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This is a fascinating post to get some perspective from the narcissist side. In my experience, beyond the suffering and abuse, it is nearly impossible to descr

This is a fascinating post to get some perspective from the narcissist side. In my experience, beyond the suffering and abuse, it is nearly impossible to describe to someone else the experience of extended engagement with someone with narcissistic personality disorder or someone with borderline personality disorder. Friends and family often have no frame of reference in dealing with NPD or BPD. It makes finding help and treatment much harder. Often you have to discover on your own that you have been the target of NPD or BPD abuse. It takes time.

vwoolf 5y ago
I'm sure there are children who unjustifiably cut off their parents, and the reverse. I can say that I read Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and it rocked my world: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/adult-children-of-emotionally-immature-parents-lindsay-c-gibson/1121368782 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/adult-children-of-emotional... by thoroughly describing my upbringing. I've not cut off contact but I have containerized it and set strict boundary conditions, if you will, and my parents seem not to understand their own behavior, at all.
- quercusa 5y ago
  Ordering that one right away; it's taken me decades* to figure out how my loving (AFAICT) parents set me up for problems in personal relationships. * I may be slow in this regard.
  - dreamcompiler 5y ago
    I think decades is pretty much par for the course.
- bittercynic 5y ago
  Thank you for the recommendation. Been reading this for the past couple hours, and likely won't put it down till I'm through.
- Trasmatta 5y ago
  This book really helped me figure out my parents and my childhood. For my entire life I've essentially thought "my parents aren't really narcissists and they weren't outright abusive, so why have I always felt like something was wrong with my upbringing, and why do I seem to harbor resentment towards them?". Turns out they were / are very emotionally immature. This quote summarizes it pretty well: > Growing up in a family with emotionally immature parents is a lonely experience. These parents may look and act perfectly normal, caring for their child’s physical health and providing meals and safety. However, if they don’t make a solid emotional connection with their child, the child will have a gaping hole where true security might have been.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  I'm an emotionally immature parent, seems like this will be a hard read :/
  - phkahler 5y ago
    If you can admit your own flaws, you can't be that bad. Or at least there's hope for you. When I pushed my parents bad behavior front and center, I got hung up on. The next time we spoke on the phone the incident was not mentioned - like it never happened.
    - DarylZero 5y ago
      That thing you're talking about with your parents is exactly how I behave. I did have a big problem with admitting, or rather realizing, many things about myself, even while other people were telling them to me. I didn't realize until this year that I am incompetent as a parent. My oldest kid is 9. Watching her grow up and watching the consequences of my own negative influence on her is what led to realization.
      - DarylZero 5y ago
        I wish it were as easy as awareness but it's so deep. There was supposed to be some kind of interpersonal development feedback loop accumulated over years and it just didn't happen. Now I can only sometimes get into a mood where I think I can re-develop a personality. But there is no rational basis for that hope. > Because they probably weren’t allowed to express and integrate their emotional experiences in childhood, these people grow up to be emotion-ally inconsistent adults. Their personalities are weakly structured, and they often express contradictory emotions and behaviors. They step in and out of emotional states, never noticing their inconsistency. When they become parents, these traits create emotional bafflement in their children. One woman described her mother’s behavior as chaotic, “flip- flopping in ways that made no sense.” I already figured this all out by myself. The book is only wrong when it says things like "never noticing." I noticed. > Growing up with an inconsistent parent is likely to undermine a child’s sense of security, keeping the child on edge. Since a parent’s response provides a child’s emotional compass for self- worth, such chil-dren also are likely to believe that their parent’s changing moods are somehow their fault. This is what I did. On edge. Insecure. Victim of abuse. It's visible in body language.
Neil44 5y ago
Yep. You try and explain the arguments or situations, but in peoples minds they apply the model of a normal person that they have in their head to the narc because they look at the narc and see a normal person, and they think well you just explain this to them or just say that to them. They don't understand that their mental models of how someone will behave and what they will feel and say and do are not applicable to the situation, and that trying to apply them will give you the wrong answer. like playing a familiar game with the controls reversed.
thejackgoode 5y ago
Do you have any references for BPD abuse? I might actually need it soon
- sonnyg 5y ago
  Not sure what you need exactly but BPDFamily https://www.bpdfamily.com/ https://www.bpdfamily.com/ (especially the forums) is a great resource for people with a BPD person in their lives. Good luck.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

vwoolf 5y ago

I'm sure there are children who unjustifiably cut off their parents, and the reverse. I can say that I read Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents and it rocked my world: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/adult-children-of-emotionally-immature-parents-lindsay-c-gibson/1121368782 https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/adult-children-of-emotional... by thoroughly describing my upbringing. I've not cut off contact but I have containerized it and set strict boundary conditions, if you will, and my parents seem not to understand their own behavior, at all.

quercusa 5y ago
Ordering that one right away; it's taken me decades* to figure out how my loving (AFAICT) parents set me up for problems in personal relationships. * I may be slow in this regard.
- dreamcompiler 5y ago
  I think decades is pretty much par for the course.
bittercynic 5y ago
Thank you for the recommendation. Been reading this for the past couple hours, and likely won't put it down till I'm through.
Trasmatta 5y ago
This book really helped me figure out my parents and my childhood. For my entire life I've essentially thought "my parents aren't really narcissists and they weren't outright abusive, so why have I always felt like something was wrong with my upbringing, and why do I seem to harbor resentment towards them?". Turns out they were / are very emotionally immature. This quote summarizes it pretty well: > Growing up in a family with emotionally immature parents is a lonely experience. These parents may look and act perfectly normal, caring for their child’s physical health and providing meals and safety. However, if they don’t make a solid emotional connection with their child, the child will have a gaping hole where true security might have been.
DarylZero 5y ago
I'm an emotionally immature parent, seems like this will be a hard read :/
- phkahler 5y ago
  If you can admit your own flaws, you can't be that bad. Or at least there's hope for you. When I pushed my parents bad behavior front and center, I got hung up on. The next time we spoke on the phone the incident was not mentioned - like it never happened.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    That thing you're talking about with your parents is exactly how I behave. I did have a big problem with admitting, or rather realizing, many things about myself, even while other people were telling them to me. I didn't realize until this year that I am incompetent as a parent. My oldest kid is 9. Watching her grow up and watching the consequences of my own negative influence on her is what led to realization.
    - DarylZero 5y ago
      I wish it were as easy as awareness but it's so deep. There was supposed to be some kind of interpersonal development feedback loop accumulated over years and it just didn't happen. Now I can only sometimes get into a mood where I think I can re-develop a personality. But there is no rational basis for that hope. > Because they probably weren’t allowed to express and integrate their emotional experiences in childhood, these people grow up to be emotion-ally inconsistent adults. Their personalities are weakly structured, and they often express contradictory emotions and behaviors. They step in and out of emotional states, never noticing their inconsistency. When they become parents, these traits create emotional bafflement in their children. One woman described her mother’s behavior as chaotic, “flip- flopping in ways that made no sense.” I already figured this all out by myself. The book is only wrong when it says things like "never noticing." I noticed. > Growing up with an inconsistent parent is likely to undermine a child’s sense of security, keeping the child on edge. Since a parent’s response provides a child’s emotional compass for self- worth, such chil-dren also are likely to believe that their parent’s changing moods are somehow their fault. This is what I did. On edge. Insecure. Victim of abuse. It's visible in body language.

Neil44 5y ago

Yep. You try and explain the arguments or situations, but in peoples minds they apply the model of a normal person that they have in their head to the narc because they look at the narc and see a normal person, and they think well you just explain this to them or just say that to them. They don't understand that their mental models of how someone will behave and what they will feel and say and do are not applicable to the situation, and that trying to apply them will give you the wrong answer. like playing a familiar game with the controls reversed.

thejackgoode 5y ago

Do you have any references for BPD abuse? I might actually need it soon

sonnyg 5y ago
Not sure what you need exactly but BPDFamily https://www.bpdfamily.com/ https://www.bpdfamily.com/ (especially the forums) is a great resource for people with a BPD person in their lives. Good luck.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]