Out of the Fog: Moving from Confusion to Clarity After Narcissistic Abuse

Author

Preface

In my first book, Start Here: A Crash Course in Understanding, Navigating, and Healing from Narcissistic Abuse I listed what I believe to be the fundamentals of understanding narcissistic abuse. The goal of that book was to provide a crash course or a reference manual of sorts with the hopes of getting people as up-to-speed as possible so that they might be able to win a game they never intended to play—and that’s what relationships of any kind are to an emotional manipulator: a game. And much like any other game, a person doesn’t need advanced strategies to win—they often just need a solid grip on the fundamentals.

While the most important words and concepts surrounding narcissistic abuse can instantly help a person see many things clearly and help them to be able to respond in a more empowering way, what I’ve also found is that many people get tripped up with blurring many common concepts such as the difference between intensity and sincerity, love bombing and love, codependence and commitment, and forgetting and forgiving, to name a few. This book is my attempt to dive into the differences between these concepts (as well as many others) that tend to keep a person stuck in the fog of manipulation. In short, the first book is more of a map of the terrain, and this second book has more to do with explaining the emotional climate (the FOG) and warning you about dangerous roads and resulting thought holes that can make for a difficult journey if you don’t know what to watch out for. So if you are already familiar with a lot of the common terms and concepts surrounding narcissistic abuse but are struggling with how to apply them or are finding yourself struggling with trusting your judgment and perception of people and situations, then this book is for you.

Chapter 1

What is the FOG, and How Did I get Here?

The FOG is an acronym for fear, obligation, and guilt, and was coined by Susan Forward & Donna Frazier in their book Emotional Blackmail to describe the emotions most commonly used by emotional manipulators to gain and keep control over others and over certain situations. When these emotions are being exploited, a fog of confusion sets in and the person in the fog has a hard time sorting out what’s really going on and who has the issue—and, most importantly, what they need to do to get out (and stay out) of this fog.

For many targets of emotional manipulators, the emotions of fear, obligation, and guilt are only part of the fog of confusion. And emotional manipulators are only some of the people that are FOG inducing. The FOG can also come in the form of well-intended bad advice about commitment, family and friendship from pretty much everyone: friends, family, therapists, culture, religious leaders and texts, and society as a whole.

This type of bad advice is not only prevalent, but it’s often passed off as good advice and is just as insidious and destructive as abuse itself. So what exactly is well-intended bad advice? I came across an analogy the other day that sums it up well, Well-intended bad advice is like a monkey seeing a fish in a lake, and thinking the fish is drowning, rushes over to pull it out of the water so it can place it safely in a tree.

Because this well-intended bad advice is so unintentionally damaging, I think it can be helpful to think of it as more of a thought hole.

Chapter 2

Understanding Thought Holes: What is a Thought Hole?

For the purposes of this book, I’m using the term thought hole to describe the well-intended bad advice that we might come across. A thought hole is to our thinking what a pot hole is to our vehicle, Meaning, if we hit one, it can cause a lot of damage, leaving us stranded along the road to health and healing and stuck in an emotional fog.

What makes a thought hole so hard to see is that they are everywhere, and the worst ones tend to be hidden in the thickest emotional fog out there. Because they are so hard to see, we often don’t realize we’ve hit one until we are much further down the road—and worse, we don’t know how to stop hitting them if we don’t realize they are what’s causing us so much damage.

We all go through life hitting these thought holes until we experience enough pain from the damage that we realize what we’re doing isn’t working and that we need to do something different.

Where do Thought Holes Come From?

Thought holes come from all of our difference spheres of influence, which are around us from birth. These spheres of influence grow and change throughout our life as we ourselves grow and change and include: parents/primary caregivers, siblings, extended family, friends, peers, teachers, religion, culture, neighborhood, society (along with gender roles, expectations, etc.), media/music, educational system, and those we turn to for guidance, such as spiritual leaders, counselors, therapists, etc.

Our spheres of influence shape our thinking, feelings, and actions. They shape our morals and values, feelings and actions about ourselves and about others, and the way we interact with the world. Because we all are our own baseline for what’s normal, and because it’s human nature to befriend and be around other people who are similar to us, it often takes a tremendous amount of pain for us to have a wake-up call that perhaps our thinking and actions, or the advice that we’ve been taking from those closest to us is all a big part of the problem. It’s like the saying goes, the last thing the fish notices is the water and it often takes a person decades to realize they’ve been swimming in a sea of dysfunction and dysfunctional thinking.

Chapter 3

A Light in the Fog: Questioning What’s Normal

The first step in getting out of the FOG is to start by seeing thought holes for what they are and then learning to avoid them. In order to live a happy, healthy life, we have to first examine the dysfunction that has been pulling us down. And a great place to start is by questioning some of the more common advice that is floating around out there about what’s normal especially in terms of our friendships, family dynamics, and other relationships.

When we start to question what we consider to be normal, reasonable, or rational, and realize that there have been some really problematic messages we’ve bought into, we can feel like Alice at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, especially if we are the only ones in our inner circle who seem to be aware that there’s an issue, let alone anything deeply wrong.

Like I mentioned before, the first step to getting out of the fog includes figuring out where those holes in our thinking are and then learning to avoid them. And perhaps the easiest place to start is to open up the discussion on what is normal and what is problematic. However, the challenge is that for the vast majority of people what’s problematic is normal. It’s like being in a cult, feeling like something is off and then turning to an advisor or trusted authority member within that same cult for guidance on what to do. Odds are other members of that cult are going to encourage them to try harder, or worse, deny that anything is wrong. And what tends to happen is that after the conversation the cult member then feels somewhat better that things can change if they double up their effort in things (or they try to brush off their doubts that something is wrong), telling themselves that a relationship takes work from both people, and that everything can be solved if they just try harder. And the cult advisor feels really good about themselves for helping the cult member work towards improving their communication and being a better partner and member of the community. And this cycle of well-intended bad advice continues until the cult member can’t handle feeling all of this doubt and confusion any longer and leaves.

The hardest part about navigating around thought holes is that we generally don’t know immediately if we’ve hit one. The results from the damage often take a while to appear, and so it can be difficult to link up the correct cause and effect so we can avoid these thought holes later. Not to mention that unlike a pot hole which makes a loud sound, thought holes don’t sound like a ka-chunk! when we hit them. They sound more like:

You need to invite Uncle Larry over for Christmas. I know he molested you when you were younger, but that was a long time ago and besides, he’s family. What happened to your Christmas spirit? You are so unforgiving. I expected more from you.

You need to have a relationship with your mother, even though she is verbally and emotionally abusive to you and your children. After all, she had a terrible childhood, and she is your mother. She’s not getting any younger you know.

You need to stay working at this job where you are being sexually harassed and bullied. No job is perfect, and things could always be worse.

You need to stay in touch with your brother. I know he’s stolen money and opened up credit cards in your name, but he’s had a rough life, and you should be more compassionate.

You should have your sister and her troubled children move in with you and your family. Sure, she’s verbally abusive and is an addict, and her kids are all in and out of juvenile hall, but they are homeless and they are family.

You should stay married because sure your spouse lies, manipulates, cheats, siphons funds, yells, puts you down, and has no sincere accountability for their actions, but you are married, and commitment is forever.

What makes these kind of statements problematic is that all of them pressure a person to put them or their children in harm’s way in order to keep a relationship afloat. It doesn’t matter if a person is family, if their behavior is going to sink you or your relationships, jumping in to help isn’t a healthy or reasonable solution. And even me saying that might sound really outrageous and self-centered, like, how dare I even propose that we put our safety and sanity first! That’s so selfish! And my response would be, my goal for this book isn’t for you to think like me, it’s for you to think about what’s healthy for you, and to take action from a place of what’s healthy for you and not from a place of feeling you need to sacrifice your safety and sanity out of fear, obligation, or guilt.

Learning to question everything is the first step in living an authentic life, and it isn’t easy, especially if you’ve been driving down a road full of thought holes for decades and didn’t realize it. Perhaps all you realized was that your life wasn’t working, or that you kept attracting all the same toxic people, but didn’t know why. To actually be authentically you, means that you aren’t going to be like everyone else. It often means going against the grain of what your significant other, friends, family, culture, or religion are thinking and doing—and learning to be okay with this. And it will take practice and emotional strength and courage to carve out your own path, especially if you are surrounded by people who don’t agree with the decisions you make or the boundaries you set. But having healthy boundaries is a big part of what living an authentic life is all about, and if we can’t tell the difference between healthy actions (which come from a place of keeping ourselves safe and sane) and dysfunctional actions (which come from a place of fear, obligation, and guilt) then we aren’t being rational, we are rationalizing.

There is no shortcut to thinking for yourself and making up your own mind about things, because:

Emotional health and wellness, especially healthy boundaries and self-awareness isn’t taught.

Just because a person is a life coach, therapist, or psychiatrist doesn’t mean that they don’t have some majorly dysfunctional thinking.

Just because something is normal doesn’t mean it is right. And just because something is right, doesn’t mean that it’s normal.

What is passed down through generations about what love and commitment are is often skewed (at best) or deeply dysfunctional at worse.

I’m not saying that I have it all figured out. I by no means do, but I can say that I have a lot of my own life more figured out. My thinking has come a long way over the years to being a lot healthier than it once was. Simply put, I no longer have friendships or relationships with people with squirrelly, confusing, condescending, critical, controlling, or crazy-making behavior. I’m also getting a lot better with not taking action from a place of fear, obligation, or guilt, and instead taking action from a place of what brings peace and enjoyment into my life. And again, this book isn’t intended for you to think like me, the goal is for me to bring up a lot of the thought holes I was hitting that I see a lot of other people continually hit too. And I hope that you can benefit from me sharing my aha moments and the aha moments of others.

The first step in avoiding the overwhelming amount of well-intended bad advice that’s floating around out there is to realize that you don’t need to tolerate being mistreated. Simply being aware that you can distance yourself from problematic people, and that you don’t need to be dragged through hell is often enough for most people to start getting more balance and peace in their lives. You might be thinking, Well that’s easier said than done and it is…at first. The more you get comfortable with cutting out toxic people and situations out of your life, the faster you will get at this, and the more you practice setting and holding healthy boundaries that keep you safe and sane, the more you’ll wonder how (and why) on earth you ever put up with so much before.

If you can examine and fill in your thought holes, your journey through life will be much smoother. …and you don’t need to have 100% change or be 100% healed in order to live a radically different life. Sometimes a 10% (or even a 1% change) in direction—especially over time, is enough. Change, awareness, and healing are all related, and they all compound on themselves, and once you see what’s really going on out there, it’s very hard to not see it.

To begin doing this, you’ll have to forget aiming for figuring out what’s normal, because odds are that will lead you straight back into the fog of dysfunction. Instead, start figuring out what’s healthy and empowering and move away from anything that is oppressive or disempowering. Once you start heading towards what’s healthy for you, that’s when your life will radically start to change for the better.

The last challenge with navigating thought holes is that once a person starts to see the thought holes out there, the vast majority of people around them don’t, and will think they are crazy, or that they are making a big deal out of nothing. It doesn’t matter how much evidence and proof you give to someone as to the existence of this thought hole—if they aren’t ready to see it, they won’t see it. They will continue to justify, rationalize, or flat out deny what’s going on, and they’ll try to push you back into acting out of fear, obligation, and guilt.

And once you are awake to the disempowering beliefs around you, you will most likely realize that there are some pretty major changes needed—especially within your inner circle. This can leave a person feeling either excited or depressed (or a little of both). If you do decide that you need to get some more like-minded people around you, then please realize there is a lag time that happens. This lag time is the time between when you clear out the old and start to gather up the new. It can be profoundly hard and lonely, and it can last for a while—sometimes several years, but please don’t let that discourage you. The results are worth the struggle. Keep moving in the direction of what’s empowering, and you’ll soon start to meet people that are more in alignment with your new beliefs.

Like I mentioned before, this book is written from my experiences with narcissistic abuse, codependency, and navigating my way towards healing from both. My journey towards healing was a long one, and the road was, frankly, unnecessarily difficult. I don’t know why this stuff isn’t taught, and I don’t know why there are so many therapists out there who give such dysfunctional, damaging, and, frankly, negligent advice. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying all therapists are bad. What I am saying is that the quality of therapists, like any other professionals out there are on a spectrum. And just like in any other profession, about ten percent of them are awful, ten percent are worth their weight in gold, and eighty percent fall somewhere in between. The challenge is in sorting out the good from the bad. However, in therapy, the added challenge is a person is often in therapy because they are having trouble sorting out the good from the bad!

For what it’s worth, in my experience, I really felt so profoundly alone after I got out of yet another narcissistically abusive relationship. I didn’t know where I was going wrong, or what red flags I was missing, and worse, I didn’t know how to prevent it from happening again. So I did what most people would probably do if they were in my situation and got into therapy. I’d go for 10-12 visits and not feel like I was getting anywhere. I didn’t know if I just wasn’t making the connections I needed to make, or if I had the wrong therapist, or if it was a little of both, or what. All I did know was that at the pace I was going, I was going to be 100 years old before I got the clarity I needed in order to get my life on track.

After several years, and several therapists later, I still didn’t feel like I was any further along in my healing or understanding. In fact, during my last therapy visit, I had the distinct thought of I feel like I’m following Moses through the desert here. How long is this going to take? Does she even know where she’s going, and how can I be sure? I had the very distinct impression that she was relying on me to lead the way, but I obviously didn’t know where I was going or how to get there, or else I’d already be there! I began to get really discouraged and resigned myself to thinking that perhaps I needed to be patient, and that having insights and personal growth in general just took time. And so I spent years reading all kinds of self-help books and going to workshops and seminars, but my life still wasn’t working, but I didn’t know what pieces to the puzzle I was missing.

Chapter 4

An Expanded View of Normal Behavior

The biggest turning point in my healing was when I somehow stumbled into a support group for narcissistic abuse. Within a matter of hours, I found myself having aha moment after aha moment. I was completely overwhelmed with relief that I wasn’t crazy or alone because I felt like I’d found the missing pieces to the puzzle that was my life. Within a few weeks I began to notice massive shifts in my thinking and what was perhaps the most interesting to me was that while I felt relatively healed from what had happened to me (at least to the point where it wasn’t negatively consuming my life) I realized that I had only just started.

In many ways, the more aha moments I had, the crazier I began to feel, as any time I shared these insights with people outside of the group, I felt like they thought I was nuts. I’m not gonna lie; I had quite a few months there where I really did second guess myself and wonder if I was seeing problematic behavior (in others as well as within myself) correctly, or if I was making something out of nothing.

When I began looking up the term narcissist and sociopath, that’s when that first beam of light broke through the fog. So much began to make sense. I knew what I’d gone through in my own life was way outside the realm of normal problematic behavior, and so at that point I began to divide the world up into narcissists/sociopaths and normal people. I also became somewhat obsessed with understanding the line between normal behavior and pathological behavior. Dividing the world up into these two main categories gave me a lot of clarity (at first), because until that point I’d been walking around thinking that people were inherently good, and given enough love, understanding, rehab, religion, or therapy, they could be fixed. And so after realizing that some people could get all these things and it could even make them worse (they learn to manipulate better), it also led to a lot more questions—and to more confusion. After all, didn’t many normal people also lie, cheat, steal, yell, belittle, or even abuse?

Then I realized three more important things:

All behavior is on a spectrum. There are only degrees of dysfunctional and functional behavior. So while a person might not have majorly disordered or pathological behavior, this doesn’t mean that their behavior isn’t problematic or toxic to you in some way. And a person’s behavior doesn’t need to be 100% toxic, either; 1% can be enough to make you feel emotionally or physically drained or flat out sick. There’s a saying that if you are on medication for depression or anxiety, make sure you aren’t actually surrounded by toxic people. … There’s a TON of truth in this, as most people are used to living in a den of dysfunction, and they are out of tune with their emotions because they’ve been continually pushed into suppressing them. But all this generally does is reroute that emotional pain into something that they are more comfortable in handling which tends to be physical pain. Their body will begin to signal to them that something is off, and these feelings get louder and louder until we can’t ignore them anymore. So ideally spend as much time as you can around the healthiest people you can find, and soon you’ll get used to feeling peaceful, empowered, and good.

There is a third category of healthy. Healthy people don’t have highly problematic behavior, and they don’t have highly problematic people as part of their inner circle. I kept landing in a ditch because I was taking well-intended bad advice from normal people. If I wanted my life to be healthy, then I needed to start looking at what healthy people did. But in order to do so, I needed to be able to sort out the difference between well-intended bad advice from well-intended good advice. I realized that good advice is, at its core, advice that encourages and empowers a person to do what they need to do in order to stay safe and sane. Well-intended bad advice is advice that encourages people to put themselves (or continue to put themselves) in situations or relationships that are a threat to their safety and/or sanity. What is safe and sane for one person is not the same for another—not only that, but it will continue to change as we grow and change. The healthier you get, the less drama and dysfunction you will tolerate, because you will be a lot more in tune with how drama and dysfunction feels—and it feels like swimming in toxic sludge. Once you get more in tune with yourself and your body, and you realize just how toxic you feel being around toxic behavior, and you realize that you feel poisoned within a few minutes, you’ll realize that it’s no wonder you were anxious, depressed, exhausted, addicted, angry, had chronic pain, etc. You were having a very healthy and normal reaction to a very unhealthy and abnormal situation!

Anyone can have toxic or problematic behavior. Again, this may sound super obvious to you, but it wasn’t for me. People are people, and anyone can have problematic behavior. So while we all like to think that we can spot problematic behavior coming, that isn’t often the case, as we all filter our experiences through our biases (as well as many other filters). Some examples of biases would be thinking that people who are police officers, military members, or who work in some sort of social enforcement (attorneys, judges, etc.) are all law-abiding citizens and have the greater good of society at the forefront of their mind. Or that religious leaders are moral. Or that therapists are emotionally healthy or have the skill set to guide others to become emotionally healthy.

Because they are people who are like the rest of us—all trying to figure things out, and most likely trying to deal with their own unresolved issues—it’s important that we learn to think critically about what’s going on, and to think for ourselves so we don’t turn our power and control over simply because someone with a certain job title tells us that person is an expert.

So while it’s really nice to have validation from others that what you are experiencing is indeed problematic, it’s critical that you learn to trust your own judgment. It’s also important to realize that when we start feeling confused by what we are experiencing, it’s generally because we realize on some level that what we are experiencing is indeed a problem—we just wish that it wasn’t.

Chapter 5

Thought Holes vs. A More Empowered Understanding

A Narcissist, Sociopath, or Psychopath vs. Being Narcissistic, Sociopathic, or Psychopathic

A Narcissist, Sociopath, or Psychopath

The word narcissist is one that is commonly used in the concept of narcissistic abuse; however, not all those who are abusive would qualify for a diagnosis