The Reason You Can't Make Up With Narcissists Has to Do With What Psychologists Refer to As "Splitting" (for both sides)

For a reference and a long explanation as to what splitting is, you can go to my own article on it  HERE. 

For a short explanation it is black and white thinking, "all or nothing" pronouncements, Jekyll and Hyde behavior, looking at people as all good or all bad and nothing in-between those two extremes, and "I have to have my own way or I want nothing to do with you at all" types of behavior. 

It is a very obvious trait for Borderlines, Narcissists and people with Antisocial Personality Disorder.  

It does not breed success in relationships, but with the exception of Borderlines, it is a "fixed" trait that you cannot change by complaining, reasoning, facts, asking them to stop it, expecting them to grow out of it, expecting them to "wake up some day", and all of the other ways that involve change. 

For this post, I wanted to discuss an article about "splitting" on political matters, particularly when it comes to fixed perspectives that seem threatening, but almost all relationships with narcissists have this dynamic going on. You can merely "disagree" on a statement, or perspective, and the narcissist casts you out as a "them", an alien, no longer an "us", no longer belonging to the family, or marriage, or friendship circle. 

Being on the receiving end of a narcissist's splitting is usually heartbreaking and shocking for most people, and a depressing set of circumstances once you realize that the splitting will never change. For narcissists, it's a preferred way of life for them, a preferred mental state where they protect themselves from giving up the on-going agenda of getting evermore domination, power, control and manipulating in every relationship that they are in.

To a lesser degree, it is also their way of protecting themselves from criticism too: unlike the rest of us, they rage and very often hurt us and punish us for perceived criticisms, or having the experiences, perspectives and feelings that they don't want us to have, whether the punishments are about insulting us, or discarding us in favor of looking for a new relationship where they can control the other person more easily, or beating us up, or committing crimes against us. 

Being in the orbit of narcissists means most of us will most likely be splitting too, at least when it comes to them, especially when the narcissist goes into a rage, decides to punish us, when they refuse to listen to us or resolve an issue where both people will be satisfied with the outcome. This comes from Dr. Ramani Durvasula. 

How much you "split" depends on a lot of factors, whether the events that led up to the narcissist's rage or punishment were traumatic for you, whether you were or have been already traumatized, whether you are dealing with physical illnesses or injuries, whether the narcissist clearly wants to or has said that they want to hurt you, your own resilience versus your vulnerabilities. Even when we aren't in the middle of a crisis, narcissists can and do manufacture one, and use it to grab more power and traumatize us. They've studied us long enough to know what will hurt us, and if they are trying to get more power at that time, there's no doubt you will be splitting then too, i.e. perceiving them as "all bad." 

I'd bet anything if a person really, really hurt you (with abuse as part of the picture) and you had traumatic reactions to the pain they caused you (lack of sleep, hypervigilance, stomach issues and/or headaches, muscle aches, lots of grief or pain), and no resolution which takes into account your feelings at all, and where the narcissist is consistently unempathetic and chronically trying to get their own way, it would be very rare for you not to split. You will likely see them as "all bad".

The big difference between us and them is that we go through considerable pain before reaching that conclusion whereas they can do it over the most minor of disagreements, or about a fact in dispute, or because they are momentarily not feeling grandiose, or they may even have a mistaken belief about our intentions towards them. A lot of them are suspicious and paranoid, particularly malignant narcissists. It's why they have a desperate need to control others, judge others and dominate.

But the end result is the same. So we can say we understand them if we've gotten to the point where we find ourselves not able to listen to them any more, no longer able to enjoy their company, no longer feel warm and fuzzy towards them, and feel our lives would be better if they weren't in it (kind of like a discard, only for us it is after our patience has been completely broken). Again, the big difference is that they discard us because they are finding that controlling us "isn't working, isn't enough for their standards" ("never good enough" being one of the major plagues of their disorder). It's a lot different than the way we experience discarding, usually after years and years of patience, trying to resolve un-resolvable issues, feeling sick and traumatized around them, and so on.

We are putting a lot of effort into the relationship, and often caving in to things we really shouldn't be caving into, but that is what all narcissists require. Our efforts, of course, would be deeply appreciated if we weren't doing this with a narcissist. It doesn't take the narcissist much time to get to the point where  they believe a relationship isn't worth their energy or consideration. 

When both narcissist and target reach the conclusion that the relationship cannot be saved, where there is too much stonewalling, contempt, ongoing defensiveness and where the decisions of both parties is that the other is "all bad", it is what Gottman discovered to be one of the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, where the narcissist shows the contempt first (i.e. "splits" and sees you as "all bad") , which in turn sets up a chain reaction of a mutual "splitting", thereby turning away from each other and ending the relationship. 

Narcissists usually end relationships first: they "split", devalue the person they now view as "all bad", and then they "discard" the person from their life. For malignant narcissists it is "discard and destroy". 

What you go through instead is trauma, then you go through the five stages of grief, and finally acceptance. Once you reach the "acceptance stage" which can take 7 months to several years, you will most likely not be willing to go through it all again, so the relationship ends. 

Some narcissists try to keep this from happening, so they attempt to come back at some point before you get to the acceptance stage of grief where they try to talk you into going back to them, or how they've changed. If you've gone through the acceptance stage, I bet you can't get talked into anything by them, or even have the same capacity to hear anything they have to say the way you used to. If you see them, you get triggered instead (i.e. feel pain or anxiety, wherein you want to get away, or for them to leave you alone). 

I can even attest to the fact that I view all of the narcissists I've had in my life as "all bad" too, even "exceptionally evil", and I ranked very, very high on a part of the Five Factor Model test on Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas (meaning I'm a lot less likely to be splitting than most people, and I do like to give people a lot of chances: whether to calm down, get their emotions under control,  be at peace enough to look at other perspectives, to get out of a defensive mindset, to sit down and talk things out - and by the way, this is not possible for most narcissists, and in contrast, they usually rank very low on Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas unless they are entirely their own). 

The narcissists in my life hurt me so much, were extraordinarily punishing over the most inconsequential matters and resistances, and also lacked reason, empathy, ethics and any trace of fair-mindedness, and believed in assumptions as reality/truth. They were all misogynistic, even the female narcissists went against girls and younger women with a ruthless war-like mentality, slashing away at any sign of a young female's self esteem. All but one commit crimes. And I do not want any of them in my life at all. As the saying goes, "I've had it." 

I think for any of us, we "have had it" when, again, our patience has been tested to the limits, or when we are going through pain from another life event - an accident, or surgery, or chronic condition, or life-and-death event when we are most likely to see their lack of empathy and realize that it is much worse than we ever imagined ... and for Malignant Narcissists, they make it abundantly clear that they get off on our pain at such times.  

Before we get to the "had enough" stage, ranking so high on "Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas" also means that we are able to listen with a much more open mind, and unfortunately, give way too many chances to people that most others would have been intolerant of and dropped long before we did. This is to say that it took some extraordinary events in my life to finally say "no more" to all of the tactics and head games they played. 

And I also found that I wasn't interested in hearing what people without empathy or ethics have to say.

In my own life, I take some pride in the fact that my attitude of "I've had it!" only applied to people with heavy narcissistic or sociopathic traits, the people among us who only seem to have some human qualities (and the worst ones). Granted, I understand that they have a personality disorder, and can't exactly grow empathy or a personality of their own because it was destroyed in childhood or abandoned by them in childhood. They may not have a choice in splitting either. But they do have choices about whether to gaslight or not, whether to go into a rage or not when they feel they are being  criticized or overlooked, whether they criticize others to the extent that they break others' self esteem, and they have a choice as to how they treat women. They also have a choice of whether to give ultimatums, about whether to use others to bully someone else, whether to scare people, and whether to hurt other people as egregiously as so many of them do, especially people who are going through tragedies (so diabolical of them, and even 100 times more so if they do all of this to a child).

I personally can no longer tolerate their lack of ethics and empathy, or deal with their head games and arrogance, especially with what I've lived through, and if no one else can either, their well-being is up to a therapist, not me.

I actually enjoy the fact that I've been able to spend most of my time with empaths in the many years since. The rest of the human race is not like narcissists and sociopaths, and what a difference it makes. I even enjoy other people's  different perspectives, something that they could never do themselves, or tolerate from me. I'm usually eager to hear what people have to say. It feels as though you get to see whole other ways of living, or worlds, beyond your own. Not that I feel I have to adopt theirs as my own, just as the Milky Way does not have to become part of, or mirror, Andromeda. But it's comforting to me that we are not all the same, or think in the same ways, that we all have expertise in diverse areas of work and study, that we don't have to be our own doctor, or our own teacher, or our own compass, or our own police force, and that there are even so many different species inhabiting the same planet who offer even more diversity in the way of thought and perspectives.

"Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas" seems like a good mental state, and to some degree, I think it helps when attempting to live through, and heal from, the trauma that narcissists and sociopaths invariably inflict upon us. It would be hard to "move on" without overwhelming intellectual curiosities, enjoying new experiences and new people, and having a creative approach to life.

Anyway, here is the excerpt of the article:

I’m a Couples Therapist. We Can Address Our Political Divide. - by Orna Guralnik for The New York Times
excerpt of the article:
     ... As children, early in our psychological development, we all resort to a defense mechanism identified by the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein as “splitting.” To cope with negative or inexplicable experiences, we divide our perceptions of people into either all-good or all-bad.
     This splitting allows us to avoid dealing with feelings of vulnerability, shame, hate, ambivalence or anxiety by externalizing (or dumping) unwanted emotions onto others. We then feel free to categorize these others as entirely negative, while seeing ourselves as good.
     In political environments, this kind of splitting manifests in an “us versus them” mentality — where “our” side is virtuous and correct, and “their” side is wrong and flawed — which produces the kind of rigid, extreme, ideological warring we are caught up in now.
     The technologies that mediate our access to reality only exacerbate this dynamic. The algorithms used by social media prioritize sensationalist and divisive content, creating “bubbles” that limit our exposure to diverse perspectives, rather than fostering a balanced discourse.
     It’s important for us to recognize just how gratifying this process can be, both for individuals and larger groups. Splitting produces a kind of ecstatic righteousness. There’s an intoxicating thrill in hate — in feeling that you’re in the bosom of a like-minded brotherhood, free from complexity and uncertainty. In this state we’re prone to ignore information that contradicts our idealized version of ourselves; we become allergic to dissonance; and those with differing views are cast out or canceled.
     To protect this brittle and distorted version of reality, we resort to extreme defensiveness. We frame opposing arguments as a threat to our identity and values. In psychoanalytic terms we call this the paranoid-schizoid position. We all tend to drop into this state of mind when we’re under extreme threat. In certain circumstances, it can allow for powerful acts of courage, but it’s also a state in which nuance and complexity are intolerable, and it’s too easy to see difference as danger.
     What I find most striking when talking to people in my practice is how intensely afraid they are of what they describe as “the other side.” Much as Louisa and Isaac sometimes felt they no longer knew each other even after decades of marriage, many of us have become frightening strangers to each other across the political divide.
     So how do we make our way back from this paranoid-schizoid state? It can seem difficult to imagine — but I know that empathy, compromise and brutally honest self-awareness are the beginnings of reconciliation.
     In Kleinian psychoanalysis, the “depressive position” is the phase that comes after the paranoid-schizoid position, when one emerges into a more integrated and mature state. In the depressive position, individuals begin to see themselves and others as complex and multifaceted, capable of both positive and negative qualities.
     To make this shift, you have to grapple with feelings of guilt and responsibility as you become aware that your aggressive feelings can hurt others — and that these feelings can also coexist with love and respect for the same person. The depressive position represents emotional maturity, within which one can reconcile ambivalence, manage feelings of loss, take responsibility and repair harm in relationships.
     When I work with couples on coming back from great mistrust and animosity, the initial phase requires encouraging each of them to take a good second look at their partner — approaching the other with friendly eyes to gather new and honest information. I embolden them to seek an attitude of true curiosity: How did their partner come to feel the way they did? What motivated them? What matters to them? This entails a shift in rhetoric, away from a stance of suspicion, ridicule and derision toward friendly curiosity. Interest in difference is a place of potential growth and repair. ...

I would argue that emerging "into a more integrated and mature state" has to come with Openness to New Experiences, Perspectives and Ideas, at least a little. 

As I've said before, this is not a transition that narcissists will make. They get to the paranoid-schizoid state and stay there. 

You might think, "How can that be? Some of them seem to have regrets. Some of them come back and say that they will change." 

They may say that, but they really don't change (another link). And the reason they don't is that their version of splitting doesn't change. It is cemented into how they relate to other people. They won't and don't listen to you right away after a difference of opinion, or an argument, or just because you're an adult and want to make autonomous decisions about your own life without their input. It happens way before most people will stop listening to other people. It can easily be said that it is an extreme form of confirmation bias where even the most unsubstantiated and ridiculous beliefs and prejudices are revered by them. 

Anyone who has ever been hoovered by a narcissist knows that even if they say they are going to change, they go back to splitting and not hearing your perspectives, and often it happens instantly, in seconds, and stays stuck there for months, years and decades.

Most people who have been in close personal relationships with narcissists, also know that narcissists go back to raging, or violence, or discarding if they feel criticized, no matter how sorry they appeared to be, and in a worse way than they were before. We know that the ambitions for power, control and dominance are still there for the narcissist, and probably more so since they failed at it so miserably the last time you were in their life. Believe me, they want that again from you, and it's a pipe dream on their part. They are also extremely jealous, envious people, and unless you burn out your bright light just for them, they are going to hurt you over and over again. It has to do with "what you have" that they feel they are lacking, or wanting, whether that is beauty, money, talent, attention, popularity, youth, a job, or you have family members or best friends who they believe are better than their family members or best friends, or just something they perceive as hierarchically superior to them.  

And because they split so easily they will feel that you are "all superior" and that they are "all inferior" at such times, which at the very least will make them extremely angry and you anxious. 

When narcissists feel inferior they most often triangulate, spread smear campaigns about you, rage, call you crazy or other names, or play the victim so that your time is spent giving attention to them and empathizing with them instead of spending your time on something that makes your light shine brighter. Narcissists really don't like hoovering or showing any signs of pretend-empathy or regret unless they feel they absolutely have to, for the sake of their reputations, or because they've driven everyone away, or for Malignant Narcissists, because they want to make sure they get back at you by hurting you so that you will remain inferior, a loser, to them in their eyes (as if whether you are hurt or not is a sign of inferiority - but to them it is ... just look at how they treat the disabled, the poor, children, women who they perceive to have no power). 

By the way, hoovering means trying to get you back to either reinstate you as narcissistic supply, or to get you back into the role they have assigned you, or to abuse you some more, or to enact a revenge by softening you up via manipulative flattering words. Hoovering is about trying to reinstate a toxic relationship with you and not respecting your boundaries, or the separation between you, your rights to say no, or ignoring your rights to make your own decisions about your own life. There is a creepiness to it, especially if they've trashed your self esteem and are suddenly acting as though it never happened and that you are the love of their life - common. 

Often when their hoovering attempts don't work, they become enraged again, so there are some entitlement aspects to hoovering. 

Some narcissists resort to stalking when hoovering doesn't work for them. 

Hoovering is also highly unethical as it most often comes with lies and fake promises, and can be dangerous. 

Hoovering is also unhealthy for you as it can stir up feelings of fear (again), feeling oppressed or spied on (again), feeling a sense of doom (again), feeling frightened and hypervigilant (again), and getting symptoms of traumatization. 

Most of all, hoovering is a sign of splitting. Let's say they called you a "senseless waste of a human being", "a b*tch", "insane and stupid", and they leave you for another woman. Then one day they show up at your door with flowers and tell you that you "are the love of my life", "the sweetheart of all sweethearts", that you must go back to them "because I had the great epiphany that I can't live without you, that it changed me to my core. You don't have to worry about me ever cheating again, babe". That's a sign of splitting, but it's also the sign of hoovering. 

If they were very nice to you until you "dared to criticize" them, whereby they abandoned you because of the criticism, that's splitting too. If they have the attitude that they have rights to do anything they want but that you don't have the same rights, that's also a sign of splitting. If they come back after months of being away after your separation, that's splitting with hoovering. 

Can you ever trust a hoover? I wouldn't - speaking about myself in my own life. And I'll leave it at that. 

Hoovering and splitting can also be a sign that they are insecure. Let us say that they dumped you and you found someone new. It eats them alive, and then they want to get back at you to see if you are still open to a relationship with them. If they find that they have the power and persuasive abilities to get you back even if you are in another relationship, it's all they really need to know, and they often abandon you again once they have the information they sought. Again, their own power and persuasion tactics are more important to a narcissist than being in a mutual relationship. It's like putting a check mark on a chalk board next to their conquests' names (for instance, checks on Melissa, Janet, Sue and Karen in terms of women who will take them back if they want to go back, or feel they need something from any of them). Again, even this is splitting with hoovering.

THE ARTICLE TALKS ABOUT A DEPRESSION PERIOD.
DO NARCISSISTS GO THROUGH THIS PERIOD TOO?

It's not very likely because of why they are in relationships in the first place: for dominance, power and control of another person. 

Instead of depression, they tend to become very paranoid instead. They can't live with the fact that they are not in control of you, and cannot believe it either. "Why was this person so easy to control before, but they aren't now?" - the answer is because the controlled person was leaning towards peace in their everyday life and was walking on eggshells to achieve that peace. Most everyone does it at one point or another with narcissists.

Also, for narcissists, the paranoia is also about their inward self, that they don't have "the magic to control and dominate" enough, or "the magic to persuade" enough, like they thought they did, or even "the deviousness to control and have people believe in the false narratives of what happened." Sometimes they are happy when the people closest to them say, "Oh, I believe you!", but again, beliefs are flimsy and often built on magical thinking, not reality, not facts, not proven, not vetted, not seen from all sides, often not within reason even, and resemble what the population has about politicians, or religious leaders, or cult leaders.

In terms of believing a politician will save our jobs, or incomes, or statuses, we often feel let down, right? When they talk about how great everything is under their leadership, we feel left out, and some of us vote for the other guy from the other party over it. The same goes for looking to religious leaders to perform miracles. Or cult leaders showing empathy they do not really have. 

Narcissists undergo the same "disappointments" where they know that people look at their "leadership", or advice, or persuasions, or their bullies, as just another ruse of self serving nonsense. 

While the average human being gets depressed and draws inward, and ruminates for a long time about what led up to the event of the paranoid/schizoid state, and how they are going to relate to the person they disagree with going forward, the narcissist gets paranoid and seeks immediate narcissistic supply from someone else instead. Obviously this doesn't help matters, however it is not obvious to them. And when they gather yes-men who have been fooled into a certain narrative, or go further and get their bullies to attack you, it makes matters unresolvable. It's more of an impulsive and thoughtless defensive reaction on the narcissist's part.

But in that impulsive state they are trying to protect themselves from being wrong by staying in that aggressive and paranoid-schizoid state. And you'll notice that the aggression escalates as they try to prove to their partner over, and over again that they are right and that their partner is wrong, and is so wrong that they deserve to be shamed and/or abused a lot. The hurling of constant insults is even abuse, but it tends to go beyond that. 

The other part of this is that narcissists aren't "invested" in relationships the way the rest of us tend to be. They are attached to us in very, very superficial ways, and since power, control and domination are all that they seek in relationships, breakups are superficial happenings because they weren't able to dominate you or tell you what to do as much as they thought they were going to be able to. You'll notice that when you talk to narcissists, they'll either be playing the victim and spouting on and on about how crazy you are, or they will describe the break-up in an off-handed, non-traumatic, "I don't care" way, even if it is their spouse or their child or their best friend. 

As I've said in this post, narcissists can feel disappointed that their relationships don't work out, but not as much as that their relationships didn't feel "good enough" to keep. 

That's an attachment style that most of us cannot relate to at all, but it is important to know that for narcissists it is par for the course. It means, for the most part, that if you want to be in a relationship with a narcissist, you won't be allowed by them to disagree, or at least outwardly disagree with them. But it's also a fact of life that at some point during our lives, we will disagree with them about something. 

Sometimes that disagreement is a life-and-death issue that they won't take seriously. The narcissist then produces an ultimatum where you have to agree to their point of view, no ifs, ands, or buts, or otherwise endure a shaming session and a discard from them instead. You can't afford to put your life in danger, so you accept the end of the relationship. 

While life-and-death issues aren't always the reason, it can be because you were ill and they abandoned you - typical. It can be because they got angry and told you that you were worthless to them, but then acted like it never happened - also common.  It can be because of one of their enablers is a sadist, or because you are their adult child and aren't willing to divorce a spouse or get rid of a boyfriend at their command, or let your child live with them, or any number of reasons where you finally hit a wall and cannot "give into them" any more. 

And let's face it, relationships with narcissists are always about giving into them. There isn't much else to it.  

But more importantly, it often means that relationships with narcissists break apart because they are at the paranoid-schizoid level, and never get to the mature level. 

And it is apparent that the issues don't necessarily have to do with divisions over politics either. You can break up with narcissists over just about anything, even the most confusing, confounding reasons, particularly ones not imbedded in reality. 

It seems nuts that a parent would forbid a child to get married, when for most families they accept that it is part of having a human life (pairing), or for spouses to break up over who does the laundry, but again, for narcissists, they are willing to break up over these kinds of issues and differences regularly. Again, it's because they view their own opinions and thoughts as superior, and that because of that, their attachments to others are superficial. As Dr. Les Carter says, narcissists don't invest in relationships, they manage relationships. I would say "they see themselves as a manager" of other people at all times, whether it is wanted or not. Or maybe that's too nice. Maybe they take a dump on others, metaphorically speaking, since they are so negative about others, especially behind their backs. 

Their type of "managing others" is also what is referred to as utilitarian love. The idea is that falling in love with a person is like falling in love with a toaster oven that works until it seems broken. And they give a person as much consideration as a toaster oven too. They do not go deep. Their love does not include depths of compassion, wanting to understand and learn, exploration, admiration for individuality, admiration for talent and beauty, admiration for the intelligence of others, none of that "openness to new experiences, perspectives and ideas" that make long lasting relationships.  

Once the narcissist splits off from you and sees your perspectives as "all bad", everything else about you becomes "all bad" for them too. It resembles someone only looking at your black and blue fingernail and deciding that the rest of you is all black and blue too - i.e. it is fantasy-making. 

Only submission and agreeing with their perspectives, no matter how fantastical and child-like they are, is seen as acceptable behavior to them. It's another reason why hoovering can be dangerous. Narcissists who want you back usually only want you back in the role they assigned you - and in one way or another dealing with their manipulations again. They know that you are not going to agree with them on absolutely everything, and for most of them, that's the pre-requisite for being in a relationship with you in the first place. It's what they mean when they say, "Loyalty is the most important thing to me" (but they require that the loyalty only be in others; it's not a quality they want in themselves at all). 

Since they know you disagreed with them, it's suspicious when they want you back.

So for the hoover, there will be consequences for not having the loyalty to agree to everything they say they want or need you to be. 

If you do not agree with the pre-requisites of being submissive and agreeing, grandiose narcissists will tend to say you are crazy and stupid and they will have the stance that you never mattered to them much anyway. 

     Covert vulnerable narcissists are likely to want you to pity them, to feel endlessly sorry for them, and they play the victim and even take the reason for the break up and twist it around into a lie. Let's just say the narcissist is a male and he is pressuring his wife to do all of the laundry in the household, that it's a "woman's job." She feels they both work, and both bring in the same amount of income and contribution. He goes ballistic on her, rips up her clothes that are in the laundry bin, pushes her when she tries to save her clothes, shoves her into a concrete wall when she tries again whereby she has a concussion and is taken to the hospital, and she leaves him after she is discharged and files for divorce. The typical covert narcissistic response is: "We broke up over laundry! Can you believe it? I'd never expect a woman to do all of the laundry all of the time, but she wouldn't lift a finger and left our relationship over it! Can you believe it? What other poor sucker is she going to reel in to do her laundry?" - very common, very projection-oriented, and also a sign that suddenly looking at a person as "all unreasonable about laundry" and creating a version where they are "all bad" comes with plenty of lies, omissions, and for paranoid narcissists, fantasies. 

     For malignant narcissists, they will be seeking ways to hurt you for not being as submissive as they want, or submissive enough. If they beat you up and if they are your marriage partner, they'll often try to convince everyone they know that you were having an affair (when you weren't - they want their audiences to see their violent actions as a crime of passion; i.e. as reasonable justification over jealousy, to not take the wounds they inflict seriously). 

     If they are your parent, and they are committing crimes such as theft against you, they'll try to convince others that you are so crazy and that you lose things constantly (again, the lie covers up their criminality against their own child). 

BUT AREN'T BORDERLINES THE ONES WHO "SPLIT"?

Splitting has been attributed to Borderlines as a stand-out trait. But it is something that can be treated in them. Borderlines do have empathy, and self reflection, and that is where they differ from narcissists. 

The lashing out also tends to be impulsively driven, but also just as impulsively regretted afterwards. 

As with narcissists, they tend to grow up in abusive abandoning families too, but their empathy, abilities to self reflect, and potential, weren't destroyed in childhood like narcissists tend to be. 

And many tend to have a reactive form of PTSD too, especially when it comes to abandonment where their emotions fly from one reaction to another, the "I hate you; please don't leave me" kind of responses that Borderlines are noted for. In reality, the response has been attributed by some clinicians as a really rapid PTSD trigger flipping from one trauma response to another (fight, flight, freeze, fawn and avoid). The trauma responses are often so overwhelming that they don't know what they feel in the end, as they flip in and out of one impulsive traumatic response after another, and then finally freeze when they know they have been abandoned for good.  

So Borderlines can find themselves wanting to get out of the paranoid-schizoid state, of at least knocking harder on that door to let them enter "the mature state" (if they are not active addicts, that is - many of them tend to be, as it is part of "the impulsivity part" of Borderline Personality Disorder). 

Narcissists plainly can't get there, nor are they interested in a more "mature space". It's the lack of empathy that keeps them from entering "the mature space", but it also has to do with the fact that they feel safer, stronger, more self-managed, more in control of others and the emotional climate in a room if they can stay stuck in their accusatory aggressive patterns. 

Borderlines tend to be creative visionaries, and I'd argue that they are too creative for maintaining ongoing accusatory aggressive stances (like they have more openness to new perspectives, ideas and experiences than narcissists have). 

Borderlines also don't have the illusion that they self-manage very well. In fact, most of them agree that their lives are a mess. 

In contrast, narcissists have the delusion that they self-manage exceptionally well, and that all of the people around them don't or can't. And narcissists tend to think that way even when their lives are full of broken relationships, broken commitments, broken promises, feeling like no one and nothing is good enough for them, unremitted raging, the kind of aggressions that most people would regret. Their lives are often also filled with regretful affairs, firings, lies, pretending, shallow narcissistic pastimes like gambling, getting drunk, endless trash-talking about other people, going on endless trips to get away from something or someone, going to prostitutes daily or weekly, and taunting, goading and bullying others. They would never see their lives as a mess, and if there are some messes in their lives, they attribute those messes to others, always.

If they rape a woman, it's always deemed to be the woman's fault, or they will deny having raped her in the first place. - those kinds of messes. 

And, of course, if they can't convince the woman that she needs to say "I brought this upon myself" (which they actually entertain because they believe that they are *that special and charismatic* or teflon-like), or press her to say that it "never happened", she is deemed to be "all bad, all nasty, the most 'ugly horseface I've ever met', would never want to rape her let alone look at her, unbelievably stupid and will face consequences for having accused me of such aggressive, criminal acts." - i.e. the immature, never-accountable, side of them comes out. 

Borderlines are less able to go to these kinds of extremes in splitting, accusing victims, or even trying to make their victims the guilty party. In other words, if they don't have morals, or empathy, or if they spend lots of time blaming victims for everything, they are not Borderlines. They are probably Narcissists, or Sociopaths or Psychopaths. It's a good distinction to make (and yes, some Narcissists can be mis-diagnosed as Borderlines, and vice versa). 

FURTHER READING
AND VIDEOS

Why Narcissists Can Forget Their Own Bad Behavior Using "splitting" to expel bad behavior from their memory. - by Erin Leonard Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Splitting (psychology) - from Wikipedia

Narcissistic Behaviour Post-Separation: Understanding Splitting in Psychoanalytic Theory - by Sarah Squires for Get Court Ready, Improving Outcomes for Children in Family Court

Splitting - from the administrators of Mindset Therapy 

Narcissists and Splitting - by Dr. Ramani Durvasula (clinical psychologist), You Tube video
Note: interesting comments on this video too

When A Narcissist Shifts From Promising To Devastating - by Dr. Les Carter for Surviving Narcissism (You Tube)

A Narcissist's Outside Angel, Inside Devil - by Les Carter for Surviving Narcissism (You Tube)
Note: interesting comments on this video too. 

Splitting and Narcissism - Google AI from a number of articles written on the subject

splitting and a narcissistic discard - Google AI from a number of articles written on the subject

When narcissists "devalue" and "discard" (Glossary of Narcissistic Relationships) - by Dr. Ramani Durvasula (clinical psychologist), You Tube video

Splitting in the narcissist relationship | Idealization and devaluation with the narcissist - by Mindset Therapy, PLLC (You Tube)

"SPLITTING" IN BORDERLINE AND NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER : WHAT IT DOES TO US IN CHILDHOOD - by Dr. Kim Sage, Licensed Psychologist (You Tube)

Another reason making up with narcissists doesn't work: An Angry Narcissist's Non-Negotiable Stonewalling - by psychologist, Les Carter, for Surviving Narcissism (You Tube)

FOUND ON FACEBOOK

From "I Am a Queen" (poster from the Phillipines on Facebook)
I included it because there may be some truth to it?
 
Do narcissists plan to destroy their relationship from the beginning ?

The truth is that the narcissist never wanted a future with you. From day one, they saw you as something that was temporary. You were disposable.

When a person is in a relationship and they're thinking about their future with that person. They're going to take the necessary steps to ensure that everything turns out ok. It's like preparing for a storm. They're going to do everything they can to prevent destruction. To prevent anything from going wrong. But the narcissist never took any steps to protect your future with them. And although you could argue that there are storms in every relationship.

They never took any steps to make things right. When you look back at your relationship, you will see that the narcissist is the storm. They caused destruction in your life. They broke you down. They turned you into nothing but a shell of what you used to be. They destroyed you mentally and emotionally. They destroyed you financially. If they were considering a future with you, they would never have done any of that.

If they have a purpose for you in the future, they're going to treat you with dignity and respect. They're going to protect you from danger or harm. They're not going to abuse you. But that's exactly what these narcissists do. They abuse you to the point where there's no going back.

Where you're not going to serve any purpose for them in the future. Because those are their true intentions. They want to break you down. So that you're not going to be good for anyone after they're gone. They know that the relationship is going to end. They know that at some point you're going to leave them and move on to something else. Every narcissist knows this. They know that they're not meant to be loved. They know that you would not willingly desire to remain around them.

Why Laws Need to Change for Child Abuse Survivors: Machiavellian Gaslighting, Dangerous Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde Splitting and Attacks by Narcissistic and Sociopath Parents

If this post doesn't convince you that child abuse laws must be changed to make parents more legally accountable for their actions, who inflict psychological and emotional abuse and damage on their children, I don't know what will.

I am also personally fed up with so many psychologists on the web grooming patients to take all of the responsibility for what happened to them. So many advertisements! "Heal From a Narcissistic Relationship in 7 Steps!", "Stop Thinking About the Narcissist and Work on Your Life Goals" (even when so many narcissists are dangerous?!?), "Stop Placating Narcissists and Start Responding in Smart Ways!" (again: why does a victim have to outsmart a narcissist? - why is it on the victim's shoulders and not on the shoulders of law enforcement?), "Scapegoat of a Narcissist: Ten Strategies for Healing!" (really? Scapegoats, most of whom have been traumatized to such extremes that most psychologists can't even imagine, are totally accountable for self-healing, while the perpetrators get away without being accountable beyond restraining orders, including the costs of therapy to heal?).

How will you be able to heal your client's PTSD when so many perpetrators are still out there wanting to do even more damage to your clients?

This all reminds me of the failed school bullying programs from years ago where the child victims were expected to get therapy, learn to heal, learn how to avoid their bully in the hallway, learn how to placate the bully and keep calm, learn to not take the bullying to heart, when the bullies were recruiting ever more bullies, and on and on ...

And the attitude about the bullies, themselves, was a resounding silence from school authorities, school psychologists and school guidance counselors. Nothing was researched about how school bullies were behaving around their victims, about how they were responding to their victims being in treatment because of them, what their attitudes were concerning perpetrating more bullying, what enticed them to bully (other than the typical lame excuses most bullies make to hurt their victims), attitudes of other students about the bullying, and so on.

In the end, effective school bullying policies meant making the bullies accountable ... Now why couldn't Ph.D.s figure this out for so many years?

How would a grown-up like going to the public library or to a continuing education course only to get beat up by a bully without the ability to have the police intervene and the ability to take the perpetrator to court? Wouldn't you feel totally helpless and scared about going to the library and to keep plowing through the continuing education course you signed up for in such a situation where the perpetrators were never accountable for any of their actions, and you had no idea if they'd be lurking in the hallway somewhere?

And we expected children NOT to have any of the protections that we demanded for ourselves?!?

Yes, thank God for harassment laws, assault laws, coercion laws, and battery laws for adults!

But what about children?

In the meantime, all of the school bullying got worse and worse, didn't it, with all of these interventions to get victims help, the lecturing, the guidance counselors and school psychologists wringing their hands trying to find an effective approach to the problem, the therapy, and putting the responsibility for healing squarely on the victims' shoulders.

And what about children who are mercilessly bullied by their OWN PARENTS??? Many of these children are so much more bullied than they could ever be in a school (since most of the time child abuse is life-long). And since schools have so many crowded hallways and staircases and eyes that homes don't, how are children supposed to fight back?

Isn't the case against parental emotional abuse of children (where the threats by perpetrators are so dangerous and Machiavellian) basically the same thing we faced when we decided that children of school bullying could not heal by keeping the status quo system? 

Narcissistic parental abuse is much more prevalent now than it ever was, with all of the same healing strategies and lectures we gave to bullied kids in school. And in the meantime narcissistic and sociopathic parenting continues to grow and get worse, and more and more children are being effected by it, and there are more victims than ever, especially those going "no contact" with their parents (adult child - parent estrangements are now 38 percent of all American families with adult children, very close to the divorce rate).

Will the nation's children and their estranged parents be able to defend their country effectively if they are invaded by another country? Will they care to, or will they be so wounded by each other that they don't have any more fight in them to take on a foreign enemy? Will they even have the will to defend lives, or families, or their divided nation?

Will so much of the gross domestic product and government money be going towards the "PTSD problem" of child abuse, spousal abuse and sibling abuse?

I see so many horrible stories of narcissistic and sociopathic parental abuse from adult children on the internet, that's just a good ol' continuation of the child abuse they endured for a couple of decades as underage children. It's getting worse, and worse, and worse. And the best society can do is to say, "Heal From a Narcissistic Abusive Relationship in 7 Steps"? Is that 7 steps, or 7 easy steps?

Even "Go No Contact! You'll Feel So Much Better!" is getting old, precisely because it often requires trying to make oneself joyous and strong in the midst of estrangement and the depression about the estrangement pulling at your emotions for years, even though the outcome is about keeping safe from a toxic family. It is true that a lot of child abuse victims feel much, much better out of their families, particularly those who can heal from C-PTSD. For those who can't heal, and there are many, many of them, C-PTSD seems not only to be a life sentence for them, but many talk about suicide, and even go so far as to push for assisted suicide.

Either way, estrangement is always in the background (including knowing that these parents are fully capable of more attacks, even egregious and life-threatening attacks) ... in reality there is often a "psychological pull" into cognitive dissonance no matter how criminal some families are. Have a look at Saddam Hussein's family: he promised his son-in-laws that they would be safe if they returned, but they were executed. Even if a survivor is never lulled into a parent's proclamation that their environment is a "safe environment", intellectually survivors know it isn't true, and most of them find that "promises" in abusive families are almost always fake promises with the betrayals of those promises rescinded through gaslighting, where even harsher enactments of abuse will happen as the result of running away and "telling."

Many domestic violence therapists steer away from talking about cognitive dissonance and their client's "emotional needs and wishes" for peace, harmony and love with their families. Granted, there is a good reason: it is a therapist's agenda to keep their clients safe, to dispel wishes and fantasies about love and comfort with abusive parents. The point of a lot of child abuse therapy is to emphasize that patients should be working towards wanting lack of familial support because their family is so bullying and toxic and has never really loved or considered you beyond doing what you are told to do by them, told what your thoughts and experiences are by them, keeping quiet about the abuse for them, undergoing punishments if you don't do what you are told by them, and leak toxic family secrets that they want you to keep secret for their reputations and their comfort - in other words, the general message many child abuse victims receive is that peace, love and harmony with their families is totally hopeless.

A lot of abusive families act like mafia families without the overt killing, but they kill their members in other ways: through severe punishments, through severe forms of ostracism, through self esteem crushing verbal abuses, through the constant pressure to accept abuse as deserved, even dangerous escalating abuse to keep you in the role that you have been assigned by them. A scapegoat role can definitely kill you if you stay (I will have a post up eventually as to why).

Do we love having to search for a "family of choice", trying to forget the wound? Do we love trying to "live in the now" even when we know our perpetrators would love to hurt us more and are always trying to find new ways to do it? Do we love seeing a child get whacked hard by some parent in a grocery store for no reason other than that the child tried to reach a cooler from the cart 6 and a half feet away with tiny hands. Do we love our responses when our wounded-child-within starts reappearing during these grocery store episodes: wanting to call CPS, feeling hopeless about the justice system, crying at the sight of it, the whole kit-and-kaboodle of what we have been through all flooding back despite all of our efforts to self soothe, to forget, to live in the simple Buddha dream-world of "no suffering" that the "no contact" seems to provide on the surface of things (if only our perpetrators weren't still spending an inordinate amounts of time with sadistic schemes and plans), to heal from narcissistic abuse in 7 easy steps?

Why are therapists and psychologists flooding the internet with so many healing strategies, all of which sound so redundant if you are into this sort of thing, and not hitting the internet with something new and bold, and that makes sense like: "Let's get some laws changed!", "Why perpetrators should be part of solving the puzzle of child abuse in the USA". Or like: "Ways All Therapists and Clients Can Band Together to Get Child Emotional Abuse Laws Changed in 7 Easy Steps!"

Therapists will not have anything to lose by it, and will still have clients, because healing from abuse will always be a demand, but their clients won't have to deal with "My scary mother is still out there wanting to do something to me! I can't seem to focus on healing with this going on! Why don't you get that?"

Also, a client who only half-hears healing strategies because their hypervigilence is through the roof, won't be so commonplace that therapists have to repeat themselves.

I will share with you some real stories where it will be very plain why laws need changing in this sphere.

But first, for survivors reading this, I discuss gaslighting (a psychological abuse) as it pertains to extreme psychological splitting, which is how a lot of Machiavellian emotional abuse gets started, and then I tell the stories of a number of survivors: a mother who kills eight of her child's pets plus some of her own as a means of punishment and control, a mother who tries to convince a child who is being sexually abused and trafficked that her toys are going missing because she has Multiple Personality Disorder (now termed Dissociative Identity Disorder), a child who throws up with regularity throughout childhood and told that nothing is wrong with her other than a weak stomach, how two girls spent their childhood being sexually abused by an older brother and taught to look at it as a divine experience brought to them by God, how an elderly mother tries to convince her daughter that she will inherit a lot of money if she "comes home" to sweet Mama to care-take and the consequences of that, and then a couple of short stories on parents who imprison and abandoned their children and where laws would help.

At the end, I share some videos. I highly recommend the video by psychologist, Dr. Todd Grande, on Vindictive Narcissism, which is what many child abuse victims have to endure, life long.

To get a better handle on what psychological splitting is, go HERE for my post on it, or go HERE to get a very short explanation of what it is on Wikipedia. Basically it is Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde behavior, "I love you and then I hate you" behaviors, black and white thinking, all or nothing thinking, a parent who plays favorites with their children and who insists that one child is all good and deserves favoritism, to be looked up to, to be idealized and another that is all bad and deserves to be ridiculed, hated, isolated from friends and family, and deserves to be in pain.

To get a better handle on what gaslighting is, go HERE to my post on it, or go HERE to get a very short explanation of what it is on Wikipedia. Gaslighting is about trying to get someone to question their reality, memory and sanity. Note: almost all abused children are groomed to look at themselves as insane - and actually I would be tempted to say that all child abuse victims are, because I haven't met one child abuse victim who hasn't been labeled that way and I have met thousands.

Pre-1985, for parents who wanted their child to be regarded as insane, it largely worked for them, and their agendas (the psychology establishment supported all parents except for the most horrific ones). Psychologists let parents who were abandoning, cruel, abusive, sociopathic and cold hearted "off the hook", and if anything, idealized these behaviors as good discipline unless they were very obviously egregious: cigarette burns on the skin, obvious severe bruising from head to toe, deep whip lash marks on the back or legs, a lot of broken bones that never healed right, children obsessively afraid of their parents, children who weren't given proper nutrition or lived chained up in a basement, parental abandonments that seemed wildly selfish or self serving.

Then along came psychologist Alice Miller's publications: the majority of children in mental hospitals and mental institutions were child abuse victims. Before she turned the psychology establishment upside-down, the majority of child abuse victims were labeled as schizophrenics and neurotics (not PTSD sufferers as they are today). In fact in today's world, in order for a psychiatrist to make a diagnosis of schizophrenia, many other disorders have to be ruled out first, including PTSD and children are not typically diagnosed with schizophrenia any more because it is seen as a mental illness that only adults get. So, that's a great improvement. There are many more questions directed at the child and parents don't necessarily get to answer the questions for the child any more. Another improvement. Psychologists now put a lot of emphasis on asking a child questions about how they are treated, rather than just focusing on how they are feeling is a major step in the right direction too.

In the old days, schizophrenia and neuroses "labels" actually increased these children's risks for much more abuse after treatment because the abuse was never looked at, solved or confronted; it was ignored (abuse tends to escalate with "no end in sight" if it is ignored). The other reason it increased is because parents could now use the schizophrenia or neuroses labels as justifications for abuse, particularly for the more severe forms of gaslighting, such as: "I didn't hurt you! You're crazy for thinking that! You're a schizophrenic! Being schizophrenic means you hear voices that aren't there!  How dare you! Just for that, you'll pay!"

Why was there ever a tradition in families where children were expected to "pay" for complaining about abuse?

The answer lies in the authoritarian family. In authoritarian families, where abuse tends to be most rampant, children are expected to put their parent's feelings and sensitive natures first. "Children should be seen and not heard" is the classic authoritarian family quote.

In healthy families where all members matter, children's feelings often come first before the adult's because their emotional natures are still developing, and they need guidance to mature into healthy adults who can express emotions in a constructive and realistic way. To bring up emotionally healthy children, there will be emotional literacy, empathy, respect, learning, listening and discussions about emotional subjects, how to understand different perspectives, discussions about emotional regulation and self esteem, spending time trying to understand and soothe children who are distraught.

In authoritarian families, all of this is squelched, and children's feelings are particularly squelched and are seen as an inconvenience and irritation for the all-important adults (again, because they believe children are "not to be heard", only the adults voices and perspectives matter in the authoritarian family). Harsh judgments and insults are often doled out if children display feelings. Adult arrogance and haughty proclamations are standard.

If it is extreme, children will be emotionally stunted in their emotional growth (and if you study narcissism, many of the Narcissistic Personality Disordered are emotionally stunted at age six because so often they were from authoritarian families where their feelings were invalidated, where the rush to judgment was practiced regularly, where the parents felt they were justified and the ultimate authority in telling children what they were thinking, feeling and experiencing, where you were expected to "shut up" if you had feelings).

The best way to teach children is by example. If children are punished for having feelings and talking about emotional pain, but are expected to be super sensitive to your own feelings, that's a double standard and the authoritarian family model cannot and will not go well, or be respected by many of its members.

If you tell a child not to be critical and judgmental of you, but then use insults to describe him or her, even small children know what hypocrisy is (you actually lose their respect, in that instance, not gain it). So hypocrisy is very much the "visible front" that everyone can see, the "Emperor Without the Clothes" in the authoritarian family.

It is a tenuous family system and built for revolution in the same way that autocratic governments are.

In the authoritarian family, the attitude is that everything has to come first for the parents (very self serving): they should come first in what they want, need, and what their opinions are, they should be considered first, they should be appreciated first, they should be heard first, they should take precedence above all others first, the best of everything should go to them first, when things go wrong in the family and there are misunderstandings, the children should apologize to the parents first, the parents should eat the good food and the children can have what is left over. It's such a crappy set of rules that children with any strength of character at all will start to refuse to adhere in the kind of way that will satisfy these parents (that is because so many parents who are trying to push the authoritarian "dream family" onto their kids are downright control freaks, trying to micromanage every part of their children's lives, and scapegoat the kids who aren't going along with every aspect of the "authoritarian dream" the parents so desperately want for themselves).

The reason why a narcissist may want an authoritarian family, apart from just wanting to call all of the shots and dominate everyone in sight, is that so many of them grew up with authoritarian families themselves. They had to compete with siblings for love; they had to accept and approve of abuse without question; they had to keep their feelings to themselves; they had to place "being approved of by parents" first and foremost in their lives above any of their own dreams; they had to show complete loyalty, reverence and subservience to their parents and put their parents first no matter how badly their parents behaved; they weren't allowed to complain about abuse or lack of love; and most of all, they survived it all, and so now their children should survive it all too, and in all of the same ways.

So many narcissists from authoritarian families want what their parents had, and feel they deserve it too, without question, and will do just about anything to their children to get it.

The authoritarian parental attitudes mostly mean this: "Children have to be polite to me, but I don't have to be polite to my children", "I get to reject and abuse my children, and sometimes treat them like they don't exist, but how dare they think to do this to me since I am so important and come first!", "What I want comes first and my children should come last in every aspect of my life, but how dare they have dreams of their own and pursue them!", "My child is crazy, and I hope he believes me, but how dare he go to a therapist and get talked into me being the crazy, disordered one!"

The high majority of parents who are heavily invested in keeping the authoritarian family model intact will create an environment for their children that is heavily based on getting children to feel ongoing fear, obligation and guilt. There will also be a lot of "testing" to see if children are still feeling the amounts of fear, obligation, and guilt that the parent, or parents, require.

Since the parents are trying to create and provoke these kinds of negative emotions in their children, it will create a negative experience and atmosphere in the home.

Where gaslighting and psychological splitting comes in, is in these ways:

Gaslighting is needed to convince the children that fear, obligation and guilt is good for them, that it creates altruism in them. It doesn't because it didn't create it in the parent when they were brought up in this way. If anything, the only time empathy is enacted is when the parent is getting what they want, so it is a reward system only, where empathy is not a genuine emotion or part of their character - it is a love bombing maneuver that creates Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde behavior in them and therefore trauma for their children.
     In other words, when things are going the parent's way, when they are producing enough fear, obligation and guilt in their children for them, then they might act empathetic temporarily, with the emphasis on act and temporary.
     Gaslighting is also needed to keep children from thinking or behaving too independently or autonomously. A child who has his or her own thoughts and ways of doing things will be smeared. Usually the way they are smeared is: they are too crazy, or too stupid, and therefore need to be controlled by the parent.

Splitting is needed to create fear, obligation and guilt too. A parent needs to appear to be exceptionally loving and rewarding to make the children work for them, and severely punishing to make children who are not giving the parent exactly what they want the incentive to work harder for the parent, all in order to get the reward of the nice Dr. Jekyll side (and not the cruel Mr. Hyde side who has been hurting them). It is an all or nothing, black and white system, and most all or nothing, black and white family systems are toxic.
     The problem with all of these love you, hate you signals based on a reward system is that it creates trauma in children. The other thing it creates is deception. It is also a system particularly prone to consistent parental mistakes in terms of judging situations correctly. What matters to parents in this system is that they believe everything should go their way at all times, and if it means an incorrect judgement, they are willing to make them because they will just create a scapegoat among all of their children for these mistakes, or for "leading them into the mistake". Anything that might cause scrutiny is hushed, every effort is made to hide evidence, for every evidence there are word salad excuses and feigned innocence ...
     Children are never treated harshly enough for the severe punishments that usually go with this style of parenting - injustice, crime, creating a fall guy, creating made up stories, creating excuses for abuse, creating a situation where parents are ashamed enough to hide abuse and deny abuse or make believe the children are abusive instead (hard to do in most cases), and it often goes against biology once the children have grown.
     Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde splitting, in some instances, may keep children in line, but not forever if you are privy to survivor stories. It leads to false hope in children, a hope that can never be fully realized, and will certainly never be realized if the child abuse victim is the life long scapegoat, which most family scapegoats are. There is usually a point of no return, and it is based on trauma and on-going emotional wounds in the child (that were originally created by the psychological splitting of the parent).

If any of you have seen the film, Mommie Dearest (the link is to my own review), which is still, after all of these years, the quintessential child abuse movie, one that just about every child abuse victim can relate to, and one that I believe everyone should see to understand how child abuse is hidden and implemented, the "fear, obligation, guilt" model and all of the very common erroneous punishments, complete with Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde implementation, the ungrateful phrase being bandied about as ritual when the mother is having her constant temper tantrums, and leaving half of the children out of the Last Will and Testament are part and parcel of just about every authoritarian family who practices abuse.

The only thing that some abuse victims may not relate to is that some parental temper tantrums are overt, as in this movie, and some are covert (the covert ways are passive aggressive: ways to hurt the child being planned out over a period of time and implemented in such a way as to bring the child the most wounding and trauma).

An abusive authoritarian family model will fall apart for about half of its members eventually, creating a split family. A lot of it gets exposed to outsiders too because "when you got nothing, you got nothing to lose" in telling, as Bob Dylan sang. Authoritarian families can be extremely ostracizing and punishing towards members who fight back against the hypocrisies, the oppressive emotional climate (of being forced to "keep quiet", where abuse can be so standard and normalized that the abused are expected to apologize to the abusers! - remember, authority is very hard to keep in place without lots of other abusers in it). So, the double standards, the horrible charades of being upstanding ("Being upstanding does not mean being evil and abusive and not practicing what you preach!" the family rebels will shout), creating an all or nothing situation in terms of your childrens' loyalty and subservience is tenuous, and in American society, very hard to implement unless you are like the Turpins: homeschool your kids so that they aren't influenced by outsiders, keep them chained up so that they can't get outside to be influenced by outsiders, shame them over inconsequentials to test if they are still going to want your approval over every aspect of life, keep them so hungry and "wanting" so that they will look to you for the necessities of life in all situations, show other siblings severe punishments to keep the other siblings in line - even when it doesn't always work (it didn't for the Turpin parents - they ended up in prison).

Many psychologists describe families headed by narcissists in authoritarian families as "cults". Indeed, they are.

The children who have no respect for the model tend to be its scapegoats and "the frozen-from-trauma" children (most often the frozen children are the lost children - in family systems theory). They are the family members who get hurt a lot from the system and feel that their only option is to leave.

The parents, who have been anesthetized by entitlement to get all that they want from their children and have intractable feelings of superiority, will feel absolutely no empathy for their hurt ostracized children. If anything, they go about their daily lives with the attitude that these children are being justly punished for not following the model and roles they had been assigned. They never want to put themselves into their children's shoes because the fantasies of the perfect authoritarian family where children are so trauma bonded, so emotionally stunted at six years old, that they will still act like six year olds wanting approval, and do exactly as they are told by the Mommy and Daddy, and even to the point of risking their lives for the parent, and put the parent always first, forever.

In fact, most narcissists and sociopaths die alone. This would be a telling sign that they want this fantasy until their dying days and never give up on it.

Domestic violence therapists are aware that American authoritarian families often breed severe abuse, suicides, murders, estrangements, divorce, incest, crime, mental health issues, sibling abuse, retaliatory parenting, cover-ups, and that the lack of empathy for children in this system will usually be profound. If the whole family gets therapy, these counselors do try to talk the parents out of this fantasy model. Often the approach is to explain why the model is not working for the parents and that it is bad for the parents. The parents do have a lot to lose, especially when they start losing their children, and then grandchildren, and in-laws, and sometimes brothers and sisters, with the abuses being exposed, but they are so self serving, so invested in themselves and their fantasies of grandiosity, and uncaring and unfeeling, that they cannot hear anything other than therapeutic advice that concerns them and their welfare.

Since it is very rare for an authoritarian-style parent to go to therapy or even admit to the fact that they are abusing children, laws must be changed as the children will be hostage to it for at least 18 years, if not more. Since child abuse is climbing dramatically, since narcissism is climbing dramatically, and since parents with estranged children is higher than it ever has been in recorded history in the developed world, the situation requires bold action. We can't afford a population heavily made up of bullies and their PTSD sufferers, which is what we will have if nothing is done.

It even costs money for states and countries, if one wants to get into the economics of enabling abuse, and one of the stories covers it.

The stories follow:

THE PET KILLING MOTHER

In childhood, a girl's pets all died before the pets reached three years of age. Seven of them died, seemingly from respiratory failure. A couple of the mother's pets also died in a similar manner, and also before they reached three years of age.

When she asked her mother why the pets always died so young, and why other kids on the block had similar pets that lived to 7 and 14 and 17, the mother said that some pets are healthy and that some aren't, that it is part of life that all things must die, and that she should be spending her time thinking about "cat heaven" and "dog heaven" rather than worrying about how her pets died.

Every explanation was diverted to "Think about something else. They are gone and you can't bring them back." 

Her mother also tried to keep her from grieving by shouting at her to "get a life." In fact, emotional expression was not allowed.

For a long time she didn't have pets, or want pets, because losing seven had been sad and traumatic for her. The pets were also used as blackmail and threats, to keep the daughter from going to sleep-overs, hanging out with a friend, going to visit her father when he was alive, etc. 

But then one day when she was 17, she came upon a stray sick dog and asked her mother if she could bring it into the house, and promised to take care of the pet and all its needs (she had a job) and take the dog with her if she ever moved out.

The mother agreed and the dog was nursed and brought back to health.

Then the daughter met a young man, and they decided to get married. The mother didn't like the young man because he lived in another city and it would mean that the daughter had to move out (the mother was a single mother with only one child). 

For months, the mother reacted: there were lectures, scare tactics, threats, arm twistings, puddles of tears on her mother's behalf, phone calls and texts to the young man which included threats, crying spells, telling him that her daughter was insane and that he shouldn't marry her or he would regret it for the rest of his life, that her daughter should be in a mental institution but that she loved her too much to have her live a life without a mother looking after her  - all the stops were pulled to make sure her daughter didn't get married and continued to live with the mother.

Notice how the mother gives herself permission to be emotional, but the daughter isn't allowed to.

So the wedding plans were on, and the daughter tried to comfort the mother in spite of the fact that the mother was trying to create this crazy-making scene to get the groom to back off. 

The wedding was being held in the city he lived in, and they had made plans to meet with the wedding planner. 

However, right before they were to leave, they stopped at the mother's house, and the dog was on the livingroom floor gasping for breath. The daughter held the dog in her arms with tears running down her face, and then the dog expired and died.

She told her mother that she wanted an autopsy done on the dog to see why it died, that she would pay for it when she got back home, and to leave the dog in the garage. 

They asked the mother her opinion as to why it died, and the mother replied that maybe a neighbor poisoned it because they didn't like the barking. 

They moved the dog to the garage and then got ready to go on the trip. The mother asked the daughter if it was a good idea to meet with the wedding planner when she was so upset and still crying, when the trauma of losing her dog was so fresh in her mind, when she might not get there safely because she was so emotional.

The daughter went anyway, because to her, the dog's death was the sign that she had to get away from her mother.

The dog's death brought back a flood of memories. She started to see a pattern, that every single one of her pets had died when her mother was trying to control her and threaten her. It sent chills up her spine.

She also remembered other things her mother had destroyed during the period she did not have pets: the only photographs she had of her late father, letters to her from her late father, gifts that were given to her by her late father.

Anyway, when the couple returned a couple of hours later they headed right for the garage and the dog was gone.

"I didn't want you to be burdened with this, so I took care of it," the mother said, meeting them outside in the dark. "I didn't want to see you hurt and crying over that dog any more."

When her daughter told her that she had no business moving the dog, the mother shouted back that her daughter was ungrateful.

The day of her wedding, her mother did not show up. The daughter found out later that most of her extended family was told to boycott the wedding too.

After the wedding, she moved into a house with her husband and they got a new dog (which incidentally lived to old age). But to back-track, upon getting this new pet, an aunt called her and accused this daughter of killing her own pets, that she shouldn't have a new dog when so many of her pets died mysterious deaths because of her care.

That raised her suspicions more and she began having the symptoms of PTSD, hypervigilence in particular. Her mother was constantly calling, wanting to come to their house to celebrate the new dog, to take it out for a walk, and maybe she could take the dog once in awhile to unburden her daughter.

A lot of abused daughters will give their parent one more chance, then another chance, and so on, because the bond is hard to break, even when so many of their pets die, even when they grow up emotionally squelched, even when the wedding is boycotted by their own flesh and blood, even when the aunt that her parent had been talking to accuses the daughter of killing her own pets, and even when the new husband has been told his new wife should be in an insane asylum.

And then there is the greater society that has the attitude that mothers are to be revered, that they are exceptionally sweet and kind and should be worshiped, that you should always believe that a mother has your your best interests at heart, etc ...

So, with all of the brainwashing and gaslighting, it is sometimes hard to make a stand against abuse.

In this case, the daughter's PTSD symptoms worsened, and the last thing the daughter wanted was to have her mother anywhere near any of her pets again. Then, she felt that she could perhaps control the situation by inviting her mother to her own house where she could keep her mother away from her pets, and never leave the dog alone with her mother. This didn't work. As soon as the daughter went to the bathroom, and after telling the mother to make sure the dog stayed where it was, the mother let the dog outside where there was a busy road. That was one incident, and there were more.

Eventually the daughter no longer allowed her mother to come to the house she shared with her new husband and the new dog.

Then the daughter got pregnant, and her husband was really frightened for their child. "If your mother is capable of doing this to so many of your pets, won't she harm our baby? Won't she try to frame you for the murder? Won't she find every opportunity to screw with your mind?"

To save her baby and her pets, the daughter felt she had to go "no contact" and to sell the house, and disappear. She still has nightmares about her mother. She has trouble concentrating because she still feels her mother "is out to get her", and that the mother will just use increasingly "sneaky ways" to do it.

This story has so many instances of gaslighting. The splitting, the desire to be destructive, and to kill,  is noticeable too when the mother doesn't get her way. Killing the daughter's pets is a sociopathic activity (Antisocial Personality Disorder, or perhaps, Malignant Narcissism - both disorders display sadism).

This is a dangerous situation in so many ways and there should be some legal action available to someone in her shoes, since the mother can be destructive in this manner to anyone and any animal, and it doesn't necessarily have to be her daughter (it could be a college student who moves in and pays rent, for instance, or anyone close to this mother). It's pretty likely that the mother also killed her own pets, so it is through pets that she does her serial killing. Most literature on sociopaths state that the killing of pets can lead to the killing of people.

Is there a chance that all of these pets had an accidental death? Very, very slim chance, especially when the mother displays so many narcissistic traits and when the pets just happen to die during times when the mother feels she is losing control of the daughter.

A MOTHER WHOSE CHILD IS BEING SEXUALLY ABUSED
TRIES TO CONVINCE THE CHILD THAT HER TOYS ARE GOING MISSING
BECAUSE SHE HAS DISSOCIATIVE IDENTITY DISORDER

Note: Dissociative Identity Disorder used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder. Since the abuse took place during the time it was called Multiple Personality Disorder, I am using that term for this story, instead of the former term.

Ten year old Sally (not her real name), tells her mother a number of times that she is being sexually molested and trafficked in their neighborhood. She is very upset and wants her mother to do something about it. It is not just run-of-the-mill sexual abuse, but has many elements of sadism and of brutality. Sometimes she is raped by many men.

Her mother does not respond to the sexual abuse in a way that will stop it from happening, but uses her knowledge of sexual abuse to research how it can effect a child psychologically. The mother does not call the police, or counseling services, or the hospital, or social services. Nothing is done at all to protect her daughter. In fact, she is isolated to her room and spanked if she cries about her experiences.

In the guise of helping her, the mother insists that her daughter not respond emotionally to the situation, but tell her rationally what is going on. She asks her daughter if she is experiencing anything unusual in her mind: voices, a pretend personality, memory loss, and so on.

Sally replies that there is no memory loss, but that she occasionally hears voices (because she likes to play, and it is like thinking something up for her dolls). She says she also pretends to have an older sister who takes care of her the times she is beaten and sexually abused by the strangers who show up in her neighborhood looking for her.

The mother tries to convince Sally that Sally has Multiple Personality Disorder, and what the symptoms are, and how it is connected to her being sexually abused. 

A number of things start happening: her toys start going missing and her clothes start going missing. In fact everything in her room starts to either go missing or ends up in places she did not put them.

Her mother, in the meantime, tells her that not knowing where her things are is part of living with Multiple Personality Disorder in that one of her "personalities" is putting things somewhere without telling the "other personalities" where they are.

The thing is, nothing was happening like this before, so she is sure that her mother is doing it to her, which gets her crying more, and since crying is not allowed, Sally has to endure more isolation.

Sally feels trapped and starts thinking about suicide (at age ten!) and tries to devise a number of plans to carry it out. The mother, however, gets wind of the plans and tells her that if she carries through with it, she will reside in Hell forever and be raped all of the time without recourse. "You think your life is so bad now?! Then think about being raped in Hell for all of eternity!"

Somehow she gets brainwashed into things going missing because of her own actions.

Eventually almost all of her toys went missing. She barely passed fifth grade because she experienced extreme anxiety in school. She was also tortured by her mother in other ways.

When she turned eleven, she stayed in her room by herself after school most days.

The family moved.

When she turned eighteen, the statute of limitations had run out for her to take the perpetrators to court. She also noticed that the phenomenon of "things going missing" had stopped, and when she went to a therapist on her own, she was not diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder.

This is just one incident. There are many sexual abuse crimes perpetrated against children across the country, as well as kidnappings of children for the purpose of sexual slavery.

While some laws on sexual abuse are changing, the extreme gaslighting by this mother made things so much worse for Sally. In fact, the mother experienced incest as a child growing up, and normalized it. The gaslighting by her mother may have been about wanting her daughter to suffer in the same way the mother had, perhaps to be trauma bonded through "similar pain." The gaslighting agenda took precedence over protecting her daughter.

This is just wrong, and it shows how victims of sexual abuse can fall through the cracks, even with  new laws passed. It would be hard for a ten year old to bring charges against many grown men, especially without the support of her mother. And it would probably be hard for a daughter to bring charges against her own mother, especially a mother who wants to hurt her daughter to this extent.

 A CHILD THROWS UP ONCE A WEEK

AND IS TOLD BY HER MOTHER THAT THE ONLY THING WRONG
WITH HER IS A WEAK STOMACH

Nora (not her real name) throws up a lot. Her other siblings do not, so this phenomenon cannot be attributed to poor cooking skills, an un-clean kitchen, cross contamination, the handling of garbage, and other issues.

The mother is unconcerned, even when the daughter complains and says she wants to see the doctor.

In fact, when she mentions the doctor, the incidences of throwing up stop for awhile.

The mother tells Nora that the fact that she stops throwing up for weeks and months at a time is a sign that there is nothing wrong with Nora's stomach, and that she just has a "weak stomach."

Nora is also the scapegoat of her family. She endures a lot of the same abuse that many scapegoats endure:

The other children insult her and kick her, and the mother doesn't intervene to stop it. "Maybe you did something to deserve it if they are all beating you up! Did you ever think about that?"

When Nora cries and is upset about the scapegoating, the mother slaps Nora hard across the face. "Stop your crying or you're going to get it! I'm capable of slapping you much, much harder, so this is your warning!"

In the beginning, Nora tries to fight back, asking her mother to consider that it isn't right to be insulted when she, herself, is not insulting towards her siblings.

The mother won't hear any of it, and tells her daughter that she has heard enough, and to "go away!" She also tells Nora that Nora is "pushing my patience."

Eventually the mother starts to insult the daughter right along with her other children, as if the mother is a peer and friend to these children (typical of narcissists), and, in fact, her mother acts like a child in these situations instead of an intelligent rational adult (that is because most narcissist's emotional maturity was arrested at about age six, so they are incapable of "grown up" reactions when their children are traumatized).

If Nora has any reaction about the escalating abuse then the reaction becomes a "punishable offense": spankings, hitting, more insults, rejection, shaming, using Nora's tears and anger for even more "punishments".

Abuse is not supposed to be reacted to or talked about in abusive homes, and I will get to why (and it's not about denial).

Nora then tries to deal with the situation by "keeping quiet" and keeping to herself in her room.

When she gets beat up by her siblings, she feels she has no recourse, and lets it happen to her. When she is insulted, she learns not to respond. When her siblings throw things at her, she stands frozen for a minute while the siblings laugh at her. When she is stolen from by her siblings, or when her siblings destroy her toys, she learns not to care about or to be invested in her things.

In the beginning, when she was quite young, Nora fought back, using some of the same defenses and tactics as her siblings, but as she got older and realized that it couldn't work, she gave up. Her dreams started to shift into wanting to have a life outside of her siblings and her mother, and exclusive of her siblings and mother.

This resulted in Nora's play becoming "imaginary", without the accouterment of toys (the toys that were constantly coming up missing or destroyed), where she imagined the dolls she used to own sitting with her, having tea with her in her room.

This concerned her mother, because Nora was talking to "mid-air", as if responding to a voice only Nora could hear. Her mother was convinced Nora was schizophrenic (which is how many abused children were labeled by psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists before the mid-1980s and Alice Miller's influence on the psychiatric establishment's labeling and treatment of traumatized children).

The only respite from the daily abuses was her father. When the father was home, he noticed that Nora was withdrawn and acting so "highly anxious" that he wanted to help her.

Eventually she gained enough courage to tell her father what was going on.

He approached his wife about the abuses (Nora's mother), but the mother acted shocked and told the father that none of it was happening, that it was all in Nora's "wild imagination" - something that child abusers do with predictability.

She denied flatly that any abuse was going on with anyone in the household, and that, in fact, Nora was the big problem, in fact a huge problem, so much so that no one wanted to be around her.

The reason for this is that narcissists and sociopaths will cover up all abuses every time - they are going to act like addicts in this regard, the ones who try to cover up their drugs at all times, except with other addicts (and only some of the time). Most narcissist's and sociopath's drug of choice is abusing others, and they will always hide their abuses except with others who like to abuse (the team approach). 

This should always be be taken into consideration when making new laws. These types of abusers will divert their abuses onto something or someone else, blame shift everything away from themselves, think up other explanations and excuses, re-word it so that it sounds socially acceptable (do their famous word salad over any and all allegations of abuse). They are heavily, heavily invested in hiding abuse, any abuse, all abuse.

They are not going to be all that different than child sex traffickers in covering up what they do to others - they will stick together, threaten their victims, isolate them, and use the victims for their own agendas. Instead of sex trafficking, it is family scapegoating and mob bullying instead.

The father, who worked really long hours, even into evenings, and wasn't around enough to monitor the situation closely, did not know what to believe or think when it came to Nora. He was given drastically different stories by Nora and her mother, and the siblings, which never added up to anything resembling a similarity of perspectives.

One time when the father was home and Nora was playing by herself in her room, the mother asked her husband to peak into Nora's room quietly, without being detected, while she was playing. The father noticed that Nora was "talking to herself" and went along with his wife about Nora needing psychiatric treatment.

So, the daughter went to a psychiatrist in the days where psychiatrists labeled just about all children who came through their doors as either neurotics or schizophrenics. Nora was not particularly open with the psychiatrist, because she felt he was an agent of her mother's (and the mother was paying the bills). At any rate, medication was prescribed.

So it was accepted that Nora was "the problem" by virtue of the fact that she had been diagnosed as a  schizophrenic. The scapegoating got much, much worse, and the stomach upsets increased, and the mother had every excuse as to why she should never listen to her daughter about anything (she justified ignoring her daughter over the "wild imaginings" of a schizophrenic).

The mother used the pills, which were prescribed as twice daily, one in the morning and one in the evening. Instead, the mother often used the pills as "punishment". So over-medicating began to be a ritual practice, and a problem.

Nora's stomach upsets increased dramatically without intervention or being taken seriously, her grades took a nose-dive, and she thought about suicide every day.

One time Nora and her other siblings were sick to their stomach all at the same period (they were sharing a bedroom at the time because construction was going on in the house). The mother comforted her siblings, and seemed to be deeply concerned, trying many remedies to get them better, but did not once show concern for Nora. In fact, when Nora complained that she was sick too, and needed the same kind of help, her mother responded "You? You're sick all of the time!"

It was at this point when Nora decided that something was not quite right about her mother. She was exposed to other mothers who did not treat their children in this way.

When she was an adult, she started to ruminate about the over-medicating and throwing up. She wondered if her mother was trying to poison her, and possibly the only reason her mother was so concerned for the other siblings is that the mother only wanted to poison Nora, and not the others.   

The father was the only saving grace, and it was the father who ultimately saved her from all of the neglect, the suicidal thoughts, the escalating abuse, and an early grave.

What happened was that he found his wife cheating and filed for divorce. He also caught her stealing his family heirlooms, stealing money, and over-medicating Nora. Nora went to live with him after the divorce. She no longer was throwing up all of the time, and the psychiatric visits were terminated. Father and daughter became very close, with father and daughter sharing "war stories" about how they were treated by Nora's mother.

Nora lived to tell the tale, but in households where there are two parents who are abusive (abusers will often band together), then Nora might not have survived.

In this story, the gaslighting, the splitting of children into golden and scapegoat, the insistence on keeping abuse quiet to the point of over-medicating and possible poisonings, should alert any authority in law that this could lead to a very tragic loss in life, whether by poisoning and over-medicating, or by suicide.

It should also show that there is no "accidental death" when it comes to this kind of household, even when "the poisons" degrade her health later on, or if she had committed suicide.

TWO GIRLS SPEND THEIR CHILDHOOD BEING SEXUALLY

 ABUSED BY AN OLDER BROTHER AND TAUGHT TO LOOK 

AT IT AS A DIVINE EXPERIENCE BROUGHT TO THEM BY GOD

Many, many abuse survivors describe their toxic families as religious cults and the family I am writing about here would seem to fall in that category. 

One thing that keeps many abusive families together, and keeps defection, estrangement and runaways from happening, is often religious indoctrination. 

Sometimes this means the father is the all-powerful figure, the all-knowing figure, and the mother is the supporter (because women are often expected to come second in many religious cult-like families). In addition, the children are taught this hierarchy as well, and are put third after the mother.

One thing that all abusive families have in common is that every member is put into a hierarchy as to "most important" to "least important." The least important, of course, would be the family scapegoat.

Most families don't seem to mind if a family scapegoat leaves the family unit, but after awhile, there is no other member to take the blame in such an easy way. In order to hide all of the misdeeds they do, they have to groom someone in the family to accept degradation, abuse and insults, and thereby be "at fault" for the misdeeds of its members. The most likely person to be a scapegoat is the empath of the family because empaths self-reflect. When the scapegoat leaves or dies, they then have to convince another child (or adult child) to be the new scapegoat. It usually doesn't work out so well because:
1. the new scapegoat hasn't been groomed throughout their childhood to take the blame. They will be much more resistant and more likely to have more arrogance than the old scapegoat, even if just a little ("I got off because I'm better than the scapegoat" kind of an attitude) ... they weren't groomed at birth to be a scapegoat like the old scapegoat was. They were groomed at birth to be "too good for scapegoating", to be better than a scapegoat. So they won't take to being the new scapegoat without a strong reaction.
2. the new scapegoat is likely to be the lost child or the mascot, both of whom have been diverting abuse, the lost child by being distracted by everything and anything else other than the family and the family's emotional atmosphere, or the mascot by diverting all of the crazy-making in the family by making it a comedy. Either one of them were already "diversionary" in their approach to abuse and scapegoating, and will further divert any scapegoat role by minimizing membership, either through gray-rocking, going "no contact" without a single explanation, or going "very limited contact." If the golden child is the only one left to give the scapegoat role to - watch out!

This is how the family with abuse in it falls apart. It can only exist as a (fake) flawless, perfectly acceptable, honorable family (even though there is abuse or incest or criminality in it) because they announce one of their own to be at fault for all of those things, and they brainwash effectively - which is why projection,  perspecticide and trying to hide evidence are the modus operandi in abusive families.

In order to let incest be a part of someone's childhood, there has to be a massive effort to hide on-going evidence and criminality, and use threats and scapegoating to allow it to continue. All of the children have to be heavily brainwashed in terms of "parents know best" and that the children do not have a say at any time as to how they are treated or how they feel. They have to be heavily projected onto ("You know you deserved this; if you didn't resist you wouldn't be in trouble now"). And last but not least, they have to be so heavily brainwashed into perspecticide (i.e. by being labeled, and having their feelings and thoughts told to them without resistance or correction from the children).

I will call this family the Spagnoli family - not their real name.

The Spagnoli family started out punishing their son (Ricky - not his real name either) when he committed incest with his two youngest sisters. Physical punishment (whippings and beatings) did not work. Long days of being isolated from the family did not work. Trying to teach him that the devil lay in his soul did not work. Insults and rejection did not work. Having him spend a lot of time in the church did not work.

So what did they do? They accepted that their son was not going to change, that he was brought to them by God for some reason that only the Lord knew, but which they had to figure out through loving acceptance and grace. They felt that by Ricky being incestuous towards his sisters would spare him from looking for sex with other children outside of the family, thereby being able to keep the family intact, never having to contemplate losing their son to prison, being able to keep all of their children via a "family secret", only privy to the family members involved.

In other words, they allowed criminal goings-on to be part of their daily life and their household.

The only problem was that one of their daughters began to suffer, and suffer greatly. She was often sad, withdrawn, scared and suicidal.

In so many ways, once criminality is normalized, it tends to dominate the atmosphere throughout the family. One can't have a pleasant family dinner when the perpetrator is sitting across the table from you, and you are frightened out of your wits by him. It begins to tarnish, shame, traumatize, escalate and "define" the family whether they want it to or not. It is like having a monster living in a closet, but letting him loose at night to prowl and attack.

While the parents did comfort her, it was often with words like "You know that he was put on earth by God, and made to be our son, and your brother. You know how he is. So you need to learn how to respond to him that will make it less painful for you. You need to embrace God in those moments to help to guide you through troubling times."

Even the potential suicide of their daughter was about how it was ordained by God, and God's will.

But it wasn't all just a "hands-off" approach. It was also about pressuring victims to keep a secret, to tolerate the abuse, to tolerate a man's domination over women, that a brother is more dominant and higher in the hierarchy than a girl.

The sexual abuse got worse too and more sadistic and deviant. Ricky met other men like himself, who liked having sex with children, and he began to traffick his own sisters. Ricky eventually ended up in prison anyway, regardless of how much he was coddled, accepted, given male privilege. Now his parents say that they are ashamed of him - shamed of him? Where is the self-shame for letting it all happen?

One of the girls became so heavily scapegoated that she could no longer tolerate her family, and went "no contact", and began to talk to outsiders. By adulthood it was too late to press charges, and she claims to have felt so frozen, frightened and incapable of much of anything beyond homeless shelters to have gone through legal proceedings regardless (PTSD does produce learned helplessness in a lot of victims, as well as frozen responses). The lack of familial attachment, the black-listing and being raped throughout her childhood has made her an advocate for assisted suicides. She feels she has no recourse when it comes to her situation. She has claimed to have done everything humanly possible to help her PTSD symptoms including all of the latest trauma therapies, pharmaceuticals, trances and meditations, getting an MSW, working with survivors, receiving every manner of therapies, and gave it all a twelve year try, but the PTSD symptoms got worse and worse to the point where the pain and fear is so chronic and excruciating she no longer has any desire to live.

She is now perusing an assisted suicide in Europe.

Does this really have to go on in this society? And we wonder why we have a "Me Too" movement ... Normalizing sexual abuse and incest in a family is how it all starts, and then it spreads out into society from there. It should also prove that "just" treating female victims for their symptoms doesn't work either.

If this doesn't prove that being dominated, abused and forced into incest has no place in a family, and that we need laws to keep it from happening, I don't know what will. It is like the parents "wasted" two of their children, one that the state has to spend a lot of resources on to incarcerate, and the other to help. Wouldn't it have been easier for the state to nip it in the bud at the get-go so that neither one of these situations would have gotten to this point?

AN ELDERLY MOTHER TELLS HER DAUGHTER THAT SHE WON'T HAVE TO STRUGGLE

FINANCIALLY AGAIN AND THAT IN RETURN FOR AN INHERITANCE

ALL THAT THE DAUGHTER HAS TO DO IS CARETAKE 

I will call the daughter Molly and the mother Gertrude (not their real names).

Molly was falling on difficult financial times. So Gertrude, the elderly mother, told her to "come home" and help with grocery shopping, sitting with her in the doctor's office, etc.

So Molly goes home and everything is fine for years until she gets a rare form of Stage Four cancer.

The cancer treatments are out of state, and so she puts her mother into a facility until she returns.

Gertrude objects wildly and tells Molly to bring her back home. Even with the staff gathering around Gertrude, trying to make her feel comfortable and secure, and Molly telling her mother she will be fine and that she will be back as soon as possible, Gertrude won't hear of it. She threatens to leave Molly out of the Will (which is extremely common for abusive parents - it is actually rare for abusive parents to not threaten it). She tells Molly that she won't get any more money and cannot use the car, that she is obligated to take Gertrude home and to keep taking care of her.

The nonsensical thing about this situation is that Gertrude can't have Molly to take care of her if Molly follows Gertrude's orders: the hallmarks of vindictive narcissism are blind spots and lack of reasoning for an agenda that will destroy both of them.

So Molly, who has very little money of her own, has to devise a way to enter cancer treatment without a vehicle and without resources. She thought about giving up and dying, but she is religious and believed that "God would show the way."

So she lived in a homeless shelter and was driven to get cancer treatments by a hospital volunteer.

She went back to Gertrude afterwards, and they both "went home", but Gertrude could not forgive her daughter and seethed at her constantly and said that Molly was taking advantage of her.

Then a few months passed and Gertrude died herself, of cancer (a little karma there).

When the Will was being read, Gertrude had never included Molly in her Will, not at any time, so the promise was false. The main recipient of the estate was Gertrude's wealthy brother, a lawyer. Molly didn't feel she could fight against it because he was a lawyer. When he died, the money went to his children, and Molly lives in a homeless shelter getting odd jobs.

So, here again, we have a situation where the state has to pick up the pieces for Molly's care, the cancer care, the PTSD therapy, the housing, and sometimes the food, especially when Molly is too disabled to work.

Trying to inflict pain and injustice is very much what Narcissistic Personality Disorder is about (and particularly Vindictive Narcissism), and especially through Last Wills and Testaments. Some laws would help concerning Wills by vindictive parents who are out to hurt their children (both life-long and after they have died).

I have heard so many stories like this, with different variations, that it leads me to believe it is way too common.

 WHEN PARENTS TRY TO SABOTAGE AND IMPRISON THEIR CHILDREN

There are so many stories from survivors of abuse about this phenomenon.

One of them is from my good friend, Lenora Thompson, who writes about her experiences in a narcissistic family on Huffington Post and an on-going blog on Psych Central.  She is estranged from her parents. I suggest reading her posts through the links I have put up. 

But there are many, many more stories where parents try to infantilize their children (i.e. not let them grow up), and punish them if they do act adult and make decisions about their own conduct, career, choice of a mate, choice about where they want to live, choice about how they want to handle a situation. The reason they are punished is because they want some autonomy and the parent does not want to give it to them. 

Some stories are much worse than Lenora's (like the Turpin parents who got away with starving their children, putting their children in chains, by homeschooling and keeping their children from being influenced by outsiders). It was so egregious that the parents paid for their actions.

A lot of them are nearly similar what Lenora went through, and also nearly similar to what the Turpin children went through - and the parents never paid for their actions. 

A lot of it comes down to extremes: you agree to be enmeshed with your parent and controlled by your parent, or you are abandoned (psychological splitting). Neither is a healthy choice for the child. If you don't trust your parent or your parent's intentions toward you, or you are put in a life threatening situation, you pick abandonment. If you don't mind being controlled, being talked down to, being lectured at, being punished as though you are a six year old, having to tell your parent every little detail of your life, putting your parent first above all other relationships, giving them flattery when they are unethical or criminal, and don't mind if they betray you over promises (which narcissists do in spades), and punish you severely at times, then you choose enmeshment. Or the parent makes the choice for you: you are deemed not to be "good enough supply" for total enmeshment and control so they abandon you and scapegoat you, or you are deemed to be the best supply for total manipulation and control so they anoint you as the favorite golden child. 

There is no love, or care, or concern, or empathy in this model. It is crippling an overwhelming number of children and their development.

It would seem to me that emotional abuse laws such as the ones they have in the UK would keep this kind of thing from happening and make perpetrators more accountable for isolating, abandoning and scapegoating underage children. Abandonment in the home basically means "indefinite time outs", isolation to your room, no contact with others, being treated like an unwanted freak, taunted and threatened, and only being let out "to keep up appearances". I have known very few cases where children got any justice. If the only thing that gets children justice is willfully starving a child, or shooting the golden child with a gun as in the Ariel Kornegay case, or willfully chaining a child to a bed full of excrement, then we are a very sad nation. 

The thing is, the Turpins very likely started out with "indefinite time outs" but since abuse escalates, and since there were so many children, it grew to chaining and taking away food privileges so that the children were starving and in dire straits by the time authorities found them.

And by the way, authorities found them in the act of the parents trying to unchain the last of the chained children, so abusive parents do try to "put a face on it" and pretend they aren't abusive.

 WHEN A PARENTAL SILENT TREATMENT TURNS INTO STALKING
AND OTHER FORMS OF ATTACK

One of the things that happens to a lot of abuse survivors is that the narcissistic parent goes silent on them (the silent treatment). If the survivor is privy to any kind of domestic violence counseling, they will learn that the silent treatment is primarily practiced by narcissists on their family members and friends. Most survivors go on to learn the traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and find that all of them apply to the parent who is using the silent treatment.

The silent treatment is the narcissist's desperate maneuver to control, to dominate and to shame others into submission to them. So their biggest expectation of you is that you will feel guilt over them having to use the silent treatment on you (note: most silent treatments are instigated over erroneous blaming incidences).

Even the general population has caught on that the silent treatment is a bullying tactic, mostly because it is being taught that way in schools these days, so in most work situations, if you ask people what the first word they think of when they think of the silent treatment, overwhelmingly they describe it as childish. So unless you are heavy on the narcissism scale or highly uneducated, you don't use it.

A lot of survivors look at the silent treatment as a wonderful blessing in disguise after they have grieved the loss of their parent, because it means the adult child doesn't have to figure out how to withdraw or go "gray rock" on a narcissist to get away from abuse (which they will be heavily advised to do if they are in any kind of counseling where the counselor is aware of abuse tactics). The withdrawing has already happened by the parent initiating it, and if anything, it seems a lot like the same kind of neglect and emotional abandonment that most child abuse survivors experience anyway - it's good to get away from the cycle of abuse, of which the silent treatment is just one part of it.

Most survivors will thrive if they go through counseling, group therapy or CoDA, and a grieving process. They will never be the same (which I explain shortly why), but many will do better than they have in the past. The ones who flounder tend to have either severe symptoms of PTSD or DID or some other mental illness, and those with a chronic disability.

But one of the things that can make healing from PTSD very difficult is more trauma.

Some survivors live in a state where they are in great fear of their walking-on-eggshells parent even if the only thing they are enduring is the silent treatment. Some narcissists are so retaliatory, vengeful, arrogant, jealous, and  entitled, and if the silent treatment isn't working for them, they try other maneuvers. In order not to incite their wrath, many survivors feel they have to "be quiet in such a way that it brings them no attention" and many survivors cannot, and do not want to be as quiet as narcissists are comfortable with.

There is also the other school of thought to "Break the silence of abuse" to keep it from happening to you again. In other words, narcissists want to abuse you in private, and they want to keep it very, very hidden, and even deny it, so by exposing it, and creating embarrassment for the narcissist, it means that you aren't so easy to abuse any more, and they will leave you alone. The power that you have over them is the truth of what they have done. If you want a quick way to cease abuse, expose it, although don't just expose it to anyone (more on that in another post) and be smart about keeping good copies of what you are exposing. However, there can be danger in this approach, depending on the level of Machiavellianism.

But, it can be especially empowering to someone who has been living under the shadow of the narcissist to finally speak the truth, show the truth, and live authentically.

But a lot of narcissists try to bring down their offspring and wreak destruction in other ways, particularly since the silent treatment has a planned obsolescence and isn't all that effective in terms of giving up your autonomy to them ... especially since the silent treatment means you will be living autonomously.

In my own personal life, I can personally attest to being anesthetized to the silent treatment to a point where I don't care whether it is given to me or not. A lot of survivors feel the same way. In some ways, that is not a good sign. When we are no longer sensitive to how others treat us socially, especially in that way, or what they think of us, something has probably snapped in our psyche, and since the silent treatment is so prevalent among parents today, something has snapped in society as well.

Anesthesia or numbing of feelings to the point where you don't know what you feel, is a PTSD reaction. Too much silent treatment in childhood over erroneous things creates it. However, where being anesthetized is useful is that many narcissists will try to make you feel obligated to answer all of their questions. A good answer to that would be: "Silence seems to be a tradition in (our family, or work place, or our marriage) and since it is, and you have used it, I have taken the silent approach." Or "I don't want to respond. You cannot give yourself the rights to silence without giving me those same rights in return."

Of course, they will try to gaslight you and try to make you believe they weren't giving you the silent treatment at all, that you misunderstood them, but there are so many reasons why you should not talk about any personal topics with narcissists anyway (I have outlined a lot of the reasons in other posts).

If anything destroys a survivor of family scapegoating the most, it is in not being able to feel our feelings the way we used to, the healthy way. Emotions can reach a point of epic invalidation, which is what many narcs say they want from us in the first place (they complain that their victims are too sensitive), but it happens sometimes anyway in the process of abuse tactics like the silent treatment. It is like the orphans in war torn countries who stop crying because they know that no one will help them or love them.

Some of us don't know how to feel any more. And in some ways the inaccessibility to feelings is similar to what narcissists go through with an exception ... The difference is that, for most survivors, empathy and hypervigilence are constant, but so many other feelings go away.  Love takes on a different meaning in terms of trust, but it is still felt. Narcissists are the opposite: empathy, fear, ability to love, ability to self-reflect, ability to be enlightened through relationships went away a long time ago, but anger, jealousy, hatred, and blame stay.

If a parental silent treatment or discard isn't enough for survivors to deal with, and to heal from, and to move on from, a lot of abusive parents break the silent treatment, sometimes for revenge, so then the survivor has to go through more trauma.

If anything scares survivors more than the silent treatment, it is being re-contacted by the parents who initiated it.

By the time the parent tries to reconnect, the child abuse survivor knows that the reappearance isn't a good sign, or comes with good intentions. The parent has willfully put their child through trauma, and abandonment, and shown no empathy about it. They also show that they cannot be trusted in most cases, sacrificing relationships with their children for power and control, and many of these parents have been running smear campaigns against the child they abandoned, and trying to hide evidence that they are abusive (many try to "steal the evidence" or "hide the evidence"). Adult children who have survived it all (and it does take a tremendous effort to survive it) do not want any of it back again.

Often the first thing an abusive parent will try to do upon re-connection is to blame and shame their child. After a long silent treatment, it is impossible to listen to, to take seriously, to have any desire to understand, to feel anything about (because of the anesthetizing that has taken place) - most adult children in these situations tell their parent to go away, or they excuse themselves from the conversation.

I think if psychologists did a study on how a silent treatment by a parent effected their adult child, I would bet that feelings of guilt inside the adult child start to subside by week two, and then by six months are very faint, and by year one or two, they have no feelings of guilt whatsoever, and especially if the adult child is in therapy.

When I say "guilt", it is not for anything the child did wrong, but many children, including adult children, will feel guilty for upsetting the narcissist, even though they didn't mean to.

Therefor, I would bet the silent treatment is not just a killer of relationships, it is a killer of certain feelings too.

So, since narcissists are very entitled people, they can't hear or respect "go away". Many are also incredibly vengeful, so "go away" means, to them, a reason to retaliate even more, and in a way that will destroy more of their adult child. Let's face it: the big excuse for a lot of reappearances is that they can't stand it that their child is happy, or successful (most of these parents show up when their adult child is experiencing one or the other, after all - they want their revenge fantasies to "stick").

I hear and read all kinds of stories of parents who go to great lengths to attack after a long silent treatment.

One of the first areas where many abusive vindictive parents attack is their adult child's profession or reputation in the work place. For instance, parcels of mail arrive at the place of employment, and there's usually something in the package that they know will "spook" the adult child. Then more insidious infiltration starts. Some abusive parents make scenes at their child's work place, or even take the boss out for lunch to talk about how their adult child is crazy and that it must be hard to deal with a subordinate with so many mental and emotional problems.

This is because lots of abusive parents begin the gaslighting of their scapegoat child in childhood, trying to get a diagnosis from anyone who will give their child something other than PTSD, and often they are successful if they bring them to enough psychologists. This was especially true pre-1980s, that if the parent "reported" aberrant childhood behavior that was in line with autism, aspherger's, schizophrenia or bipolar, their child could be diagnosed with the disorder the parent wanted. I have covered this before.

Granted there are laws about harassment, and restraining orders, but depending on where you live, cops only take these laws seriously in variable degrees depending on their own attitudes. Police are especially not likely to take laws seriously in areas where religions and teaching forgiveness are a big part of the culture, or where the authoritarian family is revered.

If a stepparent is attacking an adult child, police are a lot more likely to take allegations seriously, but unless a stepparent is involved in the attacks, it can sometimes be exceptionally hard to get protection.

Also, it is not illegal for a parent to take an adult child's boss out to lunch and bad-mouth their child to the extent where their boss will start to think about whether you are problematic for the business. A lot of adult children get fired from their parent meddling in their professions, their relationships are destroyed by the parent, their children are triangulated, they are often stolen from, and stalked, their places of residence are sometimes under attack from break-ins or the parent gains access through grandchildren, their pets go missing, they are disinherited, you name it. I have heard it all, and some abusive parents practice all of it and more.

Abusive parents are often willing to put everything on the line and to destroy everything in their child's life to resume the power and control they used to have, and which they feel they still deserve, which is why "no contact" is not the panacea to everything having to do with abusers.

For psychologists reading this, imagine someone who is out for revenge coming to your workplace, talking down about you and trying to get your clients to go elsewhere. And then imagine that it works. And that the cops really don't want to get involved. And judges aren't sympathetic. And people are telling you to just make up with the person doing this to you.

And on top of it all, that wouldn't be the end of it: your children would be targeted, your spouse, your friends, and so on. Now I hope you understand why something else has to change other than "going no contact" and not responding to attacks.

If you are a lawmaker, consider that a parent causing their child to lose a job means having to pay unemployment, perhaps therapy under Medicaid, prescription drugs under Medicaid for PTSD, perhaps providing shelter too in some circumstances where the parent really went off the rails, and if the unemployed adult child with PTSD is left out of the parent's Will, then providing government subsidized elderly care and housing for a long period of time.

I hope I have illustrated how life long child abuse is a drain on society, not just on a lone sole victim. There is no Veteran's Administration for Child Abuse Victims with PTSD. Society picks up the fall-out from it.

Finally a video by a psychologist (Dr. Todd Grande) about why narcissism is so dangerous.

While the video focuses on "work situations" with narcissists

and why companies and workers pay a huge price,

he asks that the general public get involved in changing laws,

the first I have seen touch at all on this (and I do a lot of research on this topic):

This next video is also from the same doctor. He talks about the signs

of vindictive narcissism, something I have focused on in this post. 

He states that vindictive narcissists go through life with revenge fantasies:

the 10 signs of vindictive narcissism (my own notes):

1. dominance - vindictive narcissists want to be in charge and cannot stand it if they aren't

2. loves to have power - they love to hurt others (but should not have power, and tend to pick on people who they think are less powerful than they are)

3. not very good at manipulation - they are not good at gaslighting and most people can figure them out; they enact feelings of revenge

4. perceives they have been insulted or that their power is challenged - they perceive rejection; they cannot accept positive criticism no matter how gently it is said; this means they have trouble developing and learning and are stuck in their ways. "They are trapped in a prison of narcissism, but their goal is not to escape, but to imprison other people as well."

5. "Their plans to get revenge are sloppy, childlike and simplistic, much like the school yard bully, motivated by resentment, and jealousy, the perceived insult or injury is intolerable to them." They experience narcissistic rage to make another person suffer. "They are willing to destroy themselves to destroy others."

6. Development of revenge schemes happen during their replaying over a perceived insult to their character.

7. A tremendous amount of time is put into revenge plots. Satisfaction for the narcissist comes when they can enact their revenge, but the satisfaction is short-lived. In the end, their pain and distress outweigh the benefits. Still they don't learn anything; they keep repeating their behavior.

8. They display emotional dysregulation and high neuroses - they often move onto other victims, but if they feel the revenge wasn't "good enough", they can chase the same person over and over again. They feel that the revenge has to play out in the way they planned. This doesn't bode well for victims who are always the target. But, it can also push a victim to take action such as getting a restraining order.

9. They believe they are the victim (of the perceived insult) - they believe that revenge is warranted and necessary.

10. Two vindictive narcissists eventually meet: The attempts at revenge made by the vindictive narcissist can be considered insulting by another vindictive narcissist - escalating into physical altercations (especially true if the other vindictive narcissist is a spouse or a child - it is especially common for a vindictive narcissist to have a child who is also a vindictive narcissist).  

This next video is also from the same doctor talking about typical "normal" signs of being

exposed to narcissists at work, in a partnership or in an organization.

I list them after the video for a quick re-cap. So, imagine being a child of a narcissist

or in a family of narcissists and sociopaths.  

Chronic physical symptoms from PTSD can manifest too 

(those aren't listed in this particular video, but there are other sources for that information):

what symptoms you will notice if you are exposed to a narcissist for several months up to two years (my own notes):

1. general feelings of being unwanted, hated and despised

2. exaggerated startle response - even in normal activities

3. being fearful, nervous, worried about making decisions

4. nervousness and anxiety about making a mistake

5. anxious about them leaving, followed by feeling much better when they do leave, and even more anxiety when they are returning

6. self-talk: "You deserve the narcissist": that you are stuck with the narcissist as a punishment

7. you don't want to tell the narcissist your good news and avoid communicating your successes

8. envy over relationships that are loving and caring

9. contemplating their manipulative behavior: replaying arguments, but not following through

on calling a narcissist out to avoid their rage (resignation)

....... 

He also talks about how narcissism developed in the narcissist in early childhood 

(his advice is primarily directed at people who are self-blaming 

and think that they may have caused the narcissist to be vindictive)

If you are survivor of abuse, I highly recommend this video titled

"Gaslighting Narcissist/Things Narcissists Say/Crazy Making Communication"

from Life Coach, Lisa Romano

And this video from psychologist, Dr. Ramani Durvasula entitled

"Why you should NEVER ask a narcissist 'why'?"

hint: it is because you'll get a gaslighting, word salad diversionary answer
(you have to find the truth in other ways) ...
more on this video will be forthcoming in another one of my posts:

©JustBeingNamaste.tumblr.com:

from Democrats.com

from www.brainwashingchildren.com:

sign a petition:

the first petition I have seen of its kind: Protection for Victims of Narcissistic Sociopath Abuse (proposed are the same laws about abuse that the UK has for the USA): story here and here or sign the actual petition here

further reading:

Why is Child Abuse on the Rise? Examining the recent rise in child maltreatment, abuse and deaths - by Kimberly Key for Psychology Today

Domestic Violence: Hurting the Economy as Well as the Victims - Healthline article

Child Abuse And The Law - by William Suter for the Hoover Institution at Stanford University

What is Child Abuse Under Iowa Law? - Iowa Department of Human Services

other states and countries (or look yours up on Google):

The UK

France (also a new law HERE and HERE)

Oregon

New York

California

What Is Considered Child Abuse? When does parental discipline cross the line and become a reportable incident? (my note: discusses that each state has different laws) - by Elise M. Howard M.A. for Psychology Today

When Parents Still Abuse Their Adult Children - by Lynne Beisner

How Lack of Love in Childhood Robs Us of Love in Adulthood - by Darius Cikanavicius for Psych Central

Twenty Years of Progress in Advocating for a Child’s Right to Counsel (There is much work to be done before the promise of full legal rights for dependent children is realized) - by Amy Harfield for The American Bar Association

Parents Cut Off by Adult Children: Clueless? Are these parents the innocent victims of mean-spirited, unreasonable offspring? - by David M. Allen M.D.

Meet the Machiavellians (These master manipulators are natural con artists and dangerous companions) - by Dale Hartley Ph.D., MBA for Psychology Today

What is Machiavellianism in Psychology? - from Harley Therapy Counselling Blog

excerpt:

Machiavellianism will tend to have many of the following tendencies:
* only focused on their own ambition and interests
* prioritise money and power over relationships
* come across as charming and confident
* exploit and manipulate others to get ahead
* lie and deceive when required
* use flattery often
* lacking in principles and values
* can come across as aloof or hard to really get to know
* cynical of goodness and morality
* capable of causing others harm to achieve their means
* low levels of empathy
* often avoid commitment and emotional attachments
* can be very patient due to calculating nature
* rarely reveal their true intentions
* prone to casual sex encounters
* can be good at reading social situations and others
* lack of warmth in social interactions
* not always aware of the consequences of their actions
* might struggle to identify their own emotions

Recognizing Types of Child Abuse and How to Respond - Healthline article

The Persistent Pain of Family Estrangement  (new research into why parents and children split, and the long-term impact) - by Terri Apter, Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Study Identifies 8 Components of Family Estrangements (A new study identifies why and how adult children break off from their parents) - by Vinita Mehta, Ph.D., Ed.M.

6 Common Traits of Narcissists and Gaslighters (How narcissists and gaslighters emotionally manipulate and exploit victims) - by Preston Ni, M.S.B.A. for Psychology Today

5 Types of Extreme Narcissists (and How to Deal With Them) They're on a spectrum, an expert says, and some are far tougher than others - by Joseph Burgo, Ph.D. for Psychology Today (discusses Vindictive Narcissism)

How Extreme Narcissism Wreaks Havoc On Your Life And What To Do About It - by Cathy Caprino, marriage counselor and family therapist

Vindictive Narcissists ... You can frighten a vindictive narcissist and let his paranoia run amok – or lure him with promises of narcissistic supply  - by Sam Vaknin

Child Abuse and Neglect: All About Victim’s Rights and Restitution - by Charles R. Gueli, Esq.

Survivors Sue Child Sex Abusers in Droves Under New NY Law - by Carrie N. Baker for Ms Magazine (laws have come this far finally, and it may have been started by an Emma Willard student who hung up billboards, so it is not too late to push for other kinds of laws for survivors of abuse and neglect)

Some reasons why child abusers need to be more accountable:

Long-Term Narcissistic Abuse Can Cause Brain Damage - by Kim Saeed for Psych Central

Long-Term Narcissistic Abuse Can Cause Brain Damage - from Narcissists News website

Neuroscience: The shocking impact narcissistic abuse has on the brain - by Lachlan Brown for Hack Spirit

Brain Scans Reveal How Badly Emotional Abuse Damages Kids - from the administrators of Healthy Food House who have written their article from research sources done by the Daily Mail (UK), Metro (UK), and New York Post (US)

What It’s Like to Be a Complex Trauma Survivor of Narcissistic Abuse - by Shahida Arabi

8 Common, Long-Lasting Effects of Narcissistic Parenting ... What happens when you live in the shadow of a narcissistic parent? - by Craig Malkin Ph.D. for Psychology Today

What Are the Short- and Long-Term Effects of Emotional Abuse? - a Healthline article

Why Survivors Of Malignant Narcissists Don’t Get The Justice They Deserve - by Shahida Arabi for The Huffington Post

The Real Effect of Narcissistic Parenting on Children ... Narcissists raise children who suffer from crippling self-doubt - by Karyl McBride Ph.D. for Psychology Today

Healing from Complex-PTSD in the Aftermath of Narcissistic Abuse - by Andrea Schneider, MSW, LCSW