I have been trying to explore my own wounds deeply this week. I am trying to understand how our family became such a fear laden doom laden place in later years. My one sister who used to be happy and full of life is now almost immobilised every day, I wonder if she is going through a massive turn around in her own narcissism or what the hell is going on. She doesn’t seem to be able to reach out or even think that others go through pain too. I had a long chat with one of her best friends last week who tries always to be there but is getting a little fed up. There seems to be no joy, no sadness, no movement of feeling any more and my sister is just so disconnected. I kept wondering this morning, is she going through a spiritual breakdown and emergence or just breaking apart to come together in a different way following my mother’s death? Do I keep reaching out? How much? How do I cope with the tears that fall quietly as we sit for periods in silence on the phone? Often when I speak to her I feel I am trying to breathe life into her while knowing it is beyond me too.
Then I think of how I could have got bent out of shape over a happy birthday post back in 2017, I was undergoing a lot but its ruined a friendship. I had hoped they might understand I only reacted the way I did to being overwhelmed and I read back a post from that time when I expressed those feelings. I am sad about it but I cant change the past. But does the way I reacted make me a narcissist? It really worries me
Whenever I ask my therapist Am I a narcissist? she always says to me “but Deb, everyone is somewhere on that spectrum of narcissism”. People say if you ask the question you aren’t one because narcs never feel they did anything wrong. It can be hard to sort out where you were at fault when people don’t like how you reacted or label you.
Anyway I know kids who develop NPD or even BPD were traumatised, mocked or thwarted a lot. It leaves a last injury or sore spot that flares up. I try to take care of mine as best I can because I know there is a line of badly handled frustration in our family and stress and loss goes back to the abandonment traumas my G G Grandfather suffered back in the late 1800s and his struggle to survive support a family of 16 and immigrated thousands and thousands of miles away from the land of his birth.
I feel shame at times about my anger and the way I react but my therapist always tells me anger is a force of individuality and you are better to have it because otherwise you just collapse and can be destroyed by others, especially when they unfairly try to project or ‘shame dump’ on you. My spirit guides told me to set boundaries on Tuesday as this is what I felt happening. I was given a visualisation to flush the toxins through my body.
At the same time lashing out at the wrong time may be wrong. Its something I am still searching my soul deeply about. I know most of my friends always say I only get angry with just cause. My brother once called me a loose cannon but to that my therapist (knowing what went down prior) just smiles and raises her eyebrows. I never saw anger feelings or hurt or upset managed well in my family and that is the reason I have struggled so and became an addict. Recovering and gaining awareness is taking a lot of years and its painful at times as all emotional growth is but I know its all on course. I am grateful for my blog and journaling to try to unravel this.
I do identify as highly sensitive. I have been scapegoated in the past. True empathy enables us to see the layers of feeling within a feeling such as anger. Empathy looks for where the hurt is and takes care of it instead of blowing it off, shaming or mocking it but that takes emotional intelligence, depth and sensitivity…and sometimes people just carry our shadow qualities and so we tend to rebound off them maybe a sign we are seeking to come into relationship with a missing quality, attribute or dimension of ourselves. For we are all works in progress and as the poet says ‘we contain multitudes.’
Emerging From The Dark Night 