The Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and relationships with abusive narcissists and psychopaths: the point of view and lessons of the victims.
Excerpt:
The Narcissistic Predator
'The narcissist inflicts pain and abuse on others. He devalues Sources of Supply, callously and off-handedly abandons them, and discards people, places, partnerships, and friendships unhesitatingly. Sudden shifts between sadism and altruism, abuse and 'love', ignoring and caring, abandoning and clinging, viciousness and remorse, the harsh and the tender - are, perhaps, the most difficult to comprehend and to accept. These swings produce in people around the narcissist emotional insecurity, an eroded sense of self worth, fear, stress, and anxiety ('walking on eggshells'). Gradually, emotional paralysis ensues and they come to occupy the same emotional wasteland inhabited by the narcissist, his prisoners and hostages in more ways than one - and even when he is long out of their life.'
"The brutal change in him was all the more shocking because of what he had appeared to be. The devaluation was indescribable, unnerving, frightening. His N rages used to burst forth several times a day. I found I was married to a total stranger, a Jekyll and Hyde who sometimes looked at me as if he didn't even know me. Exhausting is an understatement - it was like clinging to the edge of a cliff 24 hours a day."
"I suppose you can tell I'm scared. I believe I will end up either dead or in a mental hospital very soon if something drastic doesn't happen. He is so diabolical and so convincing to other people that my own family has abandoned me. My kids have also been brainwashed, something I would have bet my life could never happen. All of my financial means have been exhausted. Child support should have been more than enough to make it until I could finish my degree, but he quit his job to keep me from having money, and no matter what I try to do, I hit a big brick wall."
"The night he dumped me, the last thing he said to me before wandering out was 'protect yourself'. I've always puzzled over exactly what he meant, and those words have come back to haunt me now - that warning to get away from him. Without a doubt, the worst had yet to come."
"Narcissists are great con-artists. After a
ll, they succeed in deluding themselves! As a result, very few professionals see through them."
"I keep stressing that people with NPD do not present with the traits of their disorder. Far from it. How could any normal person take up with someone who had his NPD traits on show at the outset of a relationship? I suppose my husband had lots of practice, and had his supply-hunting tactics down to a fine art. This is the case with the real thing, full-blown NPD."
"Where would these Ns be without women, kids and the elderly to pick on?"
"I feel like I have extricated myself from a cult."
"I stood there thinking: 'He can't mean it'. I had the shudders, my skin was crawling. This N-from-hell exuded pure evil. Over the next 5 years he kicked his father out of the house, cut off his pension and slandered him. He cheated his first wife and his kids of money he should have paid, manipulated his business(s), lied to his separate little groups, split away from former friends and family, got 'religion', verbally abused his kids, turned other people into his little evil-doer proxies, hired and fired people on a regular basis. He'd cheat himself to satisfy his own greed if he could. About every three months I'd hear about some treachery he was inflicting on someone, somewhere."
