What is the driving force behind this webiste? Several things serve as my motivation….
Please note that some original motivations drivers behind the founding of this website and initial stages of it have now been crystallised in the site’s Mission.
Choosing Warrior over Victim
The circumstances surrounding my experience of abuse were unusual, but by no means unique. I couldn’t go No Contact and even Grey Rock – three teenage kids, my parents’ pension tied up in our joint property that she obstructed the sale of in a difficult market, my career and two businesses in common (to which I don’t hold the purse strings) had me hopelessly cornered in a kill zone – desperately exposed could, and does, abuse at will “in my opinion”. Hemmed down and isolated, I have built up my defences – but at some stage one has to say enough is enough. As a good friend once commented, you can be a victim once, but thereafter you’re a volunteer.
- I choose not to be a victim, or indeed survivor. I choose to be a warrior – a social campaigner dedicated at raising awareness and understanding of this toxic disorder.
- I had wanted to call a truce. I’ve been turned down too many times now – so I choose not to lose, and with a draw denied me, I now play to win.
- I now want my experience to inform, empower and inspire other survivors worldwide.
Suicide Avoidance
I would imagine that anyone who has stared suicide in the face has arrived at that point because they have run out of answers to “What’s the Point?” – of carrying on, of battling day in day out, of life itself. Having thought that I had lost everything, with no light at the end of the tunnel, that’s what took me there.
I found that it my darkest days, what pulled me through was jumping on to FaceBook forums to help other victims. One day I decided to pull together all of my thoughts and advice and become a social campaigner and victims’ advocate.
Purpose
Suddenly I had a reason once again for living.
Every bit of abuse I got, I researched until I could understand it and found a way to defend myself against it. I found a way to turn the negativity, every last bit of it, into a positive.
I’d imagine a lot of NPD abuse victims battle the same issues. Some don’t make it. I found a way out that works for me. I hope that you find one too.
A Life Mission
I enjoy it. I think about it a lot. It fires me up. So it’s becoming my life’s purpose. Having pursued a career that I didn’t find very worthwhile of late, my whole view on life and work has now changed. Now I seek to do something that I find satisfying – that is rewarding and uplifting. I always advise people to pursue what they want to do in life. I’m taking my own advice.
The Universe Speaks
I listen to the Universe. Sounded odd, the first time I heard this phrase. All very woowoo for engineer used to science. But the signs telling me to pursue this cannot be ignored. It seems very I look I see signs that point in this direction. I’m heeding them.
A Road Map for the Kids
In the midst of my own healing, I read Jordan B Peterson’s Book “12 Rules for Life”. Chapter 5, about Parenting, had a very profound effect on me. His points resonated and confirmed my instincts as to how one should deal with people, my style as a father, and my attitudes regarding society’s views on parenting. But would really impacted me is the weight of responsibility that I feel as a father preparing my children for their journey into the world.
Role Models
As a one half of a cohabiting couple, the father in a nuclear family, I did my best to guide and inspire my children. To develop and boost their confidence. To be the role model male that my son would follow as a future husband and father, and that my daughters would seek in a partner. I recognise that splitting from an abuser puts enormous pressure on these bonds.
Split Families
Physical separation, the brainwashing of kids, the smear campaign and the parental alienation all take their toll. Full-on battles with toxic exes simply feed the narcissistic supply they crave and put the kids in a worse predicament. Backing off for a while resolves some issues, generally short-term ones, but creates others, greater in severity and longevity. I saw the impact that this was having on my kids. I can stand back no longer. I still work to be the parent who models the qualities I wish to engender in my kids – hard work, fairness and decency, courage, determination, the pursuit of wisdom, self-awareness and self-development. But now I’m coming out. I refuse to enable campaigns of abuse any longer by keeping silent. I want to show them how to be bold and determined on the one hand, but kind and empathic on the other. And how to impose and enforce strict boundaries where required.
Resolve, don’t Ignore
I want to teach them that talking about issues, seeking support and working stuff through is a viable alternative to the stiff-upper-lip, head-in-the-sand attitude that hamstrung our forebears.
Moreover, I want to give kids worldwide a roadmap. I want to help them make sense of their abuse at the hands of toxic parents, and come to terms with it. To replace any hate that they may develop towards them with pity for the cross that pathogens have to bear on a daily basis. This attitude that has helped me enormously in my own healing, I hope it will them. I remain determined to do my level best in preparing their journey in the world – I am just having to adapt the way that I now do that..
Legacy
Most of us want to leaving a lasting and positive mark on this world. I’ve renovated houses, built businesses and started families with this aspiration. All of which have been taken away from me. Much of my personal healing has sought to take this very negative experience and turn it around into a positive. To soak up the toxicity and return it as energy driving change. If my legacy is to have promoted awareness of NPD, been some small part of the movement to address the injustice metered out to all of its victims, and to help others in their own journey, then I will die a happy man.
Revenge?
It would be impossible not to consider revenge, and as a Scorpio, revenge is not alien to me my any stretch of the imagination. Given the destruction wrought on my life, that of my children and my parents (whose life is also on hold for the moment), I would have every right to seek revenge. And to make it painful. But it is not revenge I seek. It’s a halt to the abuse of my children, my parents and I.
Zero Emotion
I feel that my healing journey, and the philosophical thought that has gone on in the background as I work on this site, has genuinely led me to the point of Zero Emotion. I neither love nor hate narcissists. My love has been neutralised by the complete realisation that I loved a charade, a very convincing con trick. Hate has been replaced entirely by pity for my abuser – I have endured her attempts at torture for a number of years now, but now I really understand the torture she endures on a daily basis and has done all her life. And a narcissist’s disorder is never their own fault.
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