The following letter was written by Alicia to her family therapist, Craig. Alicia and her husband David and their three children sought help from Craig for 14 years and spent an estimated $40,000 for his services over that time.
David displays behavior patterns consistent with overt narcissistic personality disorder (NPD): emotional dysregulation, lack of empathy, bullying superiority, overreactivity to criticism, black-and-white thinking, grandiose self-beliefs, idealizing and devaluing family members, frequent fits of rage, ongoing manipulation and coercion, and many others. Yet the family’s therapist, a respected psychologist in their community, failed to identify David’s personality disorder or the symptoms of complex trauma the rest of the family was struggling with.
Alicia’s experience is not uncommon. Although some therapists understand NPD and its impact, most do not. Whether counselors, therapists, psychologists, or psychiatrists, most clinicians do not receive adequate education and training to effectively recognize and treat people with personality disorders and those caught within their traumatizing orbit. Such practitioners not only fail to help clients in grave need, but they frequently exacerbate such clients’ trauma by invalidating their experience and giving ill-conceived if not dangerous advice.
So many of us who have survived narcissistic families and relationships and sought therapeutic help are painfully aware that this letter is the tip of the iceberg. Clinical psychology as it exists now is not responding adequately to the prevalence and severity of narcissistic and other Cluster B personality disorders in families and relationships. Children and long-term partners struggle with a hyperactivated nervous system and debilitating trauma symptoms that could be treated with appropriate interventions. And families hand down the trauma across generations.
I’d like to thank Alicia for allowing me to share her letter here. Names have been changed for privacy.
Dear Craig:
Hoping you and your family are staying safe. What a year for the world.
I have wrestled for a long time about whether or not to write you this letter. You have been a profound part of our family’s story, going back to 2006, when we first came in with Jacob. You saw every single person in our family in some capacity over the years. For a number of us, we saw you many times—alone, as couples, as parent and child, as an extended family. You are an educated, kind, smart, and godly man with vast clinical experience. I know you wanted the best for all of us.
As all of us have moved forward with our different therapists—specifically therapists with significant experience working with people in narcissistic family systems and people with CPTSD—it has become apparent that so much of the work done with you missed the primary issue we were all struggling with, namely David’s narcissism and the resulting family dynamics.
Long-term traditional talk therapy that did not identify narcissism (and the enabler) as the primary issue in the family system has made the journey to healing more difficult.
I know you are infinitely more educated, qualified, and experienced than I am in virtually every area of life. But, based on our individual, family, and couples counseling with you, I can state confidently that you are not sufficiently knowledgeable about narcissists and the family.
I have enclosed a book—the best of the 20+ books I have read on the subject—that I believe would be beneficial to you: The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free.
I have filed for divorce and our kids are all either no contact or extremely low contact with David.
Everyone is in counseling and dealing with the fallout of narcissistic abuse. With providers who understand the family realities of living with a narcissist, it has been a journey back to truth and away from the delusion, denial, and crazy that comes with a narcissist parent or spouse.
Children of narcissists suffer endlessly with issues of identity. They often develop crippling coping skills as a result of constant vigilance and unease as they navigate life with the unpredictable narcissist parent. I will forever grieve that I was David’s enabler and that I did not understand or identify the reality of his cruelty and my complicity and protect my children and grandchildren.
Narcissists like to keep everyone in the family separated through various manipulations. It has been such a blessing to watch my children and grandchildren determine to work through the ways they were purposely alienated from one another by him and see them fight for meaningful and genuine relationships with each other.
Finding practitioners who understand narcissism, and the complex trauma that results from a parent with the disorder, has been invaluable for them. Validation. Understanding. Hope.
David was able to present himself to you in a way that masked who he really was. Narcissists are exceptionally good at this. I believe you saw him as “low empathy, not no empathy.” A functional person. A successful businessman. A church elder. A community servant. A person motivated to improve. He learned to cognitively demonstrate empathy to you. He lied. He was always the victim and never the villain.
I can remember how surprised you were the time he completely lost it in one of our last couples’ sessions, the one where he ended up walking out of your office into the rain in his socks. You had me come back the next day to debrief, and I can remember you asking me how often he was like that, as you had never seen it. It felt surreal. Had Jacob not told you repeatedly about his dad’s abuse? Had Nick not told you? Had I not told you about his rages? Had you not seen it in your office in his session with Jacob? The session with the extended family? In multiple sessions with me? His “red zone” was verbal and emotional abuse fraught with physical intimidation, name-calling, monologuing, and invalidation.
David used the issues of my anxiety and trying to “control” him and the ways I “undermined” him in parenting to make me less credible. I have my issues! But, in actuality, he worked hard to keep me anxious and reactive. Narcissists diligently work to keep you unstable. Never should I have had to constantly choose between him and my kids the way he made me throughout our parenting years.
I often clearly described to you the cycle in our relationship (as husband and wife) that is a textbook narcissistic pattern of idealization, devaluing, and discarding. Trying to use the traditional modalities with a narcissist just invalidated and increased the crazy for the rest of us. Having any of us tell him our feelings just gave him knowledge about our vulnerabilities that he could, and did, exploit.
Surely my own self-doubt, denial, and desperation to make things work contributed to a confusing picture of our family system for you. I repeatedly had unfounded hope and kept trying to make progress. I over-owned much of the dysfunction in the marriage and did not understand what was going on. I was anxious and controlling. And in the end, even contemptuous.
In your office in 2015, I stood with him against my own 14-year-old grandson who was reporting being yelled at by David up against a wall in a closed room. In that appointment, I stood with David against my daughter-in-law, who bravely listed his many verbal assaults against her and other family members. I worked hard in couples counseling to work on myself—to understand his needs. It took me five years from that extended family session to see reality and leave him.
David’s devastating wounds from his past are heartbreaking. But the compassion for that reality cannot overcome the need to protect against the destabilizing crazy that comes with being in relationship with him. A relationship we all stayed in for much too long at the expense of our emotional, mental, and physical health.
Listen to Julie’s new podcast course “Understanding Narcissism.” Use code JULIE.
Julie L. Hall is the author of The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free from Hachette Books.
Need support? Julie provides specialized narcissistic trauma recovery coaching to clients around the world.
Related Articles by Julie L. Hall
- 12 Unspoken Rules of Engagement in the Narcissistic Family
- Your Narcissistic Mother Hates Your Body and Here’s Why
- 5 Things Children of Narcissists Wish Everyone Would Stop Saying
- The Hidden Trauma of Neglect in the Narcissistic Family
- Why Narcissists Will Never Love You and It’s Dangerous to Love Them
- How Narcissists Torture Others and Believe They’re Right to Do It
- The Narcissist’s Disrespect, Envy, and Contempt
- Why Narcissists Play the Shame Game
- How and Why Narcissists Are Highly Skilled Abusers
- The Narcissist Parent’s Psychological Warfare
- 7 Defining Traits of the Narcissist
- Raised by a Narcissist? 11 Healing Things to Do for Yourself Right Now
- It’s You and Me Baby: Narcissist Head Games
- 7 Things a Narcissist Will Never Do
- The Narcissist as Human Parasite: Are You a Host?
- 4 Insidious Ways That Narcissistic Abuse Isolates the Victim
- How to Protect Your Child from Your Narcissist Spouse
- Understanding Narcissistic Rage and Why It Is Not Your Fault
- The Strength of the Scapegoat in the Narcissist Family
- Seven Sure Ways to Spot a Narcissist
- The Dos and Don’ts of CoParenting with a Narcissist
Featured image courtesy of andjohan, Creative Commons.
View Comments (9)
It is understandable that she tries to educate her former 'therapist' on the slight hope that he does not hurt other clients. Maybe she can't be more harsh in her choice of words because only she knows what is best for her love ones and the community matrix in which they are embedded. I have no such contraints so let me say their 'therapist' is and will continue to be a failure. To excuse his ignorance is not necessary. As she has described him as being so knowledgeable, why and how could he be so clueless. Also her enabling the narcissist was not her concern, but the business of the failed professional to guide her in the right direction. Put a bad review on various rate your therapists sites, send a copy of her letter to any professional organization of which he is a member, and even consider sueing the dickens out him for financial recompensation. That way she will do way more for future victims of this therapist. Don't enable a mediocre 'therapist' and don't succomb to himpathy.
This post resonated a lot with me. The only difference is that I developed a distrust of psychotherapists early in my adult life after some bad experiences.
My guess is that about 10-15% of therapists are either completely incompetent or downright abusive; 50% are basically competent but unenlightened; 25% are actively trying to improve themselves but remain hindered by the inability to bracket their own experiences when working with clients; and the remainder (5-10%) are the cream of the crop. I've had therapists who thought it would somehow be therapeutic for me to listen to THEIR issues (one of the sat down on the couch next to me); I had a male therapist who had an erection; and I've had a therapist who said that basically I "wasn't likeable."
My narcissistic mother invited me to go to therapy once with her, asked a therapist friend of hers to lead the session, and then she (my mother) brought up my past marijuana use in order to discredit me in front of the therapist. The therapist sat there very passively and didn't question anything that was going on. I got up and walked out of the session and walked back to my mother's house in the Alaskan cold (I was visiting her at the time). The cold outside felt warmer and more comforting than the cold I felt in my mother's presence.
Narcissism can be a very seductive force and therapists who haven't learned how to bracket out their own preconceptions, history, and preferences AND haven't had basic education in how narcissism works do great damage to their clients.
Unfortunately, therapists and mental health workers were my narcissistic mother's favorite flying monkeys. While she triangulated her children and physically/verbally/financially abused our father, she played victim to many psychoanalysts that I was the root of all the dysfunction. And they all missed the warning signs!
I was 2.5 years no contact when I first learned about narcissism, and that their failure to act was a serious ethics and professional violation. The good news, now that I'm an adult aware of how it has impacted me and the options I have to move through, is that there are increasing resources and methods to heal. And addressing trauma from narc abuse no longer has to be regulated to a shrouded corner of silence and substance abuse.
I have been in and out of therapy since I was eight years old. Every single therapist I have ever had has invalidated the abuse I have endured. And it makes no sense. When I was eight years old, my father was so abusive that we fled in the night. The next day he showed up at the school to demand to get ahold of me. I had already told my teacher what had happened the night before, and she told me to stop telling stories. Then, he showed up at the school with a gun demanding I be turned over to him. The teacher took us to another classroom and hid us in the area where the coats are hung. I was hysterical and crying that he was going to kill me. The teacher, instead of trying to console me, kept telling me to shut up and was hateful to me.
I had told teachers for years leading up to that how my father treated me. No one ever cared. I was totally powerless with no one to protect me.
I went into therapy to deal with what my father did at the school. He received no jail time. He was just ordered to go into therapy and we were dragged into therapy with him. No one tried to rescue me from the home. It was obvious to anyone by then how dangerous my father was. No one cared. The therapist invalidated everything I, a scared and very traumatized eight year old child, said in his office. The more I was invalidated, the more scared and helpless I felt. I was living in terror and no one cared.
I am 44 years old and every therapist I have ever had has invalidated me when I talked about what my father has done to me. My father is still abusive. He caused me to lose my daughter. I was on disability, and he even wrote a letter to the SSA claiming that I was a fraud. I lost my only income. I am so ill that I am on chemo. He was angry when he found out I was on chemo and demanded to know when I would get off my butt and get a job. He said he was tired of his tax dollars supporting me. Over the summer he caused me to be investigated for my food stamps. I found out a day or two before I was to go in for a dose of chemo. He called me as I was waiting for my chemo to ask me if I was having trouble getting food lately.
I cannot physically work and hold down a job. I never have been able to no matter how hard I tried. I am forced to live without income. I am being destroyed. He is still trying to make sure I am destroyed completely.
Marie, you don’t have to have a relationship with him. Your story is very sad. Try going to the police to assist in reinstating your payments and a social worker at the Salvation Army or women’s shelter to assist you with this and finding a new place to live and break free.
The cops are not going to get the ssa to give me back my disability income. I already went everywhere long time ago to get help. Everyone refused to help me.
Three therapists missed the NPD in my wife at the time. It has taken me 30 years to figure this out. All the hours of therapy, week after week plus all the co-pays. Then I figure it out on my own! I guess better late than never. It does give me a new angle to work on myself as an empath and why I react in certain ways with narcissists in my life.
All these comments about therapists highlights how many therapists out there may be just completely incompetent, poorly trained, or totally gullible, unable to identify NPD behavior in clients. Sad. As a therapist and someone who was married to a narcissist for 22 years, I can spot them a mile away. Having lived with one, I know exactly what they do and how they do it, as well as how their behavior affects the spouse and the entire family. And yes, they can be very slick about how they "buffalo" people into thinking that nothing is their fault. A relationship with a narcissist has so much crazy making in it.
Karen, as a therapist also, and just out of a 17-year relationship with a covert narcissist, I can attest to what you mean by therapists being poorly trained to identify Cluster B personality types in session. And they do act the part well of a competent, non-disordered person. thankfully I have now remedied my own ignorance of this sphere of work - with much training in both personality disorders and relationships of inevitable harm - and will be a great deal more vigilant of these dynamics in the future.