A Huge Leap Forward in The Healing Process
(A big thank you to Lynda in Australia for her inspiration for this blog)
Frequently the dynamic with a narcissist, or someone with negative energy, is one where they have all the power and control. Or at least they think that they have.
Having a narcissistic parent, and the toxic family setup that results from that, is all about the narcissist having complete control over each family member.
Every family member is focused on survival, because they know that this depends entirely on the narcissist.
The dynamic is that the narcissist has the power of life and death, over their partner as well as their children.
The narcissist’s family revolves around the narcissist, no-one else’s needs or desires matter. The focus is to keep the narcissist as stable and ‘happy’ as possible, that way each family member stands a better chance of survival.
It’s not a team effort.
Each family member is willing to sacrifice another family member to ensure their own survival. This includes the narcissist’s adult partner, the children’s other parent. They will be willing to sacrifice their own children to keep themselves safe.
This dynamic is essential for the narcissist, it keeps them in their favoured position, in control.
No-one within the family gets settled into their role, assigned by the narcissist. This could give them a feeling of security, and perhaps of safety.
The narcissist is invested in keeping each family member unsure of where they stand with them. The family are kept in a state of trauma and fear because of the narcissist’s erratic and unstable behaviour.
In this atmosphere of fear within their family, the narcissist thrives.
They have everyone exactly where they want them.
The narcissist depends on this dynamic and will do whatever they have to to maintain it.
However, things may start to shift.
Perhaps you are fed up with the situation, or you’ve made the discovery about narcissistic personality disorder.
Whatever it is, as soon as you start to change, which you will as soon as you start to question things, the narcissist knows.
Then the fight begins.
Don’t forget if this is a narcissistic parent, they’ve known you since birth. They’ve learnt how to provoke you, to make you afraid and to exploit your weaknesses. And over your lifetime, they’ve perfected it.
Once the narcissist has sensed this shift in you, even if you’ve not made any outward behavioural changes, they will seek to claw back power and control.
This is when their abuse ramps up.
The narcissist is only interested in 100% power and control over you.
The previous dynamic suited them, they had the power and control they wanted.
It was pretty crap for you, trapped in self-doubt, no self-confidence and living in fear. But the narcissist doesn’t care about how it was for you.
The narcissist will all their tricks to try to get you back into your old role. These tricks would also have been perfected over the years, and no doubt worked very effectively.
Their priority is to remind you to be afraid of them. This is at the very foundation of their power and control over you.
So, they may remind you of how reliant you are on them, or a time when you did rely on them.
Or else they may provoke one of your fears, like a fear of not having enough money, to get you back into your old role.
Not once will they show they actually care about how you feel, and why the dynamic may have shifted for you. In short, they don’t care, it’s all about how you serve them and making sure that this continues.
This may be their tactic, to make it appear that they care and want to sort it out.
But don’t be fooled, the ‘conversation’ will be full of their old tricks. It’ll be only meant to confuse, distract, twist things, make you doubt yourself, blame you and create the maximum drama for attention for them.
Whatever they do, it will only be about re-establishing the old dynamic and their power and control over you.
No doubt, you would have been here before.
A narcissist’s behaviour is predictable and this pattern would have been repeated over the years.
The same old routine that you’ve been in before, whether or not you recognise it. Take a moment, to see if you can see it having been played out before.
Previously, you would have been catapulted back into fear, the childhood fear of abandonment coming back to you. This fear prevails into your adulthood, until you process and heal it.
This fear would have been the reason why you allowed the dynamic to continue, perhaps even apologising to the narcissist, and ignoring or denying their bad behaviour. You were desperate to get things back as they were.
However, I believe that each of these incidences add up. And there comes a point, whether or not you are aware, when it all becomes too much to bear.
You are suddenly not quite so willing to revert back to the old dynamic. You don’t want to be treated in this way anymore.
However, the narcissist is dependent on this dynamic. And they will do whatever they have to to try to get you back in your role.
The more you take a stand, the more resistance you get from the narcissist.
If you expect them to take responsibility for their actions, apologise and change, this becomes a battle.
The only answer is simple, but yet very difficult to do: to refuse to participate.
The more you engage with them, in this battle, the more attention and energy they get from you. This is what the narcissist needs to survive and is very important to them.
It is so easy to be caught up in the emotion of the situation.
Narcissistic parents know that their super power lies with the need that their children have for their love and approval. And this is what they use against you, for the rest of their life, unless you realise it.
The greater need you have for your narcissistic parent, the greater your emotions, and the greater possibility for attention and energy for the narcissist. This is the drama that they thrive on.
However, I believe that you reach a point when you are no longer able to see the relationship in the same way. Afterall, you will have been here several times before, and it was never resolved to your satisfaction.
As the narcissist ramps up their abuse, in their desperate attempts to claw back their power and control, something becomes clearer.
This is the moment when you realise, that they will never change. And that, sadly, they will never be what you want them to be.
What you are asking for is not unreasonable, IF you are dealing with a loving and caring parent who wants a good relationship.
However, to the narcissist, any shift in dynamic is NOT acceptable. They have to have all the power and control or nothing.
The moment when you are not willing to take their treatment anymore, is when the dynamic shifts forever.
There is no return from this point because you value yourself (and your family) more than pleasing the narcissist. The fear of your future with them is greater than your fear of losing them.
In this moment, they have lost their power over you.
It won’t feel like it!
Those old familiar toxic feelings of self-doubt and blaming yourself will come to the fore. They are the habits of a lifetime, and difficult to break.
No contact is essentially when you say ‘No more’, because you see the futility of trying with someone so determined to be vile, unpleasant and with no intention of ever changing.
These feelings are especially present at the beginning of no contact.
The self-doubt and blaming yourself have been encouraged and nurtured in you since birth. That’s what kept you from going no contact years ago.
Mixed in with the inevitable self-doubt of making the break in the relationship will be relief and feelings of being justified.
The narcissist will send messages or their flying monkeys, to try to catch you in that moment of self-doubt or feeling vulnerable.
There will never be any concern for you, from the narcissist or their flying monkeys. It will only be about how confused, hurt, sad or angry the narcissist is.
Time and space away from the narcissist, and anyone toxic, is essential to your healing process.
With enough time, and peace, it is possible to come to the point when you realise that the narcissist (and their flying monkeys) have lost their power over you.
You may never be aware of it, but it happens when the fear is gone.
This fear goes deep, the fear of abandonment. And with it the fear of the narcissist.
As a child, this person had the ability to control life or death. Your life or death. And it was beyond your control. The only thing you could do was anything that you had to survive.
For me, I believed my father was like a god in his power. If I did or said anything against him, I feared him finding out and punishing me for it. It was always in the back of my mind, even as an adult.
The moment my fear vanished, was when I put my son above him. I had a greater priority and responsibility.
That’s not to say I didn’t feel the fear sometimes.
With time that fear faded.
The moment when you say ‘no, more’ is when you step into your power. When you take back your power from the narcissist.
The narcissist won’t like it and they won’t accept it. But actually it’s not up to them! This is what usually results in no contact.
Everything you do from that point is to process it all and to heal.
The bargaining, anger, desire for revenge and sadness that comes up after no contact, is a normal part of the grieving process. I believe that you have to feel these things, for the injustice you faced and to acknowledge the abuse that you suffered.
There comes a point, difficult to believe at the start, when you realise you don’t feel any anger, sadness or anything towards the narcissist anymore.
This indifference is not just towards your narcissistic parent, it’s to any narcissist you are unfortunate enough to experience.
The dynamic has shifted not just with your parent, but with everyone. You will always be 10 steps ahead of them, they can’t keep up with you!
This is a point to celebrate, because it means that you have truly stepped into your power. And your bright and beautiful future awaits you.
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Originally published at https://comebackbrighter.com on April 12, 2022.