ADULT CHILDREN OF NARCISSISTS -
Overview of ACON recovery resources by Nicky
Hi dear recovery friends,
Here are some things that helped me:
http://www.controllingparents.com/links.htm
Books:
The Betrayal Bond by Patrick Carnes
Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life Susan Forward
Soul Murder: The Effects of Childhood Abuse and Deprivation Leonard Shengold
Stalking the Soul: Emotional Abuse and the Erosion of Identity by Marie-France Hirigoyen, Helen Marx, Thomas Moore
Bradshaw On: The Family by John Bradshaw
Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child and The Price of Nice by John Bradshaw
Codependent No More: How to Stop Controlling Others and Start Caring for Yourself
by Melody Beattie
Codependence: The Dance of Wounded Souls by Robert Burney
It Will Never Happen To Me by Claudia Black
Healing the Child Within by Charles Whitfield
The Artist's Way : A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity
Eric Berne's Games People Play
Claude Steiner's Scripts People Live totally changed my life for the better
The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman and Robert Pressman
The Verbally Abusive Relationship: How to Recognize it and How to Respond by Patricia Evans
Divorcing a Parent: A Sympathetic and Practical Guide for Adult Children Who Need to Free Themselves From an Abusive Relationship with a Parent Beverly Engel,
The Gift of Fear: Survival Signals that Protect Us from Violence Gavin De Becker
The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse Ellen Bass and Laura Davis
The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense by Suzette Haden Elgin, Ph.D.
http://adrr.com/aa/overview.html
and
How Verbal Self-Defense Works by Suzette Haden Elgin, Ph.D.
Emotional Blackmail: When the People In Your Life Use Fear, Obligation and Guilt to Manipulate You by Susan Forward
Emotional Incest Syndrome: What to Do When A Parent's Love Rules Your Life by Patricia Love
In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People by George Simon
When God Becomes a Drug: Breaking the Chains of Religious Addiction and Abuse by Father Leo Booth and John Bradshaw
Information about dysfunctional family systems and in particular childhood roles for each kid in a dysfunctional/alcoholic family system: hero, scapegoat, lost child, mascot
http://www.angelfire.com/vt/rcwn/Pageforty.html
and
http://ms.essortment.com/howalcoholeffe_rfng.htm
studying about cult recovery:
http://www.users.fast.net/~szimhart/cultindex.htm
http://hometown.aol.com/shawdan/essay.htm
http://www.csj.org/rg/rgbooks/rgbk_recovery.htm
and online essays:
http://narcissismnotebook1.tripod.com/
Robert Maxwell Young's writing totally changed my life for the better because I could understand important object relations concepts like transitional objects, transitional space. the writing of object relations psychoanalysts can be horribly tedious and academic but some essays can really help ACONs in recovery: http://human-nature.com/rmyoung/
Object Relations Theory Description
http://www.sonoma.edu/users/d/daniels/objectrelations.html
I recommend these essays:http://human-nature.com/mental/chap8.html
and http://human-nature.com/farrell/chap3.html
Studying Melanie Klein about her "positions" (Paranoid Schizoid Position and Depressive Position) is useful:http://human-nature.com/rmyoung/papers/pap127h.html and http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/klein.html
Biographical books by ACONs:
Mommie Dearest Christina Crawford
Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen Mah
http://www.adelineyenmah.com/index2.html
Haywire by Brooke Hayward
Ghost Of A Chance: A Memoir by Peter Duchin
Old Money by Lacey Fosburgh
Seeing Ns or Nparents portrayed in movies:
I, Claudius by BBC -13 part mini-series is fantastic an Nparent-a-rama
Mother Love with Diana Rigg playing the momster
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096656/
Dangerous Liaisons
The original Manchurian Candidate
The Grifters
Rebecca (1947)
http://www.screenplay.com/reel_people/personalities/narcissistic/index.html
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MovieTherapy/
There are a number of works of literature or movies that depict the family or society around the family behaving as a kind of abuse support network, a group Nabuser. Examples of this are Tom and Viv, the movie about T.S. Eliot and his wife vivienne Eliot or the poet that writes about Viivienne Eliot here:
http://www.creightonmagazine.org/CurrentIssue/Poetry3.asp
or Bastard Out Of Carolina: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115633/
or White Oleander: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0283139/
There are many different concepts and already existing vocabulary or additional phrases I or other recovery friends created that worked for me in this recovery, helping to name or describe some of the impacts, aspects, issues connected with this situation of being an adult child of a narcissist parent.:
Let's see. Understanding that there is an inner child who needs to reparented by oneself and in relation to healthy others. This I learned from reading books about transactional analysis, like Games People Play by Eric Berne.
Learning to reparent myself and studying how in a variety of books about healing the inner child within. Reading books on healthy parenting helped, buying myself a teddy bear and baby blanket was comforting. Allowing myself to suck a pacifier for a while helped me stop rubbing my thumbnails into furrows.
Learning that it's okay to blame the Nparent for the abuses they committed, in the safety of the recovery arena with recovery friends. Blaming an Nparent to their face will only incur untold misery and possible stalking or vendetta that may last decades.
Blaming the abusers in the recovery arena frees the ACON to take responsibility for their own life.
Reaching out to recovery friends for validation and understanding and offering that to them in a healthy exchange.
But the rush or moral or righteous indignation that comes from blaming an abuser can be addictive and if an ACON gets stuck in blame, obsessed with nit picking against the xNparent year after year after year, it cripples the ACON into being obsessive and prevents them from making healthy connections with loving, healthier friends.
It may be more comfortable to be enraged with one's Nparent that to face the abyss of depression that comes in the detaching. Studying abandonment depression helped me:
http://www.abandonment.net/swirl.frame.html
Reading The Black Swan is deeply helpful.
Taking Prozac for 6 months helped me get out of clinical depression as a rut. I do think depression has a downward spiral that needs to be stopped by taking practical action: eating healthy foods, taking a multi-vitamin, taking walks, putting active effort into creating joy in one's life and not only talking about psychopaths, incest abusers, violence, crime on TV or in the media etc.
Working on 'grief recovery' has been important in my recovery.
It takes a while to detox from years of abuse by an Nparent. That detoxing takes years. The detoxing process may put a huge strain on one's recovery friends who can only stomach so much discussion of misery.
In this blaming and detoxing process the ACON learns about having and maintaining healthy boundaries, that were taboo and never role-modelled in an Nparent family.
The learning about boundaries may swing for a while from not enough to too much. Each person has their OWN boundary comfort level that emerges over years of practice. This may also put a huge strain on recovery friendships which are painful when they end or there is conflict.
It's also not role modelled for ACONs how to have healthy connections with others so the recovery process includes learning both to connect better with people and how to better individuate from others.
I think recovery for ACONs comes in 3 stages:
1. 'Seeing' the N for what they are and working on external detachment
2. 'Seeing' one's own issues as an ACON and working on healing those issues, which results in increasing detaching internally from the enmeshment with the Nparent
3. And then what I now call post-detaching from Ns grounded recovery, learning to blossom in one's own life, which can be extremely challenging for ACONs, who may have frighteningly ambivalent feelings about succeeding at anything for fear it may be co-opted or violated by the Nparent or else leave the ACON vulnerable to the Nparent's abuse. I think ACONs need to literally come into their senses, in small, manageable increments because those very senses were violated by Nparents.
Yahoo ACON sites: http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/ACONhealth/
A recovery forum for Adult Children Of both Narcissist and/or Narcissistic parents.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AdultChildrenOfNarcissists/
Adult Children of Narcissists getting out of relationships with Narcissist spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends in adulthood.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ACONDetachingClarity/
Adult Children Of Narcissists discussing medical issues, docters, tips, health related issues, anorexia, bulimia, obesity, cancer, fibromyalgia or any other immune system deficiency or illness, or health improvement which may be in or have been in your lives.
Adult Children of Narcissists who wish to focus today on our own lives, health, well being, prosperity, fun, creativity, joy and love.
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/ACONLivesToday/
Adult Children Of Narcissists discussing any aspect of being friends and having friendships
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ACONFriendships/
Giving The Love That Heals : A Guide for Parents
By Harville Hendrix, Ph.D., and Helen Hunt, M.A.
http://www.imagorelationships.org/therapists/Reviews/Givingthelove.htm
love, Nicky
Staying The Course:
Psychotherapy In The African-American Community
http://www.odu.edu/ao/instadv/quest/stayingthecourse.html
BlackCounselors.Com
http://www.find-a-psychologist.com/blackcounselors/winley.htm Black American Feminism:
http://www.library.ucsb.edu/subjects/blackfeminism/soc_psych.html
Implications for African American women psychotherapy clients. Annals of the American Psychotherapy Association:
http://www.americanpsychotherapy.com/ce-spring-2003-RacialDisparities.php
Additional added Items, courtesy Femfree (thank you! :)
http://groups.msn.com/NARCISSISTICPERSONALITYDISORDER/general.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=100895&LastModified=4675491744755598806
Spiral of Awakening
http://groups.msn.com/NARCISSISTICPERSONALITYDISORDER/general.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=104210&LastModified=4675493384412955702
How to deal with an Overbearing Mother
http://www.ehow.com/how_15126_deal-with-overbearing.html
Drama queens, saviours, rescuers, feigners and attention-seekers by Tim Field
http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/attent.htm#Methods
Recovery resources for men:
Book for men with N or Nistic fathers
I DONT WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT: OVERCOMING THE SECRET LEGACY OF MALE DEPRESSION
by Terrence Real
How Can I Get Through to You? Closing the Intimacy Gap Between Men and Women
by Terrence Real
If Men Could Talk: Unlocking the Secret Language of Men
by Alon Gratch
How Men Handle Depression
Male Menopause
Various Links for anyone
Best Things to Say to Someone Who Is Depressed
Helping A Depressed Person Receive Treatment For Depression
Depression in School-Age Children and Adolescents: Characteristics, Assessment and Prevention
Patrick Carnes Phd, has a website here: http://www.sexhelp.com/
He is the author of the best selling books: Out of the Shadows, Don't Call It Love, The Betrayal Bond, Open Hearts, Sexual Anorexia Gentle Path Through the 12 Steps, and his latest book Facing the Shadow. His contact info is:
| Address | 1655 N Tegner St. Wickenburg , AZ 85390 |
| Phone: | 800-632-3697 |
bravenet.com