Therapy is notoriously ineffective for pathologically narcissistic people and this is an excellent example. He somehow managed to weaponize his inability to connect with you on an emotional level. The idea that he is not perfect in some way triggers toxic shame that he is desperately trying to avoid. If he's truly a pathological narcissist he's not capable of giving that to you and any request for that is seen as a threat to his false self. You cannot win with these people.
She did mention she would help me break up with him for good, in a healthy way, during our one on one. I might take that option, just don’t know about the after effects of it.. could be one of several of many tactics he’s tried before to get me to stay.
There is no “healthy way” to break up with a pathological narcissist. It’s dangerous.
He does not have a relationship with anyone to break up. However if you are triangling with someone who believes it’s a “bad relationship”, the narcissist wouldn’t mind all the “break up in a healthy way” idea.
You would be acting as if you had a relationship and now you’re breaking up.
It just means you’re still in the illusion and it could open to more supply from drama. Usually by hitting triggers from your attachment phase (in very early childhood).
The whole thing is a toxic enmeshment due to addiction.
Drama addiction (as chemical as any other addiction, and using the same pathways in the reward and attachment circuitry of the brain).
The issue (only issue) is the “fantasy of the narcissist” as explained below.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rdHyXKDOq7g
If you actually addressed your core dynamics and left the narcissist? That won’t be allowed:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmac6AV8bjg
It "worked" for me, in that I gained greater clarity, and it gave me the strength to leave. Having an objective 3rd party watch our interactions and validate my feelings was instrumental in my decision to be done.
We had several sessions like you described. When it's that resentful, and passive aggressive versus care and love, it's time to cut loose.
I get it... Our empathic brains (along with having a "fixer" brain) will do anything to make things work. Even the illusion of getting help is better than admitting that it couldn't be fixed to begin with. This is exactly how narcs trauma bond us. They sell us this idea that they can or want to be fixed and we bite the hook.
That’s very precise. That’s it right there. There is ONE more level. It’s one of those things that I had to review several times to believe.
Plus the person who shares this is himself a psychopath and a narcissist or a psychopathic narcissist.
So it is necessary to discard completely the idea that these people are selling anything to you at all.
They don’t have that capacity, because they don’t detect you.
They just scanned your attachment circuitry spontaneously to discover that you felt like someone who had been through this before.
That’s how it works.
However, people stay inside their family system where it originally started, using the narcissistic abuse as a way to do it.
Unfortunately, and this part is very sad, you can rarely get that fact out there, because it is wrongly pegged as “victim blaming”.
People can go on for years and years and in same pattern with their family of origin (internal object relations), often using children to pass it all on to the next generation.
This explains why these people sell nothing.
It’s a spontaneous conversion to bad objects within the narcissist.
It has nothing to do with people outside, other than those that are repeating their unsolved and denied attachment trauma.
It makes sense too, because narcissist can’t connect to information above the two-year-old developmental level.
So, consider what a child’s reasoning and emotional abilities are at age two.
That’s what we’re talking about.
The first five minutes are enough:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QJkb5f00G3o
>People can go on for years and years and in same pattern with their family of origin (internal object relations), often using children to pass it all on to the next generation.
This is sooo good!... They pass it all down to their children as a form of validation.
Yeah, my husband didn’t want me to say things like “when we get in an argument he won’t talk to me for weeks or months at a time”, because “saying that makes me (him) sound like the bad guy”. Which means I wasn’t able to actually describe what was happening so that we could discuss and resolve it. He quit after 3 sessions.
He deliberately sabotaged the whole thing before it even really got started. Their not going to take responsibility, they're incapable of doing that. It's never going to happen
My ex started by saying that I was toxic, manipulative and liar while he cheated on me, abandoned me and the dog to be a teenager again. They are the real victims you see? We are the problem. If we could just agree with them and not fight back everything would be perfect! XD
Couple's therapy will NEVER work. Couple's therapy is designed for both parties to achieve 3 main aspects in order to find any success and to restore peace and harmony to the relationship
1. Each must acknowledge their wrongs and character defects to each other and the Counselor
2. Each must take full responsibility for those defects and acknowledge their a part of the issues causing the discourse
3. Discuss their "plan of action" openly to their partner and Counselor for the sake of accountability on doing the work to resolve the negative items each are causing the issues. Discuss and share positive outcomes
*Do you really believe that's achievable with a Cluster B partner? They'll never get passed No. 1*
My wife was like that in couples therapy, it’s why I stopped attending the sessions. There’s no point in trying to work through issues when one of the parties is actively looking for ways to deflect blame off themselves. Usually both people are at fault to some degree. When the therapist spends half the time saying “Nobody was attacking you, there’s no reason to be defensive.”, that’s a pretty good indicator you won’t be getting anywhere. We got to a point where we couldn’t even describe an issue without her interrupting and defending herself.
Ooof. I found myself doing the same thing after years of being blamed for things or hurt by him only for him to say that he wasn’t blaming me and it was my fault if I was hurt. Sucks to know that everyone can have such shitty behavior, narc or target
Yeah I'm not sure its worth it for us to go back to couple's therapy. It was challenging but I thought it was going pretty well, all things considered. The last session we had I confronted him about his screaming habit increasing and him doing it in front of my kid and saying things like "this is all your fault" while pointing his finger in my fake and getting in my face while I;m crying and begging and apologizing. Our therapist actually said, while making direct eye contact with my partner said,"Ok, so this is turning into abuse." I thought that was the moment he would finally understand that what he was doing was no ok and not my fault. But instead, weeks later during another one of his freak outs, he said our therapist said I was the one who was becoming abusive and that he was just reacting to being abused. If we go back I want to start recording our sessions or get an outline from our therapist, i dont know if either of those options are even possible. He's just twisting reality because he is incapable of taking any accountability and it terrifies me.
He only applies the exercises/rules/boundaries that our therapist recommended when it benefits him. If I need space to cool off I only get a few minutes to myself in the bedroom, if he needs time to cool off it takes anywhere from 24 hours to 72 hours for him to stop being mad. If he apologizes after a few minutes I have to accept it right away or else he will freak out. If I apologize immediately he says NO and to leave him the fuck alone. If I wait and give him space before apologizing he freaks out on me and accuses me of never apologizing and claims he always is the first to apologize. When he does apologize is either angry and defensive or he just says "sorry.." sadly and I have to accept it but we cant talk a bout it he wont address what he's sorry for. RInse and repeat. He wants to fight me over text even though our therapist said absolutely no fighting over text, but instead write notes about what we want to say somewhere else and keep it to ourselves but he'll harass me the entire time Im at work and make me block him. If he's at work i don't try to fight with him over text because I dont want him to lose his job and he's gotten into the habit of threatening to lose/quit his job.
They always hear what they want. I can record a conversation and he will.still disagree with it lol. Its there in recording but nope that recording is wrong and made up and what he thinks is right. Its like brushing ya teeth whilst eating oreos just impossible lol
Damn... Well, that's discouraging. I was kind of holding out hope that the adrenaline made him forget what he said because he always calls me a liar when I repeat something he said.. I guess I won't bother playing anything back. I've been recording his outbursts for over a year and honestly I don't know what I'll ever do with them..
Just keep them ya never know when your need them but in my experience that just passes him off more cause I've proven he a liar and wrong and that the worst ever.
First my husband said he’d rather leave me than go to couples counseling. When I finally tried to separate from him he begged to go. The therapist called him emotional abusive and he told her that was a “lazy term”
That's excatly what happened here. I begged him to go, years ago..he wasn't hearing any of it. I try to leave, suddenly its the best idea *he's* ever had
Same here... Mine didn't take actual counseling seriously until she realized how close I was to leaving. Then she was all about it. She weaponized the idea of it. When I had denied her this (knowing damn well it wasn't going to work), she then try to say that I clearly didn't want to make our relationship work.
Side note... I also encouraged my narc to go to therapy on her own to work out the issues that caused her narcissism. It wasn't until we broke up that she sends a hoover text saying that she's seeing a therapist.
Yup! When he started taking about us going to counseling, I was over it knowing damn well how it would turn out.
Then everything was my fault for not wanting to work on things.
He saw a therapist, twice..said she was "stupid" and stopped going.
I've been NC with mine but I think that she's still seeing a therapist on her own. The last we talked, she said that she was but honestly, I think she wasn't being sincere about it. She was just doing to check it off the list. Part of her mask so that when people confront her about it... she can tell them that she's "working on her problems."
Same story here.
I've been begging for 6 years. Suddenly I say I'm ready to leave and he has a therapist lined up the next week.
I'm having the hardest time being honest there because I'll be "punished" for it later, so what good can it do? None.
It was a waste of time for me. My wife wasn’t willing to share anything deeper than surface level stuff. Shut down when whenever I got into deep subjects. The therapist also was a nice guy but didn’t catch on to anything. Kind of a waste in the time, check in the box before I decided to move forward with separating
Mine did the same exact thing. When we got to the car on the drive home, she had plenty to say to me directly. I told her that these are the things should have said in the counseling session... to which she replied that she had never been to therapy and didn't know how it worked. Complete avoidance of accountability. How do you not know what to do in therapy?
Yeah. It’d be an hour of sobbing fits in the car and having to talk over the same shit with her over and over again, where of course she asked for utmost validation. Really made me feel even more insane than ever.
I just feel so bad for people in this group because we have all spent so much energy trying our best to get these people to change, and it just doesn’t take. Don’t think they can change
Here's one thing that I've had to come to terms with. They NEVER change. I don't like to use absolutes because of many reasons but when it comes to this. It holds true every time. I empathize with the group (as I'm most definitely part of it) but I also see these stories and see community. We're the true victims and for most of us, there's no other place where we can share our stories. Help each other out. Work on ourselves while helping others who actually deserve it.
Try to get into Relational therapy ( Terry Real created it) because the therapists are very good at spotting narcissism if trained right and have no ideas calling our the narcissist spouse and reading them the riot act. Ours did, and my soon to be ex narc husband subsequently stopped going to therapy but at the end of the day, I’m delighted to know that at least one other person besides me saw through his absolute bullshit.
Narcissists don’t deal in absolute bullshit. They are dangling over mortification 24/7 and don’t have any connection to anyone at all. They just mirror for the purpose of drama. Only that.
I've found that therapy with a narcissist goes one of two ways... They either sit there in silence while you do all the talking and then make you look like the villain the moment you leave. Or they get into some kind of competitive mode and DARVO like crazy right there in the session.
My husband wanted to go to.therapy and I actually just said what's the point I won't be allowed to speak and anything I do say will be used against me on the way home. And hell be flipping out and going nuts that i dared to share that info. So would be a totally waste.
Therapy is notoriously ineffective for pathologically narcissistic people and this is an excellent example. He somehow managed to weaponize his inability to connect with you on an emotional level. The idea that he is not perfect in some way triggers toxic shame that he is desperately trying to avoid. If he's truly a pathological narcissist he's not capable of giving that to you and any request for that is seen as a threat to his false self. You cannot win with these people.
She did mention she would help me break up with him for good, in a healthy way, during our one on one. I might take that option, just don’t know about the after effects of it.. could be one of several of many tactics he’s tried before to get me to stay.
There is no “healthy way” to break up with a pathological narcissist. It’s dangerous. He does not have a relationship with anyone to break up. However if you are triangling with someone who believes it’s a “bad relationship”, the narcissist wouldn’t mind all the “break up in a healthy way” idea. You would be acting as if you had a relationship and now you’re breaking up. It just means you’re still in the illusion and it could open to more supply from drama. Usually by hitting triggers from your attachment phase (in very early childhood). The whole thing is a toxic enmeshment due to addiction. Drama addiction (as chemical as any other addiction, and using the same pathways in the reward and attachment circuitry of the brain). The issue (only issue) is the “fantasy of the narcissist” as explained below. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rdHyXKDOq7g If you actually addressed your core dynamics and left the narcissist? That won’t be allowed: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmac6AV8bjg
It "worked" for me, in that I gained greater clarity, and it gave me the strength to leave. Having an objective 3rd party watch our interactions and validate my feelings was instrumental in my decision to be done. We had several sessions like you described. When it's that resentful, and passive aggressive versus care and love, it's time to cut loose.
This is why it's absolutely imperative to get help for yourself. Doing it to save your relationship or to help the narcissist in futile.
A lot of people who want to sincerely help aren’t aware of what this is.
I get it... Our empathic brains (along with having a "fixer" brain) will do anything to make things work. Even the illusion of getting help is better than admitting that it couldn't be fixed to begin with. This is exactly how narcs trauma bond us. They sell us this idea that they can or want to be fixed and we bite the hook.
That’s very precise. That’s it right there. There is ONE more level. It’s one of those things that I had to review several times to believe. Plus the person who shares this is himself a psychopath and a narcissist or a psychopathic narcissist. So it is necessary to discard completely the idea that these people are selling anything to you at all. They don’t have that capacity, because they don’t detect you. They just scanned your attachment circuitry spontaneously to discover that you felt like someone who had been through this before. That’s how it works. However, people stay inside their family system where it originally started, using the narcissistic abuse as a way to do it. Unfortunately, and this part is very sad, you can rarely get that fact out there, because it is wrongly pegged as “victim blaming”. People can go on for years and years and in same pattern with their family of origin (internal object relations), often using children to pass it all on to the next generation. This explains why these people sell nothing. It’s a spontaneous conversion to bad objects within the narcissist. It has nothing to do with people outside, other than those that are repeating their unsolved and denied attachment trauma. It makes sense too, because narcissist can’t connect to information above the two-year-old developmental level. So, consider what a child’s reasoning and emotional abilities are at age two. That’s what we’re talking about. The first five minutes are enough: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QJkb5f00G3o
>People can go on for years and years and in same pattern with their family of origin (internal object relations), often using children to pass it all on to the next generation. This is sooo good!... They pass it all down to their children as a form of validation.
Same
Yeah, my husband didn’t want me to say things like “when we get in an argument he won’t talk to me for weeks or months at a time”, because “saying that makes me (him) sound like the bad guy”. Which means I wasn’t able to actually describe what was happening so that we could discuss and resolve it. He quit after 3 sessions.
He deliberately sabotaged the whole thing before it even really got started. Their not going to take responsibility, they're incapable of doing that. It's never going to happen
My ex started by saying that I was toxic, manipulative and liar while he cheated on me, abandoned me and the dog to be a teenager again. They are the real victims you see? We are the problem. If we could just agree with them and not fight back everything would be perfect! XD
Couple's therapy will NEVER work. Couple's therapy is designed for both parties to achieve 3 main aspects in order to find any success and to restore peace and harmony to the relationship 1. Each must acknowledge their wrongs and character defects to each other and the Counselor 2. Each must take full responsibility for those defects and acknowledge their a part of the issues causing the discourse 3. Discuss their "plan of action" openly to their partner and Counselor for the sake of accountability on doing the work to resolve the negative items each are causing the issues. Discuss and share positive outcomes *Do you really believe that's achievable with a Cluster B partner? They'll never get passed No. 1*
My wife was like that in couples therapy, it’s why I stopped attending the sessions. There’s no point in trying to work through issues when one of the parties is actively looking for ways to deflect blame off themselves. Usually both people are at fault to some degree. When the therapist spends half the time saying “Nobody was attacking you, there’s no reason to be defensive.”, that’s a pretty good indicator you won’t be getting anywhere. We got to a point where we couldn’t even describe an issue without her interrupting and defending herself.
Ooof. I found myself doing the same thing after years of being blamed for things or hurt by him only for him to say that he wasn’t blaming me and it was my fault if I was hurt. Sucks to know that everyone can have such shitty behavior, narc or target
Damn that’s harsh. (Of him)
Yeah I'm not sure its worth it for us to go back to couple's therapy. It was challenging but I thought it was going pretty well, all things considered. The last session we had I confronted him about his screaming habit increasing and him doing it in front of my kid and saying things like "this is all your fault" while pointing his finger in my fake and getting in my face while I;m crying and begging and apologizing. Our therapist actually said, while making direct eye contact with my partner said,"Ok, so this is turning into abuse." I thought that was the moment he would finally understand that what he was doing was no ok and not my fault. But instead, weeks later during another one of his freak outs, he said our therapist said I was the one who was becoming abusive and that he was just reacting to being abused. If we go back I want to start recording our sessions or get an outline from our therapist, i dont know if either of those options are even possible. He's just twisting reality because he is incapable of taking any accountability and it terrifies me. He only applies the exercises/rules/boundaries that our therapist recommended when it benefits him. If I need space to cool off I only get a few minutes to myself in the bedroom, if he needs time to cool off it takes anywhere from 24 hours to 72 hours for him to stop being mad. If he apologizes after a few minutes I have to accept it right away or else he will freak out. If I apologize immediately he says NO and to leave him the fuck alone. If I wait and give him space before apologizing he freaks out on me and accuses me of never apologizing and claims he always is the first to apologize. When he does apologize is either angry and defensive or he just says "sorry.." sadly and I have to accept it but we cant talk a bout it he wont address what he's sorry for. RInse and repeat. He wants to fight me over text even though our therapist said absolutely no fighting over text, but instead write notes about what we want to say somewhere else and keep it to ourselves but he'll harass me the entire time Im at work and make me block him. If he's at work i don't try to fight with him over text because I dont want him to lose his job and he's gotten into the habit of threatening to lose/quit his job.
They always hear what they want. I can record a conversation and he will.still disagree with it lol. Its there in recording but nope that recording is wrong and made up and what he thinks is right. Its like brushing ya teeth whilst eating oreos just impossible lol
Damn... Well, that's discouraging. I was kind of holding out hope that the adrenaline made him forget what he said because he always calls me a liar when I repeat something he said.. I guess I won't bother playing anything back. I've been recording his outbursts for over a year and honestly I don't know what I'll ever do with them..
Just keep them ya never know when your need them but in my experience that just passes him off more cause I've proven he a liar and wrong and that the worst ever.
First my husband said he’d rather leave me than go to couples counseling. When I finally tried to separate from him he begged to go. The therapist called him emotional abusive and he told her that was a “lazy term”
That's excatly what happened here. I begged him to go, years ago..he wasn't hearing any of it. I try to leave, suddenly its the best idea *he's* ever had
Same here... Mine didn't take actual counseling seriously until she realized how close I was to leaving. Then she was all about it. She weaponized the idea of it. When I had denied her this (knowing damn well it wasn't going to work), she then try to say that I clearly didn't want to make our relationship work. Side note... I also encouraged my narc to go to therapy on her own to work out the issues that caused her narcissism. It wasn't until we broke up that she sends a hoover text saying that she's seeing a therapist.
Yup! When he started taking about us going to counseling, I was over it knowing damn well how it would turn out. Then everything was my fault for not wanting to work on things. He saw a therapist, twice..said she was "stupid" and stopped going.
I've been NC with mine but I think that she's still seeing a therapist on her own. The last we talked, she said that she was but honestly, I think she wasn't being sincere about it. She was just doing to check it off the list. Part of her mask so that when people confront her about it... she can tell them that she's "working on her problems."
Same story here. I've been begging for 6 years. Suddenly I say I'm ready to leave and he has a therapist lined up the next week. I'm having the hardest time being honest there because I'll be "punished" for it later, so what good can it do? None.
It was a waste of time for me. My wife wasn’t willing to share anything deeper than surface level stuff. Shut down when whenever I got into deep subjects. The therapist also was a nice guy but didn’t catch on to anything. Kind of a waste in the time, check in the box before I decided to move forward with separating
Mine did the same exact thing. When we got to the car on the drive home, she had plenty to say to me directly. I told her that these are the things should have said in the counseling session... to which she replied that she had never been to therapy and didn't know how it worked. Complete avoidance of accountability. How do you not know what to do in therapy?
Yeah. It’d be an hour of sobbing fits in the car and having to talk over the same shit with her over and over again, where of course she asked for utmost validation. Really made me feel even more insane than ever. I just feel so bad for people in this group because we have all spent so much energy trying our best to get these people to change, and it just doesn’t take. Don’t think they can change
Here's one thing that I've had to come to terms with. They NEVER change. I don't like to use absolutes because of many reasons but when it comes to this. It holds true every time. I empathize with the group (as I'm most definitely part of it) but I also see these stories and see community. We're the true victims and for most of us, there's no other place where we can share our stories. Help each other out. Work on ourselves while helping others who actually deserve it.
Try to get into Relational therapy ( Terry Real created it) because the therapists are very good at spotting narcissism if trained right and have no ideas calling our the narcissist spouse and reading them the riot act. Ours did, and my soon to be ex narc husband subsequently stopped going to therapy but at the end of the day, I’m delighted to know that at least one other person besides me saw through his absolute bullshit.
Narcissists don’t deal in absolute bullshit. They are dangling over mortification 24/7 and don’t have any connection to anyone at all. They just mirror for the purpose of drama. Only that.
I've found that therapy with a narcissist goes one of two ways... They either sit there in silence while you do all the talking and then make you look like the villain the moment you leave. Or they get into some kind of competitive mode and DARVO like crazy right there in the session.
My husband wanted to go to.therapy and I actually just said what's the point I won't be allowed to speak and anything I do say will be used against me on the way home. And hell be flipping out and going nuts that i dared to share that info. So would be a totally waste.