Monday, January 11, 2016

Cassie's Story - Letters To Myself


The victims of those suffering from narcissistic personality disorder are sometimes overlooked. At least, their ongoing suffering can be overlooked. The  mental abuse can take years to heal. This is why Cassie feels so uncertain and why she keeps vacillating. It's hard for her to trust herself, and hard for her to believe she deserves good in her life. 

Today's episode is a bit of a breakthrough for her:



“Did it feel like family to you?”

Sue was sitting quietly, notepad in her lap, pen held loosely in her hand. I was there for my regular appointment, and also because I was feeling frustrated at my own ambivalence since that moment Saffron had said those words in my kitchen on New Year's Day.

I turned the thought over in my mind (like I hadn’t already done this a thousand times in the past few days).

“It felt comfortable, like neither of them was a guest I had to entertain.”

“Is that your definition of family? That you don’t need to entertain them?”

I smiled, it did sound a bit strange repeated back to me.

“My definition of family has been me and the kids for a long time now. My thoughts about family keep going back to my marriage.”

Sue stared at me for a few seconds, before scribbling in her notepad. When she finished she leaned forward slightly. I mentally girded my loins, Sue leaning forward meant she was going to say something to shake up my world.

“Cassie, may I ask if you are feeling the ambivalence because of what happened with Nathan? Do you feel that you are not yet free of the effects?”

“You mean do I still feel connected to Nathan? Because I don’t. I felt no attraction or feeling of guilt when he tried to kiss me.”

“That’s kind of what I mean, and I’m pleased you have been able to put that behind you. But what I meant is a bit different. Do you still feel responsible for what happened? Do you feel that you are not worthy of a good relationship?”

We had discussed this topic before, I was sure it was the root of my ambivalence toward a relationship with Nathan. I stared at Sue, trying to understand my own emotions.

“I still have trouble understanding how I am feeling.”

“Yes, you dissociated from your own emotions, it was a coping mechanism. Cassie, you should not underestimate the depth of the trauma you experienced. I hesitated to diagnose Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, because you did not display all of the pointers - some, but I didn’t think enough at the time. Perhaps I was wrong. Now you have become stronger; you have learned so much about yourself. But, I think you are not yet fully healed. It takes a long time, you were a victim of mental abuse, a specific type of domestic abuse at the hands of a person with narcissistic personality disorder. Does this sound accurate to you?”

Sue paused to take a sip of coffee, watching the impact of her words on me.

I shifted uncomfortably. It still made me feel a little bit sick to talk about my marriage, to remember the details that can only be described as sordid. Not that I could remember all of them, another coping mechanism of mine was to blank out the worst parts. I still had no memory of what Nathan screamed at me in any of his rages, only of lying curled up on the floor at his feet. Only the dark, deep despair I felt. But I had enough memories to feel dirty every time I let them into my conscious mind. I sipped my own coffee, noting the tremors that shook my hands, evidence that I was feeling far worse than I was letting myself know.

“I believe I still employ dissociation. I don’t allow myself to feel anything deeply. Like now, my hands are shaking.” I help out my hands to show Sue. “But if you asked me I would say I feel a bit uncomfortable.”

Sue remained silent as I continued to process my thoughts.

“I think I still feel responsible, for the failure of the marriage I mean. I no longer feel responsible for making Nathan happy. Although,” I admitted as a ray of understanding lit up my mind, “I did have to stop myself from falling into that old habit when Nathan said he wanted us to be friends. And I guess I allowed myself to be manipulated into inviting him and Lucy to the party.”

I stared at Sue as another ray of understanding shone through the confusion that usually clouded my brain whenever I tried to think objectively about Nathan.

“Actually I fell back into the old patterns because I agreed we could be friends. But we can’t can we? Because Nathan will always have an agenda beyond that.”

Sue smiled, but remained silent.

“And I think it is my own feelings of inferiority that I have to overcome. AND, I am afraid of failure. I failed so epically in my first marriage, how will I cope if I fail in this relationship with Matt. Can I handle that?”

Sue scribbled in her book, looked up at me and made to speak but I overrode her – for perhaps the first time in our relationship.

“No, I didn’t fail in my marriage. Who could succeed with someone like Nathan? No-one, nobody could ever be good enough for him, nobody could ever feed his needs indefinitely. Every woman in a relationship with him is going to burn out. It was not my fault.”

As I spoke, with genuine conviction, I felt the weight of responsibility – the weight I didn’t know I was still carrying – lift from my shoulders. I could feel tears flood my eyes and tried desperately to blink them back in. Showing emotion in this way was always going to embarrass me.

Sue leaned forward, handed me the box of tissues that was always at hand.

“Cry it out Cassie,” she said softly. “What you suffered has changed you, perhaps forever. But you are strong and you are coming out the other side of this. Today is a breakthrough day. You have finally expressed your emotions about your marriage verbally, believed your words in your heart and you’ve let it go. Your tears are your release valve. So cry it out and let it all go.”

I half smiled at her through the tears, before indulging in a sobfest that I can assure you, dear reader, happens only rarely.

Once the tears stopped and I’d mopped my face and drunk some much needed, rapidly cooling coffee, I shared the other ray of light that had shone in my mind even as I sobbed. The mind never turns off does it?

“I employ dissociation with strong emotions, good and bad. My feelings for Matt run deeper than I’ve let myself acknowledge. That’s why I keep on vacillating like this.”

Sue smiled at me. “What makes you think this?”

I hate the way she makes me pull out my emotions and examine them.

“Because of how happy I am to see him, because of how he makes me laugh, because of how safe I feel when I am with him, because of how my body reacts to him. And because I can’t imagine my life without him in it.”

“What do you think makes a good relationship?”

Tricky questions today. “I think the most important thing to me now is mutual respect. Trust, friendship, attraction, sex of course. But not sex as the answer to everything or as the reason for everything. To feel equal in the relationship.” I thought a bit more. “To be able to state my opinion and have it listened to and respected as my opinion. To be able to have an argument about something without feeling like a bug under someone’s shoe for daring to go against his words, to be able to have a fight and it’s just a fight, not ammunition for a future rage or the spark for an instant rage. To have someone care for me as me and not as a useful verbal punching bag.”

I was on a roll now. “To be comfortable in each other’s company, and free to do other things with other people and it’s not a betrayal. To feel safe.” I paused, repeated it. “To feel safe. And, to feel like an individual, a separate person who is happy within the relationship but also, to be me. To be me, just me, and to be accepted and loved for who I am. To not feel like I am always wrong, always not good enough, always less important.”

I looked Sue in the eyes. “I want someone who loves me for me, someone I can love in return without it being a competition.”

I paused, running my words back through my mind. “That was a lot of repetition wasn’t it?”

Sue smiled again. “Kind of. I think this is the first time you have thought about a relationship from your point of view. What you want as opposed to what you must give to make someone else happy, or to try to make someone else happy. Can you reduce it to one sentence? What is the most important thing to you, or the two most?”

What was the most important thing? “It’s two, but I think really it’s one. Maybe. I don’t know. To be loved, and to feel safe. But I think if you are truly loved by someone, you will also feel safe. Is that right? And respect, but again I think that comes with true love. I don’t think that anyone who truly loved me would ever seek to make me feel small, or to rage at me until I am so scared I block it out. I don’t think, in an equal relationship, in a true partnership, there is room for someone like Nathan. Because with Nathan it was not a partnership, it was a onemanship.”

Sue snorted in amusement, but her eyes were kind. “You can’t have a partnership with a narcissist, it’s all about them whether they play the dominant role or the victim role. And they can’t truly love, it’s not possible for them. It’s a sad and lonely existence for a narcissist. Cassie, I’m so proud of you. It takes courage to recover from the sort of mental abuse that you suffered. It takes years of work on the self to understand and accept what happened and to move on. I think you are ready to move on. You understand yourself and you know what you want – even if you choose a wordy way of expressing it!” She laughed when I looked aggrieved. “Like I said Cassie, I think this has been the first time you have verbalized what it is that you want from a relationship. Congratulations! You have put your marriage in the past, your (misplaced) sense of responsibility about it behind you. You have verbalized what it is that you want from a partnership and you have given a great description of true love.”

I wasn’t done worrying though. “But what if I enter into a relationship with Matt and I fall back into the old patterns? What if I don’t know how to have an equal relationship?”

“Do you think Matt knows how to?”

I didn’t hesitate. “Yes he does.”

“Do you think he will understand when you struggle, and want to help you? Do you think he will be patient with you and give you time to adjust?”

“Yes he will.”

“So what exactly are you worried about?”

I grinned, feeling a lightness fill my head. “I don’t know. Maybe the first thing I have to learn is how not to worry!”

Sue smiled again. “Cassie, the timing in this is your decision. You’ve told me that Matt is willing to wait. And he has shown you that he puts your well-being ahead of a, er, well ahead of his physical needs.”

“He did didn’t he? He could have taken me to bed on New Year’s Eve, or day or whenever it was by then. He didn’t. Nathan would have and not considered how I would feel. Matt put me first.”

I smiled at the thought, and then panicked. “But what if Matt always puts me first, aren’t I then the narcissist?”

Sue laughed, a full bodied laugh of genuine amusement. “Oh Cassie, only you could think that! Do you really think that will happen? What do you think happens in an equal, loving relationship?”

“Each one puts the other first. Not in a competition, but in true caring.”

“Exactly. You work together in a partnership with mutual respect and mutual love. Sometimes one is the caretaker, sometimes the other. When one is down the other picks him or her up. That’s how it works Cassie.”

“Kind of like a friendship, but with sex.”

It was my turn to laugh at Sue’s shocked look. “Don’t panic! I think I get it. But it is friendship isn’t it? You’re friends, lovers, partners.”

Sue looked at her watch, the raising of her eyebrows telling me it was likely past time for me to go.

“How did it get so late? We’re going to have to end it here Cassie. Are you ok to drive? Today was a big session for you.”

I picked up my bag, and threw my empty coffee cup and used tissue into the bin. “I’m fine Sue. I think I’m more than fine.”

“Come see me next week, if that’s ok with you.”

“I will, I’ll make an appointment on the way out.”

I paused at the door. “Maybe I’ll ask Matt to come over tonight.”

I laughed and sashayed out as Sue stared at me open-mouthed. I had been joking, but maybe, finally, now was the time to have a well overdue talk with Matt about our relationship.



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