The Truth Teller

Allsorts you need to read back again, I said she was projecting her feelings onto me.

I did not enjoy estranging her, she thinks that way, not me. I don't enjoy hurting or punishing people, she does.

Because she thinks that way, she assumes that is how I think. I'm not the same as her.

Estranging was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life but I needed to protect myself because she is abusive.

It has brought me more peace than pain.

Violet, yes I can see your mother has other family, it was the paragraph in which you said, you had children, she has none. I just didn’t think to read back, so sorry about that.You also said you enjoyed estranging her because it hurt her, she had enjoyed punishing you so you enjoyed punishing her. That is a very sad statement. It’s not resolved.

I don't know if you have me muddled with someone else Allsorts

Mother, brother and stepdad are unitied. That was the most shocking thing for me when I explained to all 3 why I wasnt going to carry on anymore. The situations I described, individually I thought they would recognise enough to realise it was all true. But they all pulled together and I realised that I was indeed the family scapegoat.

Wider family is all very complicated and difficult to explain, long periods of estrangement from my mother for all of them. The thing is, she got better at hiding her behaviour as she got older and had lost a lot of past friendships/relationhips etc so they are all in contact now and they believe me to be, well a lot of things I'm not because I was kept away from them. I'm a truth risk you see, and know what gets said about them all. Pretty awful unforgiveable stuff.

I've left them all to it though because what's the point of telling them and hurting anyone else. Also, what the point in her being unhappy and shattering her appearances, it wouldn't help me.

So Violetsky, you say your mother has no one. No other family that cares for her. It sounds as if everyone has left her. I thought you had a brother but I’ve obviously got that wrong. If she has driven everyone away it sounds as if she is suffering some mental illness, if so she needs proper help. I’m afraid mental health is difficult for family to deal with, you don’t know when it will end. The person suffering can find it very hard to seek help.

"The peace outweighs the pain"

It does, but you always know what you have lost.

That's the difference between me and my mum, she doesn't know what she has lost, not really. She can keep telling me the same things whenever she creates a new account to message me or borrows a phone to text me. It is always the same script.

What she tells me again and again is how I am guilty of estranging her. How I am guilty of turning my children against her. I am guilty, she has none of her own.

There is no love or loss when she contacts me, just blame. Just how angry she is at how this appears to others. Her embarrassment and shame that people might find out or worse, hear her wayward daughters side of the story and believe it.

She can't hear the truth, she can't hear my pain or my children's pain, she can only project her feelings onto me because doesn't know how to feel or understand mine. So all she can see coming from me is that I estranged for selfish reasons because she is selfish. I estranged to hurt her, because she felt better when she hurt me. I estranged to punish her because she enjoyed punishing me.

I know what I have lost, I knew what was missing from a young age. I didn't care about appearances, I didn't care about what others thought of us as a family, I just wanted to feel loved and supported. I know what I didn't get to experience as a child and I know exactly how that shaped me as an adult.

The truth teller, the one most likely to tell you all their own failings, their mistakes, their weaknesses.

The liar, the one who never owns up to their mistakes and if they do, it was your fault anyway. The one who will do anything to silence the truth. The one who uses smear campaigns to turn others against you. The one who is baiting you so they can point the finger when you show your anger. Above all, the one who will never apologise for hurting you because everything is and has to be always about them.

youtu.be/9Fjjf6fDVJ4

I'm so sorry you're having to deal with this freedomfromthepast.

Despite the pain that estrangement brings, at least when there's no contact there's some peace. I hope that you'll be able to find some and that your headache improves.

freedomfromthepast I'm sorry to hear that, she must realise she isn't winning with you and is just trying harder.

I am so glad it helped, it really resonated with me and its like the video described me perfectly. That was why it was recommended to me I suppose. I will pass on that it is helping others too.

Derbyshirelass

I haven't worked my mother out, on the one hand I think she planned what she was going to say to me (I could tell as the put downs came before hello and she would be literally buzzing with excitement) so that would point to self aware. However she plays victim all the time.

I have always been much smarter than she is and I think she felt threatened by that. She felt threatened by anything I was good at. When I was young, if I drew a picture, she would draw the exact same one, and better, pointing to me where her tree looked realer than mine etc. I eventually got better at art than her and she got the hump and she never sat and coloured with me again.

I was just the competition, this escalated to the point where she round about accused me of having some sort of relationship with my stepdad... The man who helped raise me since I was 3. Because he said nice things about me when I cared for him after an operation.

The other reason I struggle to tell if she is self aware is because she would literally run up to my house while my stepdad parked the car and say something nasty before he could hear. This is one of the reasons my children picked up on her behaviour though because she forgot to hide it from them.

I wonder if they can be both, thinking we deserve bad treatment and that they are only giving the punishment we deserve.

Either way, still terrible people

Violet Sky, thank you for posting this. I recognize myself and my mother in this description. It is especially timely as I am till having to deal with her right now.

We got through last weeks drama, only for her to come back this week with a full on toddler tantrum. I have literally been a walking headache for a week. I bought an industrial sized bottle of Motrin yesterday.

oops that should have been "destroying" lives, sorry for miss quoting you.

Brilliant post DerbyshireLass.

A narcissist is more than capable of passing a lie detector test, they're so convinced they are telling the truth that the machine doesn't pick up even the slightest physical response to the questions, to indicate they may be lying.

IMO all be it limited although extremely unpleasant experience, I think the ones I have encountered are extremely high functioning and you summed them up brilliantly.

They know "exactly what they are doing but just don't care. They know they are wreaking havoc, breaking hearts and destroying hearts but they don't give a monkeys. They do it because it gives them satisfaction".

Both of course blame anyone but themselves. The high functioning narc will derive great pleasure by blaming their victim, to make them feel even worse and if they can persuade others to do like wise, so much the better.

The less functioning narc will blame their victim because they simply cannot see that it is them who are at fault. Both of course do untold damage but for me it's the former who makes my blood run cold.

There's the old saying isn't there about not judging someone until you've walked in their shoes and it looks as if this is what Tudor has done.

A narcissist could never be so inward looking and self depreciating, if at all.

I think you are spot on Smiles. Your ES's wife, is true to form isn't she.

Narcs are indeed just like vampires, they feed on their victims for supply. They drain them until there's nothing left and then they discard them and move on. The Truthteller as crucifix is a brilliant analogy.

Or to use another analogy, we might say that authentic people are like kryptonite to narcs. We are their weakness, because not only we can see right through them, unlike the child truthteller who is trapped with a narcissistic parent, we authentic adults are not scared of the narc. They dont have a hold over us, so they can't hold us to ransom, unless we give away our power and let them.

Narcs cannot easily control people who see through them, especially when the intended victims are secondary targets (work colleagues/family members) or tertiary targets (acquaintances or people they come into occasional contact with.......waiters, bar staff, taxi drivers, shop assistants).

Secondary and tertiary targets usually have little to lose so can (relatively) easily either disengage or at least limit contact with the narc.

There are exceptions of course .....work colleagues with whom you have to engage or family members who are closely related and live under the same roof so there is no escape, the narcs children or siblings, or close relatives of the primary principal victim. (Usually the Parent of a son or daughter who is the PPV).

That's why the narc has to isolate the PPV who is usually their partner or spouse . They have to keep the PPV away from their families and friends so as to ensure that they (the PPV) are kept in the dark and never get to understand their tormentors true nature until it's too late.

And yes, the narc will inevitably try to shift blame....."look what you made me do".

The sad thing is most narcs, unless they are very high functioning, don't even realise what they are doing. And which is why they can be such convincing liars. They genuinely believe they are the righteous ones, they have done nothing wrong. They are always in the right, and everyone else is out of line. In their minds they are the victim.....the world is against me, it's not fair, I never get a break. They are delusional.

The extreme high functioning narc on the other hand knows exactly what they are doing but just doesn't care. They know they are wreaking havoc, breaking hearts and destroying lives but they don't give a monkeys. They do it because it gives them satisfaction.

Violetsky.....Dr Ramanis videos are brilliant arent they. She knows her stuff and explains it all in a way which the ordinary lay person can easily understand. I recommend them to anyone who needs to get a handle on the subject.

Then p, for advance study, I can a psychologist called H.G. Tudor. Just Google for his website or go to You Tube for his podcasts. He maintains that he is an Ultra Narcissist, high functioning and that he knows exactly what he's doing.

Tbh I'm not sure whether he is a narc or not, or if he has just assumed a narcs persona to get his message across.

Whatever, he is very clever and intelligent, obviously extremely well educated and I would hazard a guess by his speech from a wealthy and privileged background and that he understands all about power and how to wield it.

However, he is an absolute scream, his podcasts are hilarious but not just that, they are bang on the money. . I don't think I have laughed so much as at his podcasts. Having said that, I would hate to cross him because his humour is dark, sarcastic and biting. But.........credit where it's due, by golly, he knows his onions.

His series where he dissects the relationship between Harry and Megan is a masterclass. His language can be bit "ripe" but if you want to learn more about narcissism I doubt there is a better teacher.

What I really like is that he is British, whereas a lot of the online psychologists, like Dr Ramani are American. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I think there are quite significant cultural differences between Americans and Brits and therefore there is quite a difference in the behaviours by narcissists here in the U.K. and those across the pond.

Tudor's use of English is up there with the literary greats and he uses a lot of idioms, sayings and phrases that are unique to Britain.

I cannot recommend him highly enough, you will be both entertained and educated.

That's right DerbyshireLass which is why, as you and I know from personal experience, a narcissist will do all they can to keep for example, their partner away from his/her family for fear of their true nature being disclosed.

Being almost, if not entirely incapable of being truthful, I sometimes wonder if someone who isn't a narcissist but who they have close contact with, is a bit like a vampire (fictitious I know) being confronted with a crucifix etc.

My experience as an adult and coming into contact with adult narcissists has been in some cases an almost instantaneous dislike or the pretence only being able to be carried for so long.

When our ES's wife realised I knew what she was really like beneath the seemingly nice surface, she yelled at me "you've done this to me, you've made me like this" I simply replied with "you've always been like this".

It's so helpful to understand it all better! Understand them and understand ourselves.

So many situations where I was told what I meant when I said something or events were twisted and I refused to accept it and everyone would be angry at me for telling the truth. I stayed silent too often though.

Narcs don't like truthtellers, even when the truth teller remains silent and doesn't speak their truth.

The narc knows that you know, you have rumbled them, you have seen behind the facade and you know them for what they are.

A child might not have the vocabulary, the child may not know what a narc is, but they just KNOW, instinctively that something is very wrong.

And with that knowledge comes the ability to resist the manipulation and controlling behaviour and to learn self preservation.