Our stories
There's so much cross over @Faith-and-Hope @Former-Member with other conditions, and they can present as something else for some time. I read an article about a women who believed for years that her husband was on the autism spectrum and I think that he had been tested for it, only for her to realise that he wasn't, and that he was actually very narcissistic.
People with narcissistic traits find reciprocation in relationships really difficult. You are a function for their ego, and I am yet to meet one who is capable of monogamy. They get bored very easily, and they need constant validation. But having said that they can't live without a victim either, and they disintegrate if you try to leave them. All sorts of threats come flying.
In my father's case his SH probably fooled a lot of health professionals along the way who mistakenly believed that he could never have NPD or be a threat to us because he did SH.
I think they also assumed there couldn't be any family violence in the home because that doesn't align with your typical SH'er - but that is simply not true. People that learn about family violence at University in a book, or in a journal based on statistics - don't see the nuance and families like mine fly under the radar for decades.
Oh he's not well @Faith-and-Hope.
It's quite incredible he hasn't been hospitalised for a physical illness.
Some people still get really, really offended if you call an ED a mental illness. It still hasn't trickled down to all sections of society that it is one. I was talking frankly about ED's in the presence of some people that I know, and when I said that ED's are mental illnesses I thought they were going to get up and leave, they looked so angry. And then it dawned on me that they most likely had one, and with knowing that I had been in hospital for 4 months they didn't want themselves considered to be on par with the likes of me! I think some people still refer to it as 'a phase'.
As someone that has experienced delusions for real, I can say with some lived experience that a lot of mental illness involves every day brain tricks & functions, that we all do - but for whatever reason they become stuck and enhanced in a dysfunctional way. When you come out of your first psychosis, if you are one of the lucky ones, it is a very dangerous time, and coming to terms with having experienced societies most stigmatised illness, is no walk in the park. No-one warns you how slow and long the recovery time is, its easy peesey to lose 5 years.
A lot of people have deluded themselves when it comes to love. I guess our bodies can betray us that way, and sexual attraction doesn't do us any favours either. It's devastating when you go in with such sincerity, to come out and realise you've been played, there are millions of men and women out there in similar situations to you. I've been played Faithy, not for +35years, but I have had a little taste of your heart break over the years as a lady in this world, and I am a once bitten, twice shy kind of person. It may be too hard to ever trust again. And that's OK. In the broader context of your life maybe that is completely understandable.
Sirens going off here this arvo, and it is flooding!
