We don’t get it until we get it. It’s the same deal in every arena in life.
Someone asked me recently, “How can those around the narcissist not see what the victims see?” It’s a really simple answer.
Because, on the one hand, those around the narcissist are unconsciously enmeshed in loyalty to them, whilst on the other, they haven’t experienced ‘the switch’. In a highly conditional relationship, loyalty keeps them safe. People usually have absolutely no idea—and cannot see—the subtle nuances that are unparalleled in their wrongness. Until. There is a crossing. As soon as there is a challenge to that loyalty—it could be as simple as a disagreement—the switch occurs. Conditions become apparent. Ultimatums are not unusual. In other words, they’re saying, “get back in line… or face the consequences.” (Now, there are many roles in life where getting back in line is necessary. It’s all in the way it’s done, what the relationship is, and the presence or absence of virtues like patience, respect, courtesy and kindness.)
What we’re delving into is common through life. Until we experience certain things it’s as if they don’t happen. This is one reason why when bad things happen to us, they can be seen as educative. That doesn’t mean we appreciate what’s happened.
Before we’ve been traumatised by an incident, by assault, by loss, or by abuse, we really cannot conceive what it entails, the suddenness of it, the brutality of the impact, the instant barrenness of soul that’s felt, the levels and depths of betrayal in some cases—all of which are truly fathomless.
Before we’ve been traumatised, we can see those who are traumatised as something of a problem. Or, if they’re loved ones or friends we can be in a situation where we watch on and empathise as best we can, without truly understanding.
Before we suffer traumatising events ourselves, when we’re not close to those who have suffered trauma, we can tend to doubt them, or think they’re lying, that it’s a fabrication, or that it’s only weak people who are ‘damaged’.
We might wonder why they can’t let go of it and their responses may even significantly frustrate us. We may wonder why they don’t listen to us. Before we’re afflicted by assault or loss or abuse and are affected by trauma, we can have some pretty strange concepts of this phenomenon of grief, and only afterwards—after we’ve experienced this kind of affliction—do we see the blindness of this. Suddenly the light flickers on within us; “Ah, I get it now!”
We just don’t get it until our world is rocked. Quickly we grow expansively in empathy and understanding. Grief matures us.
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For those about to be traumatised, your world is about to change, and you will have no way back to the way life was. I am so sorry.
For those about to be traumatised, you are about to learn new things that will demand the unlearning of old things. You may be forced into a ‘new normal’ which you would never choose if you didn’t need to. This will feel brutal. Really—I am so sorry.
You will question very many parts about yourself in this process. This is grief; one of the worst kinds—the losing or deconstruction of self. This kind of grief is so hard to reconcile.
Add to the complicated nature of grief that undoes oneself, bring in the sticky nature of trauma. Trauma’s impacts stick. It does your head in. Our first instances of trauma change us irrevocably.
We must cling to the hope that a palatable new normal is possible, even probable.
The new normal will involve a bigger version of ourselves that learns to 1) accept what we cannot change, 2) change what we can (because we will not leave it as it is), and 3) discern one from two and two from one.
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Postscript: I for one think that so many people are traumatised early in childhood in one way or other through adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). It is therefore one thing to discuss the issue of “first traumatic experience” in the adult context, but we must consider that even a “first experience” probably isn’t truly a first experience. There may be experiences we had as children that we weren’t equipped to suffer at the time—i.e. they overwhelmed our capacity to suffer them.
Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash
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