled down to southern Missouri, 500 miles from home and became homeless.  My cousin tricked us and told us she had a place for us to live.  And to find out, it was a shack in the middle of the woods that had been destroyed.  It was all a ploy for her narcissistic games to get us to her house so she could use and abuse us.  And that she did.  And then our car broke down and she got us got kicked out of her apartment and we became even more homeless than before.  It was horrible.  We had four cats, and four dogs and four humans and I feared we were going to lose everyone and everything.  We did end up losing two of our cats, and we had to leave everything behind in a storage unit, and came back to our town with nothing, except us, our dogs and two of our cats.  No furniture, beds, and hardly any clothes.  And my mother, who's apartment we live above, used that time after we moved in to abuse us some more.  So it seemed a never-ending nightmare.  My mother's abuse only recently stopped.  Though she still abuses us, it's the more "regular" style rather than the hardcore abuse she doled out last year (she literally tried to starve us last year, I am not even exaggerating).  

So yeah.  The past isn't that far behind us.  And my family member knows this.  And she ignores me when I talk about it.  I could make excuses for her...like I have been this entire blog.  Saying she can't access her pain.  Which she can't.  I know this.  But that doesn't mean it's okay to say these things to another person.  To tell them "It's in the past!  Move on!"  It's demeaning when people treat us like that, like our feelings do no matter.  And I think, even though I do like her and get along with her, I don't need her to be exposed to my personal posts.  Telling her she's being annoying probably won't' change her behavior, as it doesn't change my mother's behavior.  We all know this.  I've told her this before.

This kind of story happens to most of us who are vocal about our abuse.  So my advice?  Do what I did: put that family member/friend/etc. on restricted access (if it's on Facebook).  Don't give them the chance to dismiss you anymore.  I know I'm not.  

Some people are about surface relationships.  So that's as far as you should take it with them.  Don't let give them the chance to be a part of your healing, because they obviously don't want to be.  


It's not all in the past.  Nothing traumatic ever is.  Whether it's a specific trauma or just all the years of your abuse from your mother, it's all with you, all the time.  It heals, yes.  But it's okay to explore when you need to.  Don't let others act like you're "spiraling" or whatever they label you as.  You have every right to talk about your pain when needed.  Just make sure it's to people who you trust to comfort you and help you heal 💓