Narcissistic abuse syndrome

Dealing with parental estrangement

If you have become estranged from your parents, it’s important to remember that this can be a very vulnerable place to be. Making the decision to become estranged from your family may alleviate some of the instant emotional pain after a huge argument, however, many people find that estrangement is a constant battle in their life, as it can cause them to endlessly think about their situation, even if they do feel an initial sense of relief.

Some people become estranged from their parents because they have been emotionally, physically or sexually abusive during childhood or beyond. This is a difficult decision to make but sometimes a necessary one. It’s immensely tricky to continue a healthy relationship if there has been abuse, and it can be extremely risky to continue a genuine relationship with this family member without the right professional intervention and support.

Others become estranged with their parents or siblings due to conflicts about religion or sexuality. This can also be especially painful, as the adult child isn’t able to truly be who they are. Authenticity is crucial for a happy life.

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Grieving the estrangement from a parent, no matter what the circumstances, is a very important part of healing from it, as the loss of an accepting & healthy parent is an extremely painful experience, even more so than normal grief. Nothing will ever fill the void of not having had what every child so rightfully deserves. Comfort, validation & unconditional love. Realising that a parent was never truly able to love & accept you, is utterly heartbreaking.

Even if there was abuse, children never stop loving their parent unconditionally and never stop hoping that their parent will change. This is the main reason adult children remain in contact with a parent, despite any abuse that may have occured. They will always long for the unconditional love they never had. In cases when the abuse or invalidation was constant, the trauma bond will also be why the adult child finds it hard to cut ties with their parent.

If the adult child isn’t able to fully grieve the loss of a healthy parent, they will not be able to move forward in a new relationship with them. If the parent continues to be abusive, shows no remorse, shows no understanding and doesn’t make any attempts to make amends, then it is healthier for the relationship to end.

In both cases of estrangement and remaining in contact, grieving is essential. Grieving helps lift the intense painful heaviness of not having had your needs met in childhood. It helps lessen the anger, frustration and injustice.

Most importantly, the adult children who end up going ‘no contact’, have to learn to live with the ‘early death’ of their parent before that parents actually dies. They have to continue living their life, without any communication or knowledge of how that parent is. They have to swallow the grief that creeps up from time to time, during holidays, birthdays, Mother’s day, Father’s day and during other emotional times in their life.

Those adult children who were lucky enough to have had good childhoods, with unconditionally loving parents, will never truly understand the deep pain of those who didn’t have good childhoods.

Family estrangement is a huge challenge and living with it requires support in more ways than one. It is important to have counselling from time to time and to be surrounded by understanding friends or a partner that can truly empathize. Lastly, it is crucial for the estranged, to feel the sadness that emerges and be self-compassionate as much as possible.

Love Athina ♥

The loss of what should have been

When you don’t get certain basic needs met in your childhood, there will come a time in your future where you will eventually become awakened to these unmet needs. Although this isn’t the same for everyone, there is usually one feeling which is most prevalent for most: ”The feeling of being ripped off”

This feeling of being ripped off, because you didn’t have a healthy family or because you no longer have a family to turn to, starts a very real and painful journey of mourning.

A lot of people who grew up with abusive parents, or in one parent families, or in families where their parents were chronically ill, learned to ‘live on autopilot’. They either had to push down their feelings to keep the peace, be a confidant or carer to the sick parent or learned that they had to solely rely on themselves. Even when they were scared and had no one to turn to as children, they had to keep going. As early adulthood approached, they may have found many ways to cope with this underlying feeling of sadness or anger, by drinking too much, working too much and generally trying to find ways to numb out any uncomfortable feelings that would creep up.

When an adult child is first awakened to the reality of what really was and what now is, they somehow know that things will never feel the same again. It might be that a certain event in their adult life uncovered feelings that had been buried deep inside them and suddenly the strength that they thought would always keep the safe, slowly starts to crumble. New anxieties, fears & losses start to unfold and the world suddenly starts to feel like a scary & unsafe place.

At this early stage of realisation, when adult children come to terms with the fact that they needed so much more than what they were given emotionally, the grief can feel overwhelming. Grief for adult children is a complex emotion because so much of the loss has been built up over time and they have long learned to adapt to the constant loss of an ideal childhood. Looking into the future feels bleak and they feel as if things are only going to get worse rather than better.

Through my own journey of grief, I learned that it isn’t a straightforward process and that it doesn’t have a certain time limit. When the grief was so overwhelming at times that I couldn’t imagine a better future, I reminded myself that it was necessary for me to truly feel the sadness. When your heart feels broken you have to let it heal and healing requires compassion & patience with yourself.

Pete Walker is a truly Inspirational Psychologist and survivor of childhood abuse. His words below really resonate:

“…the broken heart that has been healed through grieving is stronger and more loving than the one that has never been injured. Every heartbreak of my life, including the brokenheartedness of my childhood, has left me a stronger, wiser and more loving person than the one I was before I grieved”

The last thing that is worth mentioning, is that a lot of people don’t start their journey of recovery & grief from childhood trauma, unless it is emotionally safe for them to do so. It might be that they are in a supportive relationship and a stable environment and this enables them to ‘let go’ and just be vulnerable. It might be that they have found a therapist which they feel comfortable enough to be themselves.

Recovery from the losses of one’s childhood is necessary in order to restore balance & new found hope in the future.

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What is your experience?

Love Athina ♥

Psychological Projection-A defense mechanism that people with NPD use often

Dear friends

I am hope you are enjoying your weekend and are generally doing ok.

Before I fly off to Scotland tomorrow, I wanted to upload Monday’s Youtube video early, as I won’t be able to work on it when visiting family.

This week’s video is about an abusive behaviour & defense mechanism that people with narcissistic personality disorder use very frequently.

Projection is something I experienced most of my life from my mother and it is something that was immensely painful.

This is the definition of Projection according to Wikipedia:

Psychological projection is a theory in psychology in which humans defend themselves against their own unconscious impulses or qualities (both positive and negative) by denying their existence in themselves while attributing them to others. For example, a person who is habitually rude may constantly accuse other people of being rude. It incorporates blame shifting.

I hope you find this video helpful.

Love Athina ♥

Pathological lying & other types of lying

Happy Monday everyone! I hope your week started well 🙂

Today’s video, which unfortunately took me ages to edit due to many interruptions & distractions, is about pathological lying. Although I talk about other types of lying, I particularly wanted to highlight the importance of pathological lying because it is the most destructive form of lying there is. Compulsive lying is also similar, although not as spiteful.

Individuals which are high on the narcissistic spectrum (NPD’d, Malignant narcissists, Psychopaths, ASPD’d) are very skilled pathological liars.

Please like,share & subscribe to my youtube channel if you find this video helpful!

Love Athina ♥

Parentification

In today’s video, I talk about another type of child abuse known as parentification.

Parentification isn’t always through the known fault of a parent, as sometimes in single parent families or in families with a special needs child, the parent struggles to keep the needs of the child fulfilled appropriately. Sometimes, the parent may be also suffering from a severe disability such as a chronic condition or severe mental health difficulties, and it is only natural that the child may at times become a carer to the parent. This is especially true, if there isn’t an additional parent or family member around to support the child.

Unfortunately, in a family where 1 or both parents suffer with narcissistic personality disorder, this type of abuse is even more prevalent in both a physical and emotional way.

My video describes this in more detail:

If you have experienced parentification, then feel free to share your experience.

If you find this youtube video and blog post useful, then please like, share & subscribe.

Please support my youtube channel on my patreon page. There are exclusive patron only videos on there, which are available specifically to those of you who contribute & become patrons.

https://www.patreon.com/AthinaEhlen

Love Athina ♥

Infantilization

You might have heard of the term infantilization but you may not realise how incredibly abusive it is when a parent does this to their child.

It is only natural for a growing child to start developing independent thoughts, actions and opinions. For a narcissistic parent this can be very threatening, as they want to continue controlling their child and use them for narcissistic supply.

Check out my video for an explanation of what infantilization is.

Some examples of infantilization are as follows:

A parent stops a teenager from socialising with friends or doesn’t allow them any privacy in their bedroom. The parent may still treat them as if they are a young child whereas a teenager needs growing independence and privacy.

A parent buys their child age-inappropriate clothing and/or arranges age-inappropriate activities.

A parent might not allow the child to speak for themselves, when they are asked a question directly by somebody else.

A parent might discourage the child from pursuing new interests as they don’t want the child to become more skilled at new things than they are.

If a parent isn’t able to have healthy relationships, they may try to influence the child against their choice of partner. They can’t allow their child to leave the family nest. The parent wants to continue their enmeshed relationship for as long as possible.

The effects of infantilization are as follows:

The adult child ends up having chronically low self-esteem
The adult child has difficulties academically
The adult child may find getting a job difficult
The adult child learns helplessness and enabling
The adult child may self-harm
The adult child may have poor social skills
The adult child may self-sabotage
The adult child may become avoidant

If you can relate to any of what I have written or said in the video, then please re-blog so it reaches more people.

Knowledge is power and with knowledge comes healing. To also further promote healing on a larger scale, I have recently signed up to patreon to further support my creations of videos, pdfs & hopefully in the near future, e-books.

Patreon is a platform that enables creators to reach new goals by having their followers & supporters fund their work.

If you find my videos & blog posts helpful, then please check out my patreon page.

It would mean the world to me to be able to reach more people and help them on their journey of recovery.

https://www.patreon.com/AthinaEhlen

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Love Athina ♥

Malignant narcissism

Although this isn’t an actual diagnosis in the DSM, it is very real and it is very destructive.

I have had first hand experience with someone who has this condition and I live with a very real mental illness that was caused by that person.

I made a quick video outlining the basics.

I hope you find it helpful.

Love Athina ♥

Narcissistic abuse-Trauma bonding with a parent

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As many of you already know, my journey to qualifying as a Life Coach, was based on my own recovery from my narcissistically abusive parents.

For those of you who don’t follow my more personal blog, I wanted to just give you a little insight into my own struggles.

In the last few days, I have been struggling with contact again from my father, after 1 year and a half of not speaking.

I sent him a letter, so he could stop harrassing me by phone.

I never exclusively told him I wanted no contact, but after a very traumatic time following his attempted suicide, (as a way of stopping his wife from leaving him) he gave me the silent treatment for a year, so I just went along with it.

I was not willing to respond to him and was already in a grieving process, even though there was no closure of any sort.

When he finally decided to start hoovering me back in with his phonecalls and sudden caring, I continued to ignore his calls. This communication from him went on for 8 months. I finally got fed up with the constant calls that I decided to send him a letter to end our relationship. I briefly explained my reasons and gave him the chance to reply.

I received his reply and it hit me really hard! More than I expected it to.

I realised that I still had a tiny glimmer of hope that he might change his behaviour and this was a huge setback for me. I also realised how incredibly strong the trauma bonding is between us, even more so than with my mother.

As a means of coping with my recent distress and the final letter to him, which I am in the process of writing at the moment, I created the below video!

It outlines what I have been going through and what many other survivors of abuse face all the time.

Please feel free to share it, if you think it may help others.

Just visit my Youtube page and embed it into your page.

Thanks for reading

Love Athina ♥

Narcissists & their relationship to money

This is a topic I previously covered on my personal blog last year but it is important to highlight again, especially in the current climate.

Most extremely powerful & wealthy people in this world, are usually void of empathy. Politicians, country leaders, business tycoons etc..

Narcissists and especially overt & malignant narcissists, lack empathy, lack self insight and aren’t able to form healthy & reciprocal relationships.

In this video, I talk about the importance of money in a narcissist’s world.

I talk about financial abuse and how narcissists may use this sort of abuse.

Having had first hand experience with a narcissistic & very controlling father, I have witnessed the obsession of a narcissist with his money & how he uses it in his life, to harm those close to him.

If you have experienced financial abuse or known someone who has used money in a harmful way, then please feel free to share this in the comments below.

Love Athina ♥

When to emotionally detach from a toxic relationship or situation

Hi everyone,

This is my 2nd attempt to write this blog post, after the last one was unfortunately lost. 😦

I hope you all had a good Christmas weekend and managed to relax and enjoy time with your loved ones. For those of you who find Christmas tough due to past trauma or dysfunctional relationships, you have just survived yet another Christmas, so give yourself a pat on the back and treat yourself to something you enjoy. The New Year is nearly here and with it comes new hope and a renewed sense of direction. 🙂

The following youtube video is 1 day late, due to the fact that I allowed myself a little time to relax over the last 3 days. I caught up on some much needed sleep and I started studying for my German exam (which is fast approaching).

In my own recovery back in 2008, I was introduced to the concept of letting go of relationships that no longer served me. I was introduced to the concept of emotionally detaching from a toxic person. Although at first this was extremely hard to do, with practice and with time, I slowly started making changes for the better. I started learning to put my self-care first and to set boundaries. I started noticing the repetitive patterns that were present in my relationships and I started questioning the reasons as to why I couldn’t choose healthier relationships. In my case, the narcissistically abusive background I come from, is what influenced my choice of abusive or unavailable partners, friends & even colleagues.

This video is for those of you who are just starting out in your recovery from dysfunctional relationships, so I really hope it helps ♥

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