YOU’RE NOT CRAZY.
Pathological love & family relationships, and why it’s not ALL ABOUT you.
Truly, it’s not YOU. IT’S THEM.
How often, in your relationship, have you heard comments such as, “you’re overthinking this,” or “it’s your anger that’s the problem, not my [insert egregious behaviour de jour, something like an affair, or a gambling habit destroying the family finances].” Maybe you’ve been told “you’re mis-remembering things. That’s not how it happened.”
Or maybe you feel you’re just incapable of getting any one damn thing right whatsoever, no matter how hard you try to please your partner? Is the criticism already too much? Is the criticism excessive? Is it entirely unwarranted? Are you eternally anxious, questioning if you’ve done enough? If you’re happy enough? If you’re not you enough, but rather the person your partner is attempting to mold you to be? Do you forgive easily? Do you do that often, forgive even the most insulting of behaviours? Or are you so committed to the relationship that you’ll damn well make it work, no matter what happens to you? For better or for worse is what we’re taught, isn’t it? So you keep trying, don’t you?
Have you noticed that friends, family, and colleagues - and many others - are no longer responding to you? Have they stopped calling? Did your sisters cut off all communication with you? And for no obvious reason? Are you increasingly, if not entirely, isolated from people you were once close with?
Or did you wake up one morning only to discover that the person with whom you had hoped to live with happily ever after is now in a relationship with someone else? Maybe it happened over a year, this discarding of you. Maybe the discard happened over months. Maybe days. And maybe it was the length of one phone call, and your life has changed forever. And the lives of your children.
If any of these experiences sound familiar, you may be in a pathological love relationship, the definition of which - according to The Institute for Relational Harm Reduction - is a relationship in which one partner displays the symptoms of a full-blown personality disorder, or maybe some traits of a disorder, and the relationship has been notable for dramatic and erratic behaviours, such as those described above. These relationships are entirely traumatic and utterly destabilising, and can result in trauma disorders, such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The Institute for Relational Harm Reduction refers to these partner or family relationships as relationships of inevitable harm, given that the abusive party is responding to urges compelled by the personality disorder. They do not care the way you do. In fact, they can’t. Their ability to be empathic is compromised, therefore, doing harm to others causes them little concern.
If you are in a relationship with an individual who displays the traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, you will be harmed. No, listen. You will be harmed.
I am cerrtified through the Institute For Relational Harm Reduction in Narcissistic Abuse Survivor Treatment. I’m happy to connect with you to discuss your experiences, and help you start your journey of recovery.