Guest Post by Jenn
I never knew anything about narcissism until I married into a family with three narcissists. It was years before I made this discovery, and in those early years, I felt like I was losing my mind. The particular family I had married into managed to turn narcissism into a generational art, and so every single member of this family (including the one I married) thought that type of behavior was normal. (Quick note: my husband is not a narcissist. He has his own issues, but narcissism isn’t one of them.) And because I didn’t agree with it, fought against it, and generally rattled the glass on their pristine cage… well, let’s just say it didn’t really end well.
For many reasons, at least one of these narcissists is still involved in my personal life. Because of this, survival skills are a must. Something I have learned from spending 12.5 years with a dysfunctional family full of narcissists is they will eat you alive and spit you out with a smile on their collective faces if you let them. Am I angry? Yes. Yes, I am. But most of the time, I’m able to move past that to the aforementioned survival skills which (along with about a year of counseling from a wonderful therapist) have helped me to keep my sense of self when the world felt like it was falling apart all around me.
Listen to your body. This sounds silly, but when I sat down and thought about how North American society teaches us to take medication and ignore our body’s reaction to something, it made much more sense to me. If being in a certain situation or around a certain person (or people), habitually makes you fell ill, uncomfortable, or like you need to be on Xanax, chances are your body is screaming at you to get away from whatever it is.
Educate yourself. Once you’ve made the discovery that something is really, REALLY bothering you, it might be a good idea to see what you can find out about it. I found that reading about Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) was very helpful in that it gave me an explanation for the behaviors I was seeing.
Get yourself some resources. Jesse’s blog was like a warming balm on a spasming muscle when I found it. There are other resources online, as well as books you can check out (or purchase, if you love highlighting as much as I do) that will give tons of information on NPD. Another recent blog post that is very helpful can be found on TalkTherapyBiz.com. Continue reading →
I’d only seen her a handful of times since college. She would come into town from the ranch and once in awhile our paths would cross. My kids were younger than hers. Her kids were stretching out in that teenage growth spurt phase. I never seemed to recognize them.
