Narcissistic Abuse Recovery

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This article should be required reading for every therapist practicing today:

http://jeetwincasinos.com/the-reflective-mindset/the-endless-tide-understanding-and-honoring-perpetual-grief-after-narcissistic-relationships-e4dd48d0ec0b

I was lucky with resources and time to find a therapist whose career was spent dealing with grief…often the grief of a lost partner after 60 plus years of marriage. My therapist was in her 80’s. I still talk with her from time to time. She has incredible, very genuine, sharable healing energy. Not all therapists have this.

One story about her. She grew up in VT and told me her father was a narcissist. One day her father gave her 200 laying hens and told her to be responsible for them. That is a lot of laying hens for an 11 year old girl to be responsible for, but I believe the lessons of those hens served her well.

She could see pieces of the traditional Kublar Ross pattern in me (denial, anger, depression, bartering, resolution) that fit me, but your outline in this article and the examples you give are much more accurate to what really transpires. You also point out the many ways grief recovery does NOT happen in the special abyss of narcissistic abuse recovery.

The loss/theft of the victim’s Self occurs as the shared fantasy is meticulously built, than painfully…