Narcissists and their rages

[garlicbaubles]

For a number of reasons, I thought it might be a good idea to share our stories. I'll post one after this.

About 1 in 10 people have mental disorders, of a type that renders them incapable of seeing the world as others do. For them, all the world really is a stage: the men, women and children merely props for the drama going on in their heads. They can't see that things go on without their influence, or accept that other human beings feel & think independently. It's like the way young children think - and may well be caused by arrested emotional development.

For them, your every word and deed is scripted, by them. It's impossible to know exactly what your 'script' says. If you know them well, you can make a good guess but they will always surprise you by introducing another plot twist. (And anyway, who wants to live as a figment of somebody else's imagination?) When you step out of your appointed character - by having a thought or feeling of your own, for instance, or not being exactly where they wanted - they get terribly cross. It absolutely shakes their world; it's very distressing for them so they blame you for wrecking the world, like a temperamental director ranting at an opinionated actor.

The rage, the blame, the insults are never about you. Never. If you can manage to listen quietly, what you'll hear is this: "I wrote, cast and directed this scene. You're spoiling it for me!" You will also hear them tell you their insecurities - what they most dislike and fear about themselves, projected as if they were your faults, not theirs.

They usually forget what they said, or that they raged at all.
Please, do, share your stories of 'stepping out of character' and the Narcy rage that followed. You never know how many lightbulbs you might switch on

I tried to post this yesterday but Mumsnet vanished for a while then I couldn't find you all again.

Thank you, thank you, thank you garlic for this thread. I clicked on it because my mother is a total narc and I am used to that now, thanks to MN, and although it saddens me, I can understand it and her. BUT from your early posts my father is a worse one and I don't know how I have never seen that, he is controlling beyond belief and if I don't follow 'the script' his rage is astonishing. If I don't give them the amount of adulation and contact they need I get phone calls along the lines of 'your mother and I have decided you don't love us anymore' or a text telling me that I have not come up to scratch and it is 'a very bad day for the Lost family'. It has been a proper watershed moment in my life, everything has suddenly come into focus, I've thought for a long time that I am basically unloveable, not good enough but now I can see that it is them not me. I am not bad and wrong, I will never come up to scratch no matter how hard I try so I can just let go and enjoy my lovely little family. What a gift, thank you so much again.

Classic moment from my dad (I see that now) when my then BF phoned up to ask him for my hand in marriage (he was a brave boy to do that!) my dad hung up on him and phoned me in a rage, this was not what he was expecting from his evening, he had other plans, how dare he be phoned and asked that. He was not giving me to anyone. When he had been talked down and calmed he finally (three hours later) phoned my BF back and said 'I suppose so but I'd recommend trying to live with her first to make sure you aren't making a mistake, she's very hard to live with'. That was 20 years ago btw, I don't think he was making a mistake at all.

Wow Lost, it is amazing how we go through these dysfunctional lives and accept it as normal.

What you say about understanding your mother was narc but not your father - I see that quite a lot on here.

That's why I found the FLEAS thing interesting - it explains how people that live with narcs end up taking on their behaviours. I'm sure there are many mothers out there being blamed for their husbands bad behaviour.

In my opinion it is highly unlikely that one narc will choose another as their life partner - so the non-narc partner has almost invariably adapted her behaviour as a survival technique. I say her because it is usually the woman but not always.

My mother was blamed for years by my brothers. Yes she's difficult but it's a kind of adaptive narc she has, it's not destructive but just a bit sad. She had to do everything for him and had to prioritise him over us - over the years our bonds broke, she knew it wasn't her fault and continued on as though she didn't care. She did, but in order to protect herself she has had to 'neutralise' the pain by being distant and above all, not having any expectations of others - being completely independent emotionally. When she met him she was fairly strong and independent out of necessity but not narcissistic - a helpful child, empathic, always supporting the disabled child in the class, refusing to go to the Hitler youth groups out of sympathy for the people they verbally attacked and belittled, playing music to the soldiers in the hospital. She wasn't a narc then but could easily be described as one now.

Sadly we tend to care more about our mothers behaviour than our fathers' - there is more emotional investment, if my dad has a sulk I don't care, but if Mum does it really concerns me. Dad shouts and stomps, it's 'what Dad does', Mum does it - well she doesn't - but if she did it would be extremely concerning, or offensive depending on your personal response. Either way it would have a much greater impact.

This is how we quite often can't see the wood for the trees. It is very sad for our mothers.

Can someone tell me where to get de-FLEAd? I definitely have FLEAS. I look at how I give acted in the past, especially in high emotional situations, I hear my Dad saying "You're just like your mother." and I cringe and then start blaming myself and thinking Im the mess up one.

Mindfulness is a good start.

It's a trick of always thinking about what you are doing before you do it. It gives you that split second to decide to try to handle something differently. Once you try to do things differently thne it takes time and mistakes to get the hang of it, but you -can- do it. As someone said upthread, you start laying down different pathways in the brain that, with practise, become stronger and stronger.

With years of bad example it can take a lot of effort to recognise your own patterns of response and where they come from. It could be worth trying good counselling or therapy, perhaps with cognitive behaviour therapy concentrating on how to do things differently

I believe my daughter may be a narc.. will post more later but it's a fucking nightmare :(

Sound advice, imo, Meerka :) I did make the most significant changes within my first couple of months' therapy - now I know about mindfulness, this is what they were teaching me. I guess you can get faster results with an expert giving precise directions! Now, long term, I'm committed to compassion focused therapy and will be following it for life. It not only explains why the disordered are that way, but teaches us to develop the parts of our own psyche that suffer from living in a sociopathic world ... my words, not Gilbert's!

"I've thought for a long time that I am basically unloveable, not good enough but now I can see that it is them not me. I am not bad and wrong ... I can just let go and enjoy my lovely little family."

Oh, Lost, how unspeakably sad that you thought this way about yourself - and how WONDERFUL that you've now realised the truth! You really have given me a gift in return Thank you, and thanks to everyone on this thread!

What do you mean faster results when you say an expert giving you precise directions?

I have found most talking therapy lacking or impossibly expensive but I can keep trying!

passedgo you need a good therapist who will either lead you gently to realise some of your deeper seated patterns of behaviour / thought, or else challenge you to realise the same, when you'd not be able to see them otherwise. Frankly there's quite a few mediocre counsellors out there as well as some outstandingly good ones.

It is a good idea to at least explore the whole tangled legacy and your own reactions a couple of times with a professionally trained person just to figure out if they can help, because if you can't see your own reactions clearly then the outside perspective is invaluable.

But also, it's possible that actually you are pretty well aware of them yourself and simply don't need help to figure it out.

Different people work in different ways and different approaches can be needed, sometimes. But if you're not getting anywhere then stop the expensive therapy =)

if you're in a good partnership, or have a couple of really good honest, solid friends, they can also be invaluable in calmly letting you know when you are reacting in an unconstructive way

If I'd been trying to address my rages through DIY mindfulness, I might have meditated on my feelings to process them more honestly, learned to stay quiet instead of kicking off, and in time have come to my own resolution on how to express myself strongly without rage.

Over three sessions in one week, my therapist:
Taught me how to recognise my buttons being pushed;
Gave me some 'protective' visualisations so I wouldn't feel attacked;
Gave me permission to make people wait while I breathed out & counted;
Taught me how to appraise my feelings & decide whether they were helpful;
Helped me find my angry voice;
Taught me how to hear what was really being said by others.

Basically, she gave me tools for detachment and taught me how to value my own feelings. Obviously I've built on and around this over the years - but I have never lost my temper since that week.

I'm running massively late for something now, but as a memo to self - or anybody else who's willing to fill in! - my tools were (in no particular order):-
Invisible shield
Breathe & count
All feelings are valid; all feelings pass
Emotions: Relevant | Appropriate | Helpful
Roll emotions down to pelvis before expression
OK to ask "What do you mean?" & similar
Is this person talking about me or something else?

xpost again, Meerka :)

Can't overstate how helpful Mumsnet has been, either.

we're doing quite well aren't we?

passedgo, YES. What you write strikes so many chords. Getting lots of memories of the way he speaks to her now, so controlling and cold at times. Wow, total rethink going on now. My mum has a real problem with empathizing and if I cry she just totally freaks but 'adaptive narc', that's a brilliant phrase. You are right as well, we do live these lives of dysfunction accepting it is normal. For me it has been spending a lot more time with DH's family and seeing how loving and accepting of each other they are, unconditional love is an amazing thing, so sad that many of us grew up without knowing it.

I am going to go and do some de-fleaing

This is the best thread ever, MN has an amazing power to bring people together so they can share experience and help.

Amazing thread, thank you.

Brilliant thread.

Adaptive narc is just something I made up, there is probably a technical word for it. I was thinking about how plants adapt to their environment. We are social animals and our instinct is to get on with each other so if there isn't enough love or care or empathy from someone we trust or have a commitment to we try to make it work by changing our behaviour.

I think your made-up diagnosis is really helpful, passedgo! If we add "depend on" to your précis above - which we would, for children - you've provided a good explanation of how Stockholm Syndrome gets started, as well.

You can't train a person with faulty brain wiring to think or feel what they aren't equipped for.

Actually, in terms of personality disorders, this is completely untrue.

I have/had borderline personality disorder and I've undergone an intensive CBT therapy programme spoecifically designed to re-train the BPD brain to respond more appropriately to emotional stimuli.

And it does work.

I have seen another poster on here say the same thing for bpd [though it is possible that you are the same poster but have name changed]

Can anyone tell me if threads in this topic stay or do they disappear after a few months (like Chat?)

Cranberry - I agree with you. It has worked for me,and I teach this programme in my work (am mh prac )
I don't believe in the faulty wiring theory. I think trauma is the "cause".If the trauma is experienced very early in development (in utero? ) it may cause damage which is very unlikely to respond to retraining ,simply because it is experienced as innate. Possibly, this "innate" anxiety may become an inherited or passed down trait - through biology or learnt response?
I remain hopeful that it is possible for anyone to make changes if they wish to,and if they have the support ,strength and courage needed.

For some people,this will not ever be likely.

garlic - the tools you describe as helpful to you ,are very similar to the ones I teach,and which continue to be so helpful to me.

Mindfulness is the best thing ever,but takes constant practice .

The most liberating and hopeful thing I ever learnt was that I was not born bad.But it has taken me 45 years to really get it.

I agree with garlic, compassion focussed therapy is where I am at,too.

Brilliant thread.Lovely people here.xxx

Yep, these threads stay around, Zing. I love your festive name!

BPD has been so extensively over-diagnosed, especially in young women from dysfunctional families, that many UK professionals no longer use the term. If you were presenting for assessment now, you'd be more likely to receive a diagnosis of 'emotionally dysregulated' with or without possible bi-polar, depending on your symptoms and your professional. There's fierce debate about whether BPD even is a personality disorder. Some people dx with BPD might actually have a PD with, say, schizotypal or dependent traits. The fifth DSM is a big step forward, imho, by virtue of its flexibility compared to previous versions, allowing the patient's combination of pathological traits to define their disorder. In that respect, it's closer to the original intention of the panel which first defined PDs for the DSM.

Any personality disorder can be treated, but none can be cured - except BPD, which may not be a PD. Personality disorders feature an incapacity for what we call empathy ... there's an inability to understand that other humans are independent, fully sentient, and of equal value to the subject. It can't be fixed, any more than autism can. (Note! There's a strong similarity, but significant differences, between autism and PD.)

If you've been reading the last few pages, discussing 'FLEAS' and acquired/adaptive PD, you'll see a strong line of thought that growing up around pathologically disordered people can force you to adopt a compatible mindset. Should this happen to a child, she will develop a limited emotional range and her expressive lexicon will be smaller than average. She will have sophisticated, but disordered, relationship skills appropriate to surviving within her birth family, but lack the skills to form meaningful relationships with 'normal' people. Having lived the scripts of others, she will not understand how to live without scripts. Her thinking, feeling, and behaviour will be personality-disordered.

I would say the above applied to me. I could easily have been diagnosed with BPD in my twenties. I gravitated to superficial, emotionally volatile professions; I married a Narcissist; I assessed my own worth entirely by others' criteria. Crucially, I didn't 'see' normal, sane, emotionally balanced people. They were like another species to me; I couldn't relate to balanced people except by trying to draw them into a drama.

... But ... I always had the capacity to understand. Other people were real to me. My world was not populated by myself alone. I populated other people's film sets, running alongside them, holding up whichever mirror they preferred. I wasn't comfortable in PDWorld or SaneWorld. I just knew what to do in PDWorld, and all the self-worth I had was tied up in doing it well. It could be that my 'non-PD-ness' marked me out for my family role of scapegoat cum parental parent. It could also be what prompted my father to share more of his inner thoughts with me than with anyone else bar his mother. All I knew was that I was an emotionally volatile misfit. And 'psychic', haha. That was a PDWorld survivor's hypervigilance, not mystical powers!

I could have written this post a whole lot better. Sorry for the brain dump.

I look as if I'm disagreeing with you, janna. I'm not - I'm just figuring out my own take on it as I type.

And if inherited fear, and/or fear in utero, can damage those circuits of the brain ... Is it not the same, literally, as being born with it? Can a brain acquire a whole new functional system, more than a few months post birth?

Erm - well, this does sometimes happen with major head trauma, doesn't it? So perhaps it can ...

Garlic - your PP really hit a chord with me. You've basically described the process I went through and am going through (minus the therapy)

I still feel I have a limited range at times, and I'm hyper aware of it.

With regards to BPD are we referring to Bi-polar or Borderline?

"Populted other peoples' film sets" strikes an even bigger chord. It's funny but my abusive Ex pointed this out to me - how I would embroil myself in other people's dramas (though he suggested it was because I was running from myself because I'm such an awful person how could I live with me?) and when I examine it closer what role did I play when I allowed myself to be a part of these sets? The Fall Guy. Funny that, because I'm the black sheep of my family....

Borderline. And THANK YOU for your post, happy! I know we're not alone but, hell, it's good to have company!