Dear Nichole:

These mental diagnoses have their uses when done by capable and responsible professionals certified to make these diagnoses, following meeting with the patient repeatedly, asking questions and studying the patient. To come up with these diagnoses otherwise, based on people’s stories, is simply irresponsible.

(No one is born with a personality disorder, not a single person. It is the accumulations of symptoms over a period of years, usually a bit over two decades that “earn” a person a diagnosis).

Better not look at a diagnosis and see if a person fits into it and then figure that everything else you read about the diagnosis is likely to be true to the particular person.

Better look at the BASICS of a person’s behavior, for ex:: is he honest with you or does he lie?/ does he keep his word or break it; does he walk his talk?/ does he treat you respectfully or disrespectfully?/is he aggressive toward you?/does he blame you repeatedly and never looks within himself for mistakes or wrongdoings on his part?

Did you say he is blind, partially blind or completely blind? That is something you did not mention before!

I will be away from the computer for a few hours, then back shortly and gone till tomorrow morning, I hope you rest from this exhausting discussion, we don’t have to continue with the personality disorder topic, not at all!

anita

Dear Nichole:

I am trying to understand: this man is “completely blind”. You lived with him for three years. “I was his guide, I did EVERYTHING for him. I drove him everywhere, I was his woman and caretaker”, you wrote.

I don’t think you drove him to see any other woman, have sex with her and receive money from a girlfriend, so all his activities with other women were online?

-and “tried to have a baby” with one, that happened after you left him, so she picked him up or someone else drove him to see a particular woman and have sex with her?

anita

Dear Nichole:

Well, since you brought up the Narcissist topic, a Narcissist cold heartedly plans his actions so to mentally destroy his victim, employing well thought of psychological strategies over a period of a long time for that purpose.

But if he benefited from the relationship with you (“My ex didn’t get a financial benefit from me but he benefited very much. He was a blind man and I was his trophy woman. I made him look good… I was his guide, I did EVERYTHING for him. I drove him everywhere, I was his woman and caretaker”),

-why did he aim at destroying his significant benefit, plan to destroy it, and then execute his plan over the course of a few years?

anita

Dear Nichole:

I re-read your previous threads as well as the first page of this thread so to  try and help you with your confusion. The best place for you to clarify your confusion is in therapy with a capable therapist over time. Here on your thread, I will give you my best understanding:

Before I do, I want to get your attention to the following: it is very important that you continue to save the money you make working and not give it to your younger brother. You wrote earlier, “(I am) Consumed with how my brother needs me, how he is making bad decisions in life.. I have saved 5000 and I will continue to save so I can put down on a condo or something to have for me. Well my brother found out and I feel like he thinks I should help him since he is not in a good financial place”-

– don’t do that, don’t give your money away, not anymore. Keep your money, save it, use it for your personal purposes, no matter how strong your urge to give any of it away to your brother or any other family member.

You lived 26 years with a mother you loved dearly who was a terrible mother to you. You wrote:  “At the time I was even considering my mom was a narcissist. But as time has gone on I realize she was an amazing woman..”-

– no, she was not a Narcissist and she was not an amazing woman. She was a woman you deeply loved, as all children love their mother, and she had drugs and men as her priorities, not you.

Your father, also a drug addict, was not there for you either (“I have suffered from 2 parents with addiction”), and your older brother sexually abused you from age 5 to 13. So he was there for you in a very wrong way. Your younger brother is open to receive the money of a sister who needs that money for herself.

You have no debts to pay in regard to your family, no justifiable guilt whatsoever regarding your mother, or father or brothers, you owe nothing to no one.

When you moved out of your mother’s place to Florida, to be with “the man of (your) dreams”. you didn’t have the basics to make a healthy relationship possible, even if the man was dreamy. You didn’t see who he was, not even the fact that he was completely blind. Ever since you shared about him August last year, you never mentioned his blindness, as if you didn’t see it, as if it didn’t exist.

His blindness is a major factor to consider in a relationship and in the marriage and family you were thinking of having with him, yet you didn’t .. see it, as if you were blind to his blindness.

You wrote: “My ex destroyed me”- no, you were far from being all together when you met him and moved to Florida.

You wrote that as a result of the relationship with your ex, “I was stripped of myself. I had no confidence, I doubted myself and I lost myself”- no, he didn’t strip you of yourself, there wasn’t much of a self that you brought with you to Florida. He didn’t take your confidence away, you didn’t have much that you brought with you to Florida and he didn’t cause you to lose yourself because you were already lost for about two decades before you met him.

In the relationship with your ex, you wrote: “I was verbally abusive and an emotional wreck during out time together.. I put so much pressure on him… In the 3 years living with him I was verbally abusive when we argued which was often”- your behavior toward him was not a result of his Narcissism but a result of the troubles you brought with you to Florida.

In comparison to y0ur life in Chicago where you lived with your mother for 26 years, parts of your life with your ex was dreamy, wonderful, in comparison. But the dysfunction in the relationship, on both parties, you and him, was very significant. There was a lot of misery in your life with him, but in comparison then and after, parts of it look wonderful.

It was far from wonderful.

What the narcissist label in regard to your ex did for you was clear your confusion for a while and that felt wonderful. It cleared you from responsibility for what you were responsible for- because of this label, you were no longer responsible for abusing him for three years, it was his responsibility, he planned it all.

There is much relief in temporarily feeling not responsible for bad behavior. But the truth doesn’t let go, it doesn’t accommodate our denial of it, this is why you are still confused.

Regarding your sister in law, you were confused about her too, you found yourself “saying yes to things I don’t want to do and getting overwhelmed” and then you “exploded on her that that makes me look like the guilty one”-

-you need to not say Yes, to not interact with people who are unkind to you, and to not explode because of the anger that builds up whenever we say yes to what we want to say no to, and then get overwhelmed.

In summary, I recommend that you don’t give your money to your younger brother, end your relationship with your older brother (and his wife, your sister in law) because his eight years sexual abuse of you was never even discussed, and never resolved, if such is at all possible. Continue to have little or better, nothing to do with your father, give up completely on resuming the relationship with your ex (he was dreamy only in comparison to your life at home, in Chicago), save your money, consider psychotherapy with a capable therapist, form new contacts with new people and learn the necessary skill of being assertive, and post here anytime.

anita

Dear Nichole:

I started my 3/11 post to you with my concern that you will give money away to your younger brother. In your post yesterday you wrote about him, your younger brother, if I understood correctly: “he is very aggressive and mean… he was my best friend and the one person in my family I thought I could trust. I am still struggling with this… I feel like people need me.. “- my concern is that if your younger brother is suddenly nice to you, you will feel so elated that next thing that happens is that you give him money.

Please don’t- save the money you work so hard to make, use all of it for you. Don’t give it away.

“I feel so guilty for standing my ground. I feel like people need me. I have always been stronger and helped people”- you derived some sense of self worth as a child helping your struggling family members, but it is time now to help yourself.

Think of human worth- you are not less worthy that anyone else, your well being is no less important than your brother’s. Turn your attention to yourself, do stand your ground, be strong and help yourself.

“I am still struggling to accept my family as it is. It is my biggest trouble. I want nothing more than a support system with them”-

-take deep breaths, and as you feel calm, form the intent in your brain to give up the delusion that there is a support system in your family, for you. Your parents supported their drug addictions, your brother supported his sexual needs as he abused you, your younger brother is supporting his girlfriend (and her children, if I remember correctly), and the kind words and kind acts in between the major neglect and abuse of you do not amount to support. These are like little drops of water in a dry desert, not nearly enough to quench your thirst.

So move away from the desert to a place where there is a stream of water that really can quench your thirst. It is  not easy to do this but you are on your way of doing just that by working two jobs and saving your money, planning to move elsewhere, away from your father and younger brother, to a place that will also be away from your older brother.

I understand that your ex boyfriend was cruel to you, regardless of the label. He was not that stream of water that you need then. You need people who will not be cruel to you, but kind instead, and not just sometimes, in between acts of abuse, but persistently kind and never cruel.

“I realize how hurt and damaged these people really are. To be so cruel as my ex he must be so hurt deep down inside. This bothers me”- attend to your own hurt, to your own damage. Heal yourself best you can. As you do, you will see that it is very possible to be hurt and damaged and not hurt and damage other people.

A good person does not hurt and damage other people, be one of the good people and let the bad people experience the consequence of hurting you, which I hope is, not having you in their lives!

anita

Dear Nichole:

I hope you had some sleep last night and that you feel better today. It is okay with me that you didn’t read my last post to you, read it when you will.

“tonight I have to say I am a mess!”- you felt like a mess, it doesn’t mean you were a mess.

“I feel what she must have went through. I feel it like it is me”- it is called empathy, or  love. You always loved your mother and always will and because you always have, you never wanted her to hurt and when she hurt, you hurt too.

“She was needy… We should all feel loved and have compassion”- your mother, like mine, suffered a lot. And so did you and still, you suffer. And I suffered too, for decades. And millions of people suffer. This is human reality. When you hurt for your mother’s suffering, keep in mind your own suffering and everyone else you come across. Love and compassion are not common and we all suffer.

“I will never understand why I was so mean to her in her last days. How cold I was and all the boundaries I was setting”- you tried for about two decades to make your mother happy, you tried very hard, sacrificing yourself. At the end of her life, a part of you was trying to move on from her, to live your own life. You forget now how hard and how long you tried, unsuccessfully, to make her happy.

“I should have asked the doctors and what I should have told her”- wouldn’t have made a difference. Just like what you said and did before, your whole life with her, didn’t make a difference to her quality of life.

“I should have saved her”- impossible.

“Sometimes I feel like I was so wrong”- you were never wrong regarding your mother. You always loved her, always will and you tried your best. A child/ adult child cannot 100% sacrifice herself for her mother, part of the child wants to live her own life. And then all the sacrifice you did do made no difference in her life and more sacrifice, wouldn’t either.

“I should have been there!”- but you were with her for how many years, before you left to Florida? Again, what difference to her quality of life did you make by living with her for so long before leaving to Florida?

You didn’t betray your mother, Nichole. She betrayed you. And you love her and always will, no love is stronger than your love for her.

I love my mother too and I choose to not have contact with her. I dreamed about her the other night, that she needed me. But I will not contact her. Not because I feel anger at her, but because I know that I failed at making her happy when I was a child, when I was a teenager, I failed when I was in my twenties, my thirties and my forties. I don’t expect to be successful now, in my fifties, so I am not trying.

I hope to read from you soon, I want to know how you feel, what you think..?

anita