A
lot of us have developed, from youth, a habit of escapism. When we have
had enough of one emotionally abusive person, we call and go seek
solace from a friend. But then that friend starts showing their Narc
face, and we call someone else; then we escape that person, and go back
to the first one. Often that first one is Home. We don't realize we are
picking Narcs to populate our support network, so we end up like a
pinball, bouncing off one to another and back again, always having to
deal with some new jab from one of them. We keep ourselves in this
pinball machine as long as we have more than one to go back and forth to
and from, or until we realize that we are in the machine.
When we
realize it, we can liberate ourselves. That feels great, until we
realize we are alone, because we've taking ourselves out of the pinball
network we've built, and there's nothing in its place. Then we have to
rebuild a healthy one, with what people skills? With judgment that keeps
picking Narcs?! That's where we need to really take care and take care
and take care of ourselves, and tread slowly and carefully, and love
ourselves and our children. The trap is when we get overwhelmed at this
point and we go and find someone to fill that awful loneliness, but we
don't know if we are choosing healthy people or not. The real trick is
to truly learn how to love ourselves, even through loneliness, and connect very very carefully with new people, watching them from an emotional distance for a long time. And learning everything we missed about boundaries.
