I previously offered an explanation for why narcissists engage in their abusive behavior, or, more specifically, what narcissists get out of it. For the sake of continuity, I’ll summarize it here. In short, they are incapable of getting their social needs met through traditional means because of the nature of their personality disorder, but their personality disorder enables them to engage in harmful, dysfunctional behaviors to get them met. The behaviors they use alienate them from others and lead to further exclusion from traditional processes, so it’s a self-reinforcing cycle. So what are these harmful, dysfunctional behaviors that are so alienating, and...

From fairy tales to classic literature to legends and lore, I have noticed that the same metaphors keep coming up to explain narcissistic traits both formally and informally– in the jargon on narcissism, in the literature for survivors, and across the forums and the Internet.  It’s not surprising that stories are being used to help explain narcissistic traits. Narcissistic abuse can have the disjointed feel of dreams and nightmares when you try to put words to it. Its largely psychological terrain primes it for allegorical comparisons that can be made through familiar and nearly universal stories to illuminate what feels...

Letter from November 2015 (some identifying details removed) Dear ___________: I don’t feel anything anymore. That’s not really true. I feel an aching sadness that I don’t feel anything anymore. I used to feel hope that you would change the way you treat me, and I used to feel hope because there was something to hold onto. Now I know that if you change, it isn’t going to be right now, and I also know that there isn’t any time in our past for me to look back on and believe we can get back to and be happy, because...

I’d be lying if I said I never missed you. I’m not even sure what it is I really miss.  But it’s… something to do with you.  The shape that you once put in front of me, the presence that you had wrapped around me, the soliloquy of your voice that I can still hear in my mind sometimes if I try hard enough. But you’re never getting back in. All those excuses, all those lies, all those times you said you’d never hurt me again.  Then to come back and say you were sorry for hurting me… and expect...

Is my boyfriend a narcissist? I just couldn’t decide, even though a part of me already knew. There comes a time in the recovery process when you have to face all those things that the narcissist did that you didn’t want to face during the relationship. Yeah, those things. The things you only heard about in whispers or learned accidentally.  The stories you could only corroborate with one source.  The things that seemingly crawled straight out of your own imagination, gristly and wet, as if the narcissist knew exactly how to reach into your own heart of darkness and pull...

He used to ask me all the time what I loved about him, and I’d ramble on about all the things I thought were wonderful about him.  Sometimes I’d return the question, curious about what he’d say.  Then much later in the relationship, I’d ask him why he kept trying to come back into my life, as so many of his other actions seemed to indicate he didn’t value the relationship. “You care about me.” “You take care of me.” “I can trust you with my life.” “You accept me for who I am.  I can be myself around you. ...

Letter from October 2015 (some identifying details removed) Dear ___________: This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever written. It is difficult to write because I know that there will never really be any closure between us. You see, I have this picture in my head of us and how things could have been and it kills me. There was so much good between us, and we learned and explored so much together.  I taught you how to order a martini and play craps and baseball, and you taught me how to fly a kite, make yogurt sauce, properly...