The unacknowledged trauma in a narcissistic abuser

It is amazing to get to work with men who have been brought through calamitous circumstances to a precipice of great loss.  The ones who succeed embark on a searching and fearless moral inventory, and they battle with the perils of fear even as they face truths that have previously been beyond them; truths that shackled them to lies, secrets, deceptions, and other dark things that wrought havoc in the closest relationships, and very often left a trail of destruction strewn through the valley of their wake.

For one hundred that do face their demons, so many either don’t go the journey or completely baulk at the first glimpse of pain.  I say ‘men’ because I’ve worked with men.  I also want to discuss men, because it’s us masculine beings who tend to most commonly carry the darker secrets that hold us cavernously apart from healing.

The narcissistic abuser has unacknowledged trauma in the past that emerges in the stress of the present which paves for present and future consequences.  They cannot bear the pain of rejection, abandonment, parental ambivalence — whatever you want to call it — or, just as much, the pressure to succeed, because, of course, they’ve been coached incessantly about how ‘special’ they are.  The covert narcissist is someone given to the insecurity of shame — and that pain is too humiliating.  The overt narcissist is someone given to the insecurity of a mirage — they cannot see their abysmal flaws.  Both live in ‘the other’ so much because the self is an empty shell.  All of this is due to the only thing they cannot do.  They cannot and will not enter their pain.  You just don’t see them committing to wrestling with their brokenness.

The unacknowledged trauma could be healed if only they’d enter the vulnerable space and journey with both: 1) where they were met with disdain or were nurtured to be entitled in their development, and 2) the secrets, the lies, the deceptions, and the manipulations they’ve engaged in, very often as a direct cover for how they were missed in their developmental years.

There’s nothing wrong with being missed in our development.  Any of us who have been parents, if we are honest, know how much we contributed to the brokenness in our own children — and that’s for children who had a normal upbringing that didn’t feature any abuse.  Children who face abuse have so much more to process, but recovery isn’t beyond anyone.  Certainly those who roll up to therapy sessions for months and years, being honest about their pain, can attest to the slow process but positive trajectory of recovery.

But the narcissistic abuser cannot and will not go there.  Some of them by intention, and others because they plainly cannot see any weakness, or any propensity that they are inherently malevolent, at all.  So instead of healing, they go on and continue doing heinous deeds.

But the man who commits to a process of entering his pain, who may have denied it all his life, who rejected the pain of rejection instead of entering into it, has an immortal hope.  What I mean by that is this.  This man’s love ones had no idea that he would be open to transformation.  That he is, that’s a massive answer to prayer.  And little by little he scratches his way through his past, debunking the guilt of his upbringing and the shame of his deeds since.  He does this because he is on a quest to make amends — unless where to do so would injure.  Facing truth for the very first time, he is astounded by the temerity of the pain he must endure.  It takes him to a rock bottom emotionally every single time, but he quickly learns that God is there, and that because ‘this, too, shall pass’, he finds that God is faithful.  Little by little, hour after day after week after month, he makes progress.  Progress, not perfection.  He and his family rest satisfied.  They are rewarded for his humble submission.  Less lies, less deceit, less manipulation, less entitlement.  More truth, more reliance on God, more repentance, more sincere apologies.

The only thing that stands in our way in our healing journey, is the capacity to be honest.  For honesty, we please God because we love others, purely for the fact that we can see our wrong, and we avoid self-righteousness, because we have been honest about our capacity to sin.

Who would have thought that God could and would heal us if only we were honest about our shortcomings?  God is indeed faithful.

Photo by Alfred Kenneally on Unsplash