Some of the things I'm hearing are so unbelievably difficult for me to process, particularly all the suggestions about what I can and cannot expect from Bev. For example, she'll never apologize, never acknowledge or validate my thoughts or feelings regarding these conflicts... and the following well articulated ideas from Have Hope:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Have Hope
Bev is very likely a narcissist, or is just plain toxic. Either way it falls, what she is doing is deflecting all responsibility for her hurtful words onto you, and is taking the ownership off herself and is blaming you for your reaction to her hurtful words.
A narcissist never takes responsibility for their harmful actions towards others, they always blame the other person, and they always deflect responsibility. They also have no introspection ability, conflicts with a narcissist always escalate quickly into explosions, and they also shut down all communication as a manipulation tactic to get the other person to take ownership and be the one to apologize and make amends. It's an impossible relationship dynamic that cannot be sustained. Inevitably, people walk away from the narcissist.
The narcissist always also accuses the victim of being delusional, or crazy, or to have mental health disorder for their reaction to the harm they inflict.
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All these things make Bev sound like such a terrible person. At the same time, see her going out of her way to care for homeless animals and even though she very often commisserates to me how hard the rising costs of basically everything are hitting h. I don't know her actual circumstances financially to any s;pecific degree, I only know that she is fretting almost constantly about the rising cost of living and her need to get out of that house. At the same time, if an animal is sick and needs veterinary care, she will get the animal to a doctor and she will find a way to pay for it. And my perception of her when I see her doing something like that is that she is very kind and caring and compassionate to do what she does for helpless animals in the neighborhood.
And I simply don't know how to hold these conflicting and contradictory thoughts in my head.... on the one hand she is clearly a loving and caring person, willing to spend what she really can't afford to help a suffering animal. At the same time she is capable of being particularly mean, nasty, hurtful,