Labeling, a critical point

For reasons that aren’t quite clear to me, I ran into a major pitfall. It turned out to be a significant obstacle to my understanding of the whole thing.

Robot?

I seemed to think that there was some kind of threshold that a person would cross to graduate from being “narcissistic” to being an all out “narcissist”. I spent quite a bit of time thinking that Susan and others like her were somehow wired differently to the rest of us. I believed, because of the labelling, that she was some kind of sub-human zombie-like robot.

Mislead

I was seriously mislead and it caused me a world of confusion. The confusion came from trying to understand something that wasn’t correct to begin with. I tried to attribute all of her horrible behavior to theories that I had fabricated or bastardized that supported the idea of her being drastically different from me.

Different?

The reality is that she is not so different to me or anybody else for that matter. It’s a fine line. A tyrannical torturing bitch? Yes. A different type of human species? No, absolutely not.

I can’t say this enough. The key to understanding her was to understand things about my own behavior and my own personality that I never knew.

• Knowing the vocabulary.
• Knowing the labeling for all her behaviors.
• Knowing the components that make her what she is.
• Seeing those behaviors in myself.
• Seeing those behaviors in other people.
• Understanding that those behaviors are present in us all.
• Knowing that just because somebody is difficult does not make them a “narcissist”.
• Knowing that the narcissism is not always active, they can be great company until something happens to set them off.
• Knowing that narcissism exists on a continuum.
• Knowing that measuring narcissism is not an exact science.
• Knowing that the afore mentioned “continuum” is decidedly and knowingly subjective to any chosen perspective or focus. I.e. there’s lots to measure, what exactly are we measuring and are we all agreed? Hell no.

Peace and patterns

Make peace with that. This is not structural engineering or chemistry where things are very quantifiable and measurable. Humans are a little bit more complex. There are literally billions of parameters at play to comprise a personality. We can spot patterns only.

Vampire Apocalypse

I became suspicious of a lot of people in my life whom I suspected were “narcissists”. Incorrectly and wrongly. I found it deeply distressing at times. I hated the idea that they had passed that threshold of no return and were condemned to a vampire life of darkness and that they had no regard for me or for others at all. Again, I was so mislead. People are just people, even the difficult ones. We are not in the middle of a zombie apocalypse. Vampires are not secretly walking among us.

Narcissist?

The word has different meanings to different people. It’s a convenient term. Without the word we would have to refer to these difficult assholes as “disordered personalities [of a particular very verbose type]” or “Pathological Gaslighters” or whatever. It is essential to know the components of the disorder and after that, call it what you want.

I am not defending them

Susan tortures me. The effect she has had on me is detrimental. I have almost scratched my eyes out because of her. I’ve fallen to my knees expecting to die there and then because I could not live another minute in this state. I wanted to rip my skin off. I have made my palms bleed by crunching my fists in a rageful frenzy when she wasn’t there to see it. The abuse she has inflicted on me (under the disguise of me being bad and inadequate i.e. narcissistic abuse) has changed me forever.
Please know, the above paragraphs are not condoning the bad behavior or abuse in any way. What I am saying is, to truly figure this whole thing out, it’s essential to keep it real and not get carried away with the utter bullshit that’s out there on YouTube and whatnot. A lot of it is great. A lot of it is harmful.