Date: Fri Jun 1, 2001 9:44 pm
Subject: spiral of awakening


Dear recovery friends,
It was a thinking about recovery day.

If a relationship with a N is life in the Twilight Zone, then healing
from a pattern of relationships with Ns is the Dawn Zone.

Thoughts and revelations:
When N-Cos despise the Ns in their life for the abuse enough to want
it to stop, really and truly stop, the beginning of freedom has begun.

Leaving any N has more layers than a Napoleon pastry, each one
painful in a different way.

Finally finding people, recovery friends, who recognize that the
abuse done by Ns is specific and camouflaged, is such a relief, that
reveling in exposing the abuse is a combination of feeling giddy with
relief and despair at the bigger picture that emerges in greater
clarity from the N fog (Fear, Obligation, Guilt)

For a while it is unburdening to throw verbal rocks at the xNs. But
inherent in blaming them is the sneaking suspicion that one had a
part in this mess. But what part?

Each separating out what tricks the Ns did is painful and a joy. That
is they and this is I. The delight of boundaries brings up the abyss
of abandonment depression.

Detaching is painful joy.

Learning to Practice Apathy in order to deter the N from coming back
is arduous. Not only does one really want to snap and rage at the N,
explode, but also one knows that doing that is of absolutely no use
and the N actually gets some perverted satisfaction of one's weak
moments of rage. It's hard hearted to Practice Apathy and the N seems
to have spent their life either apathetic/bored or cynical/sadistic,
so Practicing Apathy feels as if one is becoming more like a N and
that feels like in inner betrayal. At the same time it keeps the N at
bay, at a safer distance.

There is a long period of getting comfortable with these new
boundaries and a drug, N-Dipping, that helps alleviate the
abandonment depression also brings up confusion about life with or
without the N. Everything looks gloomy either way, with the N or
without the N.

As the muscles of healthy boundaries become more exercised, one
starts to have the strength to look more bravely at one's own
weaknesses, compulsivity, control issues and fears. But one N-Dips to
see if the N can help one with these issues. If I choose to heal will
they help me to heal or can we heal together? It's a back and forth
of doubt and anger, yearning and hopelessness.

The N gets panicked by one's departure and goes into idealizing and
one is tempted to return. Their complexities and my complexities are
intertwined. We mesh. We are enmeshed.
But my struggle towards health, boundaries, enrages them and their
rage, devaluing makes me weak again. From this place of weakness I
have no strength to be part of any healing team. I need OUT.

All of a sudden I pop out of the enmeshment on one level. I see how
we were so intertwined, inter-needy, stuck in avoiding each other, in
a purgatory of ill will, blame and mutual bashing. Out of the
enmeshment I feel so alone, so lonely and so needy for comforting,
for being held and there is nobody but myself to comfort me.

I turn compulsively and obsessively to my recovery friends for
support. I feel like I am without any skin and also in the pain of
withdrawing from my dependency on the xN.

As time passes I understand I cannot be polluted by the N's presence
in my life. Their ill will and games hurt too much in my new state of
budding health. It's too polluted and toxic. I need distance but feel
raw and alone.

In this humbled rawness I'm so grateful for others' caring and that
combination of thanks connects me in a very vulnerable way with
recovery friends. I NEED their caring and I like caring about them,
being together. It's sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow but it is
really connecting. Sometimes I feel suffocated, sometimes I feel
abandoned by my recovery friends but I'm grateful for their caring
and glad to be included in their thoughts, have them receive my
affection, thoughts and energy.

As these new friendships grow there is a rainbow of feelings between
me and them and them and me. I see empathy not simply as being able
to imagine being in another's shoes or imagining feeling what they
must be feeling but also receiving their imagining of my imagined
feelings of their feelings. It's like a crochet. Their reality and my
reality CONNECTS both ways. Their perception of my reality affects my
reality and back and forth. Relationships are not an organized ping-
pong game of transactions but a weaving together of lives in each
other's being.

But these new recovery friends are:
wishing me well with good will
accepting my good will
working on having healthy boundaries together
wanting to heal and recover
interested in my healing and recovery
accepting of my interest in their healing and recovery

Because this is the foundation of our relationship, good will and
learning to have healthy relationships together, we can CONNECT.
Mutually connecting is healthy.

Locked in the endless MC Escher painting, the N and N-Co ENMESHMENT
is not healthy.

DH Lawrence wrote in his book, The Rainbow, about relationships
between earth and sky, human nature and higher awareness, men and
women. He describes the paradox in these relationships as:
Separateness in Unity..... and Unity in Separateness.

In a N and N-Co enmeshment it is Merging Abandonment and Abandoned
Merging.

In a healthy relationship this is boundaried connectedness and
connections with boundaries.

Within the enmeshment neither side can heal, find peace or co-exist
in any comfort. The enmeshment brings out the worst in both sides.
Enmeshment is purgatory.

When the N-Co pulls out of the enmeshment the N is enraged. In an
atmosphere of ill will neither side can be honest about their OWN
problems for fear of being open to the other's wounding.

These first stages of detachment are those not only of grieving but
also of healing from cruel abandonment.

The ancient wounds with one's N parent/s come up in relation to
leaving adult N relationships.
This is a big, old and painful picture.

Nobody can force the N-Co to heal. Nobody can force the N to heal.

The N-Co is a compulsive caretaker and feels bereft to leave the N
wounded, behind.

As detachment from the enmeshment progresses, compassion for the N
arises in one's heart. They are ill, dangerous but ill, crippled but
lethal. This is the beginning of savvy innocence. It is an awareness
of the N's capacity to be abusive but also a flowering of one's own
innate goodness. It is cautious goodwill.

Hating the xN kept one chained in the enmeshment. Hating helped in
the beginning but becomes a burden as the healing gets deeper..

As the N-Co moves away from the N, deep feelings return: life-force,
joy, tenderness, playfulness, flirting, wanting to CONNECT.

This is a position of healthy power: having boundaries, feeling life-
force, having attained some detachment from the xN and coming
emotionally alive again after being in the Wasteland with the N.

The healthy choice is to let go on a deep emotional level, truly as
if dealing with a person so crippled that they are unable to
function.

In this raw place the N-Co makes new connections with new friends who
are neither N nor unrecovering N-Co. These new connections are more
difficult than one imagined. There is approach-avoidance, fear of
intimacy and feeling lonely, tender but fearful. LOTS of fears come
up. LOTS of neediness comes up. Intimacy starts to bud in this new
fertile garden where there was a desert before.


Love,
Nicky


Date: Sat Mar 30, 2002 4:49 pm
Subject: Hooks/Detaching chronology


Hi dear recovery friends!

It's the time of the year when thoughts of redemption and renewal are
seasonally important and make me look contemplatively at the past and
towards the future at the same time. Happy Easter Eve!

Even though I'm Buddhist I like to go to church on occasion and a few
years ago a friend suggested I attend the mass on Good Friday, when
the
lights dim as part of the service commemorating Jesus' death. The
thundering of the organ music and the silence afterward awakened me to
thinking about the sadness of Jesus' absence after his death and about
how terrible life would be, a wasteland, without a personally
significant truth path to practice. It's only after the recognition of
real loss that one can truly rejoice.

So with the ideas of redemption and renewal in mind I wanted to
respond
to a number of recent posts on hooks and detaching. Hooks seem to me
what we redeem ourselves from and detachment is part of the renewal
process.

About a year ago on the Suite101 site that Sam Vaknin runs, I wrote a
week's worth of posts specifically on hooks and detaching. At that
time
Sam posted to his group that the media have ignored his writing and in
trying to say something comforting to him like don't worry they will
give you attention sooner or later, I made a joke and said "What are
you, some kind of a Narcissist?" Well that mild jibe caused him to
delete hundreds of pages of posts of mine, including the ones on hooks
and detaching.

In going through my files this morning I discovered some old posts
from last year that I thought I could tie into a more cohesive bundle
and
deal with the hooks and detaching subject in an overview. In a way I
think what I'm trying to do here is make a sort of chronology of how
NCos get attracted to Ns, what then causes the hooking on both sides,
detaching and post detaching.

The hooks have their roots in our earliest infancy at the hands of
emotionally unavailable parents; at the time our very connection to
reality was taking place and the foundations of our experience of
healthy boundaries and individuation. So here goes...

There is the paradox of the Ns' attractiveness. Psychopaths are
described as "pathologically charming" and that hits home where Ns are
concerned. I'm assuming that psychopaths are malignant Ns. But it also
seems a trait of ALL Ns that they are attractive abusers.

The old fashioned criminal term "confidence man", shortened to con
artist seems also to embody the concept of attractive abuser.

There are 2 sites I know of about con artists:
http://firms.findlaw.com/ps1114/links.htm

and

http://members.boardhost.com/ps1114/?980841970

Any info on psychopaths describes attractive abusers.

What has NOT been described well or in detail that I know about is the
lacework of the *N-Cos'* attraction to the attractive abuser and THAT
is what I think needs to be focused on as an important part of the
healing
process.

The N and N-Co enmeshment to me is like an MC Escher picture. It's a
twisted perspective that's not an obviously warped or twisted vision
but
it is crazy making nevertheless and it's hypnotizing, like a
relationship with an N.

http://www.worldofescher.com/gallery/

The N's allure also lies in intermittent reinforcement. This
intermittent reinforcement keeps us on the hamster wheel of the
enmeshment, going round and round in the hooked circuit.

K wrote: "When the N intermittently ceases his abuse and displays
charming, attentive, encouraging behaviour...we mistakenly perceive
that
our efforts have paid off and we are FINALLY winning the ancient
childhood battle."

This intermittent reinforcement is alluring and keeps us enmeshed, not
only focused consciously on the N externally but UNconsciously focused
on our ancient unresolved battle with our Nparent/s internally.

K said, we may be "drawn to partners who would be likely to appeal to
our N parent." Well, imo, Nparents by their nature will never approve
of any partner of ours unless they have their vampire fangs aquiver
for our partner's neck. Or the Nparent/s can USE our partner to
enhance their OWN grandiosity/power or may be a source of income or
something for the
Nparent, clout, cachet, lagniappe, prospective Abuse Support Network
pawn, possible folie a trois material for incestuous abuse.

Our resident Sampire (Sam Vaknin) has written about power issues from
his point of view in relation to the internet here:
http://samvak.tripod.com/power.html

K said "The N experiences his life one compartment at a time (he
cannot
seem to sustain a 'helicopter view' of his whole life). Likewise,
where
the N is concerned I have to jump back and forth between different
'frames'. I am unable to hold an integrated picture of him in my mind
(although I do this with other people)."

WOW, that one blew my mind. I think it is a REALLY important point in
discussing dealing with Ns from a N-Co point of view. Sam has talked
about Nism being connected with Dissociative Identity Disorder
(DID)-multiple personality. I think the lack of integration between
the
N's deeply in hiding true self and the superego which has deformed
into
a False Personality, makes NPDs a kind of multiple personality
disorder
that is not apparent. It's a coping mechanism, a defense system that
was
developed in them because of being sMothered or MoMstered.

So Ns are what I call DYSintegrated personalities.
And YES it requires jumping from frame to frame with them. One cannot
have a helicopter view of them and THIS is also what keeps one
enmeshed,
because each frame in itself seems manageable but then the frame
hopping
keeps one's interior conversation with any N all scattered. One gets
into an N F.O.G. (fear, obligation, guilt) and THAT keys into one's
old
battle issues.

There is no clarity with an N, no coherence. It's a
puzzle, a labyrinth that the N-Co gets obsessively lost in, until
there
is a recovery group with enough VALIDATION and reinforcement for the
N-Co to LET GO of the enmeshment. A Loving Support Network is a kind
of
net that catches the N-Co when they leap out of the burning labyrinth
and can create a kind of holding place for the N-Co to SEE, access and
heal the old battle wounds, thereby stepping out of their INNER MC
Escher picture enmeshment.

The N is the OUTER enmeshment and the old battle wounds are the INNER
enmeshment, mirrored by the relationship with the N. The inner and
outer
enmeshments mirror each other.

If an N-Co stays in an outer enmeshment long enough and never heals
the
inner battle wounds there is a real danger of the N-Co becoming more
malignant, becoming an Inverted N. The hope that the N-Co can heal the
old wounds with an externally abusive relationship devolves into
malignant optimism and that rots the self-esteem of the N-Co over the
years.

I think there are Inverted Narcissists (INs)who are created in the
first 6 years of their
life, like any N. But I think there are also INs who are created by
their own malignant optimism over a period of years and bring out the
N
traits in their Ns.

OK...on the subject of your own issues of being an appendage, a limb.

It seems to me that your sMother's controlling distance kept you "out
on
a limb" as a child. Her Emotional Involvement Protection Mechanism
(EIPM) manifested in idealizing some other people in her environment
and
you were chosen as her precious Secondary Narcissistic Supply, the
devalued one.

Ns have an idealize-devalue cycle and in an Nparent family there is
ALWAYS an idealized person to the N and a devalued person. The
devalued
one is the N's 'intimate'. They are kept at a DISTANCE, which is as
close as an N can get. They are made into an appendage of the N, an
EXTENSION.

Secondary Narcissistic Supply is the N's form of intimacy. It's a
paradox of attractive abuse because one is subtly informed that one is
PRECIOUS as the DEVALUED one. Precious and Devalued. A toxic mixed
message.
Distant yet an intimate. Paradoxes.

This being an appendage is what the N sMother REQUIRED of you as a
child. It's your position in the N sMother's ecology; it's your
ecological niche. It was the identity required by your N sMother for
you
to SURVIVE in her life. This was your survival role. It's a False
Personality. It's the Caretaker Personality.

In my own life I call this False Personality The Nanny. The idea of
being my MoMster's arm, as you have described yourself, makes me gag
with nausea. It's so familiar and disturbing. I understand that my
MoMster wanted me to be her arm but I rebelled. And yes, I looked to
be
an N man's "Right Arm".

A few years ago a dear friend who is a therapist told me about
dreaming.
I didn't like to talk about dreaming because my MoMster used Freudian
and Jungian terms when she was incesting us kids. Like before abusing
my
little brother when he was eating, she would say something like,"Oh
you're my Edible Rex." She twisted Freud and Jung into monstrous
meanings. So anything Freudian or Jungian appalled me until I read
Sam's
site and I could SEE how Ns toxify stuff with their warped
perspectives.

But I loved this friend who told me about dreaming. She made it safe
for
me to want to look at my dreams. She told me that every part of the
dream is an aspect of one's own self. That night I dreamed about
being a
white child wheeling a black baby on the back of my bicycle in the
rain
in the mud on a stormy night on a cliff overlooking the stormy sea.

In the dream the white child hated the black baby for being a burden.
And the black baby felt like such a burden to the white child. When I
awoke a howl came out of my mouth. I realized that I had met my true
self, the black baby. My own False Personality, the white caretaking
child-nanny, begrudgingly looked for shelter for the black baby in the
storm and was bitter about having to be burdened as the baby's
protector.

These 2 parts of my self, the angry white nanny (False Self) and the
frightened black baby (True Self), needed to make peace with each
other,
to become integrated in a healthy way. The False Self is like the bark
of a tree that has become so thick it kills the tree. Trees need bark.
Human beings need a superego to protect the true self. But the
protection needs only to be savvy, not false. If the protective outer
covering of the self is False then it suffocates the True Self, which
shrivels and weakens, becoming compulsively naïve.. The outer self
needs
to be savvy, not False. This way the true self can be protected but
not
suffocated, the True Self can be safe being genuinely innocent.


That post above about paradoxes, intertwining perspectives,
enmeshment,
intermittent reinforcement, which are all about hooks, led me into
thinking about the origins of the hooks and intertwining between the N
and the N-Co.

Mirroring and libido, where do they fit in relation to each other...?
Is
that what you're asking about? hmmm, let me put the thinking cap on...

ok..there is Self and Other.

The psychic energy from the Self to the Other can be called libido.

The psychic energy from the Other to the Self, when it is a reflection
in relation to the Self, is Mirroring.

This is rawly thought out, sketchy and I'm on unsure ground. I need to
read more. But that's what I think it may be.

This mirroring from the Other to the Self is nourishing, life
affirming
and its effect, when healthily done, is to evolve the Self well.

The Self is strengthened with healthy mirroring.
In turn the Self then has more libido, psychic energy and lifeforce,
which is cycled back to the Other.

It's an ecology of libido energy, a full circuit.

From Self to Other and from Other to Self.

In a relationship between an N-Co and an N, the libido (psychic
energy)
goes from Self (N-Co) to Other (N) and doesn't get mirrored back. The
N
takes all the libido and returns none, that's why Ns are all called
vampires. They are life suckers, energy stealers, users. The N first
idealizes the source of the libido, the N-Co, and then after a while
devalues the source of the libido. The N-Co is slowly drained of
libido
and lifeforce.

For example when a child says libininally to their N father, "Dad I'm
glad I'm not handicapped". The Ndad, devaluing, says, taking the
psychic
energy, "Of course". The psychic energy is taken by the Ndad but
mirrors
no psychic energy back to his son. The boy is left empty, not
mirrored.
Over time the son becomes drained of libido, conversation by
conversation.

The boy is not mirrored and his Self gets weak with lack of
nourishment.
As his Self loses a healthy libidinous connection with the Other
because
of lack of mirroring, the boy becomes weakly dependent on the N. The N
and N-Co are now fully counter-dependent on each other.

Until the N-Co can reconnect with, reparent his abandoned,
long-neglected Self he will remain dependent on Ns, as he was trained
to
be by his N parent/s.


A time line of the N-Co's enmeshment and detachment from a N:

Low self esteem.

Compulsive attraction to the N's "greatness" (the illusion of
excellence, strength, vitality, attractively vulnerable child-person).
The thrill of vicarious "greatness" or the allure of the potential of
feeling great around the N.

Addiction to being self-sacrificing to the N's malignancy.

The N-Co belief system expands into ever-greater reasons why the focus
has to be all about the N.

Deprivation for the N-Co becomes a lifestyle.

Feeling needed by the N is utterly magnetizing. The N-Co becomes
"trapped in the mirror", lost in the MC Escher painting of perpetually
shifting perspectives. The enmeshment is complete.

Lost in the purgatory of constantly losing one's ground to the N, this
treadmill becomes increasingly addictive. Every attempt to clarify, to
explain, to express one's needs, to exist really, is twisted with
dexterity by the N into reasons why one is a worthless idiot on some
level or another and good for only devaluing, vomiting into.

Resentment of the N's ill will locks one into focusing on getting back
into the N's good graces without knowing that the N only idealizes
what
is distant, not close. The closer the N-Co gets to the N, the more one
is devalued. This paradox makes the N-Co feel needed when being
devalued. Valued as a devalued person. Worthy as worthless. Even
though
this is easy to resent, being thought of as inferior fits in with the
N-Co's low self-esteem. It's familiar on many levels to any adult
child
of an Nparent, N-traited parent or victim of trauma, to women in
particular but to emotionally awakened but wounded men as well.

The trauma of being around an N gets so overwhelming the N-Co reaches
the roadkill stage, total burnout and breakdown.

This is a calamitous crisis that is the turning point for the N-Co to
reach elsewhere for help.

It's my opinion that N-Co recovery is not possible without in depth
understanding of the illness of Nism and that means reading Sam
Vaknin's
FAQs and as much of his badly edited but brilliant info as possible,
especially to understand really important terms such as Primary NS,
Secondary NS, False Self, Emotional Involvement Prevention Mechanism,
defenses, Inverted N. Joanna Ashmun's writing humanizes what an N is
in
terms of the N-Co point of view but I do think reading Sam's Malignant
Self Love is what has been most liberating to me because I could SEE
what I was dealing with and with that view start detaching. Knowing
the
enemy in detail showed me the way out of the enmeshment. I call this
SEEING the N.

Then comes reparenting oneself in many stages.

Grieving the N in many stages, punctuated with N-Dipping.

The idea of N-Dipping is this. Jake (from Aftermath), in talking with
another person,
asked her if she had lapsed in her resolve to stay away from the xN.
Jake formed the question by saying, "Have you been N-dipping lately??
meaning have you had addictive, close contact with the N.

I loved that phrase, N-Dipping, for the temporary lapse and addictive
reverting to seeing the N again.

I think it is an essential part of the N-Co recovery process to N-Dip.

First, in the beginning, N-Dipping is addictive, compulsive and by
seeing one's craving for N-Dipping after one has RESOLVED to let go of
the N, one starts to recognize that one is compulsive.

Bad feelings come up after N-Dipping. Shame and wanting to hide the
fact
that one's been N-Dipping from one's recovery buddies, especially
after
all the ugly things one has said about the N.

So the N-Co gets to see there is a compulsive attraction to Ns and
THAT
needs to be worked on.

Even after one has physically detached from the N and one can SEE the
N
as an impaired being, there is still a craving for N-Dipping. It may
be
more furtive now, like a desire to eavesdrop but not really get that
close.

This is the beginning of the N-Dipping becoming a validation of the
truths one knows about Ns.

It's like knowing something smells nasty but giving it a sniff anyway,
just to make sure.

I think N-Dipping may go on for quite a long time in each N-Co's
recovery as part of the recovery process. The N thing is hard to
believe. Could they really, really, really, really, really be a N? Or
am
I making this stuff up? So one N-Dips as a reality check. One goes in
for a sniff and yup, it's nasty alright! LOL!!!

So after a while one loses a taste for N-Dipping, largely, in my own
experience, because I have received TONS of validation from my Loving
Support Network and recovery friends that sure enough, that N, really
and truly is a N. There is nowhere to go with the relationship. It's
over.

The N-Co becomes more and more emotionally sober in spiraling stages
of:
receiving heaps of loving validation from recovery friends,
grieving
naming the abuses in minute detail so they come to light and the pain
they caused can be honored
feeling increasingly assertive, alive, libidinous
emotions that were long suppressed around the N bubble up
uncomfortably
healthy relationship boundaries are appropriately set in place all
over
one's life in various places
N-Dipping
Becoming aware of the hooks and
Creating detaching antidotes
More reparenting of oneself
Making real effort to be kind to oneself and practice enjoying life in
small increments
A sense of recuperation sets in as if from a long and terrible illness
and life feels like one walked out of the Emergency Ward into the
light
of day. The N-Co is wounded but alive and slowly rejoicing in that
with
a profound humility and gratitude.

The healing spiral continues long after the N is an x.

The N-Co discovers certain points about the N became hooks to the N-
Co,
just as the N is also hooked to the N-Co for NS. (I visualize threads
between these hooks and as I detach in recovery these threads grow
weaker while my self-esteem grows stronger. Some significant threads
are
simply cut with a sudden awakening/understanding.)

It's highly effective to name the hook in writing, describe it in
detail
and to create a detaching antidote for oneself witnessed by one's
Loving
Support Network here in Aftermath. Hooks and Detaching antidotes.

Detaching has many layers, including protecting oneself from being
stalked, taking legal action, gathering witnesses, using a tape
recorder
skillfully and creating the all important Loving Support System on a
daily basis.

Taking Healthy Action in increments that are manageable to begin
creating a healthy life that has nothing to do with any N.

Acting on enjoying life. Making EFFORT to create happiness in one's
life
in all the tiny mosaic pieces that make up any day or night. Sharing
that joy with pleasant, likeable people.

Working on not feeling or being smothered, on not feeling or being
abandoned in healthy relationships. Working on being able to connect
and individuate in a healthy way, appropriately.

Becoming comfortable with life not being perfect, even enjoying its
glitches, being able to laugh on occasion at the funniness of being a
vulnerable human being. As Maresie says "progress not perfection".

Love,
Nicky