Hard truths

Continuation of last post:

Hard truths from someone who has been on both sides of this situation:

To stay in a relationship with     someone while analyzing and dissecting them to determine whether or not they have narcissistic traits- is actually very narcissistic.

It’s not only judgemental and critical, but it’s also based on the idea that staying with us is better for them than finding someone who loves and appreciates them as they are.

I’m saying this now after having done this myself unintentionally a few times throughout my life. …I want to include there’s a huge learning curve due to the potential for relationship dynamics to be so complex, nuanced, and enmesshed.

We forget we can leave. It is in this way we create our own prison. We try to stay and fix people instead of stepping away from the situation
altogether.

When we do this, we’re operating from an inner child’s perspective of either not being able to leave for physical reasons (shelter, food) or differentiation being SO frowned upon in our household that it wasn’t even worth it- or we were met with punishment.

We all have what I will call a “pain hole.” We’ve ALL split off from our true selves at some point in order to gain approval from our caregivers. 

The ways we fill this hole are as numerous as there are people on the planet, and most of them are rewarded and validated by society in some way. Some work in certain settings, and not in others, but most are socially accepted and even monetarily rewarded somewhere.

An example of this is how a mental health professional may avoid their own healing work by over focusing on others, or how a military commander may have an innate need to direct and control people (beyond the requirementsof the job position).

Needing to be needed is technically narcissistic (if we’re even still using that word by this point in the post).

It’s benefitting from the other person’s disempowerment and needing them to be unwell in some way to maintain the relationship homeostasis.

A hopeful note below 🙏✨️