Setting Boundaries (for Victims of Narcissistic or Psychopathic Abuse)

edited slightly on the day of posting, and a very minor passage on 10/19/22

Note: this will be part of a series on strategies you can use to set up boundaries.

In this post, as with many others, I have a "further reading" section at the bottom so that you can see what other authors have said about this subject.

One reason that many of us end up in abusive relationships is that we have poor boundaries. From bad parents we learn to "normalize" abuse. On the opposite spectrum, good parents and growing up in a highly empathetic respectful family where members get along and feel love and compassion for each other most of the time, we learn that with empathy, we can transform relationships and even the world (no we can't, especially when we come across people who are narcissists, sociopaths and psychopaths). 

The first part of setting good boundaries is: What are our morals and ethics? Or if we come from a toxic, abusive family, what do we want our morals and ethics to be, going forward? 

This is where we get into the realm of spirituality, which can be difficult to do if you are raised in an atheistic abusive family who puts pressure on you not to adopt any spiritual practices. You are supposed to be one of those craven individuals who only looks to consumerism, money, influence over others and general selfishness as your God, don'cha ya know?

Once you contemplate what morals and ethics you want in the world at large, it is a spiritual practice. There is no getting around that. Now you have entered the forbidden territory against the traditions of your family, and their power-and-influence-and-money-is-everything family members' focus, and this will invariably start arguments, and maybe even bullying. "You aren't any better than us! Let's abuse you just to see how spiritual you really are!" they might think, and then go through with it. You're supposed to be arguing and strategizing outcomes like the rest of your family all of the time, don't you know? 

But this is the only way boundaries can happen. Your morals and ethics keep the boundary walls up so that abuse will no longer be tolerated. 

If you come from a religious family, but you are required to treat them differently than they treat you (more deference, with respect, by putting them first, by squelching your needs and wants because you are "supposed to be saintly" by not having a selfish thought in your body) while the authority figures in your family don't treat you with deference or respect, rarely put you first and who live selfish lives that are far from saintliness, then they are hypocrites, far from saintliness themselves. And we know that grossly un-saintly selfish, immoral people should not be trying to teach others how to be saintly. It doesn't work for them, and they know it. 

So, let us say that they are sending you away to college, and they have paid for it. They put you on an airplane to come home on school break and they are paying for that too. And by the way, the parents who are paying for your college and the trips back home are your father and stepmother. They hate your biological mother, and they make their hatred very known to you (it's even a pronounced parental alienation issue, something that is against the law in their jurisdiction). 

When you get home, you discover that your mother has come down with an illness and needs your help. So you spend the entire vacation with your Mom, driving her to the doctor, making her meals, watching T.V. together. 

Meanwhile, your father and stepmother say over the phone to you, "She's not really sick! She's doing this on purpose to keep you from visiting us! It's a ploy to get attention! Don't you know her by now?"

But you defend your mother on the phone, and there is nothing you see that is convincing you that it is a ploy. In fact, it seems like what they are accusing your mother of being is what they are being. 

Then you have to meet your plane to go back to school. So you ask another one of your siblings to take care of, or look in on your common mother. And then you go to your father's and stepmother's house so that they can drive you to the plane the next morning. 

But when you show up, they are in a rage. They tell you how much money they paid for the plane ticket and school, and how selfish you were to spend their money on seeing your mother instead of them. In fact, "You need to see which side the bread is buttered on!" they shout at you. "Are you going to put your mother, who has very little money first, or learn to be grateful for the money you are getting from us? Which is it going to be?!" In fact, "You owe us! When we send you a plane ticket, your duty is to us, not to her! She's horrible! She's like our enemy, and you spend our hard earned money on our enemy!"

But their rage is not all there is to this matter. They tell you that "You need to apologize to us and make a promise to us that this will never, ever happen again! If you don't, then there won't be any more school, and there won't be any more plane tickets! You can just work at Walmart's in town until you can behave yourself!" 

If this was a young child, they would be learning that money is more important than people, and more important than compassion for others, that you should put people with money first, that in order to be accepted by your parents (and not punished) that you should cut out your other parent from your life because your "all powerful father" thinks of your mother as the enemy (even if you love your mother, even if you can't quite believe money and rewards are "everything"). And it might mean your father might reject you if you love your mother. Your father seems to be in a competition with your mother for attention. In other words, it's a nightmare parental alienation situation which sends your anxiety through the roof, and a pretty common one when you have a narcissistic parent. 

If you apologize and tell them it will never happen again, it is likely to be inauthentic if you have any sort of morals or ethics at all. If you don't have morals and ethics, you wouldn't be taking care of a sick mother to begin with, unless your only motivation in taking care of a sick mother is to get an I.O.U. from her later on (strongly unethical, and definitely "narcissistically transactional" - this would make you another narcissist just like your father). But let us say that you lie to keep your father and step-mom happy. But it's not just the lie that makes you inauthentic, it's pretending to be a non-empath too. It's pretending to put money and people with money first, and empathy last. 

And if you truly have empathy, the next vacation your mother is sick, you will be spending it with her again, only this time you'll be breaking a promise to your Dad too, the promise to put him and his money first. And the same punishment will come up in that conversation, only this time, maybe he will react to it by teaching you the lesson that "I will hurt you , and keep hurting you, if you don't put me and my money first." - and by the way, that is abuse. 

So then this situation becomes an ethical and moral "mess" that challenges your morals and ethics again and again. The more you "give in" to your Dad, the more likely it is to erode away any morals and ethics you have. You'll be just like him. And is this what you want? 

So in order to keep your empathy and ethics intact (and also to keep from getting ill yourself with PTSD symptoms), you have to create the boundary with your truth, your morals and your ethics: that Dad and his money do not come first; he is not any more important to you than your mother is, that threats will not work. Throwing money at you won't change the love you have for your mother or for him. Bullying you won't work. If he has any smarts, he knows this already, but narcissists like to have excuses to hurt other people, especially other people who are "showing boundaries", so this becomes his opportunity to hurt you, to try to bend you to his will, and into being a mini-me version of him.

What usually happens in these situations is that Dad stops paying for college and abandons you completely, but he does not abandon the "hope" that you will turn yourself around and realize "what you've done".  

What you have done is actually a good thing, but narcissists can't see it because money is "God" to them, not ethics or morals. Although you may have inadvertently pushed your father out of your life by saying no to coercive control, it is the beginning of making a boundary of what you will, and what you will not, tolerate in your relationships. You will either abandon your morals and principles, seeing how hard life can be by not having your father's presence in your life, and not going for the money and mini-me pressures. However, if you can keep with it through all of the extortions, the threats, the PTSD, the other raging flying monkeys that your Dad sends your way where they'll insist he's the victim, and all of the odds that you might fail, plus all of the narcissistic carrot sticks (which most likely will be money or favors too), you can keep your morals, your ethics, and your empathy intact. 

They haven't succeeded in destroying the best part of you and that's the best part of all of it. 

Some of you might make an inauthentic promise to this kind of a Dad not to see your mother again, and then not talk to your father again, or accept his money again after he sends you back to school on the plane, but I would still bet you will feel guilty about it, at least a little. 

He is trying to trick you into a promise you know would be immoral to keep, and you are trying to trick him by promising something you will not keep. So what this creates in the end is that he doesn't trust you, and you don't trust him. 

In another chapter I'll be discussing how, when we are in a relationship, when trust is trashed for the darker narc gods like money or coercion, or when trust is trashed by not keeping promises, it's like a chess game where the chess pieces represent trust: he takes away your rook so that you have less power, but in the next move you take away his bishop. Both of you have less pieces. In the end, you may only have two kings left, chasing each other all over the board in attack or defense for the rest of your life. That is how trust dissolves in relationships too. You can't get it back once either one of you start playing with it.

So what kind of god-awful relationship is it then? Why would anyone want to be in a relationship that is that diminished, where the name of the game is to either protect yourself by retreating from attack, or protect yourself by attacking your opponent? What kind of father would want to play a game like that with their own child, and what kind of a child would want to be coerced into a game like that with a parent? 

My guess is that you (the child) walks away from the relationship and the game long before there are only two kings left. 

So let's say that you do have good boundaries. You've passed the test at not being coerced or blackmailed. Let's say that you've proved it by going through the hellacious ring of fire through all of your Dad's narcissistic tactics, more sadism than you knew he had, and more brainwashed flying monkeys than you thought he had too. The more lies, sadism and abuse you see, the more hardened your resolve becomes, much like an army trying to drive out enemies from it's borders. This is also how you keep your boundaries from being porous again. If you put up the boundaries that "I do not give in to the coercion and threats" of your father, surely you can use it on others who are coercively controlling too. 

It seems harsh, but this is one way you put up boundaries. Narcissists aren't going to listen to you when you plead with them to stop, or tell them that what they are doing is really hurting you, when you tell them that what they are doing is immoral and possibly illegal. They have said to "hell with" all of those things long ago. They chose to take the path of renouncing empathy and reasonable solutions long ago. These are the spiritual challenges you have to undergo to put up boundaries too. It's the fight of "good and evil". Of course, not everyone's challenge will come by way of a parent (which is really the ultimate challenge), but these challenges are necessary unless we want to live in a world of domestic violence scenes in every house, a world of being unmoved to help anyone who is sick or going through  coercion and bullying, a world of on-going invasions, war, and ecological Armageddon or Mordor. Yes, it really comes down to that, effecting the entire world. What happens in the home, effects everything outside the home eventually. 

If everyone is adopting money as the most important god of all of "the gods", and the invasion of ethical and moral boundaries is commonplace, the world will get there faster than ever before. We have to make the choice about whether we are going to contribute to the holocaust of narcissistic invasions of boundaries, or not. When we give in, we contribute to it. When we don't give in, then boundaries are more likely to be respected as long as most of the population is on the side of the "protection and necessity" of moral, lawful and ethical boundaries.

You may have to give up on a parent to keep being empathetic, and to experience the empathy of others. 

The reason why you cannot experience much, if any, empathy while in relationships with narcissists is because there are still more people with boundaries than without boundaries. They see you getting beaten up, hurt or coerced and many will take off: "I don't want to be around your parent. I want to be around my own parent who is much nicer than your parent. You can spend time at my house." Or if it is an adult: "I don't want to be around a person who is that abusive to their child." Or if it's not a child: "Your husband scares me. I can't be around that. Who is to say he won't threaten and beat me up too?" Being with coercive abusive people is very isolating. It is also isolating because they tend to want to control everything about you, even your perceptions, as well as every movement you make in your own life. Plus they work very hard on other people's perceptions too in "smear campaign style": that you are the perpetrator and they are the victim.

Much has been made of the fact that abusers escalate abuse, but they also escalate immoral and unethical deeds. A father like this has probably been having affairs, has triangulated and smear campaigned his co-workers so that he gets the competition fired, has lied like crazy to get sympathy and people incensed enough to approach you and tear you to shreds. In other words they have kept going down the darker and darker hole of unethical and immoral deeds for a long time, and covered up those deeds with more lies, diminishments, off-hand quick answers to avoid questions and research, false narratives about what happened, and any tool they can use that will cover up how far down the deep hole they are. Meanwhile, you have been going in the opposite direction, toward more light. 

When you have a parent who is acting in an evil way, you may have already gone down the hole a lot, a lot more than you are presently comfortable with. But you reach a point where you can't make them happy without sacrificing yourself in the kind of way that is anxiety-ridden and where every fiber of your being is balking at going down the road they are demanding, a road that you foresee will make you sick and self flagellating if you ignore your own morals and ethics. None of us are perfect, and if the coercively controlling, unethical, evil, but awarding person is your very powerful parent, you may have given into them a whole lot before you got to the point where you can no longer go down that dark hole with them any more. 

When you get to that critical mass, they may focus on your evils, your faults, how you acted no better than they acted in what ever situations they bring up, to make you feel that you are not better than them, and not worthy of the light, but the thing is, when you are going up, you are no longer at the same level of darkness that they are. In fact, the tendency is that the more you go up, the further they go down in dirty tactics and deeds in order to punish you. The more they punish you, the more likely you are to go up. That is because the more you adopt ethics and morality, the more disgusted you will be by the tactics down in the hole. 

I haven't talked about PTSD (or C-PTSD for children of parental abuse), but it can also be looked at as an illness of spirit that has emotional, physical and mental symptoms. You have been exposed to too much evil that it has made you sick. Even if none of it was your fault at all, the PTSD is a sign that your boundaries have been violated way too much. Your boundaries are like this amorphous blob that other people have tried to mold and beat up to suit their needs. The best way to really understand the concept is to understand sexual abuse. Let's say it is sexual abuse of children because they are almost guaranteed to get PTSD from the abuse. While emotional abuse can be just as damaging, sexual abuse is how you can understand emotional abuse. You were coerced or treated with force into unhealthy, unsafe, or unethical acts by an abuser ... Now to compare it with emotional abuse: even the unethical act of smashing a child's self esteem is still very, very destructive, and yes, invasive. It's an invasion of his emotional and psychological health and well being. It may be invasive in a different way than sexual abuse, but it is still very invasive, and causes the child pain, and can cause PTSD just like sexual abuse does. You do not have a right to carpet bomb a child's self esteem.

And by the way, why would you want to? That's the real question that should be answered, and answered without excuses, diminishments, lies, blame-shifting and other evil tactics. By the time "your abused person" is going up while you are going down, you are fed up with and disgusted by these tactics, carrot sticks and the never-ending fake honeymoons followed by punishments/campaigns to "make-you-suffer". 

One of the most horrific aspects about having PTSD (which for now I talk about briefly at the bottom of another post) is that cruel people pick on people with PTSD, and in many ways, seek them out to torture. So the PTSD gets worse for you, the victim, while their very dark deeds against you keep getting darker and darker and more dangerous for you. This has a lot to do with their lack of empathy mixed with their incredible desires to perpetrate attacks "predator style". 

The one thing I haven't talked about in terms of narcissistic people in this post is that they can't deal with, or want, lateral relationships. If you go towards them in any kind of lateral way, i.e. "Look at me as an equal human being", "Look at me as having feelings where I can be hurt as much you can be hurt, and for the same reasons", "Let's do such and such together as equals", they won't have any of that. When you go lateral, they always go above you, in a haughty superior style, no matter how much you insist on lateral humble communications.

Their relationship with you is always going to be about infantilizing and objectifying you. When you throw in their lack of empathy, it is a dreadful combination. They see you as narcissistic supply, a product to consume for their own ego. Thus they really can't see or know you. 

And if you don't play their game of telling them they are entitled to things and experiences, and that they are superior to you, they will turn on you in the most cruel ways possible. They'll even lie about you just to retain the image of superiority. 

Most of us can't live like that in the sacred places of our homes or within the context of much healthier  relationships that we have. They get abandoned a lot, but survive it and move on to other narcissistic supply. I imagine that lying, blame shifting, insulting their exes, playing the victim and avoiding any  accountability also helps them survive so many abandonments. So for this reason you should not feel guilty for abandoning them because most likely they have an elaborate, if dark, coping process for dealing with it. 

In fact, what ever we non-narcissists experience will be much worse than what they experience, so we can also leave with that in mind too. 

Being around narcissists for any amount of time will cause trauma for the average person. Dr. Ramani Durvasula is very much about leaving the narcissist if you can, and putting your energy into saving your health and mental health that was compromised when you were in the relationship. Dr. Judy Rosenberg is about putting the narcissist aside in most all ways in order to heal all of the psychological wounds they have made. Dr. Les Carter is very much about not accepting the narcissists way of thinking and relating, and saying "no" to how they try to influence you, that you should remain firm as an individual who has the right to make your own autonomous decisions, and the right to dignity, respect and self worth (and mostly would prefer that his patients leave narcissists behind too). Lisa Romano prefers to live without narcissists in her life, and tells you how she did it, and how you can do it too. Life coach Richard Grannon is very much about leaving the narcissist and saving yourself.  Professor Sam Vaknin, a psychologist, university professor and self proclaimed narcissist, believes everyone should abandon narcissists always, and if narcissists need help, they should go to a therapist instead of back to their old relationships. When you go to domestic violence counselors, they tell you to get out and why it is necessary. All of these experts in the field who study abuse and narcissism, keep saying "abandon, abandon, abandon", that there is nothing good for them or for you in staying in the relationship. 

"Stop feeding the evil, avoid the trauma bond and move on with your life", in other words.

However, if you are not too close to them, having the most superficial relationship you can think of may work for a lot of you. It is especially useful in workplace situations if you are not their scapegoat for rage, abuse or blame. That can be the ultimate boundary you set: superficiality with very little contact, and preferably in crowds. What this achieves is avoiding the inevitable smear campaigns, false narratives about what happened between you, and dark triangulations where they try to convince other workers that they should not have a relationship with you, and that you should be fired. 

If you are their kid or spouse, you have to be braced for this anyway. I've known very few situations where being superficial works in personal relationships like family and love relationships, but to be honest, most of the people I have known who tried this were scapegoats. Some of them endured lots of smear campaigns just to get to their goal of a superficial relationship, and hated the superficial relationship so much that they drifted into "no contact" anyway. With co-workers who are narcissists, it works much better and they can have the opinion that you are "so boring - all she talks about is laundry and making food dishes! Who does that?! I tell her what to do, and she listens but doesn't respond! What's wrong with her?!" But most co-workers won't see anything wrong with how you act or how boring you are, and will back off on making any harsh judgments (unless they are other narcissists - I will talk about how you can beat office gossip in another post).

Unfortunately, this is what it has come to in many work situations.  

My own personal story is that I went "no contact" with narcissists in my personal sphere, but it took awhile to withdraw (you know: hopes). When I was first discarded by one of the narcissists, my life was in more turmoil and pain than anything I ever experienced. Then they played the victim and expected me to relieve their state of pretend-victimhood. The experience was truly horrific and there are things I should have done to make it less horrific, but I didn't have the tools then. Because their discard was done during the lowest point in my life (surgeries, two very close people dying, dealing with two major diagnoses), it drove up the trauma symptoms (note: I became "no contact" after the discard).

But then at some point, my life improved in a drastic, wonderful and profound way, a way that I never thought possible. It made me realize that setting boundaries against the narcissist's trojan horses, puppet strings, and infantilizations are possible to do and come out the other side in better shape. There were glimmers of it when I started to go to Alanon meetings where, in my case, empaths ruled the sphere of influence. That was so eye-opening, that empaths are not always shunted off to the side, unheard, and used for coercion, blaming and scapegoating. But then even more new experiences opened up, and a new kind of life emerged that I had never experienced before, and in many ways didn't even know existed. I kind of felt like a bird who has left a very confining anxiety-ridden dilapidated prison-like nest and has flown away. I don't feel like the same person I was before. If I was to say anything about how I got here, I would say that setting personal boundaries and working on what my own ethics and morals were and what I needed to do to firm them up so that my boundaries could, in turn, firm up, was one of the major factors, as well as hard work on understanding what I had gone through in the deepest way possible, and blind ass luck. But I would say you have to know what boundaries to set, and why it matters.  

Now for those of you with kind, empathetic, close families who are devoid of predatory family members, and you have inadvertently ended up with a narcissist ... Let's say you somehow got tricked by an abuser's charm and their words of flattery, and you are married to that abuser now, and you have kids ...

You already grew up with ethics and morals, so you know that their abuse is a violation of your ethical and moral boundaries. You already have good boundaries. You have been taught to have them. But unlike the child in the last paragraphs, you have more choices, more autonomy at your disposal (hopefully). You are an adult, and that gives you more leverage, and even more hutzpah to resist. You are probably not as hostage to this situation unless you think of yourself as a helpless child, bound to your abuser by money, children, pressures from the church, threats, isolation, constant physical abuse, what ever it may be. As an ethical and moral person, you know that it is evil to abuse someone else. It is evil to abuse the happy child within you too, and it is evil to purposely traumatize you ... You may even be aware that it is evil, even as you are being constantly brainwashed by that abuser that everything is your fault ... 

Here is where empathy gets us into trouble. You may have been taught that all souls seek salvation from sin. However, research into narcissism and psychopathy, both Cluster B personality disorders, tells us that for them, it isn't so. One thing we know about psychopaths, who make up a large number in the prison population is that they use sob stories to commit crimes. "I have a flat tire. Can I come into your house to use your phone to call the service station?" "My wife is absolutely nuts, and hurt me so much, but you are my savior," "I left my money home and I need to take a bus to see my dying sister," and so on. They get access to you through sob stories or victim stories and naturally your empathy goes out to them. We know that psychopaths have something like trojan horses, that if you let them into your world with your empathy, they will probably commit crimes against you. It may be a petty crime or a murder, it may be a little scary or absolutely terrifying. All of it is a violation of the boundaries of ethics and morality. 

Narcissists have trojan horses too: their primary trojan horse is to traumatize you emotionally, mentally and sometimes physically, and to take over your life, and demand and command and dominate, by sweet-talking you into marriage, and sweet talking you into certain perspectives, trying to take away your autonomous decision-making little by little and confusing you so much with gaslighting that it takes away your ability to see them as the puppet master. If you don't do what the domineering narcissist wants you to do at all times, they put you through scary rages that can escalate to physical abuse, or scapegoating, both quite dangerous.  

Thus the "trojan horses" of narcissists can be as unethical and immoral as the "trojan horses" of psychopaths, and more importantly, as dangerous. The psychopath takes a much shorter time to get to danger than the narcissist, that's all. It's all a violation of the boundaries of decency and respect.

BOUNDARIES TO CONSIDER

Most of the boundaries to consider have to do with what is immoral and unethical in religious or spiritual terms, and are, in fact, narcissistic and sociopathic traits. 

"Do not bring us into temptation, but deliver us from evil" from the Lord's prayer can mean not being tempted by the temporary rewards of evil people, and can also mean not being tempted to use your empathy on evil people as well. Also, you are praying not to be evil yourself, and not to be tempted to use evil against others. So every time you set boundaries of what you will or won't accept from others has to mean what you won't accept from yourself as well. 

So suppose you set the boundary of not tolerating harshly judgmental people into your private life, it means you cannot be harshly judgmental yourself. You end the tolerance of harsh judgements, period.  And by the way, narcissists are extremely judgmental of others, and they are usually harshly and cruelly judgmental, expecting their victims to be "absolutely and totally perfect" in all deeds and actions towards them, and sometimes even in looks, while not being that way themselves. By not accepting narcissism to flourish in yourself and in others by shutting narcissism down and out of your own psyche and close personal relationships, it allows more peace and intelligence into the space that is left. 

Why peace and intelligence? If you take on the narcissistic idea that you are special (that you don't deserve harsh judgements, but that other people do), you are never going to be able to understand people as they are, without your labels on them. You won't have insight into them. Being harshly judgmental tends to be a trap of closemindedness as well as a compulsion to psychologically nullify the complexities of other people from your thoughts. If you are kind of twisted, it might make you feel better to be harshly judgmental for awhile, but then you have to live with being a close minded individual. "This person isn't worthy of my consideration or politeness, so bam!" - and if it is done a lot, to a lot of people, which it is for the majority of narcissists, they rarely see any kind of judgement (or truth, or glimmers of truth) beyond that. If you notice, opinions that narcissists have about other people, even their own children or a spouse, never change. They live in the hellacious experience of what they perceive as unchanging people, an unchanging world, unchanging conditions, and so they adopt unchanging responses to other people as well. 

So let's imagine that some people are apples and some people are oranges. As a "consumer", you may prefer oranges over apples, and just buy any old orange to satisfy your need to consume. But what you may fail to understand is that in the act of consuming, all oranges are different, from types, shapes, where they are grown, the soil in which they are grown in, the care they receive, the rainfall they had. The consuming is so overwhelming that it blanks out all of the rest. If we become narcissists, we  might develop harsh judgments about apples, a fruit we don't like as much as oranges.

It is what we have left after we have reduced them down into consumables for our own hungry egos. Since so many narcissists have exempted themselves from the same harsh judgements, the hypocrisies and evil inside of them flourish and gain ground. 

It might be said that the rest of us are harshly judgmental of narcissists, and if you've been hurt by one, you are likely to see them more in black and white terms than you did before, i.e. you may become  slightly more narcissistic (it's a natural psychological mechanism to see them more as "black" than as "white" when you've been hurt or traumatized by them). And even the psychological mechanism of them not pleasing you is there too. But the one big difference is that most of us don't go around expecting others to treat us with kid gloves while we light into them about how imperfect, awful, stupid and crazy they are (i.e. we are not so harshly judgmental that we are in effect, terrorizing them, and invading their peace of mind and state of self esteem in order to have them submit to our wills).

In other words, narcissists will argue with you indefinitely about how horrible you are unless you are pleasing them, and living up to their standards of perfection (while they would never live up to the same standards that they set), while at the same time not giving a damn whether they are sensitive to your feelings, let alone pleasing you. Most of us don't expect from others things that we are not capable of delivering ourselves; that's where the rest of the population differs from them. Our minds are open enough and humble enough to know that people are their own entities, just like an orange on a tree will exist in spite of the fact that no one might eat it. Human beings are not just pleasers (i.e. consumables for our egos). 

Usually when you see harsh judgements, you'll also see a lot of arrogance, how they shut down conversations that you want to have with them, sometimes about important matters that really should be discussed. You'll probably also see lack of empathy when you notice harsh judgements. Somehow it all goes together in a toxic brew. Harsh judgements mean not being at peace with others.

In Buddhism you tame desires, and therefor suffering, by accepting things and people for who and what they are without your influence. You no longer have the desire to remake, to lecture others, to be a blind consumer. You let the action spin around you. 

In Hinduism there is a space called "bad company" where your energy is drawn down to the first chakra: arguments, fighting, anger, despair, issues unresolved, etc. Bad company happens because you are more drawn to arguing your point of view, defending, and to surviving the fights, than to enlightenment. In Dr. Ramani's course, the DEEP technique is also somewhat of a Hindu perspective: "don't defend, don't engage, don't explain, and don't personalize". If you use this technique, you are not likely to attract "bad company" to you to begin with, so then you don't have to get drawn into endless arguments, their rage sessions, their need to pull you in and throw you away over and over again, or take what they have to say personally. Then you put your mind towards enlightenment instead.

Enlightenment requires inner peace and contemplation, something you can't do when people are trying to pull your energy downwards to their level. It also requires the desire to hear, understand and to tell the truth. Without that desire, you can't reach enlightenment. You want the truth even despite what your ego wants you to do at certain moments, or what your ego wants from you. It requires trustworthiness, continually opening your mind, compassion and being mindful of the feelings of others, and of course diligent mindfulness of morality, ethics and transcendence in ourselves and others. All of it is meant to reach into higher chakras, and even higher states of "the company you keep", and therefor transcendence from the karmic wheel, and the gravity of this particular way of living within the confines of this particular wave of existence we are experiencing. It is hard to reach the Hindu ideal of enlightenment, because there are a lot of life tragedies that we aren't prepared to deal with, and lots of beings who want to draw our energy down, whether by arguing, punishing, treating us badly or abusively, continual conflict, refusing to resolve, war, or seeing us as food, whether literally or for their egos. Something will always challenge our path to enlightenment and transcending karma. And the ego is the first stumbling block. 

That's a very shortened simplistic version of what is required in that faith. Our sins in that faith are not "forgiven just because we look to God or accept God", but require very hard work and a desire for transcendence out of living in the haunted house of our sins (or karma in that religion), and any sins/karma we pass down to the next generation. 

We should not want our children to be mini-mes. We want humans coming into the world to have a higher state of consciousness than ours, and even more of a conscience (since the last hundred years has generated Putin, Hitler, Pol Pot, etc ... we are capable of bringing up another generation better than that! - and in the meantime, make a world that is more enlightened too). We want better beings to inhabit the place we must eventually leave behind when we die. Therefor, we don't feed dark energies. We want to ensure that "better energies" are left to the next generation. That is also a simplistic version of the whole concept. It is meant to keep us from enslaving our children, whether as mind slaves, or literally. Our children should be versions of our higher selves, not our lower selves. 

So in setting boundaries, we are renouncing and discouraging dark energies in ourselves and in others in order to bring the vibration up, not only in our own lives, but for the life of the planet and all that exists on the planet. We won't be engaging with either narcissistic traits or echo-istic traits if we can at all help it. This is assuming we have "ways out" of these kinds of relationships and interactions, of course. We are in the transition point of ending being a victim (assuming most of my readers are victims of abuse). We are committed to not being blind or to "giving dark energies the benefit of the doubt" - remember, that is how psychopaths get in and wreak havoc on our lives and on the lives of others. 

So, the list of what we may want to avoid (using the DEEP technique, or what ever technique you want to adopt) to create boundaries and bring the vibration up is a familiar list if you have been reading my blog. The list is basically narcissistic and psychopathic traits. You can decide how much of these traits and tactics you want in your personal and professional lives. It's up to you. But I bet if you get in over your head with these traits and tactics, you won't be feeling well, and that PTSD symptoms will start emerging. The first sign is anxiety, by the way, and the second sign is having sleep disturbances. Stomach aches, nausea and headaches usually follow. And then other symptoms can emerge, and it all can get really bad ... 

The list will have some of my comments, but you don't have to necessarily go with my comments. You might think about how these traits effect you instead. 

Some of the list:

* blame-shifting: blame-shifting culpability is pretty darned immoral and unethical in my book, especially if it's done more than a couple of times over your life time (this is accounting for letting people make mistakes 2 times).
     Blame-shifting is where arguments come in, where you are on the defensive to keep injustices from happening to you.
     In my experience, once they go down the "blame-shifting" dirty road, they do it again, and again, and again, on and on.
     They lecture you with the intent of trying to get you to buy into being culpable for every conflict between you eventually. They eventually get to have the attitude that "I'm never at fault, so you have to believe it is your fault every time." Blame-shifting becomes a horrific norm in your relationship.
     They invade the boundary of justice. If they can't get you to take the whole burden of fault on your shoulders, they tend to pull away or punish you in some way.
     Accepting a blame that does not belong to you to get them to stop with lectures, black-mail, threats or arm-twisting to get back peace in your relationship with them, is extremely unhealthy for you, and you are indulging in the practice of lying on top of it all.
     Should you be lying in order to keep them from feeling the pain of culpability? Should you be lying just for them to feel comfortable in their own skins? Should you be a martyr just for them? Should you be carrying not only their pain, but the pain of the injustice, the pain of the martyrdom, the pain of repetitions of this dirty little practice of theirs?
     What I saw: If they feel you are an easy target for blame, they do it every time they have an urge to blame. That's how you become their scapegoat. And once they put you in the scapegoat role, they will not accept you being out of this role, ever (that is what I've seen in forums and in real life). It often graduates to blaming and shaming for made up fantasies, or for the most erroneous things you can think of.
     In order to end it all, you have to end the relationship to end the role. Scapegoating is very dangerous, and often boils down to mob bullying. Anyone in the mob can get out of hand and justify atrocities, murder, maiming, domestic violence, stealing, and any order of tortures. I will touch on the dangers in another post (and it's not just going to be about PTSD, though that is a huge factor too). 
     Families who do this to children kind of remind me of a commercial I used to see. I think it went like this: "Let's give the cereal to Mikey! He'll eat anything!" In scapegoating it is "Let's give all of the blame, shame, culpability, and punches to Mikey! He'll absorb anything!"
     Many children endure it for a long, long time because they see no way out and family pressures are not something a child is going to be able to cope with that well.
     But as adults, we really do have a way out of this. 
     If your boundary is ethics and morality, how is this moral, or ethical to take on blame where it doesn't belong to you? Let alone the scapegoating? You are babying the evil and allowing it to grow. 
     So I say "no" to blame shifting. If they feel better by discarding me over it, let them. I am done with showing empathy when it turns me into a martyr and a beaten down slave to someone else's needs to stay clean of fault at my, or someone else's, expense.
     You can do what you want with this one. But I found "no contact" the best way to deal with this kind of escalating situation.

* gaslighting: I think most of us know this term by now, and if not, it is about someone else trying to make you feel that you are crazy, playing with your perceptions, making you feel inept because you don't have the same perspectives they have. A lot of name calling, invalidation and erroneous blaming is really gaslighting at its core. It is used mostly by unempathetic parents who don't love their child, or as an excuse for a parent to be neglectful, unappreciative, unresponsive to their child's feelings and thoughts, and disengaged in the difficult job of child rearing. 

     If they can convince a child that the child's experience of not feeling loved or cared for has to do with having a "crazy mind" that can't get reality right, then a child backs away from asking, wanting or expecting love, care, compassion, reasonable solutions and familial belonging. In other words they take the lack of love and neglect on as their fault (i.e. "being crazy") for their parent being disengaged and unloving. 
     The other problem with this is that the child often feels he or she has to believe or make believe they are crazy to be barely considered or loved by Mom or Dad, whoever is doing the gaslighting. 
     But in believing or make-believing, the parent will use it for another dirty deed: to isolate the child, which is even worse than being called crazy: "Well, you know, my child is crazy, so you probably shouldn't talk to him or her." It makes it too easy for no one to be concerned for the child and it renders the child voiceless. Therefor believing or make-believing brings out even more evil in the parent, exponentially more evil, even if they are getting their way in being neglectful without detection. A lot of gaslighted children get thrown away at the worst times of their lives (the point is to make the child desperate enough to put up with more gaslighting and abuse). 

     Adults can experience gaslighting from a partner too, but it is much harder to do. The typical gaslighting experience from an intimate partner is to be overly kind to one person, or to total strangers, and friends, and then to be absolutely cruel and impolite to you, in Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde style.
     Gaslighting at work sometimes happens in the form of trying to get you to believe you do not work hard enough, and that they are a better worker than you are. Or they steal your ideas, claim them as their own, and tell you that you are "crazy" for thinking they took your ideas and presented them to the boss. A worker might give you the silent treatment to make you think you did an egregious thing, and when you confront the worker about why they are giving you the silent treatment, they say, "You know what you did!" - extremely typical gaslighting to make you think you are doing things you are not aware of.  
     Gaslighting can also happen in sibling relationships. Such as saying to a parent: "You know she's crazy. Why would you ever question my motives. You should question hers instead." 
     Gaslighting is pretty evil. It is especially evil when done to a child, which is where it manifests the most and continues well into adult-hood. There is absolutely no reason, or excuse, to do it to a child, none. It's cruel inhumane treatment and the child's sibling is liable to use it too.
     Even if the child is insane enough to be disabled, is parental neglect, rejection and abuse really the best way to treat mental illness? If a child has cancer, do you go around and remind the child over and over that they have cancer, and therefor you don't want to hear what their feelings and thoughts are, and that neglect and abuse is the best way to treat the cancer?
     Because that is what we get when a parent gaslights a kid.
     The other thing we get is a child who might tell others that he (or she) is crazy, and that Mom or Dad told them so, and we know that disabled kids get bullied a lot. So it opens up the possibility of school bullying, being kidnapped, being sexually abused, of being a choice target for predatory people. And then the perpetrator can claim, "I would never do that! You know he (or she) is crazy!" ... even when they are not crazy.
     And because narcissists don't care all that much about their kids beyond narcissistic supply, co-dependence, power, control and domination, the possibility that the kid will get the proper kind of help is not likely happen.     
     Gaslighting is about as immoral and unethical as you can get. It requires a whole host of dark motives including lying, manipulating, scheming, not caring, neglecting, twisting facts, making up stories, trying to get a child to be gullible and to have soft permeable boundaries where you can fill his thoughts, motives and experiences with what ever you want at any inconvenient moment, invalidating his reality, feelings and thoughts because you don't want to be bothered with having to relate to him in an open, humane, polite, attentive, empathetic and considerate way. 
     I've gotten to the point in my own life where gaslighting is a total deal breaker. It is, in its own way, an invasion of boundaries too, in terms of keeping to the boundaries of decency and respect. I certainly will not tolerate it any kind of close relationship, or even in a work relationship. 
     You can contemplate how much of a boundary you want to place on this one.   
 

These are some others I might expound on later, but in the meantime you can ponder what boundaries you want on these:

* cruelty and sadism
* punishing adults in close personal relationships
* false narratives
* shaming
* triangulating
* invalidating
* harsh judgements, making fun of others, schadenfreude
* close-mindedness
* broken promises
* bigotry, prejudice
* scapegoating
* the silent treatment
* stonewalling
* stealing
* name calling and other verbal abuses
* extra-marital affairs
* unsolicited advice
* lying (black lies, not white lies)
* scapegoating and mob bullying
* sibling abuse
* workplace bullying
* manipulations and coercive control
* rage when they are criticized or when you refuse to do what they are pressuring you to do
* rage: when you are being required to walk on eggshells
* erroneous blaming
* infantilizing and parentifying people
* hypocrisy
* people who are immoral and don't change their immoral behaviors
* stalking and people who push boundaries
* lack of empathy and lack of respect
* argumentative and baiting you for arguments
* lack of respect
* so jealous of you that they are destructive and sabotaging
* plain ol' sabotaging
* smear campaigns
* financially abusive
* rejecting and discarding
* people who bring trojan horses into your life
* co-bullies
* blackmail
* child abusers
* neglect
* threats
* arrogance
* insincerity
* heartlessness
* people who are out to make you feel uncomfortable or frightened
* people who believe they will get away with abuse or crimes
* disrespect for the property of others
* passive aggressiveness
* criminals
* people who shut down conversations between you (so that they control what you talk about - and not just for safety reasons)
* people who have committed crimes or abuses towards you, but say they have changed
* people who demand you respect them but who rarely, if ever, treat you with respect
* people who demand and command, but who ignore you when you ask them for something
* people who insult you, but demand that you treat them with dignity and respect
* people who are constantly lecturing you about your behavior ("behavior lectures"), but who do not behave themselves in the way that they expect from you, or are downright abusive 
* people who talk about torturing, tricking and killing animals in an arrogant way
* if you have PTSD, what boundaries are you going to set with abusers and abuse going forward
* if you have PTSD, what boundaries are you going to set with people who like to indulge in arguments going forward
* if you have PTSD, what boundaries are you going to set with people who are demanding, commanding, swearing, and loud 

MORE READING

How to Set Boundaries with Family: The Definitive Guide - from Med Circle (features Dr. Ramani Durvasula)

9 Signs of Poor Boundaries (And What to Do Instead) - by Dr. Ramani Durvasula, author, for Med Circle

excerpt:

     ... Boundaries affect every way we go through life and it’s often something we were never taught to set. Right? In fact, in many ways, a lot of how we raise children in our world goes against setting boundaries. We tell kids that you have to go hug someone where may not be consensual or the child doesn’t want to hug that person. Or you have to follow rules that don’t necessarily make sense for all kids. We actually kind of teach children to kind of squelch that sense of boundaries. We’re also never taught how to set them. Many people when they set boundaries, they feel guilty. Like, oh, if I set this boundary, this person’s going to feel bad and then I feel bad I’m setting the boundary. So we don’t even feel like we have the right to and even if we can get past the idea that we do have the right to set boundaries, we’ll often feel bad if we set them.

     But poor boundaries can really impact our lives in many ways, it can put us at risk for entering into toxic relationships. It can put people at risk for dangerous situations. ...

How to Set Healthy Boundaries: 10 Examples + PDF Worksheets - by  Joaquín Selva, Bc.S., Psychologist, for Positive Psychology.com

Boundaries - administrators of Good Therapy
defines what boundaries are and why you need them

7 Ways to Set Boundaries With Narcissists (How to effectively respond to intrusive and demeaning behavior.) - by Dan Neuharth Ph.D., MFT for Psychology Today

11 Ways to Set Boundaries with Narcissists - by Dan Neuharth, PhD, MFT for Psych Central

Setting Boundaries with a Narcissist - by  Scientific Advisory Board, Dr. Sharie Stines, LPCC, for Psych Central

One of the better articles I have come across: Everything You Know About Setting Boundaries with Narcissists Is (Probably) Wrong - by Kim Saeed

How To Set Boundaries With TOXIC People – Sharon Martin, LCSW

Boundaries: The Best Defense Against Narcissists (Why establishing boundaries empower you to create the relationships you deserve.) - by Tracy S. Hutchinson, Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Setting Boundaries with Narcissists - by psychologist Ross Rosenberg for The Human Magnet Syndrome
excerpt:
     Boundaries don’t work with narcissists. It is critical to fully understand this simple truth. As you begin to accept this, you can begin the treatment for your codependency and learn to protect yourself.
     Avoid the Wrestling Ring
     One of my favorite quotes is from George Bernard Shaw. It goes, “Never wrestle with pigs, you will get dirty. And besides, the pig likes it.” This saying shows us that if we choose to argue, confront, or engage in a power struggle with a narcissist we will always lose. This is because the narcissist lives and breathes and knows every angle of their “wrestling ring.”
     Just like you would never imagine stepping into a wrestling ring with a professional wrestler, you should never imagine fighting with a narcissist. Your goal instead should be to stay out of the “wrestling ring” and find a way to set a boundary without being pulled into a situation where you are already at a disadvantage.
     Every codependent/SLD will tell the same story, that boundaries never work with a narcissist. However, boundaries do protect codependents, not in that they change the narcissist’s mind, or make them feel bad, or somehow motivate them to do the right thing. Instead, boundaries allow the codependents/SLDs to recover. It helps them learn how to protect themselves by not engaging in a confrontation or fight because, again, that just puts them back in the “ring” with the narcissist.
     Here is how you can put boundaries into action.
     Observe Don’t Absorb
     ...

also recommended: Narcissists & Boundaries - by Lisa A. Romano
excerpt:
      Someone who loves you, cares about you and actually wants to know how you REALLY feel, welcomes open communication. Someone who is mature, has your back and can experience you as a 3D autonomous being WANTS to know how you experience the world.
     However, when faced with needing to set boundaries with narcissists, this is not the case.
     * Narcissists will find ways to punish you for daring to set boundaries.
     * They are angered by your desire to have an open dialogue.
     * They are resentful that you dare to suggest they've crossed a line and how you feel never crosses their mind. 

Setting Boundaries With Narcissists - The Survivor Center

Setting Boundaries Makes Narcissists Take Responsibility for Their Behavior - by Angela Atkinson for Queen Being

What Happens When You Set a Boundary With a Narcissist? - by Elijah Akin (co-founder of Unfilteredd) for Unfilteredd
excerpt:
     Healthy boundaries are a formidable adversary to a narcissist and are treated as such because they hinder their insecure pursuit of necessities for their well-being like power, control, and narcissistic supply. When they’re deprived of those necessities they will have a very aggressive response so it is important the victims of narcissistic abuse know what to expect when they set a boundary with the narcissist in their lives.
     When a victim of narcissistic abuse sets a healthy boundary with the narcissist, the narcissist is going to completely disregard the boundary. If the victim is adamant about maintaining the healthy boundary, the narcissist is going to invalidate, devalue, and dehumanize the victim until they abandon the boundary.          

How to Recover From Bad Parenting - MedCircle

The Signs You Grew up in a Toxic Family - MedCircle (features Dr. Ramani Durvasula)

How to Set Boundaries With Family (A guide to maintaining your sanity during the holidays... and all days) - by Rachel Zoffness Ph.D. for Psychology Today

How to Set Family Boundaries: A Therapist’s Guide - by Jill E. Daino, LCSW-R and reviewed by Cynthia V. Catchings LCSW-S

How To Set Boundaries With Family: Benefits, Obstacles, And The Value Of Self-Care - by Sparklle Rainne for Better Help

Setting Boundaries with Family Members - by Amanda Landry for Caring Therapists

How to set boundaries with family — and stick to them - by Julia Furlan and Clare Marie Schneider for NPR

15 Tips for Setting Boundaries With Your in-Laws - by Sylvia Smith for Marriage.com

Dangerous Personalities (Recognizing and responding to people who make us feel uncomfortable.) - by Marty Nemko Ph.D. for Psychology Today

How to Spot Dangerous People - Poema Chronicles
excerpt:
     ... 3: They will tell you that they are dangerous.
     An interesting fact about predatory people is that they tend to be proud of the fact. I could kick myself for all the times I dismissed what this or that dangerous person told me outright. If they say they are commitment-shy, then they are commitment-shy. One boyfriend told me that he felt no emotion. I didn’t believe him till he dumped me a few months later.
     If they like to tell stories about how they did something shocking or mean, it is a matter of time until they treat you in a shocking or mean way. When I was eventually cheated out of several hundred dollars by someone I considered a friend, I had to admit that I should not have been surprised. Although he claimed to be a believer, the truth was that the stories he told about himself were awful. I should have listened to the way he admitted to treating others. ...
     ... 5: If you feel strangely inadequate or a need to gain their approval, you may have a narc on your hands. ... 
     ... 6: Dangerous people do not recognize boundaries.
     If putting up a boundary always becomes the starting point of negotiation, the person you are dealing with is unsafe. Say no to the person you suspect is unsafe and watch the fireworks light up. The heart of a narcissist or other predator is filled with a deep-seated rebellion. No one has the right to set up boundaries to their twisted way of thinking. They will use manipulation to lower those fences and if that doesn’t work, they may resort to force. ...

How to Identify an Emotionally Dangerous Person (These are the warning signs you should watch out for.) - by Margaret Pan for Medium.com
     She talks about people who repeatedly violate your boundaries

The Consequences of Not Having Any Boundaries - by therapist Dave Lechnyr for Therapy Dave
excerpt:
     We all want to be fair, kind and loving to the people that we care about. Sometimes that means going out of our way for them. At other times, it means putting up with a certain amount of crap. In the long run, we hope and bet on the odds that it’s worth it for our relationship to have a little give-and-take. However, giving out love without any boundaries can be extremely dangerous and carries extreme risk to our own sense of self and others.

Psychopaths as Invasive and Intrusive People - by the administrators of Psychopaths in Life

16 Ways To Set Healthy Boundaries at Work and Why It Matters - editorial staff at Indeed.com

10 Ways To Set Healthy Boundaries At Work - by Caroline Castrillon for Forbes

found on Facebook:

another one from Facebook:

Found on Facebook (from the The Wellness Point):