True Mental Illness | LITERARY TITAN

You’ll See is a raw and poignant memoir that delves into your experiences with narcissistic abuse, survival, and the arduous journey to understanding. What inspired you to share your story with others?

I began writing my book shortly after both of my parents died – within two months of one another. I was trying to make sense of all I had experienced with my father and, to a degree, my mother, and the only way I could do it was to pour everything onto paper…I guess, it was my way of trying to determine if I was really crazy, or if these things really happened to me. With every remembered vignette I described, I began to see a pattern that my therapist helped me understand was my father’s narcissistic personality disorder. I grew up thinking everything was my fault, that nothing I did would ever be good enough…it was an emotional torture chamber that still haunts me. I realized if this was my experience, surely, it was other people’s experience, too…and I decided that giving voice to one’s truth is one of the bravest things a person can do. I want to normalize discussions about narcissistic abuse, among other things, so those of us who were manipulated into believing false narratives can actually rehabilitate ourselves and recover…eventually.

I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?

Thank you…I decided if I was going to tell my story, I was going to tell ALL of it. As an adult with a grown child, I ached for “Little Suzanne”…the innocent, curious, sweet-natured child who only wanted to be Daddy’s girl and was rebuffed at every turn. The hardest part of writing this memoir was first, coming directly to terms with how my father put himself and his desires above his own family, and second, recounting the agonizing years of watching my mother succumb to Alzheimer’s disease while my father continued his dalliances.

What is a common misconception you feel people have about living with narcissistic abuse and getting away from it?

First, narcissistic abuse is just that: abuse, and it definitely leaves deep emotional scars that can affect every other relationship in the victim’s life. Second, the narcissist’s family becomes another tool for the narcissist to display their superiority to the outside world…our job is to make the narcissist look good, no matter what. That means you don’t air the family’s dirty laundry, as it were…and because the narcissist insists their way is the only way, you become conditioned to that…to protect the family image. To do anything else and you’d be labeled as “crazy” or “melodramatic.” I believe there’s a semblance of Stockholm Syndrome at work, too…you feel you must align yourself to your captors as a form of survival. Finally, it’s easy for people to say, “Establish some boundaries! Cut off the relationship!” and the like, but it’s not that easy because especially with a narcissistic parent, you’ve been conditioned your whole life to believe YOU have the problem, and YOU are at fault. It took a really long time (and years of therapy) for me to see that I never deserved any of the treatment I received and that I was dealing with someone with a true mental illness.

What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?

I think they key takeaway I tried to impart in my memoir is that narcissistic abuse is real AND it’s insidious…the narcissist will make you think YOU’RE the one with the problem and over time, you become scarred with feelings of inadequacy, worthlessness, and longing for a relationship you’ll never be able to fix. Being able to give voice to these feelings, telling your stories to someone you trust, is absolutely the first step to taking charge of your life and defining boundaries to protect yourself. Resilience comes at a high price because it means you had to suffer along the way, but it also means you survived it, and that’s what counts.

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