My father’s a narcissist and my family waves it away. I’m fine with LC, he’s not, so I guess sooner or later it’ll turn into NC. It’s frustrating. He wants a relationship and says he’s willing to try, but he’s incapable of accepting any reality where he’s done something wrong or hurt someone. I’ve spent years trying to think of the magic words that would fix things but there’s no way around it.
As a person it’s made me more conscious of people’s limits. There’s a will on both sides for us, but we’re each limited in our own ways. I can’t be as tolerant as the rest of my family and he won’t be able to make progress without therapy that he doesn’t even realize he needs.
He should listen to Self-Therapy, its a good treatment on Internal Family Sysytems which is a modality that tries to get the “difficult” parts of us back on the same team with the other parts that can do their own cool shit and everyone inside can work together in the service of whatver you put yourself up to
Thanks for the suggestion. I don’t think I could get him to take part in any kind of therapy but it sounds interesting for myself. Do you have any favorite resources?
If he ever starts rubbing up against you or trying to swoop back in, politely refer him to the book (there’s audible if he likes that) and let him know its an important part of you getting yourself better and understanding people more and maybe if he reads it some day and put in the effort (theres exercises aha)…
We’ll see. (Probably not but telling him to surprise you and put it in his possession so he can’t pass it off to someone else (i get the sense he would be self-conscious of the idea of people noticing him with it…All these games we play, sigh
