Experience Tumblr Like Never Before
Lost a friend today because he refused to listen about how harmful the concept of narcissistic abuse is, despite knowing I have NPD and that I'm a victim of the exact same kind of abuse he was (literally, he described my experience down to the letter).
He was one of my and my partner's closest friends, so today has been really rough.
Please listen to people with NPD about how this harms us. We're neurodivergent people with a largely traumagenic disorder, usually from abuse and/or neglect. We're not monsters, predisposed towards an abusive nature, or capable of a unique kind of abuse. We're just people who struggle with self-esteem because we base our ego primarily on our perception of what others think of us.
We're not saying this can never influence toxic behaviors, we're just pointing out that that's not more true of our disorder any more than any other health condition, from autism and ADHD to OCD to PTSD to addiction to eating disorders to bipolar to depression to anxiety.
We're also not trying to take language from other abuse victims. We're asking you to not be ableist (a form a structured societal abuse) towards other abuse victims. Call it what it is: emotional abuse. Emotional abuse is such a wider category than people realize, and it's important to talk about that. I hear what people are saying when they say they're wanting to describe a specific subtype of emotional abuse, so let's make words for that!
Manipulative abuse, coercive abuse, gaslighting abuse, guilt-tripping abuse, even safety abuse - that last for when people use their own mental health state and threaten self harm or suicide to get their way.
These can all be factors in emotional abuse - what's commonly described as narc abuse is what's standard for emotional abuse, involving a wide variety of tactics to exert control in the absence of physical or sexual abuse - which also can and usually are partly emotional in nature as well.
I'd love to open a conversation about terms that better describe what we went through! I'm just asking that we don't use the ones that further demonize a badly misunderstood disorder, and that people be willing to recognize that their understanding of it is based on a LOT of misinformation.
Just, please, listen to us. Be willing to be open-minded. We aren't your abusers, and we know that you deserved better and deserve a chance to heal to the fullest extent possible. We do too. Please, help make a safe space for us all to do so together.