Is the best way to describe them. No matter what I did, or where I was, I could count on one of them to either be there physically offering their unsolicited opinions and criticisms or else they were living in my head, a constant negative narrative running on a loop.
That all came to an end after I found Dr. Carter’s channel on Surviving Narcissism and realized that was what I was dealing with. Not just one or two, but an entire clan of them. I then married into another clan of them in a failed attempt to get away from my own.
Now I know you may be wondering, how can everyone in two families be narcissists? It does seem highly unlikely and naturally it may make you then ask if I’m deluding myself or misreading people. Or maybe I am the narcissist trying to deflect onto them.
I wondered that myself but then I met others who also come from entire families of these disordered people. We tend to be their scapegoats and are usually the ones who land in therapy because we’re so affected by it all that we know we need help.
Narcissists don’t do therapy. There’s nothing wrong with them. YOU are the one who is crazy and needs to be institutionalized.
That’s your first clue. The second is that none of them are happy for you or with you whenever good things happen. Instead they act as your personal heckler during good times, bad times, and everything inbetween.
It’s who they are.
So how do comedians handle hecklers? They either ignore them (the worst thing you can do to a narcissist) or they turn the tables on them and humiliate them (the second worst thing you can do to a narcissist). Both methods work but the second one takes a little practice.
I’m currently working on honing my skills at doing just that. It’s very unnatural for me to be a dick to people though, so I’ll probably always fall back on just grey rocking them.