Parenting with a Narcissist

I found a book that seems to help me focus and give some assist in dealing with people with Personality Disorders:

Say Goodbye to Your PDI (Personality Disordered Individuals): Recognize People Who Make You Miserable and Eliminate Them from Your Life for Good! by Stan Kapuchinski M.D.

I find if I read the suggestions in the book on what to do before I have an encounter with the NPD ex it helps me script out situations so I am not suckered into another emotionally draining situation.

Hopefully this will help you, as well.

Here’s a quote from Sam Vaknin, “Malignant Self-Love” (free download of excerpts from his book)

“The narcissist equates emotions with weakness. He regards the sentimental and the emotional with contempt. He looks down on the sensitive and the vulnerable. He derides and despises the dependent and the loving. He mocks expressions of compassion and passion. He is devoid of empathy. He is so afraid of his True Self that he would rather disparage it than admit to his own faults and ‘soft spots’.”

I find this to be true. One of the things Ex really despised were people who sought therapy or did self-help or turned to their faith for strength. Not only did he believe mankind was the highest pinnacle of evolution, but that he, particularly, was at the top of that pinnacle above other human beings. He even gave himself a royal title, “His Name the 1st”.

It’s not that he couldn’t do things that appeared to be sentimental, but he didn’t really hold those things in high regard. They and what they represented could be discarded in a flash if it was expedient or because it was for a “good time”. Now, that was what he held in the highest regard.

I came to realize that his emotional “opening up” or sentimental gestures were like making deposits that he not only felt entitled to withdraw from but to overdraw, because he was…well, he was him, of course.

There is a lovely little story, “Little One Step” that I used to read to my daughter when she was younger. I find it to be very relevant now and a story can come in very handy when you’re not sure what to say.

You never know when a child will feel comfortable or feel the need to share their feelings. My daughter had spent the day playing with her dear friend she hadn’t seen for quite a while. They had gone to a birthday party together, and by all counts, she should have been flying high on the way home. But half way there, she brought up her father.

For the sake of creating a context, let me backtrack a bit. When I had picked her up from her father’s a few days ago, she told me that just before I arrived he suddenly brought up her reaction to a documentary he had forced her to watch. She didn’t know why. He was just talking and the next thing she knew he was talking about – no, mocking her about her reaction to this documentary three days previous. She was very upset about this. Read more…