This former judge helps ex’s of narcissists and I have some ideas about it.
Judge Anthony has extensive experience in helping ex’s of narcissists, and I could not be more grateful to him for his expertise and generous sharing of his trainings for parents, much of it free. Many of my parent coaching clients are in this situation, and their pain is enormous, for themselves and their children. Judge Anthony acknowledges that most judges don’t see the narcissist’s ploys of accusing the other parent of the very things they themselves do, lying about their interactions with the parent and the child, making everything about themselves, and appearing like the helpless victim in custody cases.
When I coach ex’s of narcissists, my emphasis is on the parent-child relationship, and I’ve had good results with many (some are still in process, of course.) I help the non-narcissist parent relate to the child with huge compassion and support, and a listening ear for their feelings of confusion, sadness and loyalty issues without putting the other parent down. This is crucial for the child’s mental wellbeing, as often the parental alienation that the narcissist imbues in the child leaves him or her on an emotional island of pain. Eventually the child can say in court, or just make the decision on their own, to minimize or discontinue time with the narcissist parent. In some states, there’s no age limit to declaring how old a child must be to tell the court that they want to live with one or the other parent. This is truly helpful, but not everyone lives in such a state.
One thing most people don’t talk about is that the non-narcissist ex once loved this person. It’s beyond painful for them to see their ex ruining their lives and the lives of their shared children. They may have lost all feeling for their former partner, but the fact remains that holding a grudge hurts my clients more than it hurts the ex. “Holding a grudge is like stabbing yourself and expecting the other person to bleed.” This quote rang so true to me.
In parent coaching, I offer insights into child behavior to help parents feel compassion for their children instead of blaming and punishing. It’s enormously healing for the parents and it puts them in a position to look beyond the behavior to helpful solutions.
I do the same with ex’s of narcissists by offering a brief but powerful idea about how narcissism comes about. When the ex was a small child, he or she didn’t have basic needs fulfilled by caregivers at crucial times in their development. As a protective mechanism, the brain gives the message to the little one, “They aren’t providing what you need to survive, so you have to do it. Become the absolute center of the universe and make sure everyone knows you’re here. For the rest of your life.” This results in a complete inability to see the needs of those around them, as they take up all the space and energy in their own beings.
Some experts refer to this as the “narcissistic wound.” I like this term because it offers my clients a chance to see that all the destructive behavior of the ex is, strangely, adaptive. It comes from a primal lack of nurture in childhood, of which most narcissists are unaware. They rarely seek therapy because they can’t see that they’re harming others and they project all their guilt onto their ex-spouse, so the behaviors continue to cause deep damage to everyone in their lives. Physiologically, one could say that they never developed the neural pathways for give-and- take, which would come had they been raised by parents who could provide for their children emotionally.
So to relieve my clients of the blame game, I explain this concept to free them from having to keep track of all the transgressions in their hearts. They can keep notes on their interactions, as under the training of Judge Anthony, but still carry the compassion for their ex. They can stop feeling the guilt the narcissist ex has piled onto them. And some day, they can explain narcissism to their children as a wound, to build compassion for their other parent. That way they can free their kids from the blame game, too.