Dear Hell0:

CoNgRaTuLaTiOnS for the following: (1) Telling your daughters about the breakup last week, and positively preparing them for their new home/ new life, assuring them that they will be keeping the same schools and schedules, (2) Packing and moving your things to the new house, (3) Preventing your soon-to-be-ex from taking your vehicle away, (4) Preventing him from having any access to your finances,

“Yes he’s still using the same tactics – manipulation, guilting me, projection, love bombing, etc. But I’m not affected by them… When I’m around him I feel like I’m being poisoned. When I’m not, I’m at peace. I’m spending as much time as I can away from this house and I’ll be free soon!!“- I can feel your excitement about soon being free of his poison: manipulation, guilt-tripping you, love bombing you, etc.

“Please do send me any videos, advice you might happen to find on narcissists. I’ve realized fully now that he’s been an abuser all this time and I know I’ll have to heal from that. Believe it or not his x wife reached out to me through this… He bankrupted her as well, abused her emotionally, cheated and she was in counseling for years after to recover from his abuse..“-

-My advice: (1) because people fitting the NPD criteria are interpersonally exploitative (taking advantage of others to achieve their own ends)– make sure that he has/ will have no access to your daughters, and that other people in your life who had contact with him, are aware of his exploitive personality and choose (if they are to remain in your life) to no longer be in contact with him, and (2) because people fitting the NPD criteria are very sensitive to perceived criticism or defeat, prone to feelings of shame, humiliation, and worthlessness, and are more likely to respond with anger or aggressiveness when presented with rejection, seeking revenge, for as long as you are still interacting with him in-person, be careful to not criticize, shame or humiliate him in any way (the boldfaced here is taken from Wikipedia/ narcissistic personality disorder).

anita

Dear Hello:

You are welcome, good to read that the move is progressing as planned! “He’s still love bombing and going into bouts of crying saying he doesn’t understand every so often“-

– He had a great opportunity to understand 4 years ago, when you tried to talk to him about your progress in counseling: “I saw a counselor at the beginning of our marriage and did a ton of personal work… He never once wanted to know about my progress or discussed it with me even when I tried to“, Nov 25, 2022),

and he had another great opportunity to understand a year ago when he finally agreed to attend counseling with you: “I told him he had to see a counselor at the beginning of the year. He did but he used the time to construct the narrative that I was the bad guy for ‘making him go’ and came out on the other end angry and bitter at me“, Nov 25.

So, when he now says that he doesn’t understand, he is like a boy who doesn’t get what he wants, and frustrated and upset, he exclaims: but WHY? He doesn’t really want to know the reasons why he doesn’t get what he wants, he just wants what he wants.

I am looking forward to your next update!

anita

Dear Hello:

CoNgRaTuLaTiOnS for waking up to a new day in which you no longer walk on eggshells, this is a great way to start a new year! It is amazing to me how much awareness you gained since you started your thread on Nov 24, 2022. Tomorrow is your move to your new home, how exciting!

anita

How are you, Hello?

anita

Dear Hello:

Thank you for the update and the many blessings, I wish you and your daughters a productive and healing 2023, and many, many blessings!

anita

Dear Hello

I am not sure whether you have mentioned the ages of your daughters. however much you tried to shelter them from what had been going on in your household for the past four years they will most likely have picked up on the atmosphere.   Broadly speaking this is called ACE’s ( Adverse Childhood Experiences) and they too may need professional help to come to terms with it. Please be assured this is not about putting blame or pressure on you. On the contary I praise you for your strength & wisdom many people endure theese situations for decades or never get out.

I wish you and your family a happy and nourishing 2023

Dear Hello:

Your attitude is excellent: to not rush; to take it slowly, one day at a time; to observe, to reflect and enjoy simple pleasures and your new home with your 12 and 13 year old daughters.

“I’m reading a book titled “malignant self-love” and it’s helped me tremendously. It’s considered one of the best books written on NPD“-

– I was curious so I looked up some quotes from the book, and I hope you don’t mind if I elaborate on them a bit (as part of my own self-help work):

“Narcissists like being feared. It imbues them with an intoxicating sensation of omnipotence“- this is an accurate description of my mother. I remember that Power Intoxication on her face and in her voice when she raged at me:  she enjoyed it.

“Faced with other people’s genuine emotions, the narcissist becomes suspicious and embarrassed“- my mother was definitely suspicious of me, and in regard to my genuine emotions: she stepped all over them with her feet, as if my emotions were dirt.

“In the narcissist’s world being accepted or cared for (not to mention loved) is a foreign language. It is meaningless or even repellent“- she rejected my genuine love for her, and repeatedly; stepping on it with her feet, like it was dirt.

“They are aware of what they are doing to others – but they do not care“- she didn’t care.

“[Abusers] blame the world – circumstances, other people – for their defeats, misfortune, misconduct, and failures… he has an external locus of control“- true to my mother, absolutely: she blamed the world and I was part of the world she blamed; in her mind, it was her against the world.

“The narcissist has to defend himself against his own.. shame, and anxiety.. (via) false modesty. The narcissist publicly chastises himself for being unworthy… not (formally) schooled… cognizant of his own shortcomings…  This way, if (or, rather, when) exposed for what he is, he can always say: ‘But I told you so in the first place, haven’t I?’ False modesty is, thus, an insurance policy“- this quote makes me understand something about my mother that I didn’t understand before: I never considered her a narcissist because of her expressions of low-self-esteem expressions, like saying that she was ugly, uneducated, etc., I never thought of it as an insurance policy.

“Narcissists are said to be in love with themselves. But this is a fallacy. Narcissus is not in love with himself. He is in love with his reflection. There is a major difference between one’s True Self and reflected-self”- Now I see that she really did project a REFLECTION of herself, that of a very, very good person, a very friendly and kind person, and “the best mother in the world“,  as she used to  say. These were not her True Self traits; these were traits of a reflection that she projected to the world.

Thank you for mentioning the book, Hello, and blessing back to you!

anita