No Turning Back

by Kathy Krajco

You keep trying to get through to your narcissist. You just can't accept it that you can't reach them. Stubbornly, you keep trying.

That's partly because you don't know half of what they've done to you behind your back.

When you finally give up, your only regret is that you feel like an utter fool for having fled into denial where you kept trying for so long. You see that you should have known they are a hopeless case.

This is because a narcissist's past has a hold on them, a hold much stronger than you can ever get. To understand, just put yourself in their shoes.

Imagine that you're a malignant narcissist. You have gone around telling people terrible lies about others, even about the members of your own immediate family. You say your sister or brother is violent and has often beaten you. You say that he or she pushes drugs or embezzles or whatever.

Then this family member, trying to reach you while you are in deep depression, somehow gets you in for counseling. You think you want to change. To turn your life around. Wouldn't it be wonderful! Your family loves you and that love is a very powerful pull on you.

But what's the next thing you think?

You think what will happen when people you've told those lies to see you with this brother or sister, getting alone just fine.

How are you going to explain that? Here is someone you say tried to kill you, and you're on friendly terms with him or her? Here is someone that sleazy, and you socialize with him or her?

What will people think?

What are you going to say when people ask you if that brother or sister is still beating you? Or if they ask you whether he or she is still pushing drugs? Or if they ask you how he or she has managed to stay out of jail?

What are you going to do? Are you going to stay clean and admit that it was all a lie? Can you even BE clean without repairing the damage you did to that family member's good name?

You're going to continue living the old lie, aren't you? In other words, you're not going to change. Theoretically you could. But you can't. Not really. There are things people can do that you just do not repent.

Like Macbeth, you pass a point beyond which there is no turning back.

Even the secret things that no one else will ever know stand as a demon at the escape hatch. For, to change, you'd have to know what you did and see these despicable deeds for what they are. You'd have to stop repressing awareness of them. Because you can't change if you disown what you are changing FROM.

That is, you'd have to see YOURSELF when you look in a mirror. Could you? And know how cruelly you had exploited and treated others all your life? Know that you had tortured that innocent animal just for kicks? Know that you had eviscerated that young man who made the mistake of loving you? Know that you had abused and psychologically injured your own children by denying them love? Know that you had destroyed someone's career and ruined their life or perhaps even driven them to suicide that way?

People who did NOTHING to you! People who trusted you! People who loved you! You did things like this to FRIENDS!

The spirit in which such things are done is unmistakable. These are the kinds of things malignant narcissists do = not the normal bad things normal people do.

If you had done such things would you ever be able to fess up? I don't think so. You're not going to do that, are you? You're going to stay nice and safe there beyond the Looking Glass.

This is why the prognosis for NPD is so poor. Narcissists have become what they are to cope with what they have done. It's adaptive. It keeps them from killing themselves.

But don't take my word for it, or anyone's. Keep trying to get through to your narcissist. Just do face facts. But keep trying till you give up.

It is much better to feel like a fool who banged their head against a brick wall than to know you gave up while you had one bit of hope.

http://narc-attack.blogspot.com/2008/01/no-turning-back.html