Like many in this nation, I’ve been using denial as a coping technique over the past two months. I’ve been trying to believe that somehow, miraculously, the shift in power we were dreading would not happen. I was hoping that it was all a bad dream or a horrible joke. It’s not, though. Our lives are about to change drastically.

The night of the election in November 2016, my 16 year old daughter came downstairs to the family room at about 10 pm from doing homework. Her twin and I were watching the returns come in with dismay. She had just received a text from her boyfriend about the ominous news. Her only words were, “Tell me it’s not true.” I had to tell her it was. She then asked, “Can we move to Canada?” Given that we have family there, it’s not too outrageous of a request.

My daughter’s reaction left me thinking. Her boyfriend is a darker skinned racial minority whose parents were immigrants to the US. Her best friend is transgender. Her mother is disabled. She is almost a woman. Her world is going to be drastically impacted by the changes that result from the election.

My life is also going to be impacted as well; the obvious is that I am a woman and I am disabled. Both of those groups have been declared targets of hatred in the new era, and I personally have already experienced it. I fully expect large parts of the Americans with Disabilities Act to be repealed because the ADA costs money to businesses in order to make them fully accessible, and in the new order, corporate money is far more important than those with disabilities.

There are other places where the new dawn is going to impact me. Without the Affordable Care Act, I am no longer insurable due to the past 14 years of health issues. I face insurance companies refusing to cover my medical bills because of my pre-existing conditions. Healthcare is going to be the most obvious place where I will feel the change.

Other places are less obvious at first glance, but they are real threats. I have never had an abortion in this life, and I hope I never have to. However, Roe v. Wade has ensured that abortion has always been an option in my lifetime. Now I am at a point in my life where I would have to terminate any pregnancy I might unintentionally conceive because of health issues, yet I expect Roe v. Wade to either be eliminated or heavily restricted in the coming year. If that is the case, I will have to limit my sexual partners to men who have had vasectomies or are otherwise sterile. I’m a little more than angry about (primarily older white men) deciding whom I can have sex with.

There are bigger fears, too. I spent the first part of my life living with a narcissist, and having a narcissistic man who uses gaslighting as one of his primary methods of communication in national power is triggering for me and for many others. Watching someone so ill-qualified and so mentally ill about to assume command of so many life-or-death decisions is truly terrifying, especially if one knows how fickle and dangerous narcissists can be.

I’ve spoken with my spirit guides, and they have assured me that the new Narcissist in Chief will not be pushing the big red button. However, they have also affirmed my fears that we are facing an ugly uphill battle in the near future. As a friend of mine phrased it, we are facing at a decision where we as a nation have to decide if we will be governed by fear or governed by love. As things stand now, we are heading toward being a nation governed by fear.

I choose not to live my life in that way, though. For me, the first question to any decision is always “What is the healthy decision?” That question is always accompanied by other similar supporting questions: “What will bring the most love into my life and the world?” “What will bring the most compassion to me, to others, and to humanity?” “What is the right thing to do even if it is the hardest?” I will continue to strive to hold those values dear even when the world around me is leaning in the opposite direction.

So for me, January 20th, 2017 is a day of mourning. I’m dressing in black, the traditional color of mourning in our culture. I’m letting myself grieve as hard as I need to, but I also am holding my heart in a place of love rather than a place of fear. While I can’t change the national or the global situation, I can keep working to enact change around me, helping those who aren’t accepted by others. I can keep working to get compassion enacted in our society on personal and legal levels.

The final words from “Memories” from the musical Cats have been echoing my head all day, prompting me to write this post. We are facing the new day, the new dawn, but we must hold tight to the memories that bring us hope and love.

Daylight
I must wait for the sunrise
I must think of a new life 
And I mustn't give in
When the dawn comes
Tonight will be a memory, too
And a new day will begin
​
©2017 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), an official diagnosis in the DSM-V, is a rarely diagnosed condition for many reasons. Most narcissists have a grandiose sense of self and don’t believe there is anything wrong with them. At most, they believe are victims of others’ imperfection. Thus, getting a narcissist to a therapist can be very difficult. Once in a therapist’s office, many narcissists are able to perform beautifully. They know how to act in order to maximize the sympathy of those around them including therapists who aren’t clued in on what is going on. Being in couple’s therapy with a narcissist can be demoralizing and defeating if the therapist cannot see through the narcissist’s delusions about themselves and others.

Many narcissists also are blatant liars, adapting the truth to meet their needs. Because they have convinced themselves that the new story is the truth, it’s often hard to pinpoint when narcissists are lying and when they are telling the truth. With my mother, I know that there is some root of truth in anything she told me, but quite often, the stories she shared were highly exaggerated or distorted in order to meet her needs. This is not simply a matter of having misremembered things because time has passed. Instead, narcissists manipulate their tales in order to gain the most attention and to have whatever they are relating make them look like heroes.

Because it is difficult to be able to diagnose someone who is so proficient at manipulating the truth and acting out a role as a victim rather than a perpetrator, therapists often miss the diagnosis. It takes time in individual therapy to get to know someone well enough to see through their shenanigans. Only those who have lived with, spent copious amounts of time with, or extensively worked with narcissists are likely to see their true personalities and realities. When only spending an hour a week with narcissistic clients, therapists often don’t have enough data in a short time to be able to see through the lies to the truth.

What I have found time and again is that those with severe narcissistic personality disorder are often easy to spot in group settings rather than in one-on-one or couples’ sessions. Within thirty minutes of a group meeting with someone with severe NPD, everyone in the group can usually tell that something is not quite right with those who have NPD even if they can’t pinpint what the problem is. Narcissists will dominate group conversation, pulling all attention towards themselves any way they can. They find a way to be authorities on a topic even if they have no real experience, and if they can’t succeed in doing that, they quickly switch the topic to something they do have experience in. I’ve also repeatedly witnessed narcissists extensively relating others’ authority-related stories about a given topic in order to connect themselves to the conversation which they otherwise could not speak on.

When this particular type of narcissist is commandeering a group setting, they often talk non-stop for many minutes on end, effectively babbling onto things that aren’t relevant. Even when redirected by a group leader, the narcissists will find a way to commandeer the discussion again so that they are the focus of attention. They really aren’t there to help others or learn from others as they might have said at the beginning of the group meeting. Rather, they are there to gain attention in whatever means they can, be it through sympathy, pity, authority, or flat out domination of the evening.

There is little that can be done to work with narcissists with extreme NPD in a group setting. The best solution is often to remove them from the group and work with them one-on-one. However, narcissists often don’t stay in therapy or coaching for long because of the nature of their disorder. They decide after a short time that they have mastered the situation and know more than their therapists. Alternatively, they find an excuse such as their therapists persecuting them when in reality the therapists are actually calling the narcissists out on their issues and trying to guide them in a direction of honesty and growth. Since most narcissists will not examine the true roots of their problems, preferring to blame all their issues on others, they find fictitious reasons to abandon any healing work that might have helped them grow. Those who do stay in therapy often do so with weak therapists who don’t insist on the narcissists doing personal work. Instead, therapy becomes another avenue for narcissists to get attention from someone who will support everything they say.

Narcissism is a mental illness, and it is a difficult one to live with and work with. Most of the time, there is no cure for it because narcissists see nothing wrong with themselves and are unwilling to work on healing. Most therapists who are educated on narcissism are unable to help narcissists change because the narcissists are unwilling to admit that they need to change. That means that those who spend time with narcissists are left with the options of putting up with the narcissists’ distorted and often abusive reality or ending their relationships with narcissists altogether rather than suffer from the consequences of their disease.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

My graduating high school class had 51 young women in it. The school was small and Catholic; everyone knew everyone. I thought I wanted to go to a small liberal arts college, but when I visited The University of Texas at Austin as a senior in high school, I fell immediately in love. Sometimes you just know when you have found the right place.

As a National Merit Finalist, I got priority admission for the dorms at UT which always had waiting lists to get in. However, as a freshman, there was still limited availability. While I requested to be assigned to a female dorm, I was instead placed on a co-ed floor at Jester Center, a dorm that holds between 3200-3300 people. After a pre-K-12 school of less than 600, it was a massive living space that was rather intimidating for many reasons.

At that time, the only matching algorithm that UT Student Housing used was smoking or non. As you can imagine, that did not create good odds for ending up with a roommate who was a good match. I checked off non-smoking. My first roommate also checked off non-smoking even though she was a smoker because she did not want anyone smoking in the room. So right off the bat, the matching algorithm was a completely failure.

"H," my first roommate, was a from a small town outlying the Dallas-Fort Worth area. She had been at the top of her class at her small rural Texas school but she arrived totally unprepared for college. She was there to party. By contrast, I was there to get an education. H hit it off with a woman in an adjoining room. After H broke up with her steady boyfriend back home after learning that he was already sleeping around only a few weeks into their long distance relationship, H and the woman next door quickly made their way to Sixth Street with the explicit intention of getting laid. They managed to get drunk that night but somehow failed to procure willing men.

H rapidly became the roommate from hell. We were not a good match in any way. I was a morning person. She wanted to party all night. I had fairly Catholic values at that point; despite having been baptized just that summer as a born-again Christian, H's actions and values were questionable. She wanted to start smoking in the room; I refused to allow it since it was a designated non-smoking room. We had agreed to share various chores in the room, though it rapidly became clear that she was not going to do any of them, and she tore into me for asking her to do her part. Yet at the same time, she felt free to borrow my clothes when we hit a cold snap and she hadn’t brought her winter clothes down from home yet. Her only interest was herself and her needs. Once again, I had found myself living with a narcissist.

A male high school friend of hers and his roommate set up a secret competition: They were trying to see who could get her to have sex first. The friend was in our room one night giving her a backrub on her bed while I was studying on my bed. He announced, “This bra is in the way. I’ll just take it off.” My Catholic school girl self was mortified and completely unsure what to do. Were they not clear on the fact I was sitting right there? Was the proper etiquette to leave? Yet at the same time, it was my room, too, and I really didn’t want to walk across the street to the library to study. (I have no idea who actually won the competition but I’d be really surprised if one of those guys didn’t succeed by the end of the semester.)

Within a few weeks, H had decided that I was the worst roommate ever. She dragged her mattress into the woman next door’s dorm room and proceeded to live there. The smell of pot constantly waifed out of their room. H came in our formerly shared room periodically to get clothes and give me an evil eye. She was not happy that she had to live next door in order to smoke and party all the time.

After the school year was about six weeks old, another woman on the floor came knocking door to door to get information for something or another. She asked me where my roommate was, and I told her that H had moved next door because she hated me. The woman doing the survey went next door and talked to H. The next thing I knew, H was announcing to me that she and the survey woman had decided to swap roommates. I would be moving into the other woman’s room and she would be taking my space. I was given no option, but considering the current status of things, I figured it could not be much worse. We made the switch immediately, and then applied to Housing to make it official. Our resident assistant did a “counseling” session in which she tried to work out our differences which was rather amusing. Once we convinced her that there would be no positive resolution, she applied for and received the official permission to get us to switch rooms. We signed the paperwork, swapped keys officially, and moved on with our lives.

The woman I moved in with had also decided things couldn’t be any worse than what she’d experienced with her first roommate, so she was fine with me moving in. While she was a night owl and tv addict, we were able to be respectful of each other and make it work. Within a few weeks, we were great friends. Meanwhile, gossip on the floor was that H and the survey woman hated each other with a passion. I have to admit that I was amused at that given how the two of them had treated my new roommate and me. By the end of the semester, rumor had it that H was just leaving a bottle of Jim Beam on her nightstand. She left UT at the end of the semester to move back home and go to a UT branch school, but supposedly there was a notice in the dorm mailbox that she was officially on academic probation after her less than stellar performance in her first semester at UT.

Those first few weeks of college being partnered with someone I had almost nothing in common with were really rough, but the friendship I ended having with my second roommate was fabulous. Tomorrow’s blog post will talk more about that relationship.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

My maternal grandmother died 24 years ago today, or at least that’s what the record books say.

Her death started in the week beforehand when she was taken to the ER in the middle of the night for congestive heart failure (CHF). The type 2 diabetes she had for the 10+ years before her death is an established risk factor for CHF. She was given six months to live at that point. My mother (and possibly her siblings) decided with the doctors that the best thing for my grandmother to do was to have heart surgery. However, surgery on patients with diabetes has higher risks than on the general population. My paternal aunt, who was an RN/BSN, warned me that doing the surgery was the wrong decision because the risk of stroke was so high. She told me that if we were lucky, my grandmother would die from the stroke during surgery. If we were unlucky, she’d live in a vegetative state for many years with her newly repaired heart. I repeated this information to my mother who discounted and ignored what I said because she was certain her decision to do the surgery was the right one. Her words were along the lines of, "No. This surgery is the only chance your grandmother has."

The night before the surgery, almost all the adults in the family (including me at age 17) gathered in my grandmother's hospital room. She had given birth to six children, five of whom were there along with several spouses and two other grandchildren. The room was quite crowded, but it was filled with laughter. It struck me as such an odd gathering since the family never really got together except for weddings, funerals or major holidays. I left earlier than most of the crowd because I had to be at work at 5 or 6 the next morning. As I left, I had the distinct feeling that it was the last time I would ever see my grandmother alive.

My paternal aunt was correct in her assessment of the situation as my grandmother had a stroke during the surgery but survived. She was in a coma for several more days before she died. What I didn’t expect was that my premonition was correct, too. When I went to the hospital a day or two after the surgery with my boyfriend, my mother was the only one in the room. We were already estranged at that point, so it was an awkward situation. I went and stood by my grandmother’s body, but I could tell her spirit was already gone. As I left, my mother ever-so-helpfully told me, “You know this is likely the last time you’ll see your grandmother alive, don’t you?” My mother was always right (in her mind) as she has narcissistic personality disorder, so I had learned quickly as a child that there was no point in ever trying to tell her otherwise. I simply nodded my head while inside my brain I was screaming, “She’s already gone!”

I don’t know how one tells that the spirit is gone in a patient in a coma, but I do know that I was certain my grandmother’s spirit was not there. The friend whom I have asked to “pull the plug” on me if I were ever in a similar situation is friends with many who have metaphysical abilities who will easily be able to tell if my spirit has already left. Knowing me, I will probably already be trying to communicate from the other side to tell them how to handle things!

My grandmother's body passed away a few days later; mercifully the time her body spent in a coma after the stroke was short. However, to me, the decision to have surgery was the wrong one. I understand why my mother (who had power of attorney for my grandmother who was already showing early signs of dementia) made the decision. My mother felt doctors were gods, and if any of them offered to do something, she would have rapidly agreed even if it was a procedure with terrible odds. She, like most others, also wasn't prepared to lose her mother yet. Many of us make decisions to try and keep our loved ones here longer because of our emotional attachments. However, death is inevitable for all of us. Sometimes the better option is not to medically intervene. In this case, my grandmother’s chance at six months with her family was the better one than the surgery that was likely to cause a stroke due to her risk factors.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

In recent months, I’ve found that the sense of self-entitlement among Austin drivers during traffic is rising rapidly. I suspect that this is in part related to the population changes happening in the city and surrounding areas as Austin experiences rapid growth which the infrastructure is poorly equipped to handle. That’s not to say that Austin hasn’t always had its share of rude drivers. However, what I’ve been seeing lately is a blatant sense of narcissism among drivers who seem to think that they are the only ones who matter.

One of the worst examples of this that I’ve encountered was a few months ago when there were two major accidents on one of the main highways in Austin, a highway that is undergoing major construction right now. It normally takes me 10 minutes to drive this particular stretch of roadway when there is no traffic; during traffic it is more like 20-25 minutes. On this particular day, it took me 45 minutes, and if I’d needed to go further into the city, my trip would have been delayed even more. I have to get off on the access road to get to a building where I have regular appointments. However, due to the accidents on the highway, many people were getting off onto the access road in an attempt to unsuccessfully find a faster route.

The section of the access road I traverse is oddly designed; I’m sure non-locals would be very confused by it as it is two ways in parts and only one way in another. Locals, though, are more than aware of how this part of the road functions. Yet despite this, I watched car after car rudely using a right turn only lane to rush to the front of the straight-going traffic line and then dangerously cut off the traffic as they forced themselves over. This meant that anyone in the straight traffic lane was moving at about ten feet per minute at best. I saw many near accidents and watched some even stupider maneuvers that went beyond illegal and into seriously dangerous. I finally called 911 and requested that an officer be sent to that particular intersection to help deal with the overflow from the accidents on the highway. The risk of someone getting hurt was far too high.

As I sat there in that traffic, very frustrated by the slow movement forward when I was so close to the office I needed to get to, I was not pleased by the narcissism so many drivers were demonstrating. It was clear that they believed they were the only ones who mattered. Clearly they were the only ones who had important places to be that they were late for. The rest of us, from their views, surely were just out for joyrides during a weekday morning traffic situation. Yet all of us had some place important to be. I texted my appointment and let her know that I was stuck in traffic; she was fine with it as she knew how bad it was. I was only five minutes late because I allow time for traffic issues, but my stress levels were very high once I got there because of the insane driving I had witnessed.

I understand how frustrating it is to be late for important meetings, and I know there are people out there who will charge fees for clients who show up late to appointments. However, in the situation of a massive highway issue such as two separate accidents, most people understand that it has the potential to bring that particular highway in Austin to a grinding halt. I, and many others who are rational humans, will do their best to help reschedule clients when it’s not their fault that the roadways aren’t cooperating.

Just a few weeks ago, I was heading home from my morning appointments. I stopped to pick up lunch for my son and I at a local restaurant, and then I took a different road than I normally would to get home. I passed the first entrance to my neighborhood to take the second one that is closer to where I live, but just as I did so, the traffic came to a complete and total stop. I was cursing myself for not having taken that first entrance as a span that would normally take 30 seconds to drive suddenly took 15 minutes. However, there was nothing I could do but wait my turn. A quick traffic search on my cell phone showed that the road I was on was closed due to an accident; later that day I saw on a news report that a motorcyclist was killed in the accident which mandated the need to shut down the road.

As I sat listening to the radio and watching police do their best to direct all the traffic from the major road into my neighborhood, the man in front of me began to lose it. He was driving in a Jeep-type vehicle with the roof down, so I could see him cursing and waving his arms at the police out of his frustration with how slowly the traffic was moving. While I think the police could have done a more effective job in directing traffic, they were doing what they could with limited resources. Screaming and cursing wasn’t going to change the situation. More importantly, I knew that if the road was closed, someone (and likely many someones) was having a much worse day that I was being stuck in traffic for just an extra 15 minutes.

I really wish that Austinites would adopt some common sense traffic rules and perspectives on life when they encounter major traffic issues. Among these I would like people to:

• Let one person turn in front of you when they are trying to get on the highway or onto a roadway from a smaller street during traffic. Be nice and take turns.
  
• Don’t drive on and off of the exit ramps and access roads to cut ahead of traffic unless the police are directing you to do so. This behavior creates more traffic in the long run and actually doesn’t advance your place in traffic more than a few cars most of the time. It also makes it more difficult for those who have to get on and off the highway in those locations to reach their destinations.
  
• Remember what’s important in life. This traffic may be frustrating, but in the perspective of your life, it’s very minor. Use the extra car time that you have been given to pray, meditate, or reflect.
  
• Know that in the cases of accidents, someone is having a far worse day than you including possibly having to deal with injury or death.
  
• If you are of the spiritual persuasion, send white light or prayers to those emergency crews working the accidents and those who were involved in the accidents. 
  

Austin traffic is only going to continue to get worse if the area leaders don’t start getting realistic about road development to accommodate the growth. As frustrating as it is, road congestion is here to stay. Major accidents will continue to happen. We can’t change those realities. What we can change is our attitudes toward them. Remember that you are just one of well over a million people who live in the Austin area. If you want to make our city slightly better for all of those who live here, then find ways to demonstrate behavior in traffic that you want others to reflect back to you.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

For a long time as an adult, I did not celebrate my birthdays. This was because my deceased daughter’s birthday is only a few days away from mine, and it felt horribly unfair to me that I was getting to celebrate another birthday when she didn’t get to celebrate even one. It took many years of grieving before I finally reached a place where I was comfortable enough with my daughter’s death and to be able to celebrate my own birth again.

Once I had worked through my issues around my daughter’s birthday and was ready to celebrate again, I found out that there were other reasons that I hadn’t been celebrating my birthday, reasons that were almost as painful. What I rediscovered was that my now ex-husband doesn’t want to celebrate holidays, especially birthdays. He says that birthdays aren’t important to him, so he doesn’t do them. Even though they were very important to me, he wasn’t willing to budge on this one.

I talked to many therapists about this issue and about how hurt I was by my husband’s refusal to celebrate my birthdays in the way I wanted to celebrate. I’m not a person who needs or wants glamorous gifts. I don’t even need a store-bought card. I just need those around me to acknowledge that I am special and that they appreciate having me in their lives in whatever way they can. However, my ex-husband was so against birthdays that he couldn’t even do that. Unfortunately, most of the therapists I saw during that part of my life gave me very poor advice: they placed the blame on me, not my ex-husband, and said that the problem was mine alone, not his. They told me that he had made his position clear, and that I only had one option, to accept that he would never be willing to celebrate my birthdays with me. This only compounded my insecurities and made me feel like there was something wrong with me for wanting my partner to celebrate my birthday in some way.

Not surprisingly, I could not accept my ex-husband’s position of being unwilling to even say happy birthday to me most years. I felt as though I was being completely reasonable in wanting a partner who was willing to make that small amount of effort to show me he loved me. I also did have a choice, but it wasn’t one that my previous therapists presented to me: I could leave the marriage to find someone else who was willing to celebrate me as I want, need and deserve. There was absolutely nothing wrong with me wanting to get my needs met. I understand that the therapists were trying to teach me that we can’t change others: we can only control our own behavior. However, in trying to teach me that lesson, they missed the forest for the trees. There was a very fundamental problem in my marriage that went much deeper than the issue of birthdays.

Participating in marriage therapy with a really amazing therapist and reading books like The 5 Love Languages helped me recognize that in a healthy relationship, partners do things that they don’t always enjoy, but they do it because it gives pleasure to their partners whom they love. I certainly acted this way in my half of the marriage, doing things I didn’t really enjoy on a regular basis because I knew they would make my then-husband happy. I even asked the marriage therapist at one point, “Why is it that I always do things to make him happy but he’s not willing to do the same in return?”  For the first time in my life, the therapist gave a great response: “That’s a really good question!” The answer that he eventually helped me to discover was that when both partners aren’t able to meet each others’ basic needs from a romantic partner, it’s not a good relationship, no matter how much they love each other. In this situation and many others, my ex-husband and I were not well-matched, and divorce was the healthiest option for us based on our circumstances.

Now that the marriage has ended, my ex-husband still is unable to say happy birthday or happy mother’s day to me. I can accept it now, though I still wish it was different. I recognize that he has emotional issues of unknown origin from his past that interfere with his ability to celebrate both himself and others. While it certainly is his choice, it’s not my choice for how I want to live my life. There is too much joy to be shared in this world, and I’m grateful that I am now in a place that I can embrace that joy with those who love me and celebrate me on my birthday and on other days, too.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Most people who ask for advice from others have already resolved to act as it pleases them. ~Khalil Gibran

If we perpetually seek some outer approval for our actions, we will never consciously walk our own road. ~Caitlin Matthews, “The Familiar Road,” The Celtic Spirit

All the advice in the world will never help you until you help yourself. ~Fred Van Amburgh

One of the more frustrating things for me to encounter in clients and in the world at large are people who seek my help repeatedly but who really don't want any advice. What they are primarily searching for in a miracle solution that requires no effort on their part; they also want attention. A friend who is a therapist has dubbed this phenomenon “help rejecting complainers.” That term sums up the issue rather concisely.

With clients, it’s not as frequent of an issue: they’re paying me, so it’s their own money they are wasting, and most people are aware of that. Because of my sensitivity to this issue, though, I will be politely blunt with a client if they’re not applying themselves enough for us to make progress. I don’t force clients to book on a particular schedule for follow up appointments. They can come back whenever they feel they are ready to move forward. However, if they are seeking to get me to do all their work without applying themselves at all, then I ask that they not book further appointments until they’ve worked on their “homework” a bit more. A big part of what I do is help people to learn to listen to their intuition and help themselves. It’s not an overnight process, but most people will move forward at a pace that is appropriate for them. Without following through on any of the suggestions I provide for their issues or on intuition of their own, though, the client can't usually move forward in a positive direction. 

I have run into this situation numerous times in the world at large as well. Prior to starting my business, there were several women in one of my internet groups who would regularly approach me for free advice about issues in their lives, often related to their physical health. These women have very legitimate health issues, and I believe them entirely about those health struggles. However, a very predictable pattern arose with these women: they would seek my help, I would send them detailed email messages, and then they would ignore everything I said. Sometime later, they would email me again letting know me what they had done. Inevitably their independent decisions would cause issues for them, so then they wanted me to not only fix the subsequent problems, but they would ask me for new advice to fix the original problem. However, my answers wouldn’t change. Just because they didn’t like the advice I had given them the first time doesn't mean the answer would magically have changed over the few months or by asking again. In this case, it truly feels like a waste of my time and energy to help.

In particular, there are several women in the group whom I suspect may have a variation of Münchausen syndrome by proxy, a condition where parents, usually mothers, create illnesses in their children to gain attention. In the case of the women I am acquainted with, none of them intentionally harm themselves or their children to my knowledge; I would be morally obligated to report them to child protective services if I thought that was the case. These women don’t consciously want the health problems that are making their lives a mess, yet at the same time, the mothers thrive on the attention they can obtain from the health struggles that they and their children face. They often turn to me and others seeking advice in order to get attention. In one case, the mother asked me questions for which I knew she already knew the answers. Having grown up with a narcissistic mother who behaved in this way, I also am aware of this pattern from personal experience.

At times like these, my willingness to help wears thin rather quickly. One of the life lessons I had to learn around this was in regard to setting boundaries. I am an empath and an intuitive; I’m also an INFJ. For most who fit in these categories, we want to help others. It’s part of our nature, so much so, that unless we set boundaries, we may be taken advantage of or abused. As a result, I’ve learned that there are times when I just have to say no. As much as I want to help others, I’m not willing to let them overtask my generosity. Thus, I no longer wrote long emails to help these attention seekers, instead substituting very brief responses. When I stopped giving them the attention they wanted, these women no longer felt a need to frequently ask me for help, especially once I mention that I now have a business where I charge people who need large amounts of my time. (I do still regularly answer short questions for free for established clients, friends, and community members.)

All practitioners experience this phenomenon to an extent with certain clients, though it’s definitely not the most common client scenario. Those who are paying for help generally do want to heal. However, some people are attention seekers, and they will try to get attention from whomever they can, even if it means paying for it. When they are willing, these people can be helped to find the attention they seek through healthier means by working on their minds and spirits while also healing their bodies. However, the choice to heal is one that only an individual can make. No one can successfully force healing or change on another. As quoted above, "All the advice in the world will never help you until you help yourself."

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

In an episode of The Carrie Diaries (1:11), Carrie Bradshaw’s boyfriend Sebastian is dealing with his narcissistic mother who sees him as her emotional dumping ground. She is the type of woman who attracts drama and then uses the emotional fallout to gain attention from others including Sebastian. After having recently dealt with one of his mother’s crises, Sebastian profoundly states, “No one wants to have to get involved in their parents’ personal lives. We want them to be parents, not people.”

As the daughter of a narcissistic mother, I agree with this statement. When I was growing up, my mother was basically friendless. I don’t ever remember her going out with the girls. At one point, she joined a non-denominational Bible study group with neighbor women, but aside from that, I don’t remember her having friends. As I became a teen, my mother eventually became closer to her youngest sister who was 11 years her junior and in a dysfunctional marriage just as my mother was. However, having that one sister to bond with didn’t really fill the needs my mother had for attention from friends. Instead, she used me as her emotional outlet. When she felt the need to talk to someone, occasionally about topics that really belonged in a therapy session with a professional, she instead made me the one who had to listen to her issues.

Sebastian is correct in saying that we want our parents to be parents, not people. We want our parents to take care of us when we are young. We don’t want to have to take care of them, especially as young children or teens. That includes not wanting to be our parents’ confidantes. It’s just not appropriate or healthy for parents to use their young children as friends or therapists. Our children need to be children, not our support systems.

So does that mean we should not let our children know how we are feeling? Absolutely not. Children do need to know that their parents have emotions and feelings. Parents are not stoic statues who can handle anything without it affecting them. Children need to know that all people, including parents, have feelings, and that it is ok to experience emotion. The fine line that parents need to be careful not to cross is making sure that they don’t share inappropriate information. It’s ok for children to know parents are upset about a break up; children don’t need to know the explicit details of the sexual affair that led to the end of the relationship. This is especially true in cases of divorce. It is very difficult and damaging for children to hear their parents speak negatively of their other parents, no matter how true the statements are.

The opposite extreme of this narcissistic point of view where a parent tells a child too much is in the parent who tells a child nothing. This is almost if not equally as dysfunctional. Children are people, albeit less mature ones. They are able to sense when something is amiss in their home. They can tell when parents are upset or happy or under stress. Many children, not understanding the reasons for their parents’ emotional states, will blame themselves for the negative vibes they pick up. This is easily prevented by simply telling children the simple truth such as “I had a bad day at work.” The children don’t need all of the gory details of the parent’s day, but they do deserve a basic understanding of why their parents are acting and feeling as they do.

The fine line for parents between telling their kids too much or too little is a difficult one to navigate. Despite children possibly wanting them to be “parents, not people,” parents are people, too. Parents experience emotions and stress. However, children are not therapists, and parents need to remember to maintain appropriate boundaries when talking with their children.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

During grad school and while my older children were young, I watched very little tv. I had no real need for it in my life. Yet in the days after 9/11, I left the tv on more than I had previously. In that time, I stumbled upon Crossing Over with John Edward, a show in which psychic medium John Edward gave gallery readings for those who were wanting to reach loved ones who had died. I was captivated by the show, but I hid my viewing habits from my then-husband because I knew he would ridicule such things.

Many years later, I better understood my attraction to Crossing Over as my metaphysical gifts came to fruition. As I started to develop my gifts, I wanted desperately to read John Edward’s books, but because of my multiple chemical sensitivities, I could not read the paper versions and there were no digital editions available. I bought the paperback books and put them on my shelf, waiting for the day when I had enough health to read them. Eventually that day came, and over a few weeks, I happily read through most of his Edward’s non-fiction works. They were easy, fun, enjoyable books for me.

As I read through the books, I quickly recognized that Edward’s dysfunctional father was both an alcoholic and a narcissist; as a result, Edward was mostly estranged from his father as an adult. I understood completely from personal experience how and why that narcissism can create a situation in which it’s best for the child to separate from the toxic parent. It’s a very difficult situation for the adult children involved. Our society does not support this kind of “divorce” between a parent and child. Instead, adult children are chided for breaking the Judeo-Christian commandment “honor thy father and mother.” However, in situations where the converse of “honor thy child” is not being respected, a parental-child divorce can be the healthiest thing for all those involved.

My mother undeniably has narcissistic personality disorder, though for the almost 17 years she was in my life, she never received an official diagnosis. It’s rare for narcissists to receive diagnoses because they are often able to present themselves very well to strangers. It is only in living with narcissists or working extensively with them that their true natures are revealed. I have dozens if not hundreds of stories that typify my mother’s narcissism though for the purposes of this blog post, one will suffice.

After my daughter Rebecca died, we received abundant condolence cards for the month afterward. About eight weeks after her death, a card arrived from my mother, whom I had not had any contact with in over seven years at that point. I had not informed her of my pregnancy or my daughter’s death, but we still had common contacts; she likely found out through one of those channels. Unlike most people who sent us bereavement cards, my mother sent me (and not my husband) a card that was about how wonderful daughters are. To someone who doesn’t understand narcissism or my mother, this would seem like a cruel and demented sentiment: I had just lost my only daughter (at that time) to death, yet my mother had sent me a card telling me how wonderful daughters are. However, if you analyze the situation with the knowledge that my mother is a narcissist, the situation makes a great deal more sense: She was only thinking from her point of view. She was trying to express emotion about my loss, but the only way she could do it was by vocalizing her position: She missed her daughter. She couldn’t think through the whole process that I had actually lost my own daughter and that her card was incredibly inconsiderate of that.

For years, many people had told me that I would regret my estrangement from my mother when she died. I would suddenly realize that it was too late for us to work through our differences. There would be no second chance. But as I read chapter 11 of John Edward’s book After Life: Answers from the Other Side, I found a very different perspective. Edward discovered that he was actually able to begin working through his issues with his father after his father’s death once his father was freed from some of his earthly burdens such as alcoholism. While Edward clearly encourages that people should “communicate, appreciate, validate" every day before they lose their loved ones, he does offer hope that reconciliation can happen after death. Working from that place, I finally came to true peace with estrangement from my mother. I realized that even when she dies, I don’t expect to grieve for her. I may once again grieve for the healthy mother whom I never experienced, but I know I will be fine whether she is in this world or the next. I’ve spent many hundred years attached to her soul, and I no longer have any desire to be associated with her. Losing her in no way seems like a loss.

My mother’s parents have both come to visit me from the other side. I never met my grandfather in real life as he died ten years before I was born; my grandmother died when I was 17. Interacting with them after I opened to the metaphysical helped me to understand that while they might have shed burdens such as alcoholism, unless they choose to work on their souls after death, they still carry their soul level issues with them. Neither of my maternal grandparents had done extensive work on themselves, and thus, interacting with them was not inspiring or sentimental. They were very spiritually unhealthy people whom I didn’t want to have around. Quite honestly, if my mother takes the same position of not working on herself after death as her parents have, I definitely don’t want to get back in touch with her then either!

I am grateful for the peace I have reached with being estranged from my toxic mother. I have known from early on that it was for the best, but our society doesn’t always understand that. Instead, mother-daughter relationships are glorified in a way that isn’t always true. While I didn’t receive that love as a daughter, I have been able to experience it as a mother with my living daughter, and for that blessing, I am truly grateful.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance

Many popular memes and quotes assert ideas about the amazing, boundless love of mothers for their children. A sampling from the internet turns up:

• “The love of a mother and her child is like none other.” ~Vicki Reece 
  
• “A daughter is just a little girl who grows up to be your best friend.”
• “The memories that a mother leaves are cherished forever.” 
  
• “No matter how old you get, a mother’s love is still a real comfort.” ~Stephanie Linus
  
• “A mother’s love is the heart of a family.”
  
• “A mother’s love is instinctual, unconditional, and forever.” ~Revathi Sankaran
  
• “A mother is your first friend, your best friend, your forever friend.”
  
• “A mother’s love is endless.”
  
• “The love between a mother and daughter is forever.”
  
• “Being a mother doesn't mean being related to some
• one by blood. It means loving someone unconditionally and with your whole heart.”
  
• “A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity. It dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.” ~Agatha Christie
  
• “The love of a mother for her child is undeniably the strongest emotion in the soul.”  ~Sandy Richards
  
• “Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible.” ~Marion C. Garretty 
  
• “A mother’s love is patient and forgiving when all others are forsaking. It never fails or falters even though the heart is breaking.” ~Helen Steiner Rice

These sayings are true… except when they’re not. Unfortunately, for the children of narcissistic mothers, they’re often just myths, and reading quotes like these may just amplify a pain in their hearts for the loss they've experienced in life. They've never had the experience of having a truly loving and giving mother.

No mother is perfect: They’re all human. All mothers make mistakes. However, the issues that exist between narcissistic mothers and children, though, aren't simply matters of misunderstanding or parent-child conflict. They run far deeper. This is because people with narcissistic personality disorder are unable to love others in an unconditional way. Instead, their love is self-oriented: Narcissists see other people, including their children, as existing to meet their own needs. The narcissists simply don’t have the emotional ability to love others as they need and deserve to be loved.

The Dalai Lama has written, “Love is the absence of judgment.” For the children of narcissists, they may never have experienced true love. Instead, they’ve felt a painful and conditional set of demands from mothers who disrespect the children’s needs. As these children grow, their own relationships with their spouses will often suffer unless a great deal of personal growth and therapy is involved. Because the children have been involved in toxic parental relationships all their lives, they may not recognize what a healthy love looks like, and instead, they will marry or partner with others who will continue the judgmental pattern of “love” that began with narcissistic mothers in childhood.

As Mother’s Day approaches, the plethora of praise of mothers will be abundant in the social media world, and those words may add more pain to already deep wounds. For those who are seeking to heal their own wounds, I highly recommend the book Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers by Karyl McBride, Ph.D. This work examines the toxic legacy of which narcissistic mothers create in their daughters. A great deal of the book is oriented towards those who are still in toxic relationships with their mothers or who want to maintain relationships with their mothers despite the emotional abuse they perpetrate. Only a small portion of the book acknowledges the option of ending a relationship with a narcissistic maternal abuser (as I personally chose to do). However, reading this book was an eye-opening experience for me, helping me realize that I wasn’t alone in the world of narcissistic abuse and how it influenced my life, my career, and my former marriage. I’ve since recommended the book to many other women who have narcissistic mothers, and most of them had the same response: “It’s not just me!”

This Mother’s Day, if you aren’t experiencing the love that our Judeo-Christian society dictates is necessary for children to feel for parents, remember that love is a two way street. In relationships with narcissistic abusers, you are under no obligation to praise those who may have hurt you. Finding peace with those abusers and with yourself for what you’ve experienced in life can go a long way towards a happier life. You never have to condone what the narcissists have done to you, but understanding how and why they treat(ed) you the way they do/did can make it easier to respond to them from a place of compassion. In turn, this will help you find a place of peace rather than living in a state of pain, fear or anger.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Update 10/25/2019: It's been brought to my attention that Gary Chapman is homophobic and sees LGBTQ+ people as living a "lifestyle" choice. Please know that I in no way endorse those views. I believe all genders and all sexes are natural manifestations of humanity. Despite these horrific views of Chapman, there is validity in his theory of love languages, and love languages can be used and applied in same-sex or other queer relationships.

​**

When my now ex-husband and I were in marriage counseling trying to save our relationship, one of the very useful concepts our therapist introduced us to was The 5 Love Languages:  The Secret to Love That Lasts by Gary Chapman.  At that time, I did not read the book because one does not need to actually read the book to take advantage of the basic concepts of the five love languages.  However, because the concepts had been so important to understanding what had gone wrong in my former marriage, I felt as though I should read the book; I also wanted to use it for a spiritual singles group I am starting in a few months.

Through his years of work as a counselor, Chapman has devised a system of five "love languages" which he has found to be common to all humans regardless of culture.  While the dialects that individuals speak may vary within cultures, the five languages remain the same.  These five languages are (in the order presented in the book) words of affirmation, quality time, receiving gifts, acts of service, and physical touch.  Most of us speak one of these love languages as our primary love language, though occasionally some people are bilingual.  The love language we speak is the main way in which we feel loved, or in Chapman's words, it is how we fill our "love tank."  Unless we are getting our basic needs for love met, we will not be happy in a relationship.  To facilitate the process of discovering our love languages, Chapman provides surveys and other means for readers to determine both their own love languages and the love languages of their partners.

For those whose language is words of affirmation, they have a need to hear their partner verbally express praise, love, and desire.  Those who desire quality time want their partners to spend free time together talking or doing activities of mutual interest.  They want their partners to be truly there for them, disposing of digital devices while they are together in order to focus on each other.  Those who speak the language of receiving gifts want their partners to demonstrate love through presents: They may be expensive gifts or homemade cards depending on the individual and the financial situation.  For those who desire acts of service, doing chores such as sewing buttons on shirts or vacuuming the house are ways to communicate love.  And finally, for those who desire physical touch, they want to feel their partners' hands and bodies touching their own.  How they want to be touched will vary widely by each person's individual dialect.

With regards to my own relationship, we quickly realized that my then-husband was an acts of service person.  He felt that because he was doing the dishes and taking out the trash, he was telling me that he loved me.  I had never remotely viewed those acts as ones of love.  Instead, I viewed them as getting necessary chores done.  For my part, I speak the languages of physical touch and words of affirmation.  I felt that by telling my then-husband how I felt about him and by touching him I was showing him love.  He did not see it that way.  Thus, in the case of my marriage, since I was all but bedbound and no longer able to do acts of service for my husband, he had taken this to mean that I no longer loved him.  Since my husband was rarely touching me or talking to me, I had decided he no longer wanted to be near me or love me.  Clearly our linguistic differences created a huge hiccup in our relationship. 

Chapman correctly points out that we often try to meet our lovers' needs through the language we speak and not the language they speak.  This is where most relationships falter in his opinion.  Instead, what we need to be doing is making a conscious effort to do things for our partners that are spoken in their love languages.  In many relationships, rectifying the differences and working to meet our partners' needs in their languages can resolve the problems the couples are facing.  However, in the case of my ex-husband and me, there were too many other issues outside of the five love languages also contributing to the issues in our relationship.  Just speaking each other’s love languages was not going to solve our issues despite Chapman's belief that solving this crucial issue would help unravel many other problems a couple faces.

One of the largest problems with Chapman's theory is that it will not work for relationships involving narcissists.  Narcissists are individuals whose own needs far outweigh those of their partners (or so they think).  Narcissists only want to make their partners happy if their partners can be happy in ways that primarily meet the narcissists' needs and desires. For example, narcissistic individuals might be willing to take romantic partners to the movie if they express interest in doing so, but the narcissists will only be willing to see movies that they enjoy.  The concept of seeing a movie that their partners enjoy and would make their partners happy is incomprehensible to narcissists.  This extends far beyond seemingly minor things like movie viewing habits:  Narcissists will dictate meal choices, sexual activities, employment decisions, lifestyles, and more. 

Thus, Chapman's idea that if you give more to your partner, then your partner will then get his/her/hir love tank filled and give more in return is ultimately flawed when it comes to narcissists.  In narcissists' worlds, their views and needs are the only ones that matter.  The more that a non-narcissistic partner gives to a narcissist, the more the narcissist will demand.  Narcissists will make their partners' wishes and desires seem unimportant.  In the long run, the only one who will benefit from a system of giving is the narcissist since the narcissist will suck a partner dry long before ever contemplating truly meeting the partner's needs. 

I also felt a great deal of concern in the chapter towards the end of the book where Chapman helps a devout Christian woman to stay in an abusive relationship (quite possibly with a narcissist) using Biblical injunctions since he felt that was the only way to reach this particular woman.  Chapman believes this chapter proves that even an abusive situation can be turned around if the abuser's love tank is full.  I feel that it likely demonstrated that an abused person can be brainwashed into believing that having certain needs met justifies the abuse.

Despite these major holes in Chapman's book and theory, I still feel that The 5 Love Languages is an excellent book that should be recommended premarital reading for all couples; perhaps its contents should even be taught in high schools so that we begin learning from our earliest romantic relationships that it is important to get our own needs met in a relationship while simultaneously meeting the needs of our partners.  Learning the five love languages certainly has changed my view of how I understand relationships, and I believe it can do the same for many others as well.

(I've attached a very detailed list of questions I developed from this book that are meant to be used for a group discussion or for personal journaling.  Feel free to adapt them for your group's needs.)

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Amazon offers daily Kindle Deals which greatly discount digital books.  One recent deal was Lake News by Barbara Delinsky.  The book blurb describes a scandal involving the Catholic Church in Boston, and because of my past history as a Catholic, my time spent in graduate school in Boston, and my academic research on Catholicism, I was intrigued.  I decided for $1.99, I didn’t have too much to lose, so I bought the book.  I am glad I did as I thoroughly enjoyed the book for reasons I didn’t expect, in part because it dealt intimately with narcissism, a psychological issue that has been very relevant to my life experiences.

Lily Blake, the book’s heroine, is a teacher and a night club singer.  She is also friends with the man who is named as the new Cardinal of Boston.  A scandal erupts as a malicious journalist concocts a story linking Lily sexually to “Father Fran.”  Lily finds herself the object of media fascination as reporters camp outside her building and stalk her movements around town.  In the first quarter of the book, I felt my own adrenaline rising and tension building in my body.  Delinsky does an amazing job of portraying the stress that the blatant violation of privacy causes to the innocent Lily.

With the help of a good friend, Lily escapes to the small New Hampshire town (Lake Henry) where she was raised.  There, she begins a personal and professional relationship with John Kipling, a man whose family has an unhealthy connection to Lily’s past.  Likewise, Lily must renew her relationships with her toxic mother and her sisters.  As she spends time in Lake Henry, the challenges of these relationships and the ongoing battle to regain her dignity and her reputation fill her time.

Within the first few pages of the book, I knew that I was going to enjoy this book a lot.  Delinsky’s word choices are captivating.  She describes the loons that live on Lake Henry in great detail, and while that could be a very dull scenario, Delinsky succeeds in making it a beautiful plot line.  The characters she creates are also fleshed out quite well.  I had a very clear vision in my head of what all the characters should look like thanks to her descriptive language.

The intrigue of the book also kept me turning pages, ever curious to see how events would resolve.  However, the book weakened for me toward the end because Delinsky seemed to need “happily ever after” scenarios for most of the various subplot lines.  In particular, Delinsky had developed three different characters who are strong narcissists.  Their biting emotional abuse was painful for me to read because it was all too familiar, but that pain also spoke to the accuracy of the portrayal.  However, unlike in Delinsky’s fictional world, most narcissists do not change radically in a short period of time.  Most never change at all.  Narcissists view their position as the only correct one, and they are not able to see outside of it.  Thus, when two of Delinsky’s three narcissists were able to recognize and admit their mistakes, I wanted to cry “foul.”  That’s just not how I felt things would have happened.

Aside from my issues around her fantasy resolutions at the end of the book, Delinsky created an enjoyable book in Lake News.  It kept me distracted during a day of high pain, and that is a true gift.

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

(As a reminder, I am not a medical doctor or a licensed psychologist.  The opinions below are just that:  My personal opinions.  They do not and should not be construed as official diagnoses.)

As noted in a previous post, for many years now, I have watched The Bachelor(ette).  This season (Chris Soules, “Prince Farming”) has included several incidents that have left me frustrated by how they were handled on the show.  In particular, I feel as though this season has had two participants who may suffer from mental illness which was handled poorly over the course of show.

The first participant was Ashley S., age 24, who was eliminated in week four.  From the very first episode, Ashley demonstrated signs of possibly having schizophrenia, though her mental challenges were never talked about as such.  Instead, the other participants labeled Ashley as scary, crazy, dangerous, and more.  Ashley’s behavior on the zombie hunting date and in her final episode on the show also illustrated her patterns of distracted thinking which was difficult for those outside of her head to understand.

In the “Chris [Soules] Tells All” special (and its second part) shown part way through the season, Chris Harrison, the host, showed a small amount of Ashley’s application video where she seems far more stable (or in Chris H.’s awkward words, “incredibly normal.”)  Perhaps this was due to editing of her audition tape.  Perhaps her behavior changed drastically on the show because the stress of the schedule and the cameras was more than she could handle.  Perhaps she chose to stop medications that she’d been on during the audition tape because she didn’t want her housemates (and the rest of the nation) to find out that she took psychiatric medications.  Perhaps she was on medications but the amount of alcohol she was consuming interfered with the medications’ ability to function.  Perhaps she is someone who can function without medications normally but not when under the influence of alcohol, limited sleep, and high pressure.  There are so many potential explanations for why her behavior might have changed between the audition tape and the actual show.

Regardless of what the reasons are, Ashley S. was used to boost ratings.  Her probable mental illness was ridiculed.  Instead of compassion, she faced a lack of understanding and a great deal of judgment.  I would hope that ABC was truly unaware of her mental health issues when casting her on the show.  However, after the fact, I am disappointed that ABC edited the show in such a way to put an emphasis on how “crazy” she is rather than offering education and explanation for what happened with her.  I’m disappointed that so few of the participants vocalized genuine concern for making sure that Ashley got the psychiatric assistance she needed, or if more did, that their concerns were edited out of the final episodes.

And then there was Kelsey.  As a 28 year old guidance counselor living in Austin, she was the local woman that I was hoping I would get to cheer on.  Very quickly, it became evident to me that she would not be one of my favorites.  ABC definitely emphasized the traumatically widowed aspect of her history throughout the show.  In this first introductory video, Kelsey is unable to talk about the death of her husband, 16 months prior, without tearing up.  Any therapist or life coach as well as many non-professionals will say that a person is probably not ready to move on in the dating world if they can’t relate their story of loss without breaking down.  (The same could also be said for the other widow this season, Juelia, whose late husband committed suicide when their daughter was seven weeks old.)

As the show progressed, Kelsey’s personality became stranger and stranger.  The final straw for most people came in the week when she talked about how she “loved her story.”  What I’m guessing that Kelsey wanted to convey was that she is a strong woman, and while she deeply misses her late husband, she’s grateful for the growth she’s undergone since his death.  She likely wanted to vocalize some version of the popular saying that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”  However, what came out had a completely different meaning.  Kelsey has widely claimed, including on her Facebook page, that she was misinterpreted and that ABC framed her to look like a villain.  I completely believe that there is editing done on this show (and many others) that leaves out important information and which can make contestants look far worse than they actually are.  However, Kelsey’s words were obviously not spliced together when she claimed to love her story.  She was quite clear about what she was saying in her monologues. 

As one begins to explore more about Kelsey through the amazing powers of the internet, her story becomes even more bizarre.  In particular, her late husband’s obituary is more about her than him at various points.  While one can certainly understand celebrating their love and loss, discussing her graduation after his death seems completely out of place.  The repetitious and awkward mentions of their relationship also seem improper for an obituary.  While one can argue this was something written during a time of grief, the obituary still seems inappropriate in many ways.

In my estimation, I suspect Kelsey has narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), a condition in which the individual is very self-centered and very self-focused.  As she demonstrated, her late husband’s death wasn’t about him:  It was about her.  A narcissistic perspective is not a healthy one, and in its extreme, NPD is a mental illness.  I have dealt with many narcissists in my life.  They are very difficult people to live and work with.  Many others have come to Kelsey’s public defense, but not all narcissists are without friends and family.  Some of those around her may truly believe her words of how amazing she is and how wonderful her story is.  One local radio announcer, even after all that has come out about Kelsey, still declared that he wanted to date her when she was eliminated from the show right before Valentine’s Day.

From my perspective, however, Kelsey is another woman who likely has a mental illness and whose narcissism was used to generate ratings.  She even merited her own special segment (and part 2) in the “Chris Tells All” special where her surprise about being controversial (at 1:33) may or may not have been genuine.  More likely, she’s a woman who loves being the center of attention and loves the extra time in the spotlight this controversy gave her.  She often talks around her issues and has perfect explanations for her actions, even using her famous “big words” to specifically deny her narcissism.  Kelsey's dramatic panic attack, whether true or fake, could also be interpreted as a narcissist’s attempt to gain more attention.

If Kelsey does have narcissistic personality disorder, then I don’t’ believe ABC should have been using her mental illness to boost ratings.  While I often find it hard to sympathize with people who have NPD because of their self-centeredness and their incredible ability to see themselves as innocent victims, NPD is still a mental illness.  Those who have it deserve compassion and understanding, not ridicule. 

Furthermore, mental illness is not being “bonkers” as one bachelorette poorly described one of her mentally ill housemates this season.  ABC and The Bachelor’s lack of respect for mental illness this season has been disturbing, especially when it was used as part of the sensationalism for a reality tv show.  To me, it not only demonstrates a lack of compassion, but it feels inappropriate and even unethical.  I wish that ABC and The Bachelor were doing more to help change our society’s negative views to mental illness rather than compounding the problems.  I’m nervous for tonight’s “Women Tell All” special.  I hope that Ashely S. in particular is treated with the respect she deserves as a human being facing some difficult challenges. 

© 2015 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., Green Heart Guidance, LLC

Often we find ourselves repeating the same patterns in our lives.  We date a guy who reminds us of our father, but we don’t quite buy into the whole Freudian Oedipal theory.  We watch friends seemingly dating the same person over and over again even though each time they think they’ve picked someone totally different than their previous partners.  We switch jobs only to end up a similar awful situation as our previous positions.  Why?

In my personal belief system, we continue repeating patterns until we learn the life lesson we need to learn.  I believe we all came to this planet with specific goals set before us, although I don’t know if we are aware of those goals or not.  Regardless, challenges will continue to present themselves in our lives until we master the higher concept behind them.  Once we’ve learned that lesson, then we are free to move on to the next.  Of course, that’s an oversimplified description of it all as we are often learning many lessons at once.  Because I believe in reincarnation, I also believe that lessons can carry over from past lives if they weren’t completed in previous journeys.

In my own life, especially in earlier years, there was a repeating pattern of narcissists playing prominent roles.  For me, once I was old enough to manage my own decisions in life, the challenge was to figure out why I kept having narcissists appear in my life.  The first question anyone should ask themselves when examining a repeating pattern is, “Are they serving as mirrors of my own behavior?”  For me, narcissism is not a personal issue.  My instinct is to think of others and to care about their health and safety and feelings.  I’m empathic and that dominates my being.  So for me, narcissism is not something I struggle with on a personal level.

Then why so many narcissists in my world?  As I worked through my personal and spiritual issues, I finally was able to realize that I drew those types of people to me because I had low self-worth.  I believed that I didn’t deserve someone who would love me fully for who I am.  So instead, I accepted the abuse and neglect that narcissists would force on me.  As a child, I had no power in my life to stop the behaviors of those around me, but as an adult, I do.  I am able to walk out of a relationship when I am being used or mistreated or even abused. 

Now that I’ve recognized the pattern, I am able to stear clear of the manipulation of narcissists once they come into my life.  I may have to work with them, yet I keep my physical and emotional distance.  I no longer let their distorted views damage my perception.  I stay strong, believing in the amazing person I am.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

Over the course of my life, I’ve lived with at least five narcissists and have worked with or encountered several others.  They have ranged from mildly impacted by narcissistic tendencies to those with full blown narcissistic personality disorder.   Narcissism is a spectrum like many other mental health issues such as depression, and it can be concurrent with other mental health issues as well.  Popular culture portrays narcissists as people who are obsessed with their good looks, much like Narcissus in the original Greek myth.  However, in real life, that’s pretty far from the reality of what most narcissists are like.  While some may be overly concerned with their physical appearances, most are much more obsessed with other parts of their psyches.

Narcissists are people who think of their own needs above and beyond anyone else’s.  Narcissists are so deluded and self-involved that they don’t even realize that they are ignoring others’ needs.  Bereft of a true sense of empathy, the narcissists just focus on what they need, and then they decide within their own heads that what is good for them is good for everyone.  Anyone who would dare to claim otherwise is wrong.  Narcissists blame others when things go wrong because narcissists can’t be responsible for their theoretically exemplary actions hurting others. Narcissists often can’t even accept responsibility for simple and common human mistakes such as knocking over a glass.  Someone else must have bumped the table and caused the narcissist’s elbow to hit the glass.  A simple apology for their accidental klutzy behavior is too much to expect.

Narcissists delude others into thinking they, the narcissists, are wonderful people.  The narcissists wear a mask that covers the devious and abusive actions they take against others.  Narcissists are able to manipulate their victims’ feelings and beliefs to the extent that the victims then believe that they are responsible for the narcissists’ self-absorbed behavior.  The victims twistedly accept the blame that narcissists assign to them and believe that things that couldn’t possibly be their fault are actually their fault.

Living with narcissists is exhausting.  Day in and day out, the housemates of a narcissist must constantly be on edge, using their energy to protect themselves against the psychological, energetic and sometimes physical attacks of narcissists.  You never know when or what the next attack may be.  The narcissists will always deny their responsibility or come up with excuses or ways to blame their victims.  Because narcissists are perfect in their deluded minds, there is no real recourse or hope for those who live with them except praying for a good day.

To escape a narcissistic relationship, there is only one real option:  To leave.  Narcissists will not change because they don’t think there is anything wrong with them to change.  People cannot continue to have a relationship with a narcissist and not expect to have serious emotional, spiritual and possibly physical and sexual damage done to them.  While the decision to quit associating with a narcissist whom one loves is traumatic and painful, the other side of the decision is a wonderful place to be.  Once one is no longer associating with the narcissist, one’s perspective becomes much clearer.  One realizes how twisted, demented and damaging the self-absorbed actions of the narcissist are.  At that point, the former victims can begin focusing on their own issues rather than just trying to meet the needs of the narcissists.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance