Great post I'm new here. I'm new here. I'm 51 and pretty stable now. My mother has NPD and I believe she has no conscience. I consequently grew up (and my sister) in  complete and utter madness. She once thought she hit a cat with her car and went back to help it. She wound up sneaking around people's backyards that night in her night gown. I was a child and thought this behavior was normal. My mother's other behaviors range from Joan Crawford to stuff Leona Helmsley stuff and "beyond."  She take pride in hurting people , ripping them off, etc. Taught em burglary when I was 11 years old. Taught me at age 6 to lie and keep secrets for her. She is a convicted felon and I believe she is only behaving at all to avoid prison. I do not have an official diagnosis for her, she does not drink or use drugs. But she is the smartest person she knows and claims to b e a victim that everyone abandoned her. She claims she has given us gifts and we have used her. She has a little entourage of supporters of course, but they  are dwindling. Some have died, others are getting smart. I'm sure she has lied to therapists.
My situation now is that she is getting older and I worry about her because I have a conscience and empathy. She needs help but the whole family moved thousands of miles a way from her for safety reasons. Well, I am torn and believe I will never feel resolved because I believe that I would like to help her but I do not know how to protect myself while doing so. I cannot afford to quit work and go there. And she would sabotage any work I did while there, anyway. It is her pattern. She sweet talks people into her web and then abuses them, not unlike like a spider. I cannot shake feelings of guilt and I continue to correspond with her when I can. So the guilt trips are very fresh and blatant and ever forthcoming. She has never been a grandmother to my 1 child although she did act nicely toward one of my children. She prefers males above females and when He was 14, things got out of hand, as she likes people to sleep in her bed. Innocently, watching old movies on TV but it was  not healthy in my eyes.  My son seems ok and seems very normal, is 27 and seems not to be harmed. She may have spared the grandchildren the abuse the dished out to her own children. But I protected my second child better. She has a small fortune or claims to and threatens to cut everyone out on a regular basis in her will. She uses her will like a weapon and probably hs no will.
Oh well, I have gone on too much. A lifelong pattern of abuse. Btw, there have been times that I did not speak with her for 10 years at a time. I have forgiven her for abuses but have not forgotten. Right now... today, I take care of me and mine and do not associate with her on a deep level, 1 minute at a time. I also believe I have DID from it. In fact, I know I do. Any hoe for my guilt complex?
I believe I will never be good enough to take care of my parent in a way that most people can. I would if I could, but I cannot figure out how to. I know we have enabled her in the past because we did not know the pathology No one in the family would do that again. I don't think everybody can even have a bottom. Crises can also teach people to cover up better or to be covert in their abuse. Some do not hit bottom I believe, and I have seen some die.
I have been in supervised and group therapy for over 20 years. I use online groups now. Mainly I belong to groups for Adult Children of Narcissists. More? I am a certified paraprofessional in Health and Human Services, specializing in entry level, short term counseling (certificate from SDSU).
-Sue D.
 

Darla wrote:

 Dear Members. The following story has been given to our forums to
help our members and readers.
Deprogramming
Ending the cult-like draw of the Psychopath
One family's story

Rick Ross Review:

This bulletin board has been extremely valuable to our family. We
nearly lost a daughter and probably would have if it were not for
Rick Ross of the Ross Institute. I hope the following review of Rick
will be of use for others who frequent this board. I believe Rick
can not only help those who are currently involved in a controlling
and destructive relationship but also those who have recently left
one and are having difficulty with the separation.

Rick makes it a point to explain that he is not a trained clinician.
His web page is geared toward cults. He attacks cults and has done
so on dozens of TV talk and news shows. He is SELF taught, soft
spoken, a good listener and backs up everything he states with
clinical documentation. He has performed about 500 hundred de-
programs, the bulk of which have been cultic in origin. He believes
that controlling, abusive relationship are the same as one on one
cultic relationships. He also believes they are harder to break due
to the time spent in a one on one relationship and there is a
romantic investment that may not be present in a cultic
deprogramming. When I asked him to give me an idea of his success
rate he stated that he had about a 75% success rate. He also stated
in a one on one relationship that percentage was lower.

Due to other professionals telling us that we could not save our
daughter until she wanted to be saved and that was not going to be
until she hit as low as was humanly possible and that fact that we
were extremely doubtful that a cultic deprogramming would do
anything but further remove us from our daughter we were extremely
hesitant to hire Rick.  However after 18 months of her life and ours
getting worse and worse and no hope in the future we were all very
disparate. We called Rick and tried to understand the connection
between cultic and controlling abusive relationships. We checked his
references and regardless of the outcome everyone had high praise
for Rick and the process. That still didn't do it. A couple of
months ago we deliberately passed up on an opportunity to bring Rick
in. After that missed opportunity she ran away with her abuser to
Florida. She latter called us crying that she had been abandoned had
no money and left with a hotel bill. This was a consistent behavior
pattern. He constantly abused her and left her only so she would
have to beg him to take her back! We called Rick and he was
available for five days. We then called our daughter back and stated
we would only rescue her if she agreed to be with us for a couple of
days and get help. We flew down to Florida on Monday night. Rick
Flew down on Tuesday. I picked him up from the airport which was
about an hour away from where we were staying. This gave us ample
time for Rick to go over what he expected from us and for him to get
a complete understanding of the situation.

Both my wife and I were present during the entire four days. Our job
was to be supportive to her and also reinforce a fact if she refused
to see it when Rick brought it up. We started at 9AM and Rick
proceeded to discuss his background and then to get her to describe
her relationship. She blamed most of what was happening to her as
just a bad relationship; their stars were not in alignment and
refused to understand that she was in a controlling abusive
relationship. He then started to describe other bad relationships, a
lot of which have been publicized and many that have not. He is
extremely good at telling random stories of past experiences which
he latter refers back to make a point. He carefully reviewed the
descriptions of controlling and abusive relationships and got her to
agree to each characteristic that was present in her relationship.
If there were twelve factors outlined in the documentation in most
cases her abused fit 12 of them. This was repeated several times
documented by a different clinical paper each time. Rick then
referred back to the tragic cases where this type of relationship
had produced devastating results. Our daughter was particularly
touched by the Nusbaum case, as were we all.

The bubble her abuser created and kept her in filled her with a
tremendous amount of distorted feelings and information which he
used against her, her friends and family. Rick spent the part of the
afternoon educating her on this isolation technique and how it had
impacted her thinking and feelings. He used dozens of examples and
related them to the feelings she now had about us and how they were
a distortion form the reality she had always known.  That was a full
first day and we were all exhausted. She was still holding on to him
but we saw some cracks in that foundation.

On the second day he went after the relationship much stronger. He
spent a good part of the morning reviewing the day before and
learning more about how she was treated. They discussed random and
unbelievable charges he made against her. If she took to long in a
store then she must be F##king the store manger because she was in
there alone. This verbal abuse would continue for hours until she
struck out at him and at that point SHE was characterized as being
psychotic. They covered many more sickening examples. He then
introduced her to all the current literature on brain washing and
very slowly went over each element used. They he demonstrated by the
behavior that her abuser had demonstrated to her that she was a
victim of every technique. We could see that this hit her hard and
her house of sand was crumbling. The session ended that day when he
tried to explain to her that this was not love. She left the session
crying and ran up to her room. She would come a couple of hours
latter and acted like the daughter we had always known, but we did
not discuss anything further that night about her situation.

On day three he spent the entire morning reviewing the previously
two days. He reinforced how her abuser's actions were in complete
alliance with current documentation on mind control techniques. He
reviewed the Nusbaun, Smart, Simpson and other high profile
controlling relationship cases and related how their abusers had
controlled them by using these same techniques. He explained that
her abuser had never studied these techniques but had fallen into
the because of his personality type and used them to get his way. He
related this to how he treats his mother. He is 22, doesn't hold a
steady job, is an alcoholic, drug user, has been arrested over 50
times does not pay rent, his mother does his laundry buys him things
and he abuses her constantly telling her she is a bitch and needs to
get laid.
He then asked what type of person does these types to things. Rick
then produced clinical descriptions of narcissists and went through
point by point with my daughter his actions and how they fit this
disorder exactly. He demonstrated that this type of person is
incapable of real love. The love they believe they have and are
offering is distorted and sick. He showed where this type of person
does not change; in fact they get much worse with age. He stated
where he had a history of violence he had thrown full coke cans at
her head, shaving cans, even air conditioners that this was only
going to get worse and had a good probability of ending up like one
of the cases he had reviewed. Again he reviewed the personality
disorder and informed her that his actions demonstrated that he was
never going to change plus there was a high probability of a tragic
outcome. He also stated that if the thought back he could predict
when her relationship with her abuser turned bad. He stated it was
right after she told him she loved him. The look in her eyes was
devastating. The third day ended with Rick asking her to think about
all they had talked about and to be ready to make some decisions
tomorrow. That night I took her to dinner. My wife was not feeling
well. It had been a stressful day for all of us. My daughter
indicated that she was very upset. I asked her if she was upset at
us and she stated no. I am upset a him.

On day four he spent the morning reviewing what had been covered
the previous days. At the end of the morning he asked her if she had
made a decision and she stated she wanted her life and family back.
After lunch Rick tried to convince her how dangerous he was and that
he would stop at nothing to try to trick her and get her back. He
made it clear that NO CONTACT was her only option. We all tried to
get her to invest two to three weeks in a clinic he had recommended
but were not successful. She did agree to take out a restraining
order and seek professional help in our home area.

Rick was excellent in his approach, content and documentation. He
built a logical and documented case to my daughter in a controlled
non-bias manner. We were lucky in that my daughter responded to the
logic and reason. However I must state there is no one I am aware of
that could have presented the information better than Rick. If
anyone is thinking on using Rick for a love one or for you own
particular situation and the person open enough to listen I believe
he will be successful. He is not cheap! The four days ran us $2800
and the travel time and travel and expenses ran another $2500. Is he
worth it? To us, knowing what we know now we would have sold the
house and paid him 10 times that for what he did.

Last Friday we were in out third day with Rick. We are now home. Our
daughter obtained her own restraining order. Monday she starts at a
clinic specializing in the aftermath of this kind of destructive
relationship. She is enrolled for two weeks of day classes and will
need some additional help after it's over. She is also contacting
her college to re-enroll this fall. Will there still be tough times,
yes; but my wife slept all night for the first time in a long time.

I talked with Rick at length about these types of situations and the
lack of an organized approach for help. He stated her would
reorganize a separate website dedicated to controlling and
destructive relationships and perhaps produce a video tape that
could offer some approaches to help. I think Rick can be a valuable
resource to everyone trapped in these relationships. I also
introduced him to this board. Rick may not have the answer but he
has the best approach I have found so far. The professionals we
consulted with were correct; before anyone can be helped they must
WANT to be helped. Rick helps victims see that they need that WANT.
He helps victims see that they need (WANT) to be helped, from there
everything is possible.

The following are links to Rick Ross' websites:
Brainwashing/Cults/Manipulation
http://www.rickross.com/reference/brainwashing/brainwashing11.html
The Cultic Relationship
http://www.rickross.com/reference/brainwashing/brainwashing18.html

I would like to extend my appreciation to the members who
contributed this story. Your words will help many. We cannot think
of enough words to express our gratitude.
 
 

--
-Sue Darnell
(mexican_gifts)
http://www.stores.ebay.com/mexicansilverandstuff