Swiroset.com

This past January, my mother finally admitted that I was the real problem in her life. She made this statement passionately as she held out her arm and pointed at me dramatically. She told me that I had turned the family and even her doctors against her by telling her things that were not true. She went on to say that she had never been able to make him love her.

I decided that this was the last time I would accept her attempt to blame and punish me for the problems she had created in her life. I also decided that I would stop trying to win the love that I had always sought from her, the love of a mother for a daughter.

He had long felt that she was a narcissist, but her behavior did not quite fit the normal description of a narcissist. She had some of the characteristics of her, like needing extreme amounts of attention, just being able to see a situation as it affected her, and believing that she was always right. But a lot of what she did was more behind the scenes than you normally see in the common description of a narcissist.

So, I started reading and watching videos about narcissistic parents. From blogs, books and videos I learned that there are two types of narcissists. The grand, or open, is the one most people know about. But then there’s the covert, or, as some say, the vulnerable narcissist. As I began to learn about covert narcissists, it was as if my world had always been slightly tilted and suddenly it was upright.

From everything I read and heard, I learned that writing helped with recovery. That seemed like the perfect recipe to me because I’m a writer. Therapists and coaches advised that victims of narcissistic abuse should tell, in writing or verbally, the narcissist about the abuse and how it had affected them. However, the advice was not to send the letter or confront the abuser. The suggested method was to tell an empty chair or journal or write and then burn a letter. Another suggestion from some of the therapists and coaches was to describe what the abuse victim would have liked to receive from one of her parents. So, I started writing a fictional story. As a writer this came naturally to me and provided me with the best way to express pain, frustration and longing. I used some of my experiences and some that I had observed. I soon realized that what I was writing might help other victims of narcissistic parental abuse to recognize their torture. And so, what began as a therapeutic writing became a book:Torture or breeding, a growth story. It’s a comparison of the torture of having a narcissistic mother and an enabling father and the validation and support that comes from loving parents.

You can certainly buy my book, and of course I would like you to, but to recover, you will have to do your own work. I strongly recommend that you write. It doesn’t matter what you write: a letter, a story, a stream of consciousness, a prayer, whatever works for you. You see that there is a unique connection between your brain and your hand. If you write about your experiences, it helps you acknowledge the torture you have experienced. The hand-brain connection forces monsters out of the darkness and into the light, where they can be dealt with. I’m not a therapist or a coach, I’m a storyteller. I am not a therapist or life coach, so I do not advise or coach anyone except to encourage the use of writing as part of recovery.