Do I have to forgive my narcissist?

Pop psychology will always rush to tell you it's always better to forgive. Legitimate therapists typically recommend the same. Christian preachers, Buddhist gurus, life coaches are all great proponents of forgiveness. I would agree that letting go of hate, grudges, and animosity is almost always key to being happy and at peace.

Almost always.

The exception to this rule, in my firmly held opinion, is when you are disentangling yourself from a narcissist. In the early stages of this process, I believe it is crucial to let yourself be angry, bitter, spiteful and vindictive. Why this offbeat advice? Because of the nature of the narcissist and the nature of you, his victim.

As we've talked about in other posts, narcs are not like the rest of humanity. They don't feel shame or guilt for their selfish acts. When they "repent" or apologize, it's simply a ruse to gain or maintain power. A narc is absolutely unable to sincerely ask for your forgiveness...if he mouths those sorts of words, I guarantee you he is lying. He is unable to feel for you in the first place, so why would he experience sorrow or regret over how he's treated you? He also feels no need for your forgiveness, approval, or acceptance. He already feels he is perfect and superior to you and everyone else.

Certainly to accept an apology from a narcissistic or offer one your forgiveness is a complete sham from his side.

But what about from your side? Don't psychologists and spiritual leaders always say forgiveness is required from you if you expect to heal?

Once again, in this case things are upside down. You have spent years--perhaps a lifetime--constantly looking for fault in yourself where your narc is concerned. You have apologized, accepted blame, make changes over and over again in an attempt to appease and please him. Even now you probably suffer from guilt and wonder if you've done enough, said the right things, been the person you ought to have been for him.

It is time to break this pattern. It's time to proclaim that you are the offended party, and the blame is on the narcissist. It's time to work on fully believing this, stopping the excuses you always make for him, recognizing that you are the victim who deserves justice and happiness. And in order to feel and realize these things, you have to release the anger, bitterness, and resentment you were trained by your narc to stifle.

You need to get mad. Write a furious letter to your narcissist (that you won't send, because that would be pointless), saying all the things you could never say in the past. Be angry about the rotten hand you've been dealt, being related to or involved with someone so hurtful. Acknowledge all the bad things and allow yourself to react as a normal human being would react. All this is key to getting your brain rewired and your emotions freed from the tyranny of being in thrall to the narc.

This is a process, not an ultimate goal. Eventually you want to be able to let go of all of it, put it behind you, move on and focus on positive attitudes and emotions. But you won't be able to get to that point without letting yourself be angry first. You can't be empowered to live a full and free life until you break all the chains.

In the end, when all this is through, should you forgive your narcissist? Well, if there is ultimate justice, then God and/or karma will do the judging for you, and your act of forgiveness won't affect that one way or the other. If you make a personal choice not to forgive, that is a completely valid and fair one. The best way to heal is not necessarily to forgive, but to turn away from the monstrous nature and deeds of the narcissist and focus instead on goodness, your own and others, and on the beauty and love in the world and in yourself.

Mercy is a wonderful thing all right, but as the victim of a narcissist, the person to whom you should direct your mercy is you. You deserve it...you've earned it. Let yourself receive it.

Are there any exercises that would help me make sense of the confusion my narcissist causes me?

Any victim of a narcissist has experienced lots of confusion. First, there's the fact that as a normal person you cannot fathom the way the narcissist's mind works, so you're frequently surprised or even shocked by his behavior. Second, there's the fact that in order to stay in control, narcs often lie and do all they can to convince their victims to believe in the alternate, fictitious reality that suits their purposes. Third, the narcissist loves confusing you just for its own sake--it's a rush to see your head spin, your conviction crumble, and your emotions go into turmoil.

You can fight your way out of this confusion, but it will take effort and time. I'd like to give you a few suggestions to encourage this process.

Hold Court

In my case, the first exercise I found really helpful was to do all I could to prove to myself my father and ex-husband truly had Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I literally copied off the web several lists of traits of narcissists and wrote specific examples from my experience that showed these guys had NPD. Whenever I felt guilt, shame, fear, or loss of resolve, I reread the "rap sheet" to remind myself through concrete example that I had been the victim of messed-up people who had wanted nothing except to use me.

I found the lists on this website particularly helpful in my case. Search the internet for lists that hit home to you and your particular situation. Do as I did (I do recommend actually writing it down for later reference) and hold a little trial for your narcissist, making the case to yourself and proving a conviction. Every time you feel yourself schwaffling, reread your trial transcript. Add more examples if it helps you. And remember, just because you can think of times when the narc seemed to care or did something nice doesn't get him off the hook. Any criminal "does things right" when it serves his purpose. But innocent people don't make a lifestyle out of cruel behavior like your narc did/does.

Let Your Feelings Out

Victims of narcissists spend their lives appeasing the one they serve. More often than not, that includes stifling the normal human response to abuse. A classic example from my life is when my then-husband confessed an affair he'd been having just as it was falling apart. He was in despair over losing this love interest and actually told me about it just so he could get sympathy and understanding. Believe it or not (maybe you do!), I buried my feelings of betrayal and despair and devoted myself to listening to his sob story and comforting him! Classic Stockholm Syndrome at work there.

I have no doubt that you can look back on your relationship with your narc and find plenty of occasions when your needs and feelings went unnoticed and it was all about the narcissist. You may well have not even taken particular notice that this was happening. Well, it's time to look back on those times and let yourself feel and express what you should have been able to experience then. It's time to let it be about YOU. Imagine or write down how you would have reacted had you not been in thrall to the narc. The more you do this, the clearly it will become to you what a warped, unfair, lopsided relationship you had, and how much you suffered at the hands of your narcissist. It won't be long before you start losing the feelings of guilt and fear that plague you now. Reality will have its way!

Mindfulness

If you're like me, your narcissist's-victim-training included indoctrination into a world of fear. Now that you are daring to consider rebelling against the will of your narc, naturally your emotional response is terror, panic and terrible anxiety. No matter what logic you apply to the situation to convince yourself you are not in danger, these emotions will assault you. I found myself not only terrified, but also hyper-vigilant. I couldn't help but run scenarios in my head all day and night of what might happen. My father would call me up in the middle of the night to yell at me. Or kill my pets, or burn down my house. All these imagined torments filled me with as much fear as if they were really happening.

One of the best ways to deal with imagined horrors in any circumstance is mindfulness. Mindfulness brings your attention back to what is really happening to you and around you, rather than what is happening in your imagination as you fret and worry. It breaks the cycle of your fear causing you to envision frightening things, which in turn maintain your fear. It can be as simple as switching your attention to the sensations around you right now, such as how your clothes feel, what you are smelling, and the objects you see in the room. The whole point is to get out of your head and into reality, where at the moment you are perfectly safe.

This webpage has an excellent explanation of how anxiety works, as well as a simple introduction to meditation to alleviate it. Meditation simply involves focusing on your breathing in order to direct your thoughts away from the imagined terrors. Meditation and mindfulness were key elements to my setting aside the crippling fear that came along with splitting with my narcissist.

What these three exercises have in common is helping you to escape the world the narcissist has trained you to believe in, and reconnect with the real world, your true feelings, and your actual circumstances. Working on these things will not only break the narc's power over you but start you down the path to emotional recovery and a much happier life.

What do I do about feeling so guilty for defying my narcissist?

One of the hardest things you have to face now is the tremendous guilt you feel for not accommodating your narcissist. After all, we're talking about a very significant person in your life. If it's your boyfriend/girlfriend, it's someone with whom you were planning to spend your foreseeable future. If a spouse, you committed yourself, you took vows. If a parent, sibling, or child, they are your flesh and blood. These sorts of relationships are not supposed to be broken.

But now you've decided to break with someone you never dreamed you'd abandon or shun. It seems absolutely crazy, and every voice in your head--along with at least a few outside your head--are telling you a decent person would find a way toward reconciliation. "You can't heal without forgiveness." "No one is beyond saving." "Your Christian duty." Yada yada yada.

Here's the thing: You, the voices in your head, your friends and advisors, and a whole bunch of self-help books are not taking one very important thing into account: Narcissistic Personality Disorder. All these rules of society, principles of human nature, tried-and-true adages are for dealing with normal human beings. Narcs are not normal human beings. In certain ways, they are not human beings at all, but more like psychological vampires, creatures that suck the joy and strength from humans. Or like aliens who take over the will of humans and force them to do their bidding.

Forgiveness means nothing genuine to people like this, because they cannot ever fathom that they have done something wrong. Reconciliation doesn't mean to them what it does to you, it only means the well of attention and devotion is no longer dry and can be tapped again. Lifelong commitment is something they cannot and will not understand, even if they stay attached to you for your entire life, like my dad did with my mom. All it means is that their victim never managed to put a stop to the abuse, like my mom failed to do with my dad.

You must keep all this in mind when you start to feel guilty. You don't feel guilty for ridding your body of an infection, for driving an intruder from your house, or for not giving your credit card to a stranger to use. You don't apologize for wanting to drive them away!

Don't mistake empty titles for true bonds. "Husband" is a label, not a character trait. So is "Mom" or "Brother." The narcissist has never functioned in your life as a real lover, father, sibling, true friend, so he doesn't get to hide behind the protection of a title.

Likewise, you need to tear down the facade you created for your narc. Most victims of narcissists manage to survive their day-to-day lives by inwardly minimize the crimes of their abusers, and believing in false versions of their narcs that actually possess the characteristics associated with their role. You may play down your husband's cruelty as "crabbiness," or your mother's insults as "having high standards." You might play up the occasional kindnesses or believe in faked acts of niceness, so desperate are you for love and affection.

The fault is not yours. Your narcissist has made a career of training you to be his puppet and think what he wants you to think. He's used positive and negative reinforcement, lying, gaslighting, threats, and every form of mental and emotional manipulation to control your feelings. You have been brainwashed to believe it's always your fault, he's always right (or at least in control), you are wrong unless you agree with him, and there's nothing wrong with him, it's all you. So naturally any disobedience on your part, much less an actual full-stage rebellion, is going to make you feel terrible guilt and fear!

What can you do about it? You have to reprogram your brain and heart. You have to deliberately counterattack, consistently and often, with reason and logic. Examine all your thoughts and feelings in the light of this new information and reality. Figure out what your narcissist is really like, what he was really doing all along. Understand how you have been duped and manipulated. Reconsider all the thoughts and feelings you used to dismiss as crazy or inappropriate. Reevaluate them and see how you were the normal one, there were real reasons for what you thought and felt. Review your past history and analyze what was actually happening. Make sense of it all in this new light.

I recommend you also express all this in some form. Journaling is really helpful in straightening out all the confusion and making ideas concrete, as well as venting pent up and buried emotions. Finding a trustworthy, loving person to talk with throughout the process is key, whether it be a friend or a professional.

I also want to suggest some specific exercises that might be as helpful to you as they were to me, So we'll look at those in the next post.

Why should I go "no contact" with my narcissist?

This is the first time I have used the phrase "no contact," but it certainly won't be the last. I'm here today to convince you that the only effective way to escape the clutches of a narc is to make a clean and complete break from him.

Of course it may be, particularly in the case of separating from a spouse with whom you've had children, that practical considerations prevent you from cutting off all communication. In that event you can do no better than limit contact to the minimum requirement, and work vigilantly to keep your emotions out of your interactions. Meanwhile, you will need to support your children as they cope with having a narcissistic parent. The whole subject of co-parenting with a narcissist is broad and huge, and I will address related topics over time. For now, a good place to start is this link. There are many excellent resources like this online that you can find googling "co-parenting with a narcissist."

But assuming that practically speaking you are able to do it, the no contact rule is ironclad. Why? First, because any emotional connection with a narcissist is toxic. Second, because you have an established relationship as the narc's victim and there is absolutely nothing you can do to reframe it--the narcissist will undermine your efforts every time. He will adapt to your determination to change things by either (1) forcing you back into your old role using the same tried-and-true tactics he has always used, or (2) deciding you're no longer worth the trouble and cutting you out of his life himself, at least until you come crawling back.

Remember what we've already discussed about how narcissists operate: he doesn't have genuine human feelings for you, he simply views you as the means to an end. He needs you to supply him with praise, attention, obedience, and any other emotional support he's craving at the time. If you come to him with ideas about getting more attention yourself, getting a break from giving to him all the time, being treated better, being made to feel more loved, etc....well, there's nothing in any of those proposals for him, so he will not be interested in supporting or fostering them. If he says he is, rest assured he is lying. It's not in his nature to want any of them.

If your narcissist judges that your mind is made up, and there is no way he can bend your will this time, he will cut you off without shedding a single tear. And believe me, that's the easiest result. If it happens to you, rejoice!

If on the other hand he senses you do not really have conviction, that on some level you want to be talked out of your decision, he will immediately commence plotting the best way to get you back in line. He will probably try some of these things:

• Apologizing profusely and promising to change
• Doing something really nice like giving you a gift or performing a romantic gesture
• Convincing you that you have judged him wrongly
• Demonstrating to you that you are actually at fault for the problems
• Threatening you with some sort of punishment
• Meeting your rejection with equal rejection because he knows it will "scare you straight"

He may attempt these things right away, or employ them down the line, but regardless the key is not to give in. And that's why no contact is so important. If you dismantle all means for him to communicate with you, he won't be able to manipulate you. That is your best line of defense.

So do not see him face to face, do not answer his phone calls, do not read his texts or emails. Unfriend him on Facebook, don't stalk him in any form of social media. If you don't have the resolve to ignore his attempts at communication and have to resort to changing your phone number, email address, screen names, etc., then do it. I know it can be hard if you are both invited to parties or family gatherings, but this may require you to sacrifice some aspects of your other relationships too. Some of those people will understand, others won't. But that doesn't alter the importance of what you are doing by going no contact.

The reason for it is not only to protect yourself from his influence, but also to drive home the point that he can no longer use you. Once he clearly and certainly has grasped that fact, he will probably leave you alone and move on to finding someone else to victimize. And again, that's the happiest possible ending for you.

Having him out of sight will also help you put him out of mind. There is a grieving process you must go through, a sorting out of your beliefs and a reframing of your memories, and these things will all take time. But the ultimate goal is for you to move on and rarely have to think about (certainly not with great emotion) your relationship with the narcissist. As long as he is involved in your life in some way, this challenge is made more difficult.

Going no contact is tough, but there are things you can do to make it easier on yourself. That's what we'll be talking about in the next post.

I want to escape my narcissist--what happens now?

I imagine one of two things has occurred in your life:

1. Your narc rejected you, broke up with you, or otherwise caused a rift; or 
2. You yourself have reached a crisis point where you can't take it anymore.

Regardless of which of these is the impetus for your wanting to make a change--and it can be a combination of both--odds are that what happens next will be the same. You will second guess yourself. Severely and repeatedly. Doubt, confusion, fear and guilt will well up in you. And while this is happening, one or more of these other forces could come into play:

1. The narcissist will say/do things to either make you feel guilty or woo you back.
2. Other family members, friends, or involved third parties will urge a reconciliation.
3. Practical considerations will arise to make a change seem daunting or even impossible.

All this can make the idea of truly removing this toxic person from your life seem like a roadblock as large as Mount Everest. But YOU CAN DO IT. You are not alone, there is help. And part of that help is me. I will break down this immense task into smaller, more manageable pieces, and advise you in every way I can of the tools and approaches you can employ to make it easier.

The first place to begin is with yourself. Because whatever other people are telling you, the ultimate authority on your life is YOU. Those others don't have the firsthand knowledge of what you've been through. They don't know you or your abuser the way you do. They probably have no understanding of Narcissistic Personality Disorder or how it works. Why should you heed the advice of people who aren't experts, nor are they fully informed? Meanwhile, you can be certain of your own motives: you want to be able to have the happiness that is your right as a decent human being. But other people (especially your narc) have their own agendas; even if they love you, they are also thinking of themselves.

You, like any other human, deserve the freedom to determine your own fate and pursue happiness. No one has the right to tell you to allow yourself to be abused. It is never a good thing for any member of society to be victimized--society at large always suffers when abuse is tolerated. The right thing in this case, in your case, is for the abuser to be stripped of his power, and the victim supported and given the tools to heal.

So take the time and make the effort today to recognize that you have worth, your happiness matters, and you don't have to take it anymore. Embrace these ideas now and over and over again through your doubts. Recognize this will take work but commit yourself to not turning back. And change your focus from being on others to being on yourself for awhile, for you will need to nurture yourself in many ways to get through this life change.

In the posts to come, I will work through piece by piece the tasks ahead, the pitfalls to conquer, and the tools to help you make your way. In the meantime, keep your eyes on the goal: finding piece of mind, love, joy, self-confidence, and all the other benefit that come from getting free of a narcissist.

Why shouldn't I just cooperate with my narcissist?

There's absolutely no question that the easiest approach to having a narc in your life is to cooperate with him. That, of course, is the way he has deliberately arranged life for you: do as he says, and things will be okay, but disobey and there will be a price. The thing is, there is also a price to be paid for chronically complying with a narcissist's demands, and it's much worse in the end.

Sometime before I born, my mother learned to cave to narcissists. Perhaps her own father or brother were in that category, or perhaps she only had my dad to deal with. At any rate, from the earliest moment I my childhood that I can recall, there was one overarching principle in place in my house: do NOT do anything to irritate my father. Rebellion of any kind was absolutely out of the question for us both. Sometimes, being a small child, I failed to anticipate my dad's requirements, or just didn't have the emotional wherewithal to meet his demands. The cruel response to these misdeeds drove me all the more to avoid such situations at all costs. My father didn't apply physical abuse, but he sure knew how to belittle, shame, and terrify. My mom was sometimes sympathetic, but more often upset with me for upsetting my dad. I knew his abusive tactics were the same for my mom, but I didn't fully appreciate the horrors of her life until the poor woman had passed.

My life story eventually had a happy ending. But the sad story of my mom demonstrates what can happen to the narcissist's victim if she never fights back. For over 50 years Mom stayed in a largely miserable relationship, not even recognizing that she had other options. She was a professional with a college degree and excellent job experience throughout her adult life, but she couldn't muster the courage to leave the misery behind and strike out on her own. I have no doubt that she was crippled by the same fear of my father's retribution that prevented me from disobeying him even when he was elderly and almost helpless.

That's what happens eventually: Your mind is warped by the years of emotional manipulation until you can't even see any way out. And you can also have the classic traits of the sufferer of narcissistic abuse forced upon you: chronic anxiety, depression, poor self-image, hyper-vigilance, confusion, lack of confidence, etc. Meanwhile, you develop the classic symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome, experienced by kidnappees and prisoners of war. You sympathize with your abuser, make excuses for him and defend him, and devote yourself all the more to trying to please him.

With such a warped view of yourself and the world around you, you cannot function as a healthy, successful person. These issues affect your relationships, your job, and your health, both mental and physical.

Imagine if you lived in a house full of mold, and for some strange reason were convinced there was no way to get rid of it and nowhere else for you to live. Eventually that mold would destroy your health. Well, you are sharing your life with a person who is just as toxic as that mold. You can continue to sit in your chair and breathe in the mold until it kills you, or you can eradicate it from your life.

Just imagine that clean house, and how wonderful it would be to breathe freely....

Why can I not help feeling so anxious and scared of my narcissist?

[Let me begin by saying you're in a good place simply for recognizing that you are anxious and scared. Fear of the narcs in my life was such a normal condition I didn't even recognize it as fear. The first step for me--and possibly also for you--was to stop pushing my feelings under the rug and examine what they really were.]

Let's look again at how the narcissist operates when dealing with his victim. He is a master of training and manipulation. For the thoughts, feelings, and actions you commit of which he approves, there will be a reward. Of course oftentimes that reward isn't anything much better than the avoidance of disapproval, but sometimes it will actually be praise, a smile, physical affection, kindly words. Meanwhile, for every thought, feeling, or action you commit of which he dislikes, there will most certainly be a punishment.

Especially if the narc in your life is someone who has interacted with you since you were a child, you will also be trained to believe that the acts of reward equate to love, while the punishments are simply your just desserts for misbehaving. Let's pause and take a closer look at this.

First of all--and this is crucial for you to grasp--real love is unconditional. If someone genuinely loves you, that outlook will color all their doings with you, when you are "good," when you are "bad," and when it's just an ordinary day and you are average. It will not only come into play when you are behaving in the way the person wants you to. Think back on your relationship with your suspected narcissist. If you find it hard to think of a time when you felt like he valued and treasured you even when you had failed or disappointed him, the guy is a narc. Don't fool yourself by thinking, "Well, lots of times he was really nice to me." Ask yourself if those times weren't just part of how he kept you in his power.

Secondly--and this is equally important--in functional relationships, disagreements can occur without placement of blame or acts of retribution. In a healthy marriage, a wife may choose to do something in a way that her husband doesn't like, and they can come to agree it is still a valid action, just different than the expectation. One of the partners can even commit an undeniably wrong act and the other can still talk about it rationally and not resort to punishment of some kind. If you find it hard to think of a time you disappointed/disagreed with your narc and he didn't treat you like a stupid, worthless or bad person, well, that's how he works because he's a narcissist.

This reward/punishment system was the basis of both my relationship with my father and my ex-husband. On the rare occasion that I decided to exert my will, I was always beaten back down. It was his way or nothing. I was constantly vigilant not to commit any "mistakes" that might set him off. When I dared to fight back in a disagreement, I always lost. When a situation arose that required one of us to sacrifice, it was always me, never him or even a compromise. I was afraid to even think about what I needed much less ask for it, and I knew there was no point if I did ask.

Sound like your situation? Well, I feel for you--it's a terrible way to live. And what's worse it that we victims of narcs are also trained by them to accept this lot in life, and even to feel like it's normal, and that the negative feelings we experience should be ignored and buried and we must just soldier on with the status quo forever.

That works for getting by day-to-day, but there are serious problems with it in the long run. I'll talk about some of those in the next post....

I think he might be a narcissist--what do I do now?

You may have determined this troubling person in your life has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It explains a lot, and that's a relief, but otherwise your emotions are still in turmoil. You still have doubts, you still worry that you've done something bad. Even if you could be 100% certain that he’s the problem and not you, you’re terrified to do anything differently than you have in the past. The very thought of fighting back scares you to death and fills you with guilt and shame. Maybe you think you've already done something hurtful and every fiber of you wants to apologize, make amends, appease and return to the status quo.

The best thing to do first is to deepen your understanding, both of the narc and of yourself. You need to learn there is a huge discrepancy between how you believe he thinks and feels, and how he actually thinks and feels. You need a short (and ultimately longer) course in what makes a narcissist tick.

When one has experienced being a devoted child, a loving wife, an adoring parent, or a faithful friend, one has certain convictions about the bonds between human beings. Naturally one projects that the same feelings of empathy, concern, and appreciation are universal among humans. But here's some huge news: they are not.

A narcissist has a completely different attitude towards family members and friends (as well as people in general).  To the narc, other people--even the most important people in one’s life--are never more than the means to an end.  They are tools to be used for desired results. They are there to bring benefits and advantages. If other people fail in this regard, they are not worth caring about and should be cast aside and replaced if possible.

The most useful and therefore the most manipulated people in a narcissist’s life are the ones who provide "narcissistic supply." Supply is the stuff that feed the narc's ego: affection, admiration, attention, obedience, fear, need, sympathy, etc. If you're the sort of person who tends to provide such things to those around you, you will be a narcissist magnet like I've been. (No coincidence both my father and first husband had NPD!)

I am what is called an HSP or "hypersensitive person," and you might be too, for it is very common for HSPs to be victimized by narcissists. HSPs are especially empathetic and sensitive to the feelings, moods and needs of others.  They have a natural tendency to feel other's pain and therefore want to alleviate it as much as they would their own pain. For example, I was constantly mindful that my father seemed lonely, worried, and/or sad. I put myself in his place and imagined vividly what his life was like--or at least what it would be like were I in his shoes. I wanted sincerely to do all I could to ease this suffering and brighten his life. I also felt it was my duty as family to care about such things.

Narcissists pick up quickly on sensitive traits in others. As they interact, they see how their portrayal of pain is felt by the victim, how easy it is to gain sympathy and to use the victim's empathy to motivate and manipulate them. Having an empathetic person in a narcissist’s life is extremely important as they are the easiest people to control. The narcissist's usual arsenal of intimidation is bolstered by new weapons in the case of a kindhearted, empathetic person like an HSP. In other words, my father made sure I believed he was lonely, worried, and/or sad. It was an act to garner my sympathy and devotion.

As a narcissist/victim relationship develops, the victim believes she has earned the genuine love of the narcissist by being valuable and helpful to him. Projecting as usual how she would feel, the victim feels appreciated and needed. This only strengthens the bond. But in actual fact, the relationship is one-way. The narcissist believes he’s only getting what he deserves and is his right, and feels no actual gratitude or appreciation. He feigns these emotions when it is useful, but they are not genuine. He also can’t imagine--nor really cares to bother to try--what the victim’s compassion is really like for her. Such a feeling is just too foreign to his understanding; he is literally incapable of compassion.

When a crisis occurs and a break erupts between the two--as in my case, usually instigated by the narcissist's determining his victim is no longer of use--the emotions on both sides are very different. The narcissist doesn't share the victim's feelings of loss, guilt, need, grief, regret, etc. He is merely occupied with weighing the relative benefits of having the victim in or out of his life. If he determines he may be able to restore the benefits gleaning from the connection, he will try to manipulate a restoration, either by wheedling and blame ("how can you do this to me?") or by intimidation and threats. If he decides he's better off without his victim, or that the victim has wised up and can no longer be used, he will sever the relationship and not look back.

This is because the victim--you--never really mattered. What you provided had worth, but you have no worth yourself. This fact is quite unfathomable to sensitives--to me and to you--who place tremendous worth in their loved ones. Anything else makes more sense than this. But the truth is, after a break with his victim the narcissist is not hurt or grieving, he is rearranging his life in the same way people do when they decide to change jobs or move to a new house. In such a circumstance you or I would be crushed under the enormity of causing another person so much harm. The narcissist feels no such thing because in his world, no one matters, no one has genuine existence, but him.

What you’re feeling now needs to be treated with a good dose of this reality. Stop right now projecting on the narc what you are feeling/thinking, and teach yourself to keep in mind what he's actually feeling/thinking. This must happen for you to move forward with freeing yourself from the chains of the narc/victim relationship. 

Why am I being bullied by someone who should love me?

I didn't know I was dealing with a narcissist. All I knew was I was being bullied by my own father, and in fact, when it got bad enough I allowed myself to admit he had bullied me my whole life long. And not only that, my ex-husband had bullied me too. How could it be that people who were supposed to love me--a father, a husband--manipulated me through cruelty and intimidation?

And I had accepted it--which didn't make any sense either.

If you found this, my first blog post, it may be because you searched for something like "bullied by parent" or "boyfriend bullies me." Your life has come to a point that you see now the behavior is not just crabbiness, or curmugeonly-ness. It's deliberate. And the perpetrator is doing it to get his way, to get what he wants from you, to keep you in line.

What is wrong with this person? What is wrong with you for putting up with him? What should you do...is there anything you CAN do?

The full explanation will be long, but the basic answers are short. This person probably suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. You are the victim of a narcissist. And yes, there are things you can do.

The day a person realizes her parent, sibling, partner, child, or dear friend is a narcissist, her whole world will turn upside down. On the one hand, it's terrifying and tragic. On the other, it's liberating and joyful and the first day of a journey that means you can be happier than you ever thought possible. That journey will be a hard struggle but one with tremendous rewards--I can attest to that because I've made it, and though I am still on the road and probably always will be, I am very happy.

So, how can you be sure the person you're dealing with is a narcissist? The Mayo Clinic defines NPD this way:

"A mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration. Those with narcissistic personality disorder believe that they're superior to others and have little regard for other people's feelings. But behind this mask of ultra-confidence lies a fragile self-esteem, vulnerable to the slightest criticism."

I'm sure you'll find it's going to take a lot for you to be certain you have a narc on your hands. Why? First of all, because they have probably trained you to make excuses for them. Secondly, because your whole being rebels against the idea that someone you love and trust doesn't have beneficent feelings for you...that underneath they just don't care. But be brave and face this terrible possibility head on, because your happiness depends on it.

There are myriads of places on the Web that list the traits of this disorder. Review a few of them and see how well they fit. Be brutally honest with yourself, don't make excuses, don't second guess. Remember, you know this individual quite well and have the wherewithal to judge them objectively. Here are a few suggestions to start:

• Narcissistic Personality Inventory - Take this test as the person would and see the results
• 6 Sure Signs of Narcissism - A shorter quiz, again to takes as if you were the person.
• The Perfect Narcissist Detector - What happens when you say "no"?
• What NPD Parents are Really Like - Great list of traits and behaviors that may apply.

If you're like me, as you read these pieces and similar information, you'll be thinking things like, "wow, I'm not crazy" and "THIS is what was going on in his mind?" and "no wonder nothing ever made sense."

And this will be your very first step. Keep walking, and I'll keep posting.