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.

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Featured image courtesy of andjohan, Creative Commons.