On Surviving Narcissistic Systems.

When you are raised by a parent, or caregiver, on the narcissistic spectrum, you have 2 choices:

Merge with them. Allow yourself to become an extension of their personality, their goals, their desires, and values. Do as they say. Put them first. Eradicate your own sense of "self", and become and extension of their "mask". This means you will have no boundaries. You will erase the word "no" from your vocabulary. You will most likely develop gut and or autoimmune "conditions", and systemic inflammation because your body will not be able to discern your energy from theirs after a time. You will become a copy. You may live, but you will not live as your "self".

Your other option is to fight. Rebel. Assert your sense of "self", and your own deeply held internal values, which are soul qualities that you came here with. In this case, you will be beaten down. You will be punished, you will constantly be guilted, and gaslit. If you are strong enough to endure this torture without capitulating, you will most likely have to leave your family at an early age in order to survive. You will become hyper self-reliant because it will be hard to trust people after the bedrock of who you are systematically eroded for most of your life. You will come through it—and it will have a heavy cost.

In either of these situation for you to have a chance at thriving, you will need to heal.

You will need to learn to trust yourself—your gut. You will need to repair your instincts, so that you can also learn to trust other people. You will need to discover what boundaries are, and how to enforce them without utterly isolating yourself in the process.

Boundaries are, after all, meant to allow people a way to get close to us—not to shut them out. Shutting people out entirely is an extreme application, and you will have to make that call, too.

Now I have outlined this scenario in regards to a parent, but apply it to any authority or system, and you have an idea what we—as a collective—are actually up against.

We have been lied to, massively gaslit, and had mechanisms of control—economic, medical, educational, political, and "entertainment"—enforced on us. This leads to deep enmeshment and identification with the system. Some people survive this by compliance. Some fight.

When it comes to dealing with narcissism, is there another way?

You have know what you are dealing with. You have to know the way the "beast" works. You have to educate yourself, so you can see through the "mask", and become aware of the divide and conquer tactics.

You have to hone your sense of "self" to razor's edge and be ready to surgically remove the infection, first from yourself. Then you have withdraw all the ways you are supporting it.

Look around....what's behind this and this, and that and that? The same thing.

Eyes wide open. Heart aligned with love. Feet on the ground.

This is the way.

~Justice