There is a malignant cancer that has spread throughout our country. It has permeated every facet of American society. It is in our homes, in our government, in our agencies, in our work environment, in our families, in our friendships, and in our justice system. Because trauma bonding is learned behavior, we have evolved into a society that not only accepts and lifts up our abusers, but we have been so manipulated we actually identify with them, and feel sympathy for them. This is stockholm syndrome. And this is where we see the unraveling of our very essence of our true potential and our true selves.
Narcissistic abuse can be something as innocuous as un-friending someone on social media because you don’t agree with them or you’ve become offended. Narcissistic abuse is the calculated, cold unwillingness to accept an apology or even think beyond your own selfish reactions. You may have been hurt. Learn to forgive. Narcissistic abuse can be as devastating and powerful as upsetting other countries’ democracies, destroying civilizations, murdering innocent people, and exploiting their own country’s resources for no other reason than American entitlement. Narcissistic abuse is when a parent pits their children against each other, placing some as the favored golden child or others as the scapegoat. Narcissism is ghosting. It is the silent treatment.
Those who have survived covert narcissistic abuse in the family present the same post traumatic disorders as those who have suffered abuse at Guantanamo Bay, the prison that is known as one of the worst human rights violators on the planet.
I am here, today, to tell you that this ends now.
Narcissistic abuse is when you keep getting promotions without merit while others who have worked smarter than you, don’t. Narcissistic abuse is when you teach your children vanity and manipulation in place of kindness, acceptance, philanthropy and accountability, when you lie about your friends and family members behind their back, when you ghost, when you use the silent treatment as a form of manipulation, when you play games instead of having open honest intelligent respectful dialogue.
Unchecked narcissistic abuse hides behind hyper religiosity and does not have room for true empathy. Narcissistic abuse is why we have one of the most overt, narcissistic, sociopathic presidents this world has ever seen. We celebrate it, we slap each other on the back over our successes because of it and we use fake platitudes when really what we have done is allowed the most disgusting, vile, hellish part of ourselves to take over and swallow us, shaping us into nothing more than vampires that feed off of each other in a frenzied orgy of selfish greed. Greed for popularity, greed for things, greed for power.
Narcissistic abuse has been left unchecked. We allowed it. We were unable to look in the mirror, self evaluate, self reflect, leave our egos at the door and look deep within at our own disgusting selfish agenda and tell the narcissist within us that it’s grounded, that it needs a time out.
Narcissistic abusers hold the positions of highest authority in this land. But, power WILL concede with a demand. What is the demand? The demand is that those who control The State, those narcissistic abusers and enablers of a corrosive system be replaced. YOU demand they be replaced with scholars, scientists, anti war activists, water protectors, and those who hold the moral imperative of a humanity that works for everyone as their highest standard. Power concedes nothing without a demand and that demand will be met. Those narcissistic abusers currently in power will be replaced. By you. Because YOU cannot be corrupted. You are incorruptible. Despite a system that is designed to mute you, destroy your resolve, distract you, keep you desperate for money, it cannot take you. It cannot swallow you, it cannot erase you. It cannot murder you. You are stronger than it. Because you are pure at heart. And the narcissist will laugh as you pass purity test after purity test, but they will have the last laugh because unfettered blinding, intrusive light always, always always triumphs over sneaky, weak, diseased darkness.
In the book “The Gift of Fear” former FBI agent Gaven de Becker teaches us that No is a complete sentence. It teaches us that the small voice inside of us that speaks to us quietly and gives us that hesitant feeling when something isn’t quite right is our intuition and it is the most powerful resource we have to protect us from narcissism and its strong, toxic, manipulative abuse on our lives. We must listen to our intuition and step away from the constant stream of abuse and noise coming from our abusers. And we must not let their quiet, toxic, plotting silent treatment worry us. Our intuition tells us what they are up to. We are already steps ahead of our narcissistic abusers.
Narcissistic abuse presents as friendly, charming, charismatic uplifting and helpful. In reality it is plotting, scheming, silently judges, is full of hatred, is gossipy and has an agenda. It is that helpful, charming man who insists on holding your groceries for you while you fumble with your keys so that he can push his way into your car and violate you. It is that parent that uses confusion, martyrdom and manipulation to get people to feel sorry for her and then uses others to attack you, her scapegoat. It is that co-worker that leaves you out of important meetings. It is that church member that spreads lies about you. it is that friend that has unfriended you on Facebook but never tells you why. It is when you are experiencing something life changing in your life and those who are closest to you should be supportive, but instead provoke you into engaging with them by ghosting you. It is that deep criticism and disgust at those who have taken a public knee in the face of rampant unrepentant police violence. Narcissistic abuse is so endemic to our daily lives, so part of our natural existence that we don’t even recognize it.
When righteous anger rises up in you and you are kept up at night because of the injustices that you’ve had to live through, or you can’t sleep because of the injustices of the world all around you, the narcissistic abuser will mock you. They will tell you you are over reacting. They will tell you to “get over it.” They will tell you you’re being dramatic. Or worse, they won’t acknowledge you. The narcissists in your personal life and those in power will distract you with deflections and other issues that are meaningless in the face of a tumor that is spreading throughout humanity, eating away at our lives and murdering our future, like fungus riddled bacterium that takes on various shapes and disguises and cannot seem to be inoculated. Stay outraged. Stay angry. Your unflinching dedication to compassion, your obsession with empathy and your resolve to raise up human dignity in the face of extreme oppression is stronger than a diseased person who has no authentic emotions living inside of them. You are human. They are not.
Narcissistic abuse is everywhere. It is controlling you. You are a narcissistic abuser. At times, i may have been too. But I realized my own error early on and opened my heart wide to empathy, human kindness, acceptance and truth in critical thought. And I closed it to narcissistic abuse.
Say no when narcissism presents or persists. Look in the mirror and learn how to say no. Embrace no. It is a complete sentence. Single out the narcissistic abusers. Turn your back on them. Deny them. Ghost THEM. Narcissistic abusers will never feel remorse. They will never feel bad for what they have done to you. They will never understand empathy the way you do. They will never learn accountability. They will never cease in seeking their supply. They are parasites. They will never change.
So you must Be present for yourself. Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness is a workout for your focus and your will. Do one thing at a time and give it your all. Don’t multi-task. Multi-task leads to distractions, and weakens your resolve. Mindfulness is a powerful tool in fighting narcissistic abuse. Because narcissistic abusers need your energy as a supply. They will use your own emotion, or your OWN value system against you and then suck your precious life force out of you. Start practicing mindfulness with something simple, like doing a stack of dishes without distraction. Without your phone, without interruption, without a monkey mind telling you need to go here and there. Stay focused on one task at hand. This will teach you the importance of mindfulness. This way, when the narcissistic abuser comes out of nowhere to try to trip you up when you’re in the middle of a thought or a task, they cannot break through your strong wall of focus and mindfulness.
Learn how to be fully present for yourself and for others. Put your cell phone away when you are with others. Listen to others, listen to them expressing themselves. Be authentic. This will encourage and inspire your empathy to grow. The stronger your empathy, the more powerful you will be to push back the narcissists in your life.
Learn discernment. Pay attention to your intuition. Eventually you will able to see the narcissists in your life for who they really are. Embrace your guilt if you have done something wrong. Your guilt is what keeps you from becoming a narcissist. Stay away from them. Their infectious cancer could, if left undiscerned and unchecked, infect you and then you sadly, would be lost to me. And I need you. The world needs you. Your kindness and your intelligence and your capacity to go deep in empathy and understand the way the world truly works is a gift that will shape the future of the planet. It alone will keep the narcissistic abuse from weilding any more power. And it alone can drain the power that exists now.
And that is not a gift we can afford to lose. Tell the narcissistic abusers in your lives, “No.” Tell them, “This ends now”