Not all Therapy is Equal

I’m deeply frustrated with a situation with a friend who has life long really, untreated, very severe mental health issues & who is currently getting ‘therapy’. Essentially this person has worked with someone who’s core training is Hypnotherapy for many years which is valid & for many, most people with a more regular nervous system that would be plenty of self development for an entire lifetime. The problem is that my friends issues are of some of the most, if not *the* most difficult particular, specific combination of issues that require really intensive specific therapy to unknot.

This kind of help is absolutely available, it’s not cheap & there are not loads of people offering it of a high calibre but the therapists are there & they are essential, absolutely essential to healing this particular group/combination of nervous system/ mental health difficulties. Dr Ettensohn (below) has a waiting list, his NPD specialism makes him an expert in the structure of both NPD & BPD & of course the overlap which I think we both have tbh, we have mirror yin yang of these I think, me & my friend, both amidst other issues, it’s complicated. You could request his suggestions for therapists.

Otherwise, the types of therapy to look for, there’s a whole bunch: Schema Therapy, Transference-focused Psychotherapy, Mentalisation-based Treatment, CBT/DBT, MIT/IPT & Psychoanalysis, any of these will help massively.

Tinkering around the edges absolutely will not do it & is skiving off the real work. I only recently realised what his therapist was doing when he went to his therapy after being in very low mood & came back more armoured, more stoically attached to his defences than I’d seen him for ages & the penny dropped for me. This therapist is just tinkering around the edges, providing a feel good affirmation when what’s needed is excavation & reconstruction with these very specific techniques listed which have a proven track record across the personality disorders.

So this is an intentionally vague note & is mainly a missive of comm to him, a warning, you are treading water as the current pulls you out, away from the shore & your dearest hopes & dreams for your life, there is a life boat nearby but you need to beckon it, wave to it, shout to it, a rubber ring won’t do, the storm is rising, hail the professionals, do it now or drift on a few more years treading water getting ever more lost, missing even more love, it’s up to you but I want you here, back on dry land open to sanity & affection, open to friends in the real world wherever you happen to be.

Dr E & not being found

 

This is my favourite episode of Dr Ettensohns podcast atm. I’ve listened to it several times & find it really helpful. I’m going to unabashedly promote his peerless work on the understanding & healing of NPD & for myself personally, the facets of BPD, the construction of it, that overlap with NPD are also being dealt with too.

I was discussing recently with my daughter who also has a range of nervous system damage with BPD traits from her traumatic childhood with me as her undx & unsupported profoundly mentally impaired mother - she mentioned her bodily self perception being that of a kind of amorphous blob & it reminded me of a description I made of myself, my own self perception of life in my body back on MySpace, back in 2006 when I first ventured to share something of my self publicly.

I felt very ‘thing’ like back then, very shapeless, amorphous & nonhuman on a self perception, interoception level. I said to her that I didn’t feel that way now after so much work, pre & post dxs. I feel like a human being now, with feelings that come & then actually go after, sometimes not even that long in time! Quel surprise! To not be permanently in a void, disassociated or otherwise in intense prolonged emotional pain of varying depth….. mostly too deep to be doing much else without finding something to block it out with. I’m very grateful as well as proud to have changed like this.

Anyway, there’s so many top quotes I could take from the video but I’ve got to go out now so I might add some later or tomorrow. Otherwise just watch it & share share share this Dr who is currently standing as a sole outpost of sanity in the pwNPD or BPD webosphere where damning & indeed stigmatising this population of the mentally & emotionally ill has been completely normalised.

Dr Ettensohn of Heal NPD - 2 videos

 

The first video is word to both pwNPD as well also their ‘victims’ - something that does not really happen on the big mainstream channels about Narcissistic abuse. I think it’s a really vital & relevant conversation that should be happening so much more on these hugely popular accounts.

If you don’t have damaged or porous boundaries you are impregnable to Narcissistic abuse; toleration of abuse is demonstrating to you where you are porous, flawed & therefore vulnerable to the continuance of abuse.

If you are always looking for the chink of positivity & the lesson in life you might be able to see it as a service the abusive relationship has done for you by rudely awakening you up to your own woundedness by finding it, targeting it & thus amplifying it. When you failed to protect yourself by walking away it must be assumed that you were experiencing the abuser as significantly more valuable ‘to you’ than your own self, including your own self preservation, self respect, self esteem & individuation. A state of deep delusion if there ever was one, a situation that inevitably results in more harm & new trauma.

I don’t know if my ex, 20 yrs my senior, 5 yr deeply traumatic relationship ending when I was 33 had NPD, he certainly had several traits but he had been in many & varied deep therapeutic self development/self reflective environments for most of his adult life due to his constant anxiety & inner sense of insecurity. Chances are that he was a semi conscious NPD with complex trauma working on himself to my undx BPD & complex trauma - I certainly experienced him as more valuable over & above my own self esteem, self care etc. it was a very distinct experience because I consciously knew he did not serve or support me on any level whatsoever but I was emotionally unable to detach. A very clear cognitive dissonance right there. 

The mass Narc abuse education, release & healing from that that’s occurring atm seems to be a communal throwing off of an old school deep secret in society & families passed down, of a somewhat normalised state of trauma. The Narcissist themselves hugely being the bearer of as well as the detector & distributor of trauma. That said, only those with significant unconscious unexamined damage can succumb to such manipulations for any length of time.

By its unnatural anti-life nature, late stage capitalist society has engendered generations of deeply unconscious wounded, highly stressed parents who go on to deeply wound their own children if they do not break the cycle somehow. Cycle breaking time is upon us, if ever there was one, it is about now. 💪🩷

Dr Ettensohn on Cluster B Depersonalisation & Derealisation

Well kinda sorta, partially.

I relate to some of this, historically, with BPD in remission. He’s got a real gift for reframing things to make them less threatening. And it’s details like this & an attitude of compassion like this that open up the quieter, semi conscious suffering just under the surface of all Cluster B 🙌

Dr Ettensohn - Heal NPD Channel on YouTube

I highlighted Dr Ettensohn on my old blog having found his podcast & book Unmasking Narcissism somewhere. I’m glad to see that Mark is regularly producing output on YouTube (prob also his podcast).

Here is his about me page on his website 

Mark is providing a much needed high insight no stigma approach to understanding NPD & thereby all of the Cluster B Personality Disorders. His work is extremely important right now whilst so many other experts are focused entirely on profiting from helping & healing the victims of Cluster B (a very worthy cause). This huge healing push has inadvertently incited a tsunami of stigma, as well as a huge dissonant spectre of hopeless outcomes for all with the very early brain damage phenomena that is all Cluster B PDs.

Here is some of his work I enjoyed from YouTube. He is the real deal.

https://www.drettensohn.com/

https://youtube.com/@healnpd