Saturday, August 15, 2009

For Those Who Tell You to "Just Get Over It" or "Forgive & Forget" by Kathy Krajco

For Those Who Tell You to "Just Get Over It" or "Forgive & Forget"
by Kathy Krajco

Forgiveness?

...what about a crime in progress? I'm morally obligated to forgive it, right?

What does that mean? Like, I am under assault by someone committing assault-and-battery against me, and I must sign off on the debt he will owe me when he finishes damaging me? I must "give away my anger"? I must therefore put down that baseball bat and stop defending myself, right?

Well, let's say the Narcissist has already ruined my life. He destroyed a $50,000 professional career (the cost of a college education), calumniating me so badly that I can't get a job anywhere but at the checkout in a convenience store.

He did it 10 years ago. Which means that the Narcissist has by now racked up a debt of $500,000 ($50,000 a year). Plus interest. Plus punitive damages.

But I'm a bad person who fails to "heal" if I haven't forgiven him by now, right?

But let's say I do forgive him now. Am I not forgiving a crime in progress? The ruining of my life? Yes, the crime is in progress until he restores my good name, and he never will. So, am I not forgiving the $50,000 he will be stealing from me next year, and the next, and the next, until I die?

I think I'm beginning to get it. This "forgiveness" business is just "letting him get away with it."

It's bad enough to be unable to do so, but don't try to tell me that I have no right to want to do so.

Aye, laddies, THERE's the pathology! It's those pathological feelings of mine! I must numb them.

So, I get it now: forgiveness is like a drug, a pain-killer. A mental one. It amounts to "acting like it didn't happen."

Yes, let's play Pretend.

All gone. I feel fine now.

That's all you have to do to make a ...crime go away. Just make nothing of it.

Ruining my life was nothing.

I'm going to ask the [therapists & ministers] why they are dehumanizing me, devaluing me all the way to absolute zero, by saying that destroying my car is destroying a thing of value -- but destroying me is nothing.

Though I must forgive him, he need not ask for my forgiveness. He need not give me back my good name or pay even a portion of the damages. He need not even say he's sorry. He need not even admit that it was wrong for him to do that. He need not even admit that he did it!

How come I am the only one who incurs a debt through his deed? I owe him forgiveness, and he owes me nothing.

Indeed, he need not even promise never to do it again.

Like that guy committing assault and battery against me. He does that about once a week. But I must forgive him 70 times 70 times without him ever even promising to stop doing it?

Well then, let's add this up. If it was nothing when she or he did it yesterday, it would be nothing if she or he does it tomorrow too. No penalty = no damages.

YES I AM!

The reason I yelled that is because someone with total contempt for logic, who thinks you negate a truth by simply flatly denying it, is sure to say that I am not letting them do that, as if that is a valid argument in answer. Which is exactly as valid as thinking that you prove the sky is purple simply by saying that it is.

(Psst, if your genetic instincts for survival are so anesthetized that they haven't informed you yet, I have news: some folks are amoral, like precisely the folks who attack you for no reason, so hitting back is the only way to make them stop attacking you. Yes, I'm afraid 'tis so. Sorry, their amorality doesn't take away my right to protect myself from them: it gives me the right to whack them.)

By serially forgiving the serial offender I am letting them offend me, because I am doing nothing to put a stop to it. I am doing nothing to discourage them from doing it more or again. I am not protecting myself. I am not defending myself. This conduct flies in the face of the instinct for self-preservation and therefore violates the Laws of Nature as a perversion of human nature.

That's of all things "healing"? I'd say it sounds more like self-masochism.

Yeah for forgiveness! A great idea invented and loved by all the bad guys in Hell.

By forgiving every offense – for no reason other than that it was committed and hurts me - I am letting them hurt me!

Pardon my incredulity at such craziness. That allows me no more rights than his punching bag has. I mean, to be a good girl, I must thus serve myself up on a platter (the literal meaning of 'be-tray') and deliver myself up to continued victimization = I must bend over it.

Yes, that will make me like myself a lot. I'm being sarcastic, of course. I see that I must thus make me hate myself instead of my abuser. Because I will for sure hate myself for being such an abject worm who just lays down like a doormat to be trampled like that.

And any HUMAN being, any therapist or preacher with one drop of empathy/ humanity in them, knows that. How callous of these "caring" people to tell us we're bad if we don't prostrate ourselves to abuse this way - something that makes any man, woman, or child feel so self-degraded that they hate themselves ever after.

How faithful of me to me. But what happens to your relationship with anyone who betrays you to harm or abuse? Then what happens to your relationship with yourself when you betray yourself?

I'd like to know how any therapist thinks that would be good for a person.

Now for some sanity.

The problem with feelings, like hunger and thirst for justice, anger, and sorrow is NOT that they hurt. They are emotional pain. If you repress them to the subconscious, they drive your behavior from there, without your awareness of what's driving your behavior. You have done nothing but slam the lid down tight on a pressure cooker.

That's when they can explode so you that do do something wrong. If you accept, own, go through your feelings, like any pain they pass.

Then, as time passes, so does the pain. THAT'S healing.

And when the pain of the emotion of anger passes, so does the motivation to right that wrong. ...you should never give up, never surrender, never resign yourself to defeat. Never, never, never. That you must never quit waiting for an opportunity to set the world right-side-up again.

Anyone who thinks that's bad should try thinking right-side-up.

Because forgiveness is for the repentant. To hand it out to the unrepentant is like going up to your neighbor on trash-collection day and saying, "Here, I'll trade you this 12-carot diamond ring for that little baggie of doggie-do."

In some cases, the Narcissist has stolen something of value from you, like your peace of mind or reputation - something you have every right to get back from the damned thief. You stop being a victim when you win justice and get it back, period.

http://narc-attack.blogspot.com/2008/03/healing-and-forgiveness.html

Recovering from Someone with NPD

Hope this helps someone.

excerpt:

The person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

* Lacks the ability to empathize. They can fake it on and off, but if you have enough exposure to the person, eventually you will see this pattern clearly. They may show zero emotion when hearing news of, for example, deep suffering of huge numbers of people.

* Loves attention, even bad attention.

* As psychiatrist Thom Hartmann says, they "Kiss up and Kick Down", meaning they are incapable of having truly healthy relationships. They regard other humans as a kind of resource to be used for their own ends. People they have relationships with become part of their "pyramid marketing scheme downline".

* Goes from incredible highs to deep lows. When they are high, they might not be able to stop talking. When they are low, they struggle to say good morning. (seems bipolar but is not)

* May fly into a rage at the slightest provocation on some days. And at other times, they seem impervious even to the most brutal attack. They might stay awake all night wrestling with a single innocuous thing you said to them the day before, and then launch at you the next day with some bizarre logical conclusion of it.

* When you challenge their behavior, you may quickly move from Friend to Enemy. Sufferers of NPD think in black-and-white terms. You are either "with them or against them".

* Ultimately, they are at the center of the universe. Just like an alcoholic, they will risk a lot to get their next fix.

* Their relationships with newcomers go through three stages that I have identified: (1) Enchantment to (2) Disenchantment to (3) Contempt. [ ] They may go directly to the Contempt stage if the new person show no signs of adoration or reverence early on.

* Often respond in the opposite way to what you might expect. (BACKWARDS reactions - they attack when they should comfort)

* They are attracted to positions of power and particularly those where their decisions are rarely questioned. They regard themselves as "the decider". They often just don't get that others may have a contribution to make to the decision process. You can see that in their language. They talk as if they have the facts. They begin sentences like this "the reality is..." and "the fact is..." and so on.

* NPD starts early and its sufferers have over decades developed an impressive range of dis-empowerment skills, from "you are being too sensitive" to talk about a person being a "good person" or a "bad person".

* They are masters at setting one person against another, and they construct a culture of distrust and hostility.

* They always believe they are right.

From what I have read, NPD sufferers rarely get clinically diagnosed, let alone treated. I can understand that. Just imagine waking up with the notion that you might be afflicted with this condition; you would have to build your life from scratch, even if you did believe treatment were possible - which it's not.

There are plenty of people out there who have suffered at the hands of a Narcissist, and extensive research has been done to help you identify it. The Internet is awash with anecdotes, life stories, and the results of research.

The best thing you can do to protect yourself from a Narcissist is to stay away from them. Give it time and Narcissistic Personality Disorder, if you are exposed to it in someone in whom you have personally invested, will hurt you. I guarantee it. It's a slow nibbling-to-death process.

First, you're attracted to this striking person because you seem to have so much in common with them, and striking they are, as they weave a web around you. They know exactly how to get attention - they've been perfecting the art since childhood. What's really happening is you are being prepared for dinner. Their dinner. And you are but one of their side-dishes. They don't count how many little folks like you they have consumed over the years.

A spider doesn't count the flies he eats and he has no feelings for any of them. The fly is just dinner; that's the fly's place in this world. When you have a relationship with someone under the influence of NPD, you are the fly.

http://portfolio-living.blogspot.com/2007/02/narcissist-as-boss.html

Thursday, August 13, 2009

http://www.bpdfamily.com/bpdresources/nk_a115.htm

Interesting Information about "The wizard of Oz Movie"

Wizard of Oz, interesting information

http://www.bpdfamily.com/bpdresources/nk_a115.htm

ROMEO'S BLEEDING WHEN MR. RIGHT TURNS OUT TO BE MR. WRONG PART 1-CONTROL

Roger Melton, M.A., L.M.F.T., CEAP (Retired) OBGYN.net Editorial Advisor

Who needs a heart when a heart can be broken? -Tina Turner

The trouble with falling in love is that the fall can terminate against the cold concrete of betrayal. Pain replaces promise, cynicism flowers in place of confidence and hope flees on wings of misled desire.

If both of you gave it your honest best, and it failed to work out, then it's the kind of pain that can heal in time. The experience can even increase the chances for future relationship success. But there are times when the object of your lost affection intensifies the pain-times when someone who looks like the perfect choice turns out to be the perfect heel. And the damage may not be easily undone.

Unlike men that can honestly struggle with their own uncertainties and confusions about a relationship, and recognize the part they play in creating problems and conflicts, there are other kinds of men that see love as a game and you as their pawn. In this cruelly covert contest, cunning is their watchword, deception is their fix, and control is their high.

Just as addicts are unrelenting in pursuit of making the next score, these kind of men are unyielding in their hunt for women that they can deceive and manipulate. Unlike emotionally sound men and women, who respect others as much as they do themselves, controlling-men respect no one. To them, people are things. And things can be used.

These "Controllers" use words as deceptive tools. Applying charm's anesthetic to deaden the pain, they perform emotional-heart-surgery with crude precision. And young women can make the most vulnerable targets for a Controller's manipulative scalpel.

While the harm most of these men inflict is emotional and psychological, there are those among them with a more dangerous twist, who feed off their victims' souls the way a leech drains the blood of its prey: drop by drop. These are the captivating vampires, whose devious masks conceal every woman's worst nightmare-the terrifying face of a future batterer or stalker.

To these violent men, control is like oxygen. Every sign of submission from others is like the breath of life, falsely confirming their delusion that only brute force affirms their worth. Failing to dominate a woman triggers loose a choking fear in these men, which they cannot face. That hidden fear is the truth that threatens their common delusion of godlike invincibility and exposes them as frightened little men, terrified of everyone and everything, including their own guilt. But guilt, for them, is intolerable.

They twist responsibility for their cruel actions away from themselves and lay it onto their victims. Their domineering maneuvers are magically excused in their minds. They project their own selfish, manipulative and deceptive defects of character onto the very people they harm, while persistently and vigorously proclaiming themselves as blameless.

Almost every woman will encounter at least one of these control-obsessed men in her lifetime, whether his method of control is limited to emotional manipulation or extends into physical intimidation. But there are ways to identify each type of Controller before it's too late. There are methods for dealing with them, avoiding them or escaping them. There are ways to protect and keep an honest heart. And this series of articles is designed to help you protect yourself from harm, by providing you with a basic Controller detection system, which begins in grasping the fundamental nature of control.

Control, itself, is not inherently negative. Everyone wants some form of it. It would be sheer folly to want none in a relationship, especially if you have experienced previous betrayal. But there is a critical difference between healthy and unhealthy control.

A healthy desire for control originates in a need to protect-either someone else or your self. Until a toddler learns the limits of safety and danger in the home, its only source of protection is its parents' limit-setting controls. Movement control is harm control. Love is the motive. Protection is the goal.

Unhealthy control originates in a desire to dominate another, either through words or actions designed to both charm and harm--to captivate while simultaneously damaging the emotionally captured. It is this pairing of charm with harm that is the hallmark of Controller manipulations. Preaching sugar while practicing poison, they are experts at concealing their true natures. Hiding bad intentions beneath polished appearances, they have perfected the art of "looking good." It is this uncanny ability of Controllers to alternate looking good with manipulative behavior that perpetuates tormenting emotional snares for those they target as victims.

Regret is not in their psychological vocabulary. They harm others because they feel entitled to hurt people. It is not a matter of moral right or wrong to them when they inflict harm. It's only a matter of believing that they "have the right." And if they always believe that right is on their side, which they always do, then any harmful act is always justified.

In over twenty year's work as a therapist, one of the eeriest experiences has been in listening to clients describing control-obsessed parents or partners. It is as if many of the people I have counseled had the same mother, father or relationship partner, stamped out of a small collection of similar molds. Or that all control-obsessed individuals took the same set of courses at Controller College-some with a specialty in narcissistic personality, others in being sociopathic and still others in sadistic or borderline psychopathology. The behaviors and attitudes of each type are so astonishingly similar, it seems as if they must all belong to the same bowling team.

These similarities in so many clients' descriptions of their control-obsessed parents or partners gradually brought me to suspect a common link between Controllers and their mental states. In 1993 that link was clarified by a team of researchers, headed by Donald G. Dutton, at the University of British Columbia, who were studying the personality characteristics of battering men.

Dutton's team discovered that 90-100% of men who physically assault their spouses exhibited symptoms of what are clinically known as "personality disorders." Many studies done to test their research project have confirmed their conclusions, which provides stunning evidence that men who batter women have sets of distinct, unique, identifiable personality characteristics. And a potential victim can recognize these characteristics before falling for someone who is skilled at appearing to be "Mr. Right."

The Canadian's exclusively focused upon men who are physically assaultive, but there is an entire range of control-obsessed men who do not batter with their fists. Their weapons are words, charm and your vulnerability. And their personality profiles are as distinct as those of their more brutal counterparts.
This is the beginning of a series of articles, condensed and modified toward a Young Woman's perspective, from Control >< Counter-Control: How to Identify and Overcome Controlling Men and Women-At Home to Corporate Battlefield, © Roger Melton 1998, which has yet to find a publisher. Each article is based upon my own extensive experience and research in dealing with various types of trauma survivors and those who victimize them, and upon extensive experience counseling a wide variety of individuals and couples as a licensed marriage and family therapist.

Next in the series > Romeo's Bleeding: Part 2-The Malice Artists. It will describe the basic features of "personality-disordered" men who are obsessed with control.

Copyright © Roger Melton 1999

http://www.obgyn.net/displayarticle.asp?page=/yw/articles/Romeopart1
acessed August 14/2009