[mr.Paraplegarino]

My problems originated from second grade. I was emotionally abused and alienated all throughout elementary and 6th. it all stopped when i put the mask on. i wore a mask of unpredictable animalistic rage accompanied by the most callous look i have ever seen on anyone in person. 5 years later and it became a habit to the point i couldnt remove the mask. I almost always am callous but i have learned to cope with anger pretty well. i just have to avoid some situations. this is kinda an antisocial issue but you wanted a new thread.

What is your story?

My story involves being severely emotionally abused through most of my childhood and young adulthood and adapting accordingly.

My mother being narcissistic herself would constantly make me feel worthless and degrade me, use the mental health system to control me by lying to the doctors in order to have me put on 8 different medications for minor behavioral problems in order to make it easier to control me, and would even have me locked up every time I dared act out in defiance. She even wouldn't allow me to have friends like normal children or play outside because of how "dangerous" I was. To make matters worse, I didn't have any other family in my life to show me any kind of love; no father, no siblings, and no other relatives. What little family that I did have got pushed away because of my mother's lies and when they dared try to take me away from her because of how she treated me, she would uproot our life and flee the state in order to run from them and keep control of me.

I spent most of my life feeling withdrawn from society and feeling like I needed to lie and hide behind a mask in order to get people to like and respect me. I was content to live a life of solitude inside my head until I was about 19 which is when my narcissistic side began to emerge.

During this time, I had just enrolled into a trade school to seek a career in a technical field. People finally began to like me because I was one of the top students in my class and I was at a national level in a student competition program. I had began to realize what it was like to truly be admired and respected by people and I craved more. I quickly became one of the most popular people in school and almost everybody was in line to be my friend. I became adept at over exaggerating my achievements to make people like me even more and even lying to get ahead when it suited me. I would lie both to make people like me more and to advance myself in my chosen career. I was basically a dictionary example of a highly machiavellian individual who would do anything to get ahead in life; nothing mattered to me more than success and all people were expendable to me. I even scored in the top 97th percentile on the dark triad test for machiavellianism.

Of course, my desire for money and power came back to bite me later which is why I'm seeking help for my "condition". I lost many friends because of my recklessness, selfishness, and my lies including a girl that I loved with all my heart that I had a date in Paris planned with not even a year ago. It's taken a great amount of loss and suffering to make me see that I have a problem and I need help.

[mr.Paraplegarino]

if anything i am infamous at my school. feared by many and respected by all. I feel euphoric although there is no better feeling other than seeing eye to eye.

Originally Posted by mr.Paraplegarino

if anything i am infamous at my school. feared by many and respected by all. I feel euphoric although there is no better feeling other than seeing eye to eye.

I couldn't agree more. There is nothing more glorious than having power and being in control.

It is better for one to be feared than loved if they cannot be both.

[crosstobear]

I was a refugee born in Europe to two parents who fled the Middle East. My parents were not a good match for each other. My father was and still is maybe 8-10 years old mentally and my mother was stuck in mid adolescence for much of her life. My grandmother was a very manipulative woman who arranged the marriage and invalidated my mother. My grandfather was abusive both physically, emotionally, and I assume sexually to his three children (one of which was my mother, and another of which is one of my uncles who played a huge role in abusing me). Their whole family dynamic was one of abuse, invalidation, and the rape of dignity.

My father himself came from a rough, impoverished family. His father died early and was very abusive. His mother was coddling and very attached to her kids, but my father was one of 6 kids. His sister died when he was a child, and his father died shortly after. I assume these traumas stunted his development at around 8-10 years old while my mother's development stopped when her parents divorced (which is a huge social trauma in the part of the Middle East she came from).

When I was born, we lived in a poor area of a town in West Germany with a bunch of Turkish immigrants. My mother and father fought frequently. My grandmother pushed us to going to the USA, and we eventually did, despite my father's insistence that we stay in Germany. Prior to fleeing the Middle East, my father (who had studied in Texas on a student exchange program under the monarch of Iran at the time) wanted to stay there with his family and help his brother with his construction business. He ended up abandoning those plans and leaving the country with my mother for Turkey, then to Germany. So his family relations were shattered.

We came to America and my grandmother worked harder to separate my father from his family. Meanwhile, my parents had their usual fights and they became physical. I remember I was 3 years old and my mother just dumped me in front of a strange apartment building after my father had been absent from our home for a few weeks. After some time of just hanging out there by myself, my father opened the door and took me in. I found out later they had separated for a few months and my mother left me to live with him in the room he rented with another family. When they got back together the fights continued. My mother would go to school while my dad worked two jobs, and my grandmother would raise me and two of the neighbor's children. My abusive uncle moved in with us and gave me my first smoke and my first swig of alcohol at age 4. He would often fight with my father and was often sent out of our house, a one bedroom apartment in a shabby area of town.

A few years later we moved, and thus began a series of moves. My whole childhood we never lived in one place for more than a couple years. I changed schools 10 times and never really made many friends. In this particular town, I was 5-7 and in those years our family had a lot of violent trouble. First, we were collectively hit-and-run by a truck driver and my grandmother, who I was very attached to, was sent to the hospital in bad condition. My grandmother was a very codependent person who would give me extreme affection provided I believed and followed everything she said. She'd spoil me, but turn me against my father, or my mother, or whoever she wanted. I was in essence a weapon for her. On the other hand, my mother was absent for the most part and when around, was so stressed that she'd abuse me. She'd take her anger out on me with slaps, bites, punches. My uncle was a drunkard and would physically beat me with belts, closed fists, and sticks. This wasn't routine, disciplinary punishment. It was them having a bad day and just beating me to beat a body, to exert their control, to see something young and innocent and frail in absolute terror and pain. My father would invalidate me, but would also try to be a father. He would take me out a lot, take me to his workplace, and buy me things. He would try his best, but he too was flawed. I often found myself being ripped apart between my father and grandmother, two manipulative and codependent people who saw me as their possession.

Another uncle lived with us and he had a son born of an Afghani woman. They divorced early and this child, my cousin, was very wild and difficult. He would routinely give him to my abusive alcoholic uncle to beat with belts. One day I was eating dinner and saw my cousin being dragged into the bathroom. My saner uncle told me to keep my head down, eat, and tell no one. My alcoholic uncle closed the bathroom door, pulled out his belt, and all I heard were screams and loud thumps coming from the door. I did not understand what happened until far later; he was molested and sexually abused. I saw my saner uncle crying, but to this day I don't even say hello to him. Neither does he to me. We both know there's no communication after that incident.

My father and grandmother got into a verbal spat over money issues. She was living rent free with us and my father was bringing home most of the money, and she would interfere in the marriage and family matters. The verbal spat turned heated and my father threatened to kick my grandmother out. Then my two uncles assaulted him, beat the crap out of him and held him by the throat with a knife. I saw all this at like 5-6 years old with my own eyes- my cousin was with me witnessing it as well. I wasn't scared because it was so normal by then. My mother called the police, and my family was separated. My alcoholic uncle and grandmother went to Canada, my other uncle went to another state.

Throughout childhood and adolescence, I had no voice. I wasn't allowed to think for myself. Up to even 26-27, my grandmother and father still have no understanding that I'm a human being with my own brain and feelings. They cannot take that I can reason on my own. This constant invalidation by my two biggest figures in life led me to be unable to understand myself. I wouldn't trust my own mind or body. I became preoccupied with smelling bad and being dirty. I developed OCD and panic attacks. I also started developing conduct problems. I was more or less an odd nerdy and scared child, but had evil moments where I'd do some shameful things to animals.

My mother's absence legitimized her in my eyes. I rebelled against her. I did not love her as a younger child or adolescent. She was a child herself in many ways and I looked at her more like a troubled sister than a mother. I called her by her first name and never called her "mother". My mother also would invalidate me by assuming I'm a manipulator, a liar, and an evil person. This went on from as young as 5 years old with me. I understand now this has to do with how her father treated her, and how her own mother related to her (my grandmother was a skilled liar and manipulator). But at 5, I couldn't understand this. I lost all sense of self, and thus growing up, I created many false selves and went through many phases. The abuse was sporadic and unpredictable. I remember my mother had a rough day at work and I triggered her with something I said- she ran down the hall past two rooms, tackled me, and bit into my head so hard that I screamed. My father's family asked for financial help from my father one day, and my mother screamed at them on the phone. My grandmother took me into my room (I was maybe 8 or 9) and told me my father just gave them $50,000 that they had saved for my college. He had in fact given them nothing- we didn't even have money for clothes and we wore hand-me-downs. But just like this, my grandmother began turning me against my father.

In middle school, we moved to a rich town. I did not relate to anyone there. I had one or two sets of clothes and these kids were dropped off in BMW's and Mercedes. I did not make many friends. My grades suffered as this school was one of the best in the state. I went from being a gifted and talented student in one of the star programs in my old town to being lowest in my class in seventh grade. My father was too cheap to get me tutoring, but too busy and academically ignorant to actually help me himself. He soon decided that my problems were due to me being lazy and undisciplined, and had me sent to military school. This was one of the most traumatizing events of my life. For two months we had plebe training and I was not allowed to call a single person. We woke up at 5AM, were put under enormous stress and hazing, and were expected to also perform well academically. I became a pariah and was bullied by everyone. I tried to jump off a two story building and was sent home by the schools' psychologist.

I was put on medication for ADHD, but my problem was more a sense of hopelessness and dissociation. I didn't care. My life wasn't in my control. I was just watching a video of myself. I had no voice, no identity, no me. Life just happened. I was evil, manipulative, sick, wrong, lazy, undisciplined. Scum of the earth. My parents and I got into fights and I fought my father over computer use (it was my only escape) and ran away, calling the police. a few months later, my mother and father got into a huge fight and she had enough. My grandmother turned me against my father by then and I had come to hate him. My mother sat me down and asked me, in front of my crying father, whether she should get a divorce. I said yes, he's a parasite and will never change. He broke into tears and I felt powerful. They divorced shortly after. My ages 13-17 I was hospitalized 7 times and had been sent to juvenile detention for fights at school. I was bullied and scared for my life and every day was hell for me. I only found solace in my therapists office or my school nurses' office where I would often fake illness. My grandmother saw that I was getting attached to my therapist, so she sabotaged that by turning my mother against him. The one person I needed most was taken from me. When I was sent to JDC, my grandmother and I had a phone call and she blamed me for my predicament. I remember being surrounded by heroin and crack dealing adolescents, gang bangers, etc and being so scared that I was numb.

I had three girlfriends. All three were damaged. The two relationships I had first were short and full of intense misunderstandings. The last relationship I had lasted for three years and was with a girl who was just as messed up as me. My grandmother and mother got jealous and, once again, went on the attack. This led to resistance from me, and eventually we all had a physical altercation and I spent time in JDC again. At 16 I had a thick juvenile record and was the worst delinquent in town. At this age I also began torturing our pets. I was pretty much a child sociopath. I would smoke regularly, drink, cut phrases and symbols into my arms with glass, bully others, and make attempts on my own life. I was a black hole, a walking case of nihilism. Meanwhile, my mother focused on my brother, but he realized what the house had turned into and ran away with friends. He never got close to his family. My mother was too damaged. People came and went in this period, each left a mark on me. Each tried to raise me. I saw all my mother's boyfriends and sabotaged each one of her relationships.

When I hit 18, I went to community college and became religious. I stopped my games. I had a physics tutor who became a father figure for me. My girlfriend of three years- I promised to marry her after my degree. She struggled with self esteem and thought I'd cheat on her eventually, so she detached and began cheating on me. A year later, she dumped me out of the blue. A couple months after that, a guy she screwed called me and told me how she would go sleeping around with multiple guys and urged me to get tested as this was happening for the last year. I was wrecked. I never let a woman get close to me again. I redefined myself and buried my past under this religious cloak. I did it to gain my grandmother's love, as she was highly religious. I buried my memories of my uncle and began praising and respecting him. Again, I invalidated myself so much that I even invalidated my memories! I wore this mask for everyone. This mask of normalcy.

I managed to graduate with honors and move on to a four-year university. Living there on my own, I came to realize just how much I lacked social skills and awareness. The environment was like high school. I was diagnosed bipolar after the stress of school and social life made me go manic. I lacked sleep and did terribly embarrassing things. I became addicted to cigarettes and stimulants. I had three short flings that were intense and ended horribly. I nearly was put on academic probation. I finally stood up for myself and sought therapy with my old childhood therapist and convinced my mother who began to see how much I was unraveling. I had become an atheist and lost faith in life. I had to fight hard to be put on meds. My mother wouldn't allow it. She thought the meds I took in high school made me violent and angry, and she didn't realize it was the family dynamic that did it. In fact, my grandmother- who had successfully manipulated everyone- convinced her that the meds I took made me violent and convinced her that I needed to cut therapy and psychiatry for good and that there's nothing wrong with me. So all these memories came back to my mother and she tried hard to sabotage me getting put on meds. I finally won, got my meds, stabilized. I was good for about two years on lithium and a bunch of other things, and managed to escape college with a bachelor's degree and a somewhat decent GPA. My mother remarried my senior year and her perspective began changing as soon as she found the peace she sought. She and my stepfather soon realized my grandmother was the source of so much misery.

At 22, after nonstop failed job interviews and bottoming out into a long depressive phase, I got into a fight with my brother and ran to my apartment, drank bottle of white wine and downed an entire bottle of lithium. I slit my wrists open vertically and bled red into the bathtub. I began throwing up and realized that I was indeed dying and becoming weak. I called 9/11 because I realized I made a huge mistake and I was scared of leaving life behind. I was rushed to the hospital. I was clinically dead but resuscitated and my kidneys were very damaged. I still do not know how I managed to survive taking a whole bottle of lithium (there was also seroquel and klonopin) plus alcohol. I started believing in God.

Five years later, my life has dramatically changed.

With therapy, good meds, and most of all, the absence of my grandmother and the fundamental change in my mother due to her remarriage, I have been able to turn myself around. I still struggle with social skills. I struggle greatly with empathy. I struggle with love and have yet to be able to open myself to and trust a woman. I have worked in the mental health field for three years and am in graduate school and intern as a clinician. I cannot believe I made it this far. I've managed to forgive myself for "causing" my parents' divorce and have rebuilt a relationship with my father after over a decade of no contact. I've come to realize he's mentally immature, and my mother- while being a decent woman- was extremely troubled. I even came to forgive my uncle and grandmother, but the former is so hopelessly manipulated by the latter that I can only shake my head and move on. My grandmother is 84 years old now and continues her manipulation. I've realized that she never really loved me nor was capable of it. I cursed her out a couple years ago for trying to take my father from me and since then she stopped the manipulative "act" of "affection". Hence, some of you guys may notice when I claimed several times in the other threads how gushy emotion disgusts me. That is where it comes from. My mom has the same aversion to affection and I totally relate to her in this respect. It's been contrived and fake in both of our experiences thanks to my grandmother.

I have very little sympathy for my grandmother but that's because she's such a liar that I know nothing about her life. I'm sure if I did, I'd have understood. My mother I've come to realize had no childhood and had her dignity taken from her very early on. My father was mentally a child and while he loved my brother and I, he didn't know how to maturely express it. Both of them had grown up invalidated and only did what they knew how to do. I cannot blame them. I can only hope to never do this to my own children, if I can ever undo the damage and become a father.

One thing I will tell you about masks... is that we all wear one. It's called "normal" or "socially acceptable". Underneath we are all weird and scarred. The mask changes with the environment.

I don't know what "disorder" I have other than Bipolar Disorder. I don't believe I have one. I believe I became what my environment and temperament would inevitably have had me become. And when that environment changed, I changed. The mind is weird, and the more we know, the more we don't know. Thanks for reading about my ****ed up life!

[crosstobear]

Addendum:

My brother was often a target of my abuse growing up. He was the focus of my family's attention and my mother's genuine affection. He was born when I was 5, so on top of the violence and discord I witnessed at that age and the abuse from my uncle and cousin, here I see my brother getting affection from my mother who wouldn't show it to me. So out of jealousy I'd hurt him or play sadistic games with him. The way I treated him and the chaos he came to see between my parents and family led him to running away from home and spending 90% of his life with friends. My mother came to realize deep down that the family made a mistake with me and paid money she didn't have to keep him in sports and different clubs so he wouldn't come home and turn into someone like me. Meanwhile I was in and out of treatment programs and alternative schools. I was eventually expelled from public high school when I was 15, then expelled from two alternate schools and was home-schooled until I got my diploma.

My relationship with my brother improved throughout undergrad and now, but he lives with his girlfriend and has no intention of really keeping in touch with family. Other than me, and occasional talks with my mother, he stays away from the family. He is a cold and unemotional person that bottles everything inside and his relationships always end because of his complete emotional deadness. He is 100% more well-adjusted than me though, and I often envy his lack of emotion and ability to make selfish decisions on a whim.

All that being said I still hope for love and happiness. I want a family and children to raise right. I want to grow old with a partner. I want to give what I never got. But sometimes it seems like I'm asking for too much. I actually remember now my childhood therapist insisting that I have a narcissistic personality disorder of sorts. But others have disagreed. My current therapist says I am bipolar with PTSD and periodic panic attacks. The PTSD is a Complex PTSD that is triggered by vulnerability and romantic attachments. I fear getting close to people so I sabotage my love relationships before I get attached.But who knows. Labels don't really amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Recently I've been dating this girl who has had a similar family life and I feel myself coming to have affection for her, and she's very trustworthy and honest and likes me a lot. I actually have to fight my PTSD moments where I begin to distrust and grow nihilistic. I often fear lapsing back into smoking or drinking during these moments. It's a struggle. But if love happened for my mother, who was much more messed up than me, it can happen for me, lol.

Thanks for the like, Atypical- that was validating. I'd be exciting to hear everyone's life story and journey with narcissism, provided you guys are open to sharing.

[HeavyMetalLover]

Originally Posted by crosstobear

Addendum:

My brother was often a target of my abuse growing up. He was the focus of my family's attention and my mother's genuine affection. He was born when I was 5, so on top of the violence and discord I witnessed at that age and the abuse from my uncle and cousin, here I see my brother getting affection from my mother who wouldn't show it to me. So out of jealousy I'd hurt him or play sadistic games with him. The way I treated him and the chaos he came to see between my parents and family led him to running away from home and spending 90% of his life with friends. My mother came to realize deep down that the family made a mistake with me and paid money she didn't have to keep him in sports and different clubs so he wouldn't come home and turn into someone like me. Meanwhile I was in and out of treatment programs and alternative schools. I was eventually expelled from public high school when I was 15, then expelled from two alternate schools and was home-schooled until I got my diploma.

My relationship with my brother improved throughout undergrad and now, but he lives with his girlfriend and has no intention of really keeping in touch with family. Other than me, and occasional talks with my mother, he stays away from the family. He is a cold and unemotional person that bottles everything inside and his relationships always end because of his complete emotional deadness. He is 100% more well-adjusted than me though, and I often envy his lack of emotion and ability to make selfish decisions on a whim.

All that being said I still hope for love and happiness. I want a family and children to raise right. I want to grow old with a partner. I want to give what I never got. But sometimes it seems like I'm asking for too much. I actually remember now my childhood therapist insisting that I have a narcissistic personality disorder of sorts. But others have disagreed. My current therapist says I am bipolar with PTSD and periodic panic attacks. The PTSD is a Complex PTSD that is triggered by vulnerability and romantic attachments. I fear getting close to people so I sabotage my love relationships before I get attached.But who knows. Labels don't really amount to much in the grand scheme of things. Recently I've been dating this girl who has had a similar family life and I feel myself coming to have affection for her, and she's very trustworthy and honest and likes me a lot. I actually have to fight my PTSD moments where I begin to distrust and grow nihilistic. I often fear lapsing back into smoking or drinking during these moments. It's a struggle. But if love happened for my mother, who was much more messed up than me, it can happen for me, lol.

Thanks for the like, Atypical- that was validating. I'd be exciting to hear everyone's life story and journey with narcissism, provided you guys are open to sharing.

You are very brave to share your story in this much detail! I am stunned and glad that you're not experiencing the abuse anymore! What a fascinating person you are!

[Atypical_Disaster]

Thanks for the like, Atypical- that was validating. I'd be exciting to hear everyone's life story and journey with narcissism, provided you guys are open to sharing.

You're welcome. Your posts are always a fascinating and unusually articulate read. Quite brave of you to be so open.

My story with narcissism is atypical(there's a reason that word is in my username), in that I'm more of an Antisocial than a traditional Narcissist(I've been diagnosed with both disorders) so my flavor of narcissism is quite different... Though I am prone to episodes of self-deception where I put on a mask of being a traditional Narcissist. I find it interesting and it makes me chuckle that the only way I have ever lost myself is through myself. It's complicated, lol.

My life story would be considered horrific to most people, but I don't think of it that way. I think that it simply was what it was. Yes, it sucked and all... but it's long been over. I don't spend much time thinking about it or talking about it unless I think it's relevant to the conversation at hand... I might share here at some point but it'll be very short as really writing about all of it would be better suited for a novel, not a post on a mental health forum.

Originally Posted by crosstobear

All that being said I still hope for love and happiness. I want a family and children to raise right. I want to grow old with a partner. I want to give what I never got.

You took the words out of my mouth! I definitely relate to that. That's what I want too. I want to be a "daddy" not just a father/provider. And I want to have a wife whom I love more than life itself, whom I'd do anything for, not hate like my dad hates my mom. And do anything for my children, not invalidate, reject and ignore them, like I was, and how I was told "After everything I do for you, you're ungrateful" and "I'm the only one bringing in the money, it's my money, my house, I make the rules, I'm the boss." And a huge sigh and whining when I ask for the smallest favor. At about the age of 10, after my dad once again threw a fit after I asked him for something, I vowed to myself I would never ask him for anything ever again. I'm 26 now, and have never ever asked him something since then. It's good in the sense that it teaches one how to become resourceful and cunning.

But, that's not how I want it to be in my family one day. I will fight as hard as I can to keep my family and home one day filled with love, respect and acceptance for one another. I want to be a dad who my children can ask anything, not feel they have to hide things like I had to hide things from my dad (he always freaked out about everything and turned the whole conversation into how it affected him). And I want to be a loving husband whose wife can also ask him for anything.

I know it's a far-off dream, and I don't know if it will ever come true, but I live in hope.

Thank you so much for sharing your story, crosstobear.

[Atypical_Disaster]

Your description of your father reminds me of someone I knew once. I found his behavior to be highly amusing, his little immature tactics didn't work on me... Though mind you I had my fun pretending he was hurting my "feelings" oh so much and then slammed his character and cut him off cold. Heh.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I have to wear my mask as i wouldn't be accepted in this world if the real me was shown at all times. Sure I have my issues as well, ones I have already written of here. Some know others weren't around maybe someday I will share some more.