Living in the damage path

Well it's been 15 days since Iv'e posted here and I have to be honest with you. Writing about this and reading the many articles and opinions for research has put me in a emotional tail spin so to speak. I have recurring nightmares and my sleep has been quite disturbed to say the least. The difficult part is that in all fairness I have to look at the illness of the sociopath behaviors from all perspectives and I have found that those who abuse us in relationships are really living in hell themselves. That doesn't excuse their behavior and it doesn't make me feel any better that I seem to choose these relationships. I have tied the term narcissism and personality disorders together here and I think it is important to make the distinction here. Narcissism is most often identified as the chief character flaw in Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and most people when referring to a "narcissist" are talking about people with NPD, however narcissism is a character flaw that exists in many personality disorders in the respect that people with these disorders generally act only on behalf of themselves. They are so caught up in their own crap literally everything that they do is for some kind of self aggrandizing outcome. One example is the person who claims to be doing "good deeds" for others.  Some of the borderlines I have dealt with share this in common, even when they appear to be "helping" others they are in fact just pumping up their already overstuffed ego. You will notice people like this only help others where they can get recognized for their efforts. Even so far as only praying for people when it is a public prayer so that people will say "wow what a giving person you are". The heart breaking part of this behavior is knowing that what people are seeing as "selfless giving" is really just a sick scheme to solicit compliments and make people think you are something your not. This "giving person" could give a rats ass about those in need.  

   This is especially prevalent in the Borderline BPD. Borderlines have no sense of self worth and they use people to make them feel worthy, therefore "if people think I am good then I am good" "if people think I am bad then I am bad. For the borderline there is no in between it's black and white, that's why you won't often hear them admit to any wrong doing. The narcissistic ego is so fragile that admitting a mistake shatters the cardboard mask and unrealistic self image. Then comes the self loathing and phrases like "I am a total piece of crap" etc. I spent the better part of 15 years with one of my ex-wives that was clinically diagnosed with BPD and while that information certainly didn't prevent a divorce it certainly shed some light on the crazy hell I was going through. One of the destructive patterns  and certainly a problem was as often as we argued in that marriage I cannot recall ever reaching a resolution. BPD's will do what I call the circle talk. The harder you try to discuss the problem at hand the more they will keep introducing other topics to avoid discussing the actual problem...them. This also serves to convince you that if there is a problem you are the problem not the BPD. 

  The stark reality of these fights is the fact that you are partnered with someone who doesn't care at all about anything except what they need to feel good about themselves. If you are married to a BPD and she or he spent the mortgage money on expensive outings (in our case) or shopping, gambling, booze, drugs, etc. They are not going to feel bad about it or even have a discussion about it. To them your confronting this behavior is that you are calling them a bad person or questioning their character. They can't think beyond that to have a rational discussion that will produce a reasonable plan to get the mortgage back on track. If you work hard enough by yourself to get your finances squared away you will find yourself having the same argument with a few differing parameters sometime in the near future.  The lack of empathy or remorse in these situations is astonishing. The BPD doesn't feel bad because they have neatly avoided taking responsibility for the problems and because you do care about the welfare of your family, you inadvertently end up enabling this behavior by cleaning up the mess. This of course extends beyond financial messes this is just one example.

  I have to admit that those years were really tough on me and I went through the gambit of emotions. The phrase living in the damage path of an emotional tornado is the only way I know how to describe it. People with cluster B personality disorders are drawn to guy's like me just like fly's to honey. The reason being that I am a survivor. I survived growing up with two sociopaths and living in survival mode at times just felt natural to me. I do have empathy for the pain of others and I will not quit when the going gets tough. These are positive qualities that emotionally abusive people use to hide their faults and further enable their agenda. If you are enduring emotional abuse, then that is exactly what you are doing...surviving...not living just getting by until the next tornado hits and leaves you picking up and repairing the damage. 

Thanks for reading,

Hank

Vindicated from the narrcisstic BPD smear campaign.

I wasn't sure how to start this process however it occurred to me to start with the event that provided me with the best revelation and also cleared my name from a massive smear campaign of one of my exwives. We were married by the Church and she was a full time employee. I voulenteered every week and we were highly visible to most of the 3000 families that attend the parish. The marriage lasted for 15 years but really it was done in 9 years before the split. During those years I experienced the worst manipulation and emotional blackmail ever. The one event that first got me to acknowledge that I was married to a narcissitic manipulator was of all things her employment with the Church. We had 5 young children two younger ones were ours. We agreed when we married that she was a stay at home mom and the primary care giver of the children. Five years in I got a great job that relocated us to a new state. She had expressed to me that she wanted to go to work and needed to "be somebody". Our youngest son was only one at the time and I wanted him to be raised at home. She hounded me day and night about it with endless babbling rants and I decided that as a compromise if it was only part time the boys would be in daycare 1 day per week. This lasted less than 90 days because behind the scenes she was manipulating the Padre and his staff to make the position full time. I came home from work one day and she announced that the job is now full time and weekends and two nights a week. Therefore full time day care for the kids and I would be cooking and caregiver for weekends in addition to working 60 hrs as the primary bread winner.
  I was furious and tried several times over the next few years to get her to honor her obligation to our family. Those discussions always ended the same way. I would have to prove that what she did was wrong and selfish and then she would threaten to divorce me and take away my children.
Anyone who has been in a relationship with a sick person like this knows that if cornered the narcissist will discard you and find a new host to leech on and start the smear campaign to convince everyone that they were not to blame.  The hard part is that the people she used to smear my name were the Church folks and my own family members.
Like most narcissist she found a new dupe a few months before the divorce was final and kept that in secret because a Catholic is not free to date or remarry until they get an annulment. This is especially true for an employee. She was cock sure that the process would be a slam dunk since she was sucked in tight with the powers that be. The only thing that she didn't realize was that I was not going to roll over and just take it. Most annulments the petitioner slams the respondant in such a way that the respondant either doesn't respond or spends the whole time trying to defend their name. Instead I took the time to answer every question and was given an advocate to help me fight the process.
Now if I were reading this for the first time. I might ask the question why would you fight the annulment? Because I don't think that Christianity condones divorce. There are only a few reasons why the Tribunal grant's annulments like lack of form or immaturity IE too young to understand what you are doing. I never imagined that there were actually grounds. I discovered through that process just how seriously the Church Tribunal takes the annulments of marriage. The process took two years and I found out later that it included her being interviewed by the tribunal as well as a psychiatrist. They concluded that the marriage was annulled on the grounds of her MENTAL ILLNESS. They classified her as having borderline personality disorder. The Church said that I am free to remarry but she cannot until she gets help for her Abusive mental illness. The vindication that I felt sent me down a learning path that began to answer every question I have had about my growing up life and also cleared up the reason why I have made so many poor choices in relationships.
Thanks for reading. Next post I will reveal how this event helped me to identify my own personality disorder.
Hank. Tahelluride.

Narcissim and personality disorders.

My name is not really important for now. But you can call me Hank Tahelluride. I will have to share with you later why the psyudonym. I was raised by a mother with borderline personality disorder and a father with obsessive compulsive personality disorder. It was as you can only imagine a living hell. I have four siblings two younger and two older. To complicate the situation I had the misfortune to be the family scapegoat. It didn't help that I was an unusually large person and I didn't discover until much later in life that I am also extremely dyslexic. So naturally I was reminded every minute of every day how much I needed to feel ashamed of myself for being so "fat and stupid".
For reasons that I cannot explain I always believed in my heart that I was not what the"family" said I was.  Sure I was miserable and I struggled to find a sense of self. However the same things that my abusers said that I should be ashamed of turned out to be my greatest assets. I am planning to write a series of blogs sharing my experiences in dealing with the malignant narcissim of personality disorders and the sickness that accompanies them.
Moreover I want to share the details of recovering and dealing with the aftermath of life in what I call the damage path of the emotional tornado. After I became an adult and emancipated from my family of origin I was far from being okay. I also went through four divorces and have looked at this from every angle imaginable. I now enjoy a successful career and have a good relationship with two of my three children. The fence is currently being mended with the third child.(they're all grown)

I am hoping that writing these blog's will be cathartic for the reader as well as the writer.
Thanks for reading,
Hank