Did you tend to feel any of these ways with a parent or a partner? Never sure what to expect from them? In certain moments they would seem thrilled with life and you but at other moments would treat you with such hostility, contempt and rage such that they could seem like two different people? Caught up in the drama?…They …
Going from human ‘doing’ to human ‘being’ for the scapegoat
Do you find your moment to moment experience to hinge on what thought you’re thinking right now? Do you carry around a feeling of inner pain, malaise, or otherwise suffering? Do you find that the more you learn about and think about narcissistic abuse, the less free from it you feel? Do you find yourself having to operate more like …
Stop self-punishment to heal from narcissistic abuse as the scapegoat
Do you find yourself feeling low or down after periods of feeling good, proud, or effective? Do bouts come over you where it feels like you’ve done or are something wrong even though you can’t point to anything? Do you carry around a sense that the other shoe is going to drop? It’s a matter of when not if? Many …
Healing from narcissistic abuse by ‘showing off’
I remember that my favorite school days in elementary school were when we got to do ‘show and tell’. These were days where the teacher would devote 30 minutes for our class to sit in a circle and around so that each student got a turn to show some thing or skill that they wanted to tell the class about. …
The pressure to be as the narcissist insists you are
There is a form of psychological abuse committed by narcissistic parents that is hard to identify for a child. It is a psychological process that is designed to mess with the child’s sense of himself or herself. In fact, therapists sometimes get paid the ‘big bucks’ so that they can bring all of their professional and personal training in therapy …
Feeling unreal after narcissistic abuse
One of the grave impacts of being scapegoated by a narcissistic parent is the sense that at your core you are not real. Survivors often feel this way from early in life and have found a way to live with it. This can be a terrifying feeling that is often not discussed with friends, partners, therapists, or even oneself. It …
Surviving A Parent’s Narcissistic Rage: The Value of the Freeze & Submit Responses
This post considers the take-no-prisoners quality of narcissistic rage. A narcissist’s rage can feel – and sometimes be – life-threatening to its recipient. First, narcissistic rage will be described and a case example provided. Next, I discuss the role of rage in the narcissist’s psychology. Particular attention gets paid to how rage ensures others comply with the narcissist’s inflated sense …
Beware the altruistic narcissist: “Accept my help…or else!”
Narcissism comes in many forms. I suppose the one common denominator is that those around the narcissist either feel ‘less-than’ or face harsh repudiation. I want to focus on the altruistic narcissist because her cloak of kindness can confuse her victims. Such narcissists go way out of their way to curate the image of a selfless caregiver. This image is …
The Narcissistic Mother or Father: Why they make their children suffer
Today I would like to focus on the psychology of a narcissistic mother or father and why it is so likely to end in abuse for their children. Life can feel confusing for a child born into a family headed by a narcissistic mother or father. Particularly if that child was the family scapegoat, it can seem like everything they …
The Bigger They Are…Why Narcissist’s Target Big People
In my practice, I see a fair amount of people who have been scapegoated in their families of origin. There is a conspicuous bigness that scapegoated people seem to possess. I mean ‘big’ in the size and strength of one’s body and personality. Over time I have come to conclude that the ‘size’ of scapegoated individuals is no accident. A …
- Page 1 of 2
- 1
- 2