The book I've been translating gave me an insight about enablers. There are no "non-narcissistic" enablers. No one can have a "relationship" with a narcissist for years and years and years and raise children with them and watch those children get mistreated in ways that children of narcissists get mistreated and not have or develop some protective narcissistic traits themselves. The "dear old mom" or "sweet, but weak dad" never were real. We imagined them.
My author (who does have narcissistic traits, but is beginning to sound more human to me by the page, especially considering the abuse he survived in his childhood) keeps reminiscing wistfully about his mother, who was (quite apparently) a cold bitch. The fact that she suffered horrible abuse at the hands of her husband does not change that. She survived by shutting off her empathy and all feeling.
But he keeps imagining "what if." What if he killed his evil, sadistic father, and stayed with just his mother? Would she then have stroked his hair sometimes? Would she then freely show him her love? Would she then not have bathed him in boiling hot water when he had meningitis just so the doctor wouldn't see him "dirty"?
Although my family was much more "normal" than his, I recognized so much of my mother in his. The basic indifference, the insistence on looking good to others, the "could have shown love to me if only..."
No. When normies get involved with narcs, they either run when they find out what they got themselves into, or they become zombified themselves.
yes that is true. i do believe there are two types of 'dysfunctional' relationships. there is the classic one, involving normal people or normal person. where there is some sort of volatileness, violence, abuse, and the two are miserable and finally one decides to get out or the other or both of them and the relationship just kind of dissolves or breaks down. then there is the functioning dysfunctional relationship, where the relationship seems to live off its own dysfunction. where both people are actively dysfunctional and the relationship doesn't break down but stays the same forever. only a narcissist would stay with another narcissist. i think i've seen this said even by some psychologists. i guess theyve seen from experience, that narcissists attract other narcissists. because otherwise the poor person would just break down and get up and leave. i guess breakups require change and the people most defended against themselves never change. so they are the perfect candidate for other narcissists. its by process of elimination really. you just fall in with other narcissists cause everyone else leaves. like attracts like? like magnets, really.
ReplyDeleteGave me a lot to think about. Interesting concept that to survive either leave them or join them. Zombifying is an interesting way to leave mentally without leaving physically. Thanks for the post.
ReplyDeleteFrom recent experience of a crisis, I'm reminded that sustained exposure to emotionally charged demands and fear (whether fear of or fear for) can exhaust the mind's executive faculties and impair memory and even physical coordination. 'Zombifying' is a very, very good word. On a large scale, I wonder if it's what that narcissist H*tl*r meant by 'a nation of sleepwalkers'?
ReplyDelete-GKA
*sigh* this is probably true but I just don't understand it. I can't excuse any of the bunch. We can only heal this by changing ourselves...one child of narcissist at a time, by not "repeating" the damage that was done to us and not "standing by" someone who inflicts this damage onto another.
ReplyDeleteOnly when we are the children of narcs, we don't have the option of just running off - not during childhood, at least. I think some extent of "zombifying" (excellent term) is inevitable.
ReplyDeleteThe other interesting thing about (non-narc) ACONs is that they either find a partner as dreadful as their parents, or do the total opposte and find the most wonderful person (or choose to have no partner at all).
NLR
I agree with this post ... It's painful to agree, I wish it wasn't true ... but in my experience, it is.
ReplyDeleteFor years and years, I forgave my father; I even favored him over my mother. But I've seen my father grow more and more narcissistic and dismissive with time. He definitely has the traits of my mother now.
The word "enabling" is far too kind to express the amount of damage down by a parent who just listens and lets it be and badgers the children to conform to the N's ways.