Hope beyond anger for healing for men who have suffered abuse

First of all, let me hang a label out there. For the purposes of the exercise, let’s just imagine the label belongs only to me. (There is no sense in offending anyone, because the truths that apply here belong to everyone. Everyone wears this label the moment they walk entirely in their own understanding, where life suddenly has to be all about them. I can tell you; I’ve had those seasons. We all do.)

Here’s the label: NARCISSISM. If you can read no further, I’m sorry, but to get anywhere we need permission to talk truth. I am narcissistic when I insist on me being above others. When I must be served first; when I must be understood rather than understand; when people must agree with me while I reserve the right to disagree with them; when respect must first come my way or I’m disrespectful; when people must be compassionate with me even if I’m cruel with them.

I am narcissistic when I cannot and will not see that my thinking is entirely egocentric. (The word “ego” in Greek literally means “I”—when everything is about me.)

Let me first suggest an orienting thesis for this article:

Narcissism is caused by abuse,
which is none of the narcissist’s fault,
but that which the narcissist must heal
if they’re to recover from their narcissism.

That, there, in a nutshell,
is what we’re dealing with.

Putting it in the “I”,
when I’ve been abused—
not the abuse itself—
but my responses to get healing
are my responsibility.

The abuse they were afflicted by is never the narcissist’s fault. They wouldn’t be the way they are if they hadn’t suffered a vacuum of love—or perhaps it was such a paucity of love, they feel they were hated or despised by someone they needed love from. It’s not across the board, but in some crucial area of life they have been afflicted with a trauma that undid them.

In some cases, too, the “abuse” the narcissist suffered was living under a tyranny of entitlement, which was a bubble that burst the moment they hit the real world. When you’ve come to believe everything revolves around you, what do you do when you realise it doesn’t? Well, that is a truth that is all too commonly too hard to face. The “abuse” was the neglect of reality.

The abuse was not the narcissist’s fault. But how they respond to it now is. First, not everyone who is abused becomes narcissistic. Many people are abused because they’re empaths. Vulnerability is their way, and for better or worse, they’re more vulnerable because the default is to trust. Empaths when abused are traumatised. But being empathic, they can’t bear to live with the trauma and so they do become quite desperate for healing, whereas the narcissist buries the trauma, and either cannot face it happened or they cannot stay there in that pain.

It is a great gift to have the capacity
to enter our own pain. Not everyone can.

People who become entrenched in narcissism sense the great injustice that has happened to them, yet paradoxically they cannot face it.

They become resistant to the fact that there is now a weakness in them, not realising that weakness is in all of us, and that facing our weakness is the secret to attaining true strength.

Compassion for those who are angry

Compassion is a dangerous arena for those who are battling narcissism. They lack insight for the things they now need to take responsibility for, whilst demanding compassion from others as their only way forward.

We know we’re in real trouble with a narcissist when we give them compassion and it’s like giving them an inch—they demand a mile. Tragically it enables them! Too often too many of us have found ourselves trapped in a cycle of enabling the narcissist just this way.

Compassion is actually a great test. When anyone responds well to compassion their anger decreases. If anger increases or demands ensue, watch out. But if compassion brings peace, and even a renewed effort to understand and journey with one’s own material—and the pointing finger is put away—we’re not dealing with a narcissist. That’s evidence of hope for healing right there!

The trouble, in any event, is compassion—other than kindness we should be offering anyone, all the time—is not really what they need in the first instance.

Compassion is merited to the narcissistic person as they begin and continue to get the log out of their own eye. Many it seems don’t have the capacity to do this.

Now onto the real reason for this article.

Hope for recovery for men who have been hurt and abused

If you’ve made it this far, well done. This is actually where I wanted to start, but I found that when I did, I needed some wind-up time.

Men who have suffered at the hands of others, there is only one way to go if you want to make anything purposeful of your life. For what you sustained, for what was done to you, for what is none of your fault, somehow you alone have the responsibility to put it right.

That will sound grossly unfair.
That alone could make you seethe with anger.

From your angle, it is unfair. It should not have happened. I could think of many expletives that might give some warrant to the injustice of where this is at for you. You shouldn’t be in this place. But you are. Staying in this place will do you and everyone else in your life no good at all. You know this, of course. There is a way forward.

I found it in the rooms of AA. The secret is biblical gold bullion hidden in plain sight, but if you google “How It Works,” or go to an AA meeting you’ll come 90 percent the way to acquiring the healing you strive for now. The last 10 percent is always the hardest—the hard heart work.

The first ninety can be understood in the mind. The last ten must be absorbed in the heart. And this last ten can be summarised in these few words:

Will you give yourself wholly to this program?

God will withhold nothing from anyone if they will only GIVE themselves entirely to the program of recovery. This is the requirement of brutal honesty that looks one-hundred-and-ten-percent INWARD. Yep, you guessed it; the moment we begin to look at anyone but ourselves, the mystery of healing disappears from view, like oil that runs through the fingers.

Now, we can become so conditioned to feeling like, “Poor me, poor me, pour me another drink.” That’s exactly how sprees of drinking and drugging and abusing occur. There’s always an underlying anger that shrouds what is more truly sadness and fear.

We have to get out of the stinking thinking.

But here’s a portion of the secret. A surprisingly blessed thing happens when we look INWARDLY—when we get stuck in getting the log out of our own eye—when we stop looking at others’ wrongs and stay continually in our own wrongs; those wrongs of our angry responses to the sins done to us.

The more we stay in the place of seeing and addressing our negative responses to the harms that were done to us, the more God does something incredibly healing! The more we see our responses of anger and abuse, the more we put these things right (as much as we can, for some things cannot be fully righted), the more power for joy and gratitude and abundance we experience.

To take responsibility for our own responses to the injustices that have happened to us frees us. Responsibility is the ability to respond. If we cannot begin to account for our responses—if we’re unable—i.e. we cannot take responsibility—then we’re marooned in a place that eventually leads to stinking thinking and ultimately narcissism if we’re not careful.

So, I’m here to say as compassionately as I can, please don’t demand others’ compassion and understanding. But as we begin to show compassion and understanding with others, those things will be measured out to us also.

But we don’t do compassion and understanding because we need them. We do our compassion and understanding because others need it and because it’s central to OUR healing.

I want to say as a counsellor and pastor I believe ANYONE can recover from their narcissism and that I’d always be prepared to work gently with someone who is ready to tackle it.

Postscript: I know in writing these words that there are holes inevitably in the thinking and writing, for which one day I will be answerable in the face of God. I take none of this lightly.

Photo by Simon English on Unsplash