The Covert Narcissist taking his mask off – in the end.
I met with a woman, I will name “Annika,” (a favorite pseudonym of mine), who told me some details about her life story with men. She gave me permission to write about her story here. I am going to write this in “first person,” as if it were a memoir. She is not a client and, I say this, so if my clients are reading this, they won’t think it is their story. I am breaking this up into different parts. I start with this aspect of her journey: coming back from being in a trauma bond after the break-up with a covert narcissist.
For the past seven months, I have been numb…as I walked in the desert alone – in silence and prayer or meditation. I have come to know God in a renewed way; as I took this path on a contemplative journey. The pain and suffering of losing yet one more relationship at 59, took a hold of me and wouldn’t let go. Realizing, that once again, I had given up on myself while trying to please them and one more time being blamed. This time something completely made up and fabricated to get rid of me. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back and yet, while I hoped to get an apology and for the nightmare to be over, I began to realize, month by month, this was just not going to come.
I will not put this movie (French 2018), in “The Arts” section because it is a psychological drama that hits on the topic of sexual abuse, narcissism and women being left alone for several generations; much like Antonia’s Line (Netherlands, 1995). The film starts out in the 1950’s post WWII France. If you are a great film lover, as I am, you will know when you see the cover and the title, it just hits you – I must watch this film. What really piqued my interest was the title “An Impossible Love,” which hit home for me. I saw other things in the description that I ignored at first until it came up on the screen. I love the way Catherine Corsini handles abuse of a child in this film. Extremely subtle. The topic does not even come up until much later in the film. The child’s older lover tells the mother, not to let her daughter visit the father anymore. The shock on the mother’s face, to realize a man she has loved for 16 years, but who has rejected her all the same, is now sexually abusing their daughter. The shock to finally take in the missing pieces of this puzzle “Rachel” has created, her fantasy that he was a great lover, that they had something special together, suddenly unravels before her eyes. Virginie Efira (with the help of the cameraman), gives a somatic demonstration of soul searching, confusion, awareness and reality in just a few seconds of this film.
The above title is a comment made by Jesus, on the cross, and can be found in the New Testament. I was taking a course on Insight Timer recently called “The Contemplative Journey,” which is a Gnostic workshop given by Methods. The very last day of this five-day process, the instructor took us on a final meditation in which he used these words “They know not what they do.” I was mesmerized by this statement in a new way and decided to reflect on this today.
Reflections Inspired by A Course in Miracles, A Course of Love, The Way of Mastery, Choose Only Love, & The Way of the Marys. . .with Celia Hales - https://www.amazon.com/author/celiahales
Jeannine Vegh 