SEPTEMBER 2025 - Well we took you to Stately Homes

[AttilaTheMeerkat]

I have now set up a new thread as the previous one is now full.
This long runnning thread has become a safe haven for Adult children of abusive families.
The title refers to an original poster's family who claimed they could not have been abusive as they had taken her to plenty of Stately Homes during her childhood!
One thing you will never hear on this thread is that your abuse or experience was not that bad. You will never have your feelings minimised the way they were when you were a child, or now that you are an adult. To coin the phrase of a much respected past poster Ally90;
'Nobody can judge how sad your childhood made you, even if you wrote a novel on it, only you know that. I can well imagine any of us saying some of the seemingly trivial things our parents/ siblings did to us to many of our real life acquaintances and them not understanding why we were upset/ angry/ hurt etc. And that is why this thread is here. It's a safe place to vent our true feelings, validate our childhood/ lifetime experiences of being hurt/ angry etc by our parents behaviour and to get support for dealing with family in the here and now.'
Most new posters generally start off their posts by saying; but it wasn't that bad for me or my experience wasn't as awful as x,y or z's.
Some on here have been emotionally abused and/ or physically abused. Some are not sure what category (there doesn't have to be any) they fall into.
NONE of that matters. What matters is how 'YOU' felt growing up, how 'YOU' feel now and a chance to talk about how and why those childhood experiences and/ or current parental contact, has left you feeling damaged, falling apart from the inside out and stumbling around trying to find your sense of self-worth.
You might also find the following links and information useful, if you have come this far and are still not sure whether you belong here or not.
'Toxic Parents' by Susan Forward.
I started with this book and found it really useful.
Here are some excerpts:
"Once you get going, most toxic parents will counterattack. After all, if they had the capacity to listen, to hear, to be reasonable, to respect your feelings, and to promote your independence, they wouldn't be toxic parents. They will probably perceive your words as treacherous personal assaults. They will tend to fall back on the same tactics and defences that they have always used, only more so.
Remember, the important thing is not their reaction but your response. If you can stand fast in the face of your parents' fury, accusations, threats and guilt-peddling, you will experience your finest hour.
Here are some typical parental reactions to confrontation:
"It never happened". Parents who have used denial to avoid their own feelings of inadequacy or anxiety, will undoubtedly use it during confrontation, to promote their version of reality. They'll insist that your allegations never happened, or that you're exaggerating. They won't remember, or they will accuse you of lying.
YOUR RESPONSE: Just because you don't remember, doesn't mean it didn't happen".
"It was your fault." Toxic parents are almost never willing to accept responsibility for their destructive behaviour. Instead, they will blame you. They will say that you were bad, or that you were difficult. They will claim that they did the best that they could but that you always created problems for them. They will say that you drove them crazy. They will offer as proof, the fact that everybody in the family knew what a problem you were. They will offer up a laundry list of your alleged offences against them.
YOUR RESPONSE: "You can keep trying to make this my fault, but I'm not going to accept the responsibility for what you did to me, when I was a child".
"I said I was sorry what more do you want?" Some parents may acknowledge a few of the things that you say but be unwilling to do anything about it.
YOUR RESPONSE: "I appreciate your apology, but that is just a beginning. If you're truly sorry, you'll work through this with me, to make a better relationship."
"We did the best we could." Some parents will remind you of how tough they had it while you were growing up and how hard they struggled. They will say such things as "You'll never understand what I was going through," or "I did the best I could". This particular style of response will often stir up a lot of sympathy and compassion for your parents. This is understandable, but it makes it difficult for you to remain focused on what you need to say in your confrontation. The temptation is for you once again to put their needs ahead of your own. It is important that you be able to acknowledge their difficulties, without invalidating your own.
YOUR RESPONSE: "I understand that you had a hard time, and I'm sure that you didn't hurt me on purpose, but I need you to understand that the way you dealt with your problems really did hurt me"
"Look what we did for you." Many parents will attempt to counter your assertions by recalling the wonderful times you had as a child and the loving moments you and they shared. By focusing on the good things, they can avoid looking at the darker side of their behaviour. Parents will typically remind you of gifts they gave you, places they took you, sacrifices they made for you, and thoughtful things they did. They will say things like, "this is the thanks we get" or "nothing was ever enough for you."
YOUR RESPONSE: "I appreciate those things very much, but they didn't make up for ...."
"How can you do this to me?" Some parents act like martyrs. They'll collapse into tears, wring their hands, and express shock and disbelief at your "cruelty". They will act as if your confrontation has victimized them. They will accuse you of hurting them, or disappointing them. They will complain that they don't need this, they have enough problems. They will tell you that they are not strong enough or healthy enough to take this, that the heartache will kill them. Some of their sadness will, of course, be genuine. It is sad for parents to face their own shortcomings, to realise that they have caused their children significant pain. But their sadness can also be manipulative and controlling. It is their way of using guilt to try to make you back down from the confrontation.
YOUR RESPONSE: "I'm sorry you're upset. I'm sorry you're hurt. But I'm not willing to give up on this. I've been hurting for a long time, too."
Helpful Websites
Alice Miller
Personality Disorders definition
Daughters of narcissistic mothers
Out of the FOG
You carry the cure in your own heart
Help for adult children of child abuse
Pete Walker
The Echo Society
There are also one or two less public offshoots of Stately Homes, PM AttilaTheMeerkat for details.
Some books:
Toxic Parents by Susan Forward
Homecoming by John Bradshaw
Will I ever be good enough? by Karyl McBride
If you had controlling parents by Dan Neuharth
When you and your mother can't be friends by Victoria Segunda
Children of the self-absorbed by Nina Brown - check reviews on this, I didn't find it useful myself.
Recovery of your inner child by Lucia Capacchione
Childhood Disrupted by Donna Jackson Nazakawa
This final quote is from smithfield posting as therealsmithfield:
"I'm sure the other posters will be along shortly to add anything they feel I have left out. I personally don't claim to be sorted but I will say my head has become a helluva lot straighter since I started posting here. You will receive a lot of wisdom but above all else the insights and advice given will 'always' be delivered with warmth and support."

Trauma disrupts so much. I think we have only just come to realise in recent times just how much it affects people. I have no time for my in-laws with there just suck it up attitude about my own kids. We know the damage it does just brushing everything under the carpet. They think I’m a right twat with my beliefs and the feeling is pretty much mutual. The world has moved on and it’s a good thing but they are still stuck dealing with the consequences of their own parents parenting etc. It’s all behind you! You can’t change the beliefs of people as it’s pretty much ingrained but we can change it for our kids. Look back but forward is the only change you can make.

My mother did this with my children when they were small. Was all over the first like a rash and completely uninterested in the second. It was really weird. It was a massive factor in me going LC. I just thought, I can't do this. I can't sit back and let her destroy their sibling relationship. I've got various theories as to why she did it. It was really bad, though. She had a bedroom in their house that was specially for DD. She pressured me constantly almost from birth to have DD stay with them without me there, but DS was never welcome. They took DD on holiday with them. Never took DS. When she visited, she would bring one bag of sweets and give to to DD. I actually saw her push DS out of the way when he tried to take the bag, to make sure she could give it to DD. After they moved away, she used to invite DD to stay with them, but never DS. 'Send her to us,' she used to say to me, in a soppy voice. 'We'll take care of her. We'll sort her out.' I used to just think WTF. It actually made me feel quite ill. The one time I challenged her on it (she wanted me to take DD out of school so they could take her on holiday, I said why don't you take DS, he's never been and he's not at school yet) she laughed in my face and said 'oh, I don't think so.'

So you're not alone in having to deal with this, and it's awful. My choices were basically, I had to prevent my kids from having a relationship with their grandparents, or I let them have a relationship and my son was treated like dirt. Both of those choices are awful.

My choices were basically, I had to prevent my kids from having a relationship with their grandparents, or I let them have a relationship and my son was treated like dirt. Both of those choices are awful.

But not equally so, from the perspective of the children. No relationship is way better than a bad relationship. An absence of a person is way better than being treated like dirt in their presence. As someone who had almost no relationship with my grandparents due to geography I can't say it's affected my life in any way. Whereas being treated like dirt and having a wedge driven between me and my siblings by a narc has affected me far far worse. I'm glad for your son that you protected him from that.

Yes, obviously protecting the kids from it is the lesser of two evils, and that's what I've done. But it's a choice I wish I had never been forced to make. I don't like the fact that I had to deny them family, having so little family myself, and having grown up cut off from extended family. My mother is basically the only blood relative I have any contact with. My father hated me and his side of the family cut me off completely after my parents got divorced. I have no relationship with my sibling, because he's disinterested and dishonest and I only hear from him when he wants money. My mother is an only child, so no aunts or uncles or cousins, and I don't know any of my mother's extended family because although they lived nearby, my father isolated us from them in childhood, and when my mother reconnected with them after the divorce, for reasons I don't really understand, she introduced my brother to all of them and he was able to develop those relationships, but she never included me in that. I remember going to my grandmother's funeral and not having a clue who anyone was, while my brother went to sit with this group of (to me) strangers and they all welcomed him with hugs and it was obvious that he was comfortable with them and knew them quite well. My mother was then baffled that I didn't know who anyone was.

What I wanted was for my kids to have some extended family, what I got was my mother who can't behave herself.

It’s totally unfair but your kids have a mum trying her absolute best which is so much more then you had. Their lives will be so much better off because of you, that’s amazing isn’t it. None of us have asked for this fight but we are doing our best to
shield our kids from other people’s war. It’s a shame we don’t get to pick our families and it isn’t just pot luck if we born to decent people.

I have copied and pasted this from a group I follow on fb.

THE AGEING NARCISSIST
As a narcissist ages, people eventually see through the false charm and see the person for who they really are. Slowly but surely, the narcissist’s social circle dwindles away, one by one people disappear, no longer finding their behaviour acceptable. Most people who have crossed their path in one way or another have borne witness to their deceit and toxicity. Towards the end of their lives there is often not one single living soul who cares whether they live or die. By the time the final curtain falls, they receive what I call poetic justice, getting back what they gave out to others all their lives. As they take their last breath, there’s not a hand to hold, everyone who once cared is long gone. Call it Karma, call it God having the final say, call it what you will… I call it pay back.
Ageing is a process that none of us look forward to, but it IS better than the alternative. Most of us try to age with grace and dignity, having gained wisdom through the years. A narcissist’s behaviour tends to get worse with the passage of time. As time takes its toll on their looks and their health they know that admiration is a thing of the past. Time has taken its toll on their withered frame. They can no longer rely on their outward appearance to attract new supply. They glare at the image staring back at them from the mirror failing to accept the aging face before them. Their mind is not as sharp as it once was. What have they left to look forward to? Retirement? Obscurity? Insignificance? We are always told to look on the inside, look at how someone treats others, look at their heart and look at their soul. It’s the inside that counts. What’s on the inside of a narcissist? Absolutely nothing but an empty shell. As the years roll by the narcissist faces a complete loss of supply and lashes out at anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot.
WHEN THE NARCISSIST IS LEFT ALONE
I have a strong belief that people who treat others poorly and have no empathy or compassion for others will be shown no compassion in later life. They have spent their entire lives abusing, betraying and demeaning others, aware of what they do, and without a second thought for the pain that they inflict time and time again. Friends and ex-partners have become enemies. If their children haven’t already become strangers, the narcissist may try to buy their children’s love in a feeble attempt to keep them close, believing that they may be the only people left on this earth who will put up with their pernicious behaviour. These meagre efforts to be seen as a good parent may be welcomed by a child who has spent a lifetime seeking mum or dad’s approval. There may the ‘hangers on’ who wait around hoping to get their hands on the family fortune, hoping their demise will be sooner rather than later. They didn’t put up with years of abuse for nothing. Plus, they learned from a good teacher and have often taken on the traits of the parent they despise so much. For others, it will be too little too late.
An ironic twist of fate…
Their enemy will be their memories.
They can never undo what they’ve done.
They can’t escape their thoughts
When they find themselves alone,
Unloved and abandoned.
When their evil has been uncovered,
The truth will pursue them,
Wherever they go.’
The narcissist is an immature, angry, volatile and controlling individual. They spend their lives attempting to form relationships. Sadly, it’s not a partnership they are seeking but a dictatorship where they have all the power and control. Eventually people get sick and tired of their behaviour and abandon them. A string of failed relationships adds to their already fragile ego. By bringing about their own abandonment as a result of their abusive and despicable behaviour, they inflict upon themselves a deep narcissistic injury. Somehow, the narcissist will delude themselves into believing that their own self destruction is someone else’s fault.
Much like a drug addict without their supply, the narcissist can’t cope when supplies become scarce and run out. They become chronically depressed and angry and find no pleasure in anything. Their noxious behaviour becomes more demanding and worse by the day. Things that they used to enjoy no longer hold their interest. Their world has become hostile, their social life non-existent. No one wants to be in their company for any length of time. They often become a hermit, closed off from the outside world, blaming everyone else for the situation that they find themselves in. The longer the lack of supply continues, the worse their insecurities and paranoia become.
The narcissist clings desperately to nothing, resenting the passage of time yet helpless to prevent it. They may create fake profiles on social media to stalk people, people that they may never meet or talk to. Surfing the Internet may give them the opportunity to get a little attention from someone, from anyone. They’ve lost faith in themselves. They don’t like themselves and nobody else likes them either, so they think, ‘There’s no point in being nice.’
Narcissists have an enormous fear of their own mortality. As death approaches, they know that complete oblivion is on the horizon. Life gives back to them exactly what they deserve, loneliness and isolation. They find themselves being shunned and ignored. The one thing that they never could control is time. As they move forward to eternity they have the knowledge that there is a final judge, and this time, it’s not them.
THE NARCISSIST AND ILLNESS
People will say that when they have become ill, the narcissist didn’t want to know. They were not interested and basically didn’t care. They saw it as your problem, so get on with it. So what happens when a narcissist gets sick? They will milk it for as long as they can. They will take all the sympathy and concern that they can muster, and then some.
They will see their illness as a reason to demand your attention 24/7. Cast any plans you may have aside. Your focus must be on them until they are better. After you have nursed them back to health, taken them to the doctor, collected their medications and tended to their every need, don’t expect them to show you how grateful they are for your tender loving care. They aren’t. It was your duty after all. You could have done more.
There are times when a narcissist will fake illness, fake a heart attack, fake cancer, in fact fake anything, just to focus attention on themselves. They may do so when you are ill, go one better than you with an illness much worse than yours in an attempt to get the attention that should be focused on you.
THE NARCISSIST ON THEIR DEATH BED
I am often asked if a narcissist will change when they are on their deathbed. Will they want to put things right and apologize to all those they have hurt in their lifetime? Some people want closure and expect a change of heart from the narcissist as they take their last breath. A deathbed apology is extremely unlikely. They are likely to die the same way that they have lived, hurting others. Many will use this time to twist the knife in just one more time.
Don’t beat yourself up if you decide not to pay them one last visit. It is a matter of looking after yourself, a matter of self-protection. There is no point in opening old wounds to satisfy the demands of someone who inflicted those wounds in the first place. If they wanted your company, they should have shown remorse before this late stage, and they should have acted better. Pity them for being the person they are if you must, but please be careful to never give them the chance to hurt you again.

Does anyone have any advice on how to stop ruminating? I am so tired of the daily grind of my brain chewing over childhood stuff, having angry thoughts about my mother, trying to figure stuff out. It's exhausting. DH has said (and he's right) that I'm trapped in circular thoughts of trying to reason things that don't have any reason to them, my mother behaves the way she does because there's something wrong with her that I can't fix. That's why she married my father in the first place, it's why she stayed with him for so long, it's why she treats me the way she does. FWIW she messaged me this week to say she'd been in hospital for a minor procedure but was back at home. This of course triggered very difficult feelings - why tell someone afterwards, why tell them at all, what did she want from me, what did she expect me to do, tremendous guilt that I have no desire to offer any support, tremendous rage that she wants support from me but I couldn't ask her for support over my own health struggles. Not that long ago she told me she thinks private healthcare is morally wrong and people who use it are disgusting (when I had been foolish enough to tell her I was accessing care privately because the NHS wait time was so long and I was too poorly to wait). I was able to accept that there was something very wrong with my father quite easily, but it's much more difficult to accept it about my mother.

I would like to stop obsessing over it all so much.

@crazylizardsss rumination is a form of dissociation. It distracts from feeling something. It's an awful habit because it's so exhausting. Every time you catch yourself doing it just disrupt it and focus your attention on whatever you are actually doing (or even better feeling) at the time. It's a difficult cycle to break. I literally had to do it 100 times a day at the beginning. Over time you will catch yourself doing it sooner and disrupt the cycle sooner.

You might find that some awful memory comes up or some feeling overwhelms you. Try to accept it and move through it. I found it a hundred times easier than the effects of rumination. I ruminate because it's a habit and it's a kind of autopilot I have not always control over.

Another strategy is to find a way to connect with yourself. I can do this very well with certain type of music that gets me emotional, I cry and then feel a million times better. I like to put my ear defenders on for complete silence which always relaxes me too.

@Twatalert thank you, that's really helpful. It's become apparent to me that I have a lot of little habits that are all about not feeling anything. Just constant fidgeting, always having to be busy, always needing background noise. I'm really vulnerable to the type of doomscrolling that you get from twitter etc because it's so distracting. I feel like I am constantly kicking the can down the road. I can't ever relax. I know that I was punished for showing emotions in childhood (both good and bad - either by being in trouble or often with humiliation). I am afraid of what I will feel if I stop. I am very afraid of what I am mentally running away from, because I know there are childhood things that I can't remember. It's like my brain has closed them off.

This probably sounds weird, but I always have an overwhelming urge to burst into tears in the first ten minutes of a film at the cinema and at the theatre. I don't know why.

@Twatalertthank you for that it’s very helpful as rumination is something I still suffer with

I 'learnt' rumination in childhood as a survival mechanism because I couldn't face the reality of what my life was. It became automatic like breathing. It's not a choice, but I can choose now to disengage and retrain my nervous system.

I feel like I did this too. It was partly due to always having to be hypervigilant to my father's moods and also I can remember inventing ways to talk myself through the anxiety and the terror.

That's precisely it. Trying to predict and figure everything out kept me safe at times but it had an awful effect and I didn't learn to connect to myself or emotionally regulate. There wasnt anyone to model it or mirror me either.

I was no contact for around 8 years. Mum died last month. I was "banned" from the funeral for "abandoning her", and not mentioned in the notices or photos etc. I probably wouldn't have gone anyway but their attitudes hurt.

Ruminating keeps us physically up in our heads and physiologically detached and out of our body and their sensations. All we are doing is thoughts that we can spin and expand forever. We don’t take action or use our agency. We rehearse comebacks that are never said. It’s almost like the freeze state in the trauma response - keeping all the anger inside and unprocessed.

I think you are half way there. Awareness is always the first step, then acceptance that this happened and this is how you feel - but action and agency are what move us through. So noticing the spiral and intercepting as soon as we can with an active change of our physical state - move, drink a pint of water, stand outdoors. Also look up mentalisation - which is a state were we have two brains and one which looks from above on our troublesome thoughts and sees them as distinct things that can be observed and float away in time. Also anger is a secondary defensive emotion which can have a life of its own and accelerate - but need to get under it to what the real emotion is - deep sadness, hurt, disappointment, fear - and to be brave enough to embrace it and tolerate digesting it - not to be worried that that sadness will overwhelm you - it will have an intensity, a shape, an energy and an trajectory on a timeline. It might last 3 minutes at each episode. But our rumination can hijack us forever if we don’t actively release ourselves by putting a spoke in the wheels.

That sounds familiar to me, too, my father’s moods could change very quickly. We used to definitely be walking on eggshells at home. Especially when we were younger and he used to smack us really hard.

When I was a teenager, I couldn’t bear to be around him and this never changed right up to when he died. (I was 28.)

I felt the same, I actively avoided him as much as possible. The one tricky thing was that I was terrified to leave my mother alone with him and felt tied to the house as a result. I was afraid of what would happen if I wasn't there to intervene/provide support. I remember spending much of my teenage years wandering around the local Asda every evening with my mother and sibling because it was open and it was free and it was better than being in the house with him. I only realised recently that I've got a lot of anxiety around being away from home for too long even now and I think that's at the root of it. I've started saying to myself 'it's alright, it's safe, your home is safe' when I go out to see if that helps.

This is really interesting, I've been reading a lot recently about freeze and also about fawn. It's obvious to me now that freezing was my main response when things kicked off at home. I also had selective mutism, There are so many things I didn't say that I wish now I had said. Maybe it would be better with my mother if I had called her out on her crap years ago instead of being unable to respond to it and silently withdrawing as a result. But then again, maybe not.

I am very angry and I feel the rumination is part of that. I am also afraid that if I let go of the anger, I will be drawn back into being her support human, and she'll hurt me like she always does. I've done some emdr. Perhaps I need more.

I think the anger comes from your inner child wanting to resolve some way the hurt it feels, the injustice and the unfairness. The inner child is a lot like the narc, it’s immature and kind of wants to punish. Perhaps the best place to be is indifference, you no longer care anymore either way. Maybe we have to convince our inner child to let this go. It can’t get what it wants this time, there is no punishment for a person like this.

In my case, I didn’t see my DM as being at risk from him when I was a teenager, as they seemed close. It was only when I read a couple of his letters to her years after he’d passed away, whilst we were doing a sort out, that I recognised that he’d emotionally abused and manipulated her for years, which probably explains why she never realised that he was sexually abusing my DSis and me.

What is true is that I went home regularly in my twenties despite my discomfort around my F for my DM’s sake because I could see that she had a lot to cope with. (He had Parkinson’s Disease and several strokes.) It wasn’t for his sake at all.

That's very interesting about ruminating as a way to avoid feeling. It had never occurred to me.

I feel so divorced from myself, I feel almost nothing (apart from love for my children and dog) . I feel like I show 'the world' about 5% of myself. I don't know how much of myself I'm accessing, not very much.

However I am feeling regretful atm, I really really wish I'd beaten up my cunt ex sister. I should have punched her really hard in the mouth every time she opened it.

I'm angry at myself for not smashing her face in. If I ever cross paths with her again I will, as a gift to myself.

Why don't we scream in people's faces when they're rude or hurtful? Why be socially acceptable in the face of psychopathic monsters?

A film I watched I heard an interesting line. The would be murderer says to the would be victim something about politeness overriding the victim's feelings of self preservation.

And the victim not reacting in their own best interests so as not to offend someone who means them ill!!!

Think of the serial killer Ted Bundy, he used the same ruse over and over on 'nice girls' - 'my arm is injured please help me load my car' - the 'rude' answer is 'ask a bloke' or 'no'.

They must have overridden their own self preservation instincts.

Rumination is really emotional processing. There are so many things I see clearly now that my family did to me as a whole that I never would allow now but I know it is pointless even bringing these things up with them as then I am starting an argument, another of the lines my brother and mother seemed to trot out at will. Lets of course gloss over the fact they picked and said things in order to bring upon an argument and lets gloss over the fact they were arguing but no no blame me for it.

Actually reminds me of one xmas. I collected my brother from his then gf's house and he was pissed drunk. We drove to my fathers house to have dinner with him and my sister and brother drank more. I was stone cold sober and driving. Then we left there and drove to my mothers for the evening. I finally got to chill out and poured a glass of wine and my brother taps my sister on the shoulder, points to my glass of wine and says 'this is where the argument starts' and over the course of the evening he nitpicked at me, said outrageously vile bullying abusive things towards me so I of course then explained myself which ended up in an argument but he had manipulated this right from the start pointing out my one glass of wine and mentioning an argument. His then gf now wife was there that night and actually saw what he did, most people realised that night what he did so the following day he did ring and apologise and everyone thought he was wonderful but nobody mentioned the deeply painful things he said to me and he did it over and over again in the months after that and every single time he blamed me for responding and defending myself just to somehow prove to himself I was the argumentative one.

Christ when you start piecing things together it really makes you sad for the person you were pigeonholed into thinking you were instead of flourishing. It is even more poignant to establish that now neither my brother nor mother are in my life I genuinely cannot even say I have argued with anyone since. Not one person. I am no longer their fallguy though so I wonder now who is. Not enough to contact either of them but I hope my sister in law has stayed as strong as she was and is not his victim now.

I read something really helpful…..There true selves were ineffective at getting their needs met from their caregivers so they abandon it and created one which they felt would work in the world. If they aren’t significant then they are nothing. It explains an awful lot of the effort they put in to feel significant, why you can’t challenge it, why you can’t be equally significant. My husband wanted me to up my position at work but when it happened he hated it. He had to devalue my significance all the time. Same like my MIL, she won’t allow our significance, won’t be happy at our birthdays or when good things happen. They literally can’t allow their children to be significant to them it’s always the other way around.

We ruminate because it is our given right and our souls purpose to have had love and connection and survival. If we can fix the abuse our soul will be at rest. It’s all primal. I’m not sure a soul can ever be at rest whilst it can’t ever get the fix it needs. As best as possible might have to be enough.

The narcs soul is never at peace also because they never got love and acceptance and survival.

Thing is though that we are not getting love and support from them either but are able to stop the cycle. As the saying goes, it ran in the family until it ran into me.