Many people enmeshed with narcissists ask themselves whether the person they care about or need to deal with and who is treating them in some rather weird ways really is a narcissist.
Once we read upon narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) in particular, two things happen. The light bulbs start flashing and all the pieces of the puzzle start falling into place. But at the same time, we really don’t want to believe that the person we have emotionally invested into could be THAT.
We cling to hope, keep searching for excuses for their behaviour and blaming ourselves – maybe if I said it differently, maybe if I didn’t get angry, maybe if I didn’t say that … maybe, he/she wouldn’t act like this.
I believe that it is OK to have doubts but it’s also quite important to be able and willing to face the truth. To understand that someone is a narcissist and adjust the way we deal with them is quite crucial for our own sanity and can have significant consequences in our life (I have described how a covert narcissist makes you look like a crazy person in this article).
Handling a conflict with a narcissist versus a non-narcissist
Handling a conflict with a narcissist is very different from handling a conflict with a non-narcissist. We all have our issues. We all can act irrationally, even stupidly, sometimes. We can say and do things that are hurtful, not well thought through, coming from our own insecurities. In short, even a non-narcissist could sometimes act like a narcissist.
But there is a big difference – the non-narcissist would calm down eventually and would be able to change his or her perspective, if approached in the right way. He or she would be able to see your point and if not accept and understand it, then at least consider it. The non-narcissist would have the capacity to doubt himself or herself.
A narcissist will never be able to do any of that (though they might be able to pretend) and many of us who are still enmeshed with them will waste a lot of time and energy trying to make them see, validate and understand us – something that is never going to happen.
Conflict resolution skills and boundaries
I believe that the truth about a narcissist comes up when you replace your old dysfunctional communication patterns with healthy constructive communication and conflict resolution techniques. The truth comes up when you start firmly asserting your boundaries and require the narcissists to be accountable for their actions.
In this article, I want to share with you some insights from my personal and pretty dramatic quest to reach a peaceful closure with a narcissist that discarded me after a four year relationship, which he originally led me to believe was the most serious thing ever. (You can find my earlier articles about the various stages of the narcissistic relationship cycle here, here and here to get a better idea about what I went through).
It was a pretty mad and emotional time for me – a relationship that I used to consider my future faltered in a way I couldn’t comprehend, the man I used to consider the love of my life started behaving like an utter jerk, and I had absolutely no clue what was going on. I was lost. Ripped apart emotionally by the sudden withdrawal of the perfect prince charming. At that time I was aware of a tonne of my own issues and wasn’t handling the situation well. I embarked on an intense journey of healing with meditation, psychotherapy and various self-help approaches such as Inner Bonding.
For as long as I remained lost and confused, the narcissist was sort of willing to engage with me post-discard. The whole situation escalated paradoxically, much later, after I had achieved a considerable amount of healing and started replacing my original non-constructive communication patterns with healthier ones..
There was a time when I realised that my original way of communicating about what was going on was not right and I felt I myself had aggravated the situation.
I read some of the works of relationships psychologist John Gottman and realised that I certainly was guilty of some of the behaviours that he describes as the horsemen of a relationship apocalypse. I thought that the narcissist’s abrupt cutting me out of his life had to do with the fact that I started criticising him and giving him negative feedback about his behaviour when he stopped acting like the perfect prince charming I knew in the pedestal phase.
Buy John Gottman’s Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work from Amazon by clicking the image above.
I was desperate to mitigate the damage that I had done. I wanted to keep a positive connection to the man I had spent four years of my life with and wanted to remain on friendly terms. I didn’t understand why it wasn’t possible. At that time I already suspected that he was a narcissist but I was hoping that perhaps he just had some narcissistic traits and wasn’t a fullblown NPD.
The first book on narcissism that I bought was Craig Malkin’s Rethinking Narcissism: The Bad-and Surprising Good-About Feeling Special. A best-seller at the time, the book presents a rather hopeful view on the condition. However, I have to say that implementing some of Malkin’s advice back-fired spectacularly. In fact, I would say, that what Malkin recommends, would help you establish with certainty that the person you are dealing with has no empathy and doesn’t care about your feelings (lack of empathy is characteristic of narcissists). But if you are not yet strong enough in yourself and don’t have your reactivity under control (I have described in this article why victims of psychological abuse frequently get into trouble because of their reactivity), you can get badly hurt by implementing this technique.
Be vulnerable? Really?
What Malkin recommends is for you to pluck up the courage to be vulnerable. To be vulnerable means that instead of snapping at the narcissist, you go to the deeper level and tell him or her how his or her behaviour makes you feel on the deeper level and that you care about them – sad, hurt, lonely – there are many difficult emotions that we are trying to protect ourselves from when dealing with someone who doesn’t care.
Malkin’s idea, supposedly backed by some sort of research, is that the narcissist can be prompted towards empathy if handled in the right way.
To be fair, Malkin says explicitly that this technique doesn’t work on the more full-blown malignant-type of narcissists. But the reality is that at this stage you most likely don’t know how much full-blown or malignant your narcissist is. Especially covert narcissists are very skilled at hiding their true nature.
Buy Craig Malkin’s Rethinking Narcissism from Amazon by clicking the image above.
So what happens when you implement this technique? You wear your heart on a sleeve, you are honest about your feelings, your sadness, your desire to make peace with the narcissist and maintain a positive connection with them… An the narcissist spits into your face, laughs at you, tells you that you are unhealthy and that you never really meant that much anyway… wow… lovely. Not the outcome you hoped for. You certainly didn’t prompt the narcissist to any kinder behaviour. But guess what? Now you know for sure that it was not you. They really don’t care and don’t want to care. You exposing your feelings annoys them and they see you as weak. If they manage to make you snap, then that’s good because they will be able to prove to the world that you have always been the crazy one.
Another issue is whether this little experiment helps you to accept the reality or not (we sometimes really stubbornly cling to the illusions of the past, especially if we were raised in narcissistic families but that’s a subject for another article).
Non-violent communication
Another technique that I have studied originally with the purpose to sort out things with the ex narc was non-violent communication. Developed by American psychologist Marshall Rosenberg, the technique assumes that people want to feel heard, validated and understood and that if we learn to listen in the correct way and help them get in touch with their feelings, they will eventually be able to hear and understand us.
Non-violent communication is all about practicing empathy – the ability to tune into another person’s feelings and see a situation from their perspective.
Get Rosenberg’s Non-violent Communication from Amazon by clicking the image above.
It’s a lovely technique that includes several steps. Already the first step of listening presents a great opportunity to determine whether someone is a narcissist. And in fact, me implementing this step led to the narcissist giving me the ultimate silent treatment.
So what is this step about? This step is essentially about you trying to make sure that you understand correctly what the other person says. You are listening to them and essentially reflecting back to them what they say. This gives them the opportunity to either correct your understanding or explain more. It leads them deeper into what’s really going on on their side of the argument.
It works wonders with normal confused people. You sort of help them figure out what’s going on with them and make them feel heard.
Let’s have a look at what happens when you implement this technique with a narcissist. The important thing to understand is that a narcissist is deliberately manufacturing the conflict and doesn’t want to resolve it. A conflict with a narcissist is not a misunderstanding. It won’t go away by you explaining yourself better. They are deflecting blame, shifting goal posts, trying to make you feel like the problem. You never reach the feeling of a conflict successfully resolved with a narcissist. You will always feel sort of pressured to drop your case and accept their reality.
They frequently contradict themselves, twist facts and use stuff from the past that you have apologized for a thousand times.
When you start really carefully listening to them and reflecting their contradictions back to them, they can’t handle it. Their goal is not to be heard and understood. They don’t want to resolve the conflict. They want to muddle the situation and make it seem like you are the problem.
The key to establishing with certainty that it’s them and not you is really to stop emotionally reacting to the frequently hurtful nonsense they are spitting out and instead start to calmly reflect it back with all the contradictions and absurdities.
When I implemented this technique with the narcissistic ex (desperately hoping at that time to achieve a peaceful closure) he refused to talk to me further. He ended the conversation telling me that I was being resentful and that he would only talk to me again when I stop being resentful.
The problem for me was that at that time I still wasn’t ready to accept the reality.
Boundaries and non-reactivity
Another way to establish with a fair amount of certainty that someone is a narcissist is to get really clear on your boundaries. What is OK for you? What is not? What behaviours can you tolerate? What do you not want to tolerate?
Once you get your reactivity under control (a pretty tricky task for all of us raised in narcissistic families), you simply communicate the boundary and if the narcissist refuses to respect you, you simply withdraw yourself from the situation.
Be prepared for some shocking discoveries. They would rather not have you in your life than change their ways.
One example is you communicating that you are not willing to pretend that something didn’t happen. Narcissists rely on your willingness to forget about their outrageous behaviours, brush it aside for the sake of peace and be their ‘friend’ when it suits them. If you say ‘look, this happened and I am not OK pretending that it did not because it hurt me’, you most likely won’t hear from the narcissist for quite a while. The next time you’ll hear from them, they will be testing the water whether you have forgotten or are now willing to pretend you have.
Anyway, good luck on your narc journey. It is my mission in life to help as many people as possible to understand this damaging condition.
Great article! I agree..my experience with sharing my feelings on how I’d been hurt or what caused me to feel uncertain only lead to defensiveness and attacks on her part. “Oh, so you’re saying it’s my fault?!” And trying to have a discussion in response to her statements only led to invalidation of my thoughts and her dismissing my efforts outright. I didn’t know she was a narc until things were over and done with, but it was impossible to have a mature discussion that didn’t focus on anything other than her telling me it was all my fault.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for your comment. I agree that it takes a while to figure all that out. Once all the pieces of the puzzle are in place, it finally starts making sense. I didn’t get it at the defensiveness stage, so there came to offensive stage – ‘you are dwelling on it and it’s unhealthy’, ‘you are resentful, I will talk to you when you stop being resentful, you clearly need more time’ – not being resentful in the narc’s world means forget and pretend that nothing ever happened. No amount of explaining yourself ever helps…They just flip it all upside down and make you look like to deranged one….
LikeLike
How very true! “Just forget it like it didn’t happen.” Yes, there were so many pieces to put together with hindsight that the yes, everything did fit and what happened finally made sense. Sense in that there was an explanation that didn’t lead back to me… Sense in that there was something going on with her that colored our interaction in a way that ensured I was going to be a loser. I was lucky that I didn’t participate in anything that went crazy–it was all insults and nonsense from her. I just wanted to understand her point of view and have mine be heard. I felt like it was all just a big misunderstanding that could be solved with understanding. I never assumed malice or cruel intent on her part. But the more I tried to explain myself, the meaner she became. That was my punishment for trying to affect the course of the plan she had put in to motion.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I was myself unfortunately getting triggered big time, definitely didn’t manage to keep my calm so my respect to you that you didn’t participate in anything that went crazy… It’s tough to be made to feel like utter piece of garbage by someone you used to care about so much…. Sometimes I wonder how it must feel to him to know to that someone who used to care about him and love him so much now feels nothing but utter contempt… well… He probably doesn’t care and has his own story, where it all makes sense. We have to remind ourselves that it really is a mental illness and that their behaviour is driven by their disorder, we just became victims to it…. it was a tough time but I learned some really immense lessons from that. I am not having anyone’s bullshit anymore…. I hope that everything in your life from now on will go as well as possible 🙂
LikeLike
I’ve been reading self-described narc answers on quora to answer that very question. What do they think or feel? “It’s your fault. They are a victim at your hands. You made them do what they did. There’s nothing to reflect on. It’s all in the past. ” So pretty much nothing about you. Someting like that, as near as what I can gather. Glad that you have learned lessons and are not having anyone’s bs anymore 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, now we know how to spot them and avoid them… I pity those who will come/have come after us… They will also have to learn their lessons…
LikeLike
Thank you for your blog and your writings in Quora! I
I didn´t know anything about narcissism either, at the time when I was together with my ex. A lot of things have become clearer only afterwards, so that I can only now analyse what kind of hell I actually went through. One of the exaples that used to make me feel like my brain is gonna explode was when I tried to talk about his violent outbursts. Yes, in addition to the psychological manipulation, he was also physically abusive. Of course it was all my fault, according to him because “he always has reasons do to the things he does”. I was really struggling to understand, how someone who sais that he loves me so much, can do these things to me. But every time I tried to talk about it, he blamed me of “having a go at him” or “being nasty to a nice guy” or “bullying a man who bends over backwards for me” or “but we agreed that that`s in the past and we don`t talk about it, why do you always have to bring it up” or something else like that. But then again he didn`t like that I felt more and more depressed and unhappy. Just one of the things among many where I just couldn`t win. And these kinds of converstations often made way to yet another violent incident which was my fault because I “started picking on him”.
When I think about it all, I can`t believe how many times I actually apologised for things that I wasn`t guilty of in my mind but according to him I was. Even when he locked me outside in the rain for 4 hours in the night without my keys or my wallet!. I apologised just to keep the peace, to avoid arguments. To have that person back who I thought he was in the beginning, the person who he tricked me into believing he was.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for your comment and I am very happy if you find my blog and my writings on Quora useful. It sounds you must have been through quite some hell… It’s insane how they make us feel responsible for their crazy behaviour. The narc I was with wasn’t violent but I have a somewhat similar situation with my tantrum-throwing mother. She would never own her actions. I can’t raise anything with her. I just have to walk on egg-shells, accept whatever she does, otherwise I am faulty..I have also been blamed by my whole extended family for how my father treated my as a 12-year old – like telling me to die and that I was a loser. In the eyes of my deranged family, I deserved it… ehm…. I hope you are in a better place now and that your healing is progressing. I am sending a big hug!
LikeLike
Oh, this is so good and really made me laugh. I am so past my narcissist relationship–but I still work closely with him every day. However, I no longer see him at all as a human–just a kind of robot thingy that moves around and messes up the air quality. He doesn’t even really exist, it seems, because he has no basis in reality and his personality doesn’t actually exist–he is a reflection of whatever or whoever he is sucking identity from at the moment. So I just pass him by.
I loved your part about non-violent communication. “The important thing to understand is that a narcissist is deliberately manufacturing the conflict and doesn’t want to resolve it. A conflict with a narcissist is not a misunderstanding. It won’t go away by you explaining yourself better. They are deflecting blame, shifting goal posts, trying to make you feel like the problem.” I realized finally that my boss/ex-partner has a true, full-blown, pure-blooded version of NPD. It blows my mind how completely his identity has been killed off.
There’s this dimensional human form walking around trying to suck up life from anyone around him in any way he can. I just walk around it now and leave the toxic gas alone. And I pity those around that get sucked in. Everyone who breathes his air ends up coming out the other side harmed.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you for your comment 🙂 I am glad that the article made you laugh 🙂 I have to admit that I personally still kind of struggle to fully comprehend this non-identity thing. I remember when my ex narc gave me a list of the major differences between us – they contained everything he previously admired about me… Back then I was really not getting it. Now I know that at that time he had already sucked up someone else’s personality traits and mine were no longer cool. And also the narcissist’s inverted reality. The stories they spread where everything is the other way round. Robot thingy with a faulty programme, I would say. Maybe they really are robots and we are making the mistake to treat them as humans and to expect them to behave as humans…
LikeLike
I’ve been told, by a “professional” no less, to treat them as if they were three years old. Because that’s how they operate. The difficulty for us, also as relayed by the professional, is that because they look like an adult, we have expectations that they will behave like adults. And those expectations aren’t going to be met.
I like the bad air quality robot with faulty programming analogy. That was good for a smile. Thank you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, I agree, the problem is that it really does take time to understand that they function so differently. For me the problem was also the cognitive dissonance because during the pedestal phase the narcissist really did seem like an epitome of reasonability and maturity. So then you kind of struggle to understand where did this reasonable person go… and it takes a while to get your head around the fact that it was just an act. Anyway, thank you for your comment!
LikeLike
Agreed! Cognitive dissonance abounds. I like that you use the term “pedestal phase.” That is more fitting for what I experienced than “love bombing.” That implies some sort of perpetual overblown production that catered to my needs and ego. She wasn’t like that, but rather reasonable and mature. Like what you would expect from someone who likes you. That’s why I thought if only I could clear up the misunderstanding, she’ll be reasonable and mature once more. Alas, no.
LikeLiked by 1 person
OMG, I have to laugh: ” if only I could clear up the misunderstanding, she’ll be reasonable and mature once more”. I am just having a flashback – I was so desperately trying to reach that mature reasonable guy – and then, when he made his final grand statement, I finally saw it – “you are a stranger! OMG! who are you? I don’t know you! I am sorry, I was trying to talk to someone else!” That realisation that you have been exposing your raw feelings in front of a complete stranger. That the whole kind reasonable lovely person was just some weird mirage. I will never forget that feeling. A plot of a rather bad film…
LikeLike
Oh I’m so sorry. It churns my insides to think about that and it pains me you suffered through it. What happened if you care to share? I heard one of those final statements as well. It wasn’t the last thing I ever heard from her (unfortunately), but it made me realize there in the moment that everything was different than what I had thought it was, that she wasn’t who I thought she was, that things could never be the same, and that I was merely playing a part in her life plan (or not sufficiently playing what my assigned part was supposed to be according to her). It was almost like an out of body experience it was that surreal. As bizarre as it was, and the insight it gave me, I foolishly thought it was a misunderstanding (“we want the same thing”) and the she was out of sorts in the moment and didn’t mean it. I tried to clear it up…that’s when I really got punished. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
LikeLiked by 1 person
Well, I was one of those closure-chasing discarded narc exes. I couldn’t comprehend how someone who loved me, adored me and worshipped me could just throw me out of the window without as much as a word for explanation apart from ‘I changed’…. I was still trying to talk to the ‘reasonable guy’ I remembered. I didn’t want to go back into the relationship (though that’s what he clearly brainwashed himself to believe), I just wanted to be on friendly terms because he used to be so important to me. Wow, the more I was trying to explain to him, the more I was willing to own my own mistakes, the worse shit was I getting – I was unhealthy, dwelling on it, he had no intention to talk to me since he was so much happier now, the relationship was not that serious ever so no big deal (of course during the relationship I was the love of his life and we were the best couple better then any other couple). As I started pointing out his contradictions, he gave me the ultimate silent treatment telling me that I was resentful and that he would talk to me again when I stop being resentful. I still couldn’t let go and was trying to persuade him that I was not being resentful that I just didn’t understand and wanted to remember him as a good person. I was trying to let go but every let say four or five weeks, I would start having this sadness and the urge to talk to him, so I would email him. Never received any response. Eventually, I asked a common acquaintance whether she could ask him why is he treating me like this. His reaction to her finally made me see that he was doing it all deliberately, trying to make me look like the problem, manipulating… I snapped and sent him about twenty emails telling him that he was a narc, that he should seek treatment and how his behaviour hurts other people… it was a lot of emails. I was in a shock because that was when I finally saw the truth for what it was. He reported me to police for harassment. That was his final statement. The man who spent three years of my life telling me how much he loved me, adored me and worshipped me and how much he would always respect me reported me to police. It was the most humiliating and extremely traumatic experience. I also discovered at about that time that he hacked and completely hijacked my SKype account when we were still in a relationship using my own computer and the fact that I was trusting him so much to even tell him my passwords… Yeah, the police was my closure and it cured my cognitive dissonance. No positive memories, no fondness left. I know what he is and I have to say that if someone told me that he is going down with cancer I would probably invite a bunch of friends for a party… that’s how badly he hurt me. I used to deeply love and care about this guy and he treated me like the worst garbage, like a fucking criminal. SO yes, this was my story of discovering that everything was different than I thought it was – yeah, an out of body experience, the reality flipped upside down. I am trying to cultivate the understanding that he is mentally ill but I still hope that his karma gets him. I am afraid I won’t get to know when this happens but anyway. I don’t want him to fuck up anyone else the way he fucked me up. I wasn’t the first…
LikeLike
Reading your article was as if I wrote out my experience, completely erased any memory of writing it and then reading it.. about 10 days ago I was reading articles about covert narcissism, which ironically enough, I began reading about personality disorders from a fascination given to me by my ex (I believe to be narcissistic) because she used to talk about her previous bf’s having personality disorders and abusing her. That was how she would flip the script on me so productively. I would feel guilty for being insensitive and self centered. I’d try to learn and practice ways to avoid these conflicts. When something would be so blatantly wrong that these was no excuse I would tell myself I don’t understand because I didn’t experience that abuse. She cited the abuse as to why she wouldn’t respond to texts or calls for hours. Every text message, every phone call, I ever made to her in the last 2 years took her an average of an hour to receive a response. Sometimes it’d be 4 hours, or never, usually if I made a comment that referenced any of her behaviors as incorrect there might be a quick response but even that was spiratic. She also said the abuse caused her to struggle to stay on task do I needed to accept that showering might be a 4 hour ordeal. But she would insist that wasn’t going to happen this time, she swears she’ll be here in 15 minutes. So I get ready and wait outside. An hour goes by so I send a text “hey, you still planning on coming by?” No response. An hour later I text again “hope everything’s ok, if you’re just running behind I’m not angry. Just let me know if you’re going to make it over.” A half hour later I receive “sorry, I didn’t take my phone in the bathroom while I was showering. I just have to get dressed and I’ll be over.” An hour later I ask again if she’s coming and about 4 a.m. I go to bed, alone. I learned that bringing up the fact she strung me along for 6 hours and then blew me off only seemed to start a fight that confused and frustrated me to the point of tears or rage so I stopped trying to explain that if she’s having a hard time keeping focused and things aren’t going as planned that it’s ok, I would just appreciate a text saying that. At the point I started to feel like I had made some progress by changing my behavior and expectations to avoid arguements, she started disappearing. Sometimes it would be the result of a fight that seemed like it had to be a joke, and sometimes she’d disappear and I would have no clue why. If there was an apology it seemed insincere, there was a single time it actually included the words “I’m sorry,” and very often she blamed others or danced around the root issues. What helped me see the truth was when I needed her, i mean genuinely could have used a friend and called on her, she would never be there. In the last 2 years I’ve had so much going on in my life it’s hard to imagine. My gf’s daughter, before the accused narcissist gf, shot herself in the head. I started going crazy having nightmares and flashbacks and panic attacks while my ex was going in and out of different stages of grief where she would attack me one day, want to get married the next day, just want to be friends the next and then hate me for being a terrible boyfriend or praise me for being the best. I ended up in a coma for a few days at one point and had a psychotic episode once. A lot has happened. The girl I believe to be narcissistic was aware of all of the troubles I was having and really knew more about me than anyone at a point. I would tell her things sometimes in hope’s that she would give me a break just this once. Or because I really trusted her and at points felt safe exposing these things to. I had nights I was terrified to fall asleep because of the nightmares and just wanted to not sleep alone, but she would ignore me when I would say things like that. Or when I woke up from the coma she was the first visit I got and looking back it seems like she was just checking that I wasn’t going to tell anyone that she played a role in what happened. The last few months she had been completely gone more than present in my life but her reasons for disappearing got more pathetic and what she wanted when she came back became more obvious as time went on. The bizarre feeling you described upon realizing that person fits the description of NPD, I still have that. I continue to try to gain perspective and understanding through reading and the more I read the more certainty I feel that NPD is the answer to every single time I was confused or suspicious or taken back. There is relief in being able to find reasons, but it breaks my heart that this person I’ve known for 20 years and I’ve loved, trusted, confided in, cared for, changed for, sacrificed for, is incapable of feeling the same way about me and will never be the person I thought they were. It sticks out to me that this disorder is a result of child abuse and I am currently in several hours of therapy a week dealing with being abused as a child. I despise, loath all child abuse which helps me see her as injured and sick instead of evil and malicious. I want to be able to help her because I believe whole heartedly that those that had a raw deal as a child deserve help until they get it right. REAL unconditional love. But from what I read, even if i was healthier than i am mentally and emotionally there’s still almost nothing I can do. I will pray for her. Thank you for sharing your experience and information as it helps me to understand what she was doing that was sick, what I was doing that was sick, and how reality evaded me for so long! I’ve been fortunate that with all the other issues I was having I was already in professional treatment and learning a ton about healthy relationships and communication and grief so I didn’t go down too dark of a tunnel with her, but I certainly got a glance of what was going on and through other experiences I know this is the most damaging abuse there is. I will continue to learn, understand, heal and then inform and advocate because there will be people who can avoid some of the pain and insanity if they just have some information on this! Knowledge is power
LikeLiked by 1 person
What a story 😦 Thank you for sharing. It seems you must have been through hell. It’s good to hear that you are in therapy. It is unfortunately true that once you are in the devaluation stage, they just don’t care and use whatever excuses they can to justify their behaviour. An experience of abuse is by no means and excuse to treat others like garbage and be allowed to get away with it. I hope you can remove yourself from all that and heal from all the madness you have been through… I think you need to have more compassion with yourself first. She clearly didn’t have much with you, did she? Also remember that maintaining boundaries and expecting others to treat you with respect is not bad behaviour, it’s healthy. But those toxic personalities are trying to bully us into believing that if we assert boundaries or require them to treat us with respect, we are being mean to them – that’s the manipulation they do…
LikeLike