Greetings Everyone,

Dragon Heart here. This is a post that I wrote in response to a “yahoo answers” Question in 2008. Here is the Answer I wrote which I think still works well today. It also reflects the recovery I was able to gain after 10 years of working at it.

Can Children of Narcissist Parents Ever Recover?

YES, you can recover from NPD Parents!

First of all you need to learn about recovery and what recovery really is.

There is 12 step recovery and then there is therapy and then there is Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT or “Tapping” is a technique to relieve  emotional disstress and clear the issues that are stuck), and there is the Recovery Model in the mental health field.

I visited the San Diego Zoo for my birthday this year.  While my friend and I were looking on at the Flamingos, something unusual happened.  All of their heads shot up at once.  Their alarm was obvious.  I commented to my friend that their behavior was strange as they began to squawk and pace about in their habitat.

My friend suggested that it might be their feeding time so we meandered up the path a bit and stood on a small bridge over where their food would be delivered.  When my friend answered that the bridge didn’t normally sway, I knew we were in an earthquake.  It was a fairly sizable one, at that, and it lasted for nearly a minute.

Here comes another day, fraught with memories that comprise a most massive disappointment of my life for a thousand reasons and simultaneously for no reason at all.  My mother, who lived a full life, died two years ago on May 26th.  June 3rd marks the anniversary of her funeral, and another siginificant event in my life … the day my Narcissist chose to end our relationship.

 I don’t know what to think about that event.  I’ve garnered many opinions from others, yet I keep my own counsel on the matter.  A part of me wants to empathize with the stress my Narcissistic lover might have been under but another part of me wants to believe the words of those who also knew him then.  As he is a coward and will not speak of the event with me, his point of view remains hidden.

He came forwards as a hero on the day my mother fell into a coma.  He was at the hospital with me, being everything I dreamed a lover would be at such a time.  We spent hours on the phone talking over things as my mother’s condition worsened.  It is impossible to forget the angelic glow of white that surrounded him as he soothed her dying body in the hospital bed.   At face value, he was perfect in that role. 

The day Mom died, as he walked away from my car to go back to what he referred to as work, he claimed he felt free.  The tone of our conversations on the phone, the week after her death, took on a different tone.  He bagan to tell me my calls were intrusive but he never explained why.  The day of Mom’s funeral, when he came through my door nearly an hour late, unshaven and unshowered wearing clothes that looked as if they had been slept in, I felt the storm he brought with him.  I knew I was in danger with him that day but I had no where else to turn.