Narcissistic Personality Disorder

And then, we will all Keep Doing This VITAL, easy, short practice.

One of the many things I learned from the “Resilience Skills” University online course I took that I keep teaching you about here only in this group is that Resilience Needs Mindfulness.

And, 1 of the first things to learn about Mindfulness is how to practice conscious breathing and why.

Mindfulness conscious breathing exercise to practice daily 3 or 4 times—
In/Out: This is the first practice on Conscious Breathing:

breathe in (a good, deep inhale), and say or think “I know that I am breathing in”,
breathe out (a longer, full exhale), and say or think “I know that I am breathing out”

After a while of practicing this, you can shorten the cue words to saying or thinking simply “In” on the Inhale, and “Out” on the Exhale.

“When we continue to practice like this, something wonderful happens—-we stop the thinking.
This is already a miracle happening because when we think too much, we are not truly ourselves. But this way, our mind and our body becomes aligned/in the same place; instead of our body here but our mind is elsewhere— in the past or in the future.

If we practice breathing in and out with some concentration, we attain what is called the oneness of body and mind.
The body and mind are unified and you begin to be there truly yourself.

When you are not really there, you cannot see things clearly and deeply. You miss everything, everything seems to you not clear, vague.”

Running to the future or going back to the past- you miss life, that is only here in the present moment.

Breathing in and out consciously is how to get back to the present moment.

What you are looking for —joy, inner peace, freedom …is all in the present moment.

If you feel agitated and not solid, vulnerable, breakable — then you practice this in order to get solid again:

Practice sitting in a stable position and practice breathing in and out. Saying “breathing in, I see myself as a mountain, breathing out I feel solid.

From time to time, a very strong emotion overwhelms us. That emotion could be anger or despair or fear. And when we are overwhelmed by a strong emotion we feel very vulnerable, like we may die, But we are more than our emotions. We are more solid than we think. And therefore, practicing being solid like a mountain is very helpful.

Source: Thich Nhat Hahn’s The Art of Mindful Living (read by the great man himself on YouTube — I am always so calmed by his voice even.)

#Mindfulness #MentalHealth #Selfcare #Depression #Anxiety #GeneralizedAnxietyDisorder #MajorDepressiveDisorder #PersistentDepressiveDisorder #MoodDisorders #PTSD #PTSDSupportAndRecovery #Agoraphobia #ComplexPosttraumaticStressDisorder #Trauma #BipolarDisorder #BipolarDepression #AnorexiaNervosa #Addiction #EatingDisorders #Selfharm #SuicidalIdeation #SuicidalThoughts #Grief #Suicide #Fibromyalgia #ChronicPain #ChronicIllness #CerebralPalsy #Cancer #MultipleSclerosis #BorderlinePersonalityDisorder #ADHD #ObsessiveCompulsiveDisorder #PanicAttacks #PanicAttack #ChronicFatigue #ChronicFatigueSyndrome #MyCondition #Relationships #FamilyAndFriends #RareDisease #RheumatoidArthritis #Arthritis #CrohnsDisease #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder #Caregiving #SocialAnxiety

Had a big therapy session last Friday. Think my therapist must have known something about how my body would react. She said "show yourself some love this week". Today I have crashed and burned. There is a monster inside me who hates me and wants me dead and it is a chimera made up of my Mum, my Dad and the most demanding, critical, self-hating parts of myself. What the hell do I do with this. The last thing I want to do is show myself love. It's all I can do to sit and stare blankly into space. (The pic isn't me, but it gets as close as possible to how I feel right now).

#Depression #DissociationDisorders #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder #Abuse

Anyone else revisit favourite books from childhood? Finding it really nurturing to revisit Winnie the Pooh (the originals with the beautiful EH Shepherd illustrations) and re-read it whenever I need a cheerful, cosy moment. There's something about Winnie the Pooh being a collection of stories that the narrator is reading to indulge their own beloved child/grandchild that I really relate to as a Dad and find really comforting as an abuse survivor because it evokes that affectionate parental climate that was missing in my childhood. Feels deeply personal and really special to read them just for me; as well as read them to my two lovely girls.

How do you recapture those nurturing moments? What books/activities (if any) do you enjoy for this purpose?

#Depression #PTSD #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder #Abuse

I haven't been paying attention to my mental health recently and it has been slowly declining. Thank goodness I have been working on this for a long time and was able to catch this in time before it became mania.
I moved out of my toxic marriage in Feb of 2024. Went through a divorce as well which was finalized on July 31st 2024. Me ex decided to throw all my belongings in a corner of the living room. He even took down all the curtains. I have been avoiding going through all the stuff because I wasn't ready to handle the emotions. He finally gave me a month or he was throwing it all away. On Sunday I went there and started to go through my stuff. It was painful to see 26 years of memories thrown in boxes but to go through it and have to start throwing stuff away was even more difficult. I don't have any room for my stuff in my tiny apartment. My ex doesn't care. He says "It's not my problem" that's his famous line to me. I had to get up a few times, walk into my son's room to cry. I mean the holidays are painful as it is, but to make me go through this and he sits there and watches me was uncomfortable.
Thank goodness I have a great landlord that said I can put a few buckets of my stuff in his garage.
I go back this weekend to box up all my stuff and I'm just not ok about all this. I'm not ok with him sitting there watching me struggle and be in pain and he does nothing. It doesn't even phase him. That's unfortunately a narcissist for you. He thrives on control and power.
When I decided to leave after he choked me in front of my daughter I got myself into treatment for my addiction. I than attended a 12 step fellowship, Narcotics Anonymous. I made friends and got a support network. I attended domestic violence classes, and got a trauma therapist who specializes in addiction as well. I went back to school to get my peer advocate certification as well as a recovery addiction coach. I even got a part time job to save money. I did all this healing and growing so the day I said I was leaving I was ready and prepared. However, I guess I didn't realize all the emotions and feelings that comes with leaving.
Today, I am struggling, but that won't always be the case. Healing is a journey. It's messy. One day your good and the next your not. To be able to handle my bipolar and my addiction at the same time as I am healing is not easy. As long as I have this app to allow me to write and process my feelings, my friends, my therapist I will continue my journey.
Thanks everyone for listening. Much appreciated! 👍 #NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder #narcissist #AddictionRecovery #BipolarDisorder #MentalHealth #ToxicMarriage

One of the things I'm discovering I love to do is explore and adventure in new ideas and places. In my childhood I was mocked, manipulated and punished for this swashbuckling and consequently I buried it, to my immense harm. Coming back to adventuring now, I'm realising that because of the ways my parents abused me in childhood, I learned that my worthiness for recognition was based on staying put, shutting up and agreeing with them, so rejecting my own thoughts, feelings and desires. But...what I'm learning now is that my worth is unconditional. On top of this unconditional value (perhaps even because of it!), I can explore and adventure and understand (or not understand - that's ok too!) whatever I want AND disagree with others/the author at the end of it. I'm learning it's not disloyal to want to grow; and it's not arrogant to have a mind of my own.

#NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder #Abuse #emotionalimmaturity

It's been 3 months so far since I was officially divorced and I'm feeling emotional today. Wanted to play the victim role today. So I was looking up online all the things that he has done to me and I sat and swelled on all of it. However, I'm gonna turn this around now. I will never get past the memories of being stalked and tracked, choked out, pics of me that were sexual put online pornsites without my permission, a loaded gun in my bedroom, etc however I am free today. I have escaped the hell I was living in and now I am honestly feeling safe for the first time in a long, long time. So I might go back to the horror I was living in every once in awhile but today I can tell myself I am free!

The rabbit catcher, by Sylvia Plath

It was a place of force—
The wind gagging my mouth with my own blown hair,
Tearing off my voice, and the sea
Blinding me with its lights, the lives of the dead
Unreeling in it, spreading like oil.

I tasted the malignity of the gorse,
Its black spikes,
The extreme unction of its yellow candle-flowers.
They had an efficiency, a great beauty,
And were extravagant, like torture.

There was only one place to get to.
Simmering, perfumed,
The paths narrowed into the hollow.
And the snares almost effaced themselves—
Zeros, shutting on nothing,

Set close, like birth pangs.
The absence of shrieks
Made a hole in the hot day, a vacancy.
The glassy light was a clear wall,
The thickets quiet.

I felt a still busyness, an intent.
I felt hands round a tea mug, dull, blunt,
Ringing the white china.
How they awaited him, those little deaths!
They waited like sweethearts. They excited him.

And we, too, had a relationship—
Tight wires between us,
Pegs too deep to uproot, and a mind like a ring
Sliding shut on some quick thing,
The constriction killing me also.

#NarcissisticPersonalityDisorder #Abuse #PTSD #Trauma #MightyPoets #Depression #Anxiety