Many hands make lighter work, yet we all have our own work to do. Remembering your personal mission as an individual soul with a purpose can be difficult if you encounter narcissists or any other lazy, manipulative types keen on getting you to do their work.
Narcissists and other lazy, manipulative types have well-honed strategies to recruit you to their personal mission. It starts with picking you, because not everyone falls for this recruitment. Over time, their behaviour, which is serial in nature, becomes widely known by everyone in the know.
Innocent bystanders would classify those people as predatory. They should come with warnings. But they don’t. People who know keep their distance or keep quiet until it is too late.
Leaving a narcissist is hard to do, and it’s a lot easier when you drop the labels and evaluate what’s going on, like Richard Grannon does in this YouTube video to explain narcissism without using the word.
Richard Grannon claims to have been in five of these abusive relationships in his life, before he was able to break the cycle.
It’s a cycle, whether it’s conscious or deeper, of showered attention and praise that slowly and surely withdraw into criticism, demands, and chaos – icky conditions, so why don’t people leave?
I remember my ex’s brother’s wife telling me, “He’s a chauvinist. He looks down on women. He thinks I shouldn’t own power tools.” But I laughed that off because I owned power tools.
The narcissist looks down on everyone, but it’s not always a display of grandiosity. The arrogant bragger might light up red flags for you, for sure. But as I’ve learned, bragging can sound a lot like complaining.
The Nature of Narcissistic Abuse
The vulnerable or covert narcissist complains and whines, like a baby, and like a baby, my personal mission was managing his triggers and emotional states. Like I was a mom with a baby, even though I never wanted to be in this arrangement.
No time or energy left for me. No time or energy for my interests, ambitions, or friends. Over time, all my relationships atrophied, and no new ones replaced them.
Functionally, there was no way any information about him could reach me unless it came through him. Isolated, both from people and information, and also from myself.
Tortured. As I became his version of me, instead of my version of me, depression set in, as should have been expected. Richard Grannon says that replacing your self-concept with that of another creates depression.
For sure, I went through the stages: whirlwind romance, followed by a test of self-betrayal that I passed with flying colours, only to wind up abused, bewildered as to why, isolated from anyone who could help me get extracted, deeply depressed and suicidal. Suicidal, I landed in therapy, and the long, slow re-evaluation of my life experiences and interpretations of them made me realize I’d abandoned my true self a long, long time ago.
With my father on a pedestal and my mother highly emotionally dysregulated, it’s likely that the dynamic between them was similar. I know he tricked her into having more kids than she wanted – a trick he was proud of that sickened me to my core.
To the narcissist, you have a role. Fulfil it, or go away.
Playing a Role
For my father, I played my role as best I could. I remember him at his happiest when my three siblings and I were competing for his attention. I remember thinking that if I became an engineer like him, then maybe I’d get the approval, connection, and appreciation I yearned to feel.
Instead, I remember him feeling proud of himself that his daughter was now an engineer. Vaguely, I was aware of how it was about him and not me. Vaguely, I was aware that I’d crossed the finish line and hadn’t got the result I’d been working towards.
After a few months, he started asking me when I was going to go back for my Masters. This final push proved to be my breaking point, and I finally said, “Never.” I realized I had oriented every decision in my life around his opinion, not my own. I had a job that caused me great stress and no joy. More, my unhappiness didn’t seem to matter one iota.
When I landed in the hospital after a suicide attempt, he found out and said, “I should have been your first call.” Did he spend a second wondering why he wasn’t? If he did, it was all my fault and had nothing to do with why I’d never list him as an emergency contact person. You don’t care about me at all, so why would I call on you?
You only care about how I reflect on you, whether I am being the “Right Version” of me. It’s a love based on performance, and life is not a stage.
You know I was set up for guaranteed failure with impossible standards. I made it my personal mission to be the perfect daughter and took my punishment when I was not.
Lost in Bewilderment
Why would someone who loves me treat me this way? Ah, there is the problem. You’ve assumed they love you. Maybe that’s what they said they feel. Maybe they lied.
Mine never bothered to form the sentence. When I said, “I love you,” he said, “I know you do.” It was a response that sent chills down my spine. I stopped saying it. Then I stopped feeling it. I started feeling fear instead.
It’s difficult to know this thing called love. For what is it anyway, but something we all idealize as something that should be unconditional and all-encompassing.
But parents and people have conditions. They have understandable conditions like time, work, and other priorities, and they also have difficult-to-understand conditions, like values, perspectives and intentions. Within the limits of these conditions, we all experience parental love as conditional.
I graduated from my attempts to be the perfect daughter to trying to be the perfect girlfriend. In bewilderment, I wondered where I was failing. I’d adopted his interests and did a good job at performing as his sidekick. Who else would do this? Who else could afford this? As I tried to point out that he should put a ring on it because he’ll never surpass this relationship, my arguments fell flat.
Finally, he blew up at me. “Never!” he screamed. I cried, I mourned as a fantasy died, but I did not leave. I ratcheted my ambitions down and scolded myself for pushing.
Why be so mean? So cold? So withholding? As someone trained in problem-solving methods and root cause analysis, I couldn’t leave my bewilderment alone. I made it my personal mission to know, if only so that I never do this again.
Seeing True Colours
In the beginning, I glowed under the light of his attention, admiration, and constant study. “He’s always staring at you,” my sister said, a red flag for her. He can’t take his eyes off me, I thought, a green light for me.
In reality, I learned from Richard Grannon that his constant study is the red flag of a narcissist. Apparently, observation helps them to determine the exact formula required to hook the target.
In these early days, I remember feeling noticed, feeling like I mattered. A lifetime of feeling invisible and insignificant cured, finally.
Some people can’t be hooked like this – they are secure in their personal missions and self-evaluations. Nothing external can knock them off course. Not me, I was oriented for external approval. Raised to be a people pleaser. To put others first. Don’t be selfish! Be seen, but not heard. Many lessons that did me harm.
Performing for someone else is exhausting. If you can’t win, and playing is no fun, why continue?
After twenty years, the baby should have grown up and moved out. The mom should have the opportunity to pick up her life where she left off. The mom who never wanted to be one should be let out of jail after the sentence is served.
When my grandma met my boyfriend, she classified him as a “bad man.” While I couldn’t argue, I also didn’t think I deserved more.
Time proved that I certainly couldn’t attract better. In fact, no one. I was not sought after, so you take what you can get, don’t you?
After enough study of the bad man, I learned his ways. I could expect his lines, retorts, and commands. Adopting them as my own paved my way out, while causing surprised reactions and nervous laughter.
Remembering Your Personal Mission
After a long day working in his gardens, he explained that something heavy needed to be moved.
I explained that I was tired and worn out and not interested in any further physical activity on this day.
The exchange continued.
Finally, he bellowed, “Are you going to do it or not? Because if not, then I’ll have to do it!” The last few words were delivered with the face of the devil and a threatening tone of voice.
I got up and did the heavy lifting. Then, I went inside to claim the guest bedroom as my own.
Pathologically selfish. If we were drowning, he’d step on my head to breathe. I knew for sure there was a complete lack of morals in that vessel I used to call my boyfriend.
Over the years, it’s easy to be kept in the dark and lost in hope and fantasy when there are only weekends and vacations. When you move in, information is still kept from you, as your social circle is kept closed and heavily monitored, but truth does not remain hidden.
Experiences stack up and can’t be excused away. Apologies ring hollow. Reparations are not made.
When I realized that everyone else knew – not because they knew me, but because they knew him, and this was his pattern – I realized the end was inevitable. I was entertainment for the townspeople, but it was my life. My time, my money, my lost identity.
I can get one of them back. Two of them I can stop wasting.
To the Highest Power
Remembering your personal mission starts with knowing that you had one. One that might be more important and come from a source more significant than this other human who is attempting to control you to make their work easier.
If you are all about doing what you are “supposed to” be doing, maybe take your personal mission from the highest power you can find. At least, that’s what worked for me, as my journey recovering from the chaos and pain of my past led me to find spirituality and a god of my own understanding with whom I share a personal relationship.
Thanks, God, for that helping hand when I asked for it. You’re the best of best friends anyone could want.
With these experiences, I’ve learned how to marry the mindset of the prey with that of the predator, because there’s no such thing as “bad men” or “good men” but simply “real men” with their own challenges on their own personal missions.
You do yours, and I’ll do mine. I mean it. Please, stop trying to recruit others, stop acting like you must grind or hustle, stop choosing force over power. Let your soul take the lead by heeding the call of joy.
Joy.
Felt it lately?
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