Recovering From Emotional Abuse.

While I'm slowly coming to terms with the abuse I suffered within a toxic family relationship and am learning tactics to cope with it, it's still hard to counteract the mental burnout.

I'm dealing with many layers at once. Firstly, I'm receiving therapy for narcissistic abuse, which has specific and nuanced characteristics. One of the most painful aspects of recovery is learning you'll never rationalise with a narcissist. They'll never empathise, acknowledge or apologise for their behaviour. They can't be wrong. And they deliberately create drama to feed off; hurting you has an impact, and that's the best retaliation to hand if they can't compete with the truth (though if they can distract and deflect from their actions in the process, that's a bonus). And they have little autobiographical memory and endless double standards; it's one rule for you and another for them.

On top of this, I'm gradually accepting that the person I thought they were doesn't exist. They don't love me rationally and can't resist projecting guilt. Once you grasp they don't care in a logical or empathetic way, so much makes sense. And strangely, you're released from much of the responsibility; when you believe they love you, you can't understand how they could treat you so callously, but when you get comfortable with the fact they might not - or that their love can apparently exist entirely outside of their actions - you realise there was nothing you could do to fix things. Their toxic logic won't allow it.

So I find myself essentially grieving both parents at once: the actual passing of my father and the metaphorical passing of the mum I thought I had. Her behaviour was often inappropriate during my childhood  - as was her partner's - and has been compounded by her lying and general lack of culpability since. But the truth is what's important, and no amount of gaslighting can change that.

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