YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

Recently I heard Paul Gilmartin talking about his mother and their relationship, and I was struck by how anguished he sounded describing her NPD behaviors, and he seems to despair of ever achieving an understanding or some kind of healthy relationship with her.
Let me say that speaking from a lot of my own experience, that will never happen, and I think he should let it go (and her), otherwise I think that after she passes away ( he said she was 85 years old ), he will carry an unnecessary heavy burden of unfulfillment or loss.

I am not any kind of mental health professional or expert, but I have an intimate understanding of NPD as my father is one of these people.
I think I should first say that I think narcissism is one of those concepts that a lot of people don't fully understand, or more specifically, many people are not aware of the difference between narcissism and NPD. The difference is huge. Many people are narcissistic or have narcissistic traits without having NPD.

From the wiki page which has the DSM-5 diagnostic criteria:

Includes five or more of the following characteristics:

Is grandiose in evaluation of self without demonstrating superior achievements
Concentrates on fantasies of great success, influence, intelligence, beauty or perfect love
Believes in own "specialness" and expects to associate with high prestige people or institutions
Demands to be overly admired
Feels entitled to special treatment and to have demands acceded to
Exploits others to achieve own ends
Lacks empathy for others
Frequently envious of others or assumes others are envious of him or her
Is arrogant in attitudes and behavior

You can probably think of many narcissistic people who have none or only one or two of these traits or behaviors.

In particular, with regards to my father, I have come across a term I find to be very apt in describing him: “malignant narcissist”. This is not a term used in the DSM, but has been used by a number of experts/authors that I have run across. The main additional feature of a malignant narcissist from what I can gather is the presence of sadistic tendencies. I feel like people don’t believe me when I talk about this part, like I am just angry at my father and I want to really beat him up when I talk about him, but it is just the truth; he derives pleasure from hurting and domineering others. I have seen him do this countless times to others, to animals, and most of all to myself. I don’t think people like him actually enjoy the hurting of others but rather they greatly enjoy the feeling of power that comes from it, it’s a subtle difference that probably doesn’t matter to a victim but I think it matters for understanding these people.

Crucial to understanding people with NPD is understanding how capable and functional they are.
For most of my life, my father has been very successful, when I was a kid he worked selling very expensive electronics and hardware to the military and other big corporate clients. He has always been a very capable salesman, now that he is retired he is still making decent money selling real estate. He was making six figures throughout a lot of the 1980’s and 1990’s. And at this same time, I would often go to school in stained T-shirts and jeans with holes in them ( this was before holey jeans were hip). Because in his mind he was and is very begrudging to spend anything on anyone else if he can get out of it, or put it off. He would make all kinds of promises, like helping me out with buying my first car or college. My mother (they divorced when I was ten), who never had his kind of money, helped me with thousands of dollars for schooling and my cars, but my father has never given me a cent for these things.

A huge reason that NPD’s are functional is very simple: they very rarely act out their nasty behaviors outside their family. They are not stupid, my father is well into the genius range. To an NPD, a family is a captive audience and hostages who can never get away rolled into one. They are textbook abusers and predators, my mother suffered terrible abuse as a child, and my father homed in on her vulnerability instinctively. She was stronger than he thought though and she finally dumped him. I got sick of his shit too at sixteen, when we had an argument at the dinner table and he punched me in the face and then started kicking me on the floor after I fell out of my chair. He had always fostered an atmosphere of not even speaking to him at all by being so domineering. For years he had sat next to me at the dinner table, his face less than three feet from mine, and he would stare at me with abject, naked hatred. I guess it was all the resentment, because I always did badly in school, I did badly with friends and social life in general, I did badly with everything in fact, because I was in constant torment and always under attack. I walked around in a semi-dissociated state most of the time, desperately trying to pretend none of it mattered and it was all no big deal, which of course would come off as aloofness. He was oblivious to any of my unhappiness, of course, he just knew he was not getting what he wanted out of me to a satisfactory degree.

At the dinner table I told him I was sick of him, which was what got me the beating. He had always beat me from as early as when I was six or seven. He would usually use his thick leather belt, I think because this gave him the appearance of some kind of propriety, but if time was of the essence he would use his hands. And he would not hold back with that belt, snapping it smartly to add to the terror, I remember him often pulling my skinny ass out of bed after midnight when he would come home from a business trip, I was eight or ten years old, and I remember him grunting, hitting me as hard as he could with that belt, me in my underwear. If I covered my butt, he would beat my thighs, and when I covered them, he beat my back. It is very easy to be inhuman to people if you don’t actually consider them human, if you just consider them a cog or a creature that only exists by your leave and for your whim.

Usually what got me my beatings was a bad school report. And I was troubled emotionally and socially from as far back as I can remember, and I always did badly in school. Which meant that every report card, for grades 2 to 10, I got a beating. And every half term report. And every progress report. And every call from the teacher or vice principal, of which there were many. He never gave up on the beatings. Even though a moron could see they were not working, were doing the opposite of working, he never gave up. At some point looking back, I realized that he did not beat me because he thought that this would make me shape up somehow, he beat me because he wanted to beat me. He eschewed any other approaches, like a counselor, or a therapist, or clergy, or whatever. He was not interested in that.

Anyway after getting punched at the dinner table, I told him I wanted to leave and move in with my mother. And even though I was a very confused kid with negative self-esteem, I did on some level realize what he was about, and I kept bugging him and bugging him about it for weeks, though he as always of course tried to just let things blow over and go back to business as usual; I did not let it go and he finally let me go to live with my mother. The explanation as to why he would give up this control over me was revealed in his demeanor: in his mind my mother was so much dumber than him, and could provide me with such a lower standard of living that I would surely regret leaving him. He had an air of ,”it will serve him right” in his voice.

I kept up a semblance of a relationship with my father through my twenties and thirties, because of the simple fact that I just didn’t realize what he was, as I’m sure many people are fooled by NPDs for years. They are very good at passing for human. They know how people are supposed to act and they can mimic caring or decent behavior towards others. I have even realized that behavior that looks like human behavior can often only appear that way, probably largely because we want it to. Like when my father would give me something that sounded like helpful advice that a father would give his son, looking back I realized that his attitude and most importantly his motivation was something else. He would give “advice” or tell cautionary tales only if it made him sound like he was very wise, clever, sagely, or worldly. He would never say something to me along the lines of, “now don’t do this, do that, and it will probably work out better for you, son”, he had no interest. Also, sometimes when we would disagree on the phone, like once I told him that I did not want to travel to his house for Christmas as was usual every other year, he kind of got weepy and hurt sounding. He would do this sometimes, but I eventually realized that this was his last resort. He could no longer use violence to control me. And he eventually found out he could not hold money over my head, either; once on the phone when he didn’t like what I said, he said to me, “do you want to be cut off financially from this family?”. His tone was impossibly cold and nasty, like something out of a bad soap opera. So, often he had to resort to getting sobby with me, which he was not above. I think that much of his upset was real, losing control bothered him a lot.

Anyway, so five years ago, I just came to the final awareness of how the gears really turn in his head, and I stripped away all the delusions I carried about him such as: “He’s not that bad.” Or “He’s changed, or gotten better”. He is the same son of a bitch he has always been and always will be, he’s just old now, and when I am around him the idea of trying to physically intimidate me does not enter his head only because the thought of fighting with someone who is not half your size anymore is terrifying to him.

I could go into the details of how I finally got to this point, but maybe I will go into that later as this post is getting very long. I just hope that people who are unaware of NPD get some kind of idea of it from this post. Some of the people talking and writing about malignant narcissism propose that it might be related to sociopathy, and this makes a lot of sense to me. If there is someone in your life that you honestly and soberly think is really like this, my very strong advice is to cut them off, get rid of them. Stop getting upset over them, and wringing your hands at how they act towards you. Stop it. I don’t care if they are your spouse, or your parent or whatever, do yourself a favor, save yourself years of torment, and leave them behind.

Hugs. I am sorry you had to deal with a father so cruel and uncaring. Sometimes cutting out people like that completely from your life is the only way to proceed.

If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend Toxic Parents by Susan Forward. It helped me a lot in the way I approach contact with and set boundaries with my mother.

HI,
I 100% totally get what you went through and dealt with. My father is NPD also. Minus the major physical stuff that you got more of than me, the hitting stopped for me around age 5-6 (was a belt though...), I think because eventually he didn't need to hit, I was too scared of him. My younger brothers got hit a few times. The worst of it is all of that verbal/emotional abuse. His rages were soul destroying and would last for hours while my mother just stood there.

I am also at the place of total cut off. It is really the only way. NPD is very different from being a narcissist, a whole other level of crazy. Your are right, they are great at tricking other people outside the family. My father has quite the entourage of followers. I do think that there is a sociopathic element to their behavior. There was this realization for me too, that he wasn't "better" or nicer, things didn't change, just his methods did because he no longer had power over me. They resort to a quieter method of manipulation to get what they want. People are just a source to get whatever they need and no one is human, not even their children. It sad that they can never get better but what is hard is undoing the damage done by this kind of parent. There is a sick enmeshment that occurs that has to be broken, this in my opinion is complete cut off.

Thank you for writing about your experiences. I think there are a lot more survivors of parents like this out there and you telling your story will help them see what is really going on in their lives. They can stop feeling like the crazy one and go get help.

I hope that you are doing better and remember you are strong!

Thanks Leebeeboo, I have heard about that book, I will check it out, the Amazon reviews are very promising sounding.

And thanks littlecat, I can tell from your post that you know exactly what I'm talking about, and my sympathies to you for that and what you went through with your father. Yes my father is also very capable of being abusive in ways other than physically.

I have a strong desire to reach out and tell people about NPD, because I am bothered by the insidious and deceitful nature of it; the way people can struggle with someone like this for years and years without being aware that the person they are dealing with does not think and feel at all like they do, or like any reasonably healthy, decent person for that matter. It results in so much frustration and grief and wasted time.
I mean, what if most people were familiar with NPDs? Then they could not get away with all of their shit; they would be left alone with no one to use and screw over constantly, maybe they would actually be motivated then to improve or seek help?

I don't know though, my feeling is that they are extremely recalcitrant or virtually unable to recognize the way they are; it's a major component of their disorder that they can't accept fault or acknowledge that they might not be perfect.

Reading all this breaks my heart. I am in a horrendous ( now going on TWO YEAR ) divorce with a man who is BPD / NPD. To me he is a simply a sociopath. My children are 4 & 6 and I left because I knew I couldn't survive the emotional and sexual abuse I was subjected to with him and I cannot stomach my children seeing it. Unfortunately, like many narcissists, my husband is very successful financially. He has the surface stuff down. But he is truly a sick individual. BUT, he doesn't physically abuse me and my children.....so in the eyes of the family court, there is no problem. Despite his blatant perjury, lying, stalking, and flat out illegal behavior. It's so difficult. I am literally fighting for my children's lives but I'm losing. He has taken everything I own and I struggle I put food on the table while he goes on tropical vacations with his girlfriends and has a full time housekeeper in a half million dollar home. But I can deal with that shit. The prospect of me not being able to protect my children from his need to completely suck the people closest to him dry is terrifying. To read about children of these people is so scary. I guess I'm here because I am doing everything I can but I have to face the fact that he IS their father. How do I help them? What can I do when no one will help us?

I want to add that I would love nothing more than to have no contact EVER again. But I am forced to interact with him daily for the sake of my kids and he uses every single opportunity to continue the abuse. He has the one and only weapon that can cut me to the core.....my children. I don't know how to "detach" from that. How do I not care about what he is doing to them? I'm trying so hard to be "strong" and live a life beyond this but I feel like he always has one foot on my throat. I love my children so much and he knows it. He doesn't suffer that kind of emotion.

Veronica -
Your story reminds me very much of what a friend of mine is going through (her kids are even about the same ages as yours). I will tell you the thing that I tell her - your kids have YOU. That is a big advantage. As they get older they will see him for what he is. Kids know. You can't control his behavior, but you can control yours, and being a great mom for the time that you spend with your kids will be able to overcome the negative influences of his behavior on them - Especially since you understand and have awareness of his issues and the potential they have to affect your kids.

I wish I had some advice for how to deal with your interactions with him. It sounds like it really sucks. If there are ways that you can have the court set and enforce boundaries (e.g. visitation times) so you are not put in that position, hopefully that can help. I understand that you said that to the court, he is a "good guy", but there should be a mechanism that can be put into place to regulate your interactions with him. I hope that you can find a way to take care of yourself in the midst of this struggle. Being kind and compassionate to yourself will enable you to be the best person (and best mom) you can be.

By the way... huge, huge, massive props for having the integrity and courage to leave that abusive relationship. That must have been one of the most difficult things that you have ever done.

Sorry, dookeye, for hijacking your thread.

Thank you so much for your reply weary. And I also apologize for just blowing up on the thread. I started listening to Paul about six months ago and I don't know why I just decided to post. His show had been such a huge source of inspiration for me. But one of my biggest obstacles has been the awareness of this disorder. When you say "narcissist" it's such a common term that it really has nothing to do with NPD. It's so incredibly damaging while also being elusive. All I can say is, if your a victim of a true NPD, you know it. Luckily my parents have been very supportive but it took a long time for them to see it. I think narcissists are so calculating that "normal" people cannot fathom the things they do. Many times it's completely counterproductive. As I've had to explain to my attorneys over and over, the threat of trial doesn't bother him. And it should.

He is an abusive alcoholic who had affairs our entire 10 year marriage, committed tax fraud, and stalked me to the point my friends had to take out restraining orders. But he really just doesn't give a shit. Because he's fucking INSANE!!! I had no clue until I was pregnant with my second child how bad this man was and by then he had slowly isolated me from everything. From the outside it looked perfect. I had the big suburban house and ridiculous SUV. Stay at home Mom (I have to add that when people say women are "lucky" to "sit at home", as if you ever SIT with little kids, they have no clue the independence you relinquish when you leave your career). 2 vacation homes. Etc etc. It's so friggin cliche it's embarrassing. But NPD NEED that. I hated the pressure of this image. My ex-mother in law actually told me not to eat after I gave birth so I could lose the weight quick because she wanted ME to have a dinner party 10 days later. I was breast feeding her grandchild for God's sake. But since I've extricated myself from this family I have been horrified by the almost cult like indoctrination. I am NOT materialistic. But I appreciated being able to give my children experiences that most people don't get. You don't realize, when your a "normal" person that NPD's only do things for themselves. If they do something for you make no mistake, the price is huge and there's an ulterior motive. But I have come to believe that it is a true deformity for lack of a better term. NPD's literally lack brain function that most humans have. But it's VERY dangerous because the nature of NPD makes it nearly impossible to "treat". And in many ways society rewards the very traits of the NPD.

Anyway, I appreciate the kind words. My rational brain tells me my children DO have me and I don't let them forget it for a second. Not only that I know how he manipulates and hurts people and I am doing my best to learn ways to deal with him so I can teach them. But my God, it's so fucking hard to face the fact that I had my children with this monster. I brought them into this world with a noose around their necks. I was "smart" and strong and independent. I have an amazing family, graduated from college (2 weeks after I had my first lol) and I still fell victim to this man. He nearly killed me. And I wanted to die.

I probably shouldn't say this.....but the thing that gave me the balls to leave was having an affair with my kids 23 year old coach. It sounds horrible but I was suicidally depressed and just didn't care anymore. It took one night of being with someone who was just nice to me to see how bad things were. One week later I told him I wanted a divorce and I never could've believed how much worse it would get.

BUT.....at least now there's a bit of light. And 2 years later the "coach" is still my refuge and the thing that gives me the feeling that I'm an amazing woman. I don't expect to be in a place for a healthy relationship for a long time but every once in a while the universe tosses you a bone and you gotta grab it (I wasn't going for sexual innuendo but hey it works). And I can honestly say that at 32 years old I have so much appreciation for the truly important things in life.

I'm rambling again. It's just amazing when I stumble on anyone who actually cares or even has any understanding of NPD. So THANK YOU!!!!

Ps- yea I was the stupid blonde suburban housewife that screwed the pool boy (poor guy - that what my friends still call him). Now I''m the feisty down on her luck single Mom. Seriously, I am a walking talking cliche. It's embarrassing. But I'm still not gonna stop trying to kick my ex-husbands ass....or stop screwing the pool boy

Hey dookeye, I think I'd like to hear details of how you learned to deal with your dad. I say "think" and not "like" because it is so painful for me to hear how kids of NPD's suffer. But I can't let that stop me from facing it to help them. I admire your strength and no one can empathize more with the feeling that no one gets it. There I times I believe that it is true evil. Not the hypothetical shit. The kind that makes you realize your are not special. You can be a good, honest and caring person and an NPD uses those exact things to make you suffer. And for what? There is no point. There is no end game. There's just pain. But you are pulling yourself out and although I am trying, I have to find a way to help my kids navigate this monster so they don't go through things like you and I have. I'm lucky enough to have parents who Iove and support me (even though it took monumental effort and my ex trying to institutionalize me....then poison me) to have them see I needed help.

I completely agree this NPD thing has got to be separated from "narcissist". As a matter of fact, I don't even describe him as that because no one grasps it. They are sociopaths. And parasites. They live through the power and control of others. Your point about how they don't necessarily enjoy hurting people but the power they get from it is dead on. But again, I think it's because they have an actual deformity (whether chemical or neurological or whatever) that does not allow for the normal processing of emotion. Thy truly lack a basic human element. Empathy. Not just the soft and fuzzy kind but the kind that makes most people realize how to get what they want. Your Dad needed the fix he got when he hurt you. He needed to feel something. Because like most parasites, they lack the ability to survive without taking from others. But for most people, there is a core understanding (even if its warped in millions of ways) that hurting others is NOT a way to fulfill yourself. It's just the opposite. But with NPD that is not something they are capable of understanding. And here's where I want your input too: Do you think people with NPD have ANY real emotional function? I sometimes think they do what they do because they have no abitily to really love or hate. They simply do not feel with any depth. In any direction.

But.....I recognize I'm hardly a non-biased observer. I'm so sorry you were a child saddled with that abuse. Since I jacked your thread feel free to let off steam and rant to me. I get it. And I do care. Cheesy, but I swear its true. And know that you have never been crazy or wrong about what you were feeling (I felt the same way...I was the mess, cuz that's what NPD's do). What you are is a fucking warrior. And for what it's worth, I'm thankful for your story and your willingness to put it out there. I know they say that going through this shit and making it better, (or as Paul likes to say "Doin the work") really does make you a better person....But Christ, who wants to be a better person when this is the price. I miss being the dumb blonde who actually believed life gave a fuck.

Take care of yourself. <bitter high five>

Thanks Veronica,

Thanks for sharing and describing your life with a NPD. When I learned about NPD 5 or so years ago, it was an "aha!" moment. I was able to understand how my first love operated, and that it wasn't me who was crazy (as NPD's like to make you think), it was her. I was also able to realize that her mom, who I was really close to as a child, was also a cruel, calculating person, and that my first love was the victim of all this, so it was no wonder she turned out the way she did. She had the "perfect" teacher.

My sister had a kid with this guy who was a megalomaniac, and possible an NPD idiot. When they separated, their boy was about 5 years old. His dad did just what you described your husband is doing with your kids. Using them to torment the mother. Now, my nephew is a grown man, and with the help of both his parents, managed to become a veterinarian. He also displays many traits of his father, and its to the point I don't like to hang around him. I don't know if his behavior is in the Gene's or because his father was a bigger influence in his life, but I suspect more the latter. You MUST take some counter-measures to your ex-husbands controlling ways over the children. Don't just "be there" as my sister did. She was a great mother, but it is going to take MORE than that to counter an NPD's programming. I'll leave it to you to figure out what to do, but counseling (family and individual) for an extended period of time is recommended. Share with the counselor what you are up against, and take it from there.

If you keep posting your progress, I'll keep reading about it.

Thanks and take care.