Masters of Manipulation: How to Spot Narcissists, and How to Deal with Them
Well, yes, but….
children who grow up under this do grow up. They have the opportunity to grow into much better human beings, much finer humans, after they work to grow up. I would put Alice Walker’s daughter’s essays, and Erica Jong’s daughter’s essay, as a statement of the slow, painful growth to a good adulthood.
I’t a bit early in the game, but the book 13th gen covers what happens to the generation raised by habitual narcissists might possibly look like. I thought it was a strange book when it came out, but it seems to be telling true, as time goes on.
Judith Wallerstein writes “The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce”- and face it, divorce is a habit of narcissists. This is a portrait of the slow, painful growth of innocent victim children into decent, kind human beings.
And, quite bluntly, the “character counts” routines that schools have installed are designed to explicitly teach to children what some of their parents are incapable of imparting, b/c they are morally damaged. So, even at the school level, mitigation is going on.
I’d say there is some pastoral training on how to deal with narcissists in the congregation. There are books on group dynamics, as well as the comic articles about people who aren’t in the choir insisting on long solos in church. I’m not sure how congenitally nice people deal with boundariless narcissists, though. I’m not sure how they even comprehend them.
It is absolutely possible to grow up, and grow past a narcissistic parent. This is where student loans and social security payments are absolutely a blessing- you can leave and go far away to a college they don’t approve of, and then they have enough money to not need to move in with you later. It’s expensive, of course, but we, in America, don’t really have long, soap opera novels about poisonous, controlling parents living with us, in quite the way the rest of the world does, or that we did, prior to the 1950′s. I’d add, after-school activities, extra- curricular work, possibly even summer camp, part-time jobs, all while in high school.
As for treating a narcissist like a flu that will come around- have a rich enough life, and a rich enough inner life, that you are immune. they sound like cheap glitter falling, if you’re in a good way already. they sound immature, and peculiar, if you are healthy. If you are trying to socially strive, and this narcissist is a key piece of your advance- just accept you’re vulnerable, and maybe you might want to rethink your strategy of social ladder-climbing.
