Where you’re headed (part 1)
There’s no right or wrong place to be.
Before we jump into the Narcissistic Family System (NFS) and what it means to be born into that structure, before you ask yourself “what is my family system”, or “what do I do about it”, let’s talk about where you’re headed and all the wonderful possibilities that occur on a path of increased awareness, growth, and healing. Some of you may be well along this path already. Or you may not even know what the path is or what is going on and why you feel so bad all the time. Others of you are somewhere in the middle. There’s no right or wrong place to be. Everyone starts at the beginning. So if you’re at the beginning, celebrate that you’ve reached the starting line. Not everyone gets there.
You are on a path of truth: clarifying the truth about who you are and getting in touch with your authenticity, otherwise known as the development of your Self. I define Self as the genuine you: what you like and dislike, your real thoughts and feelings, how you see and experience the world, and your ability to stand on your own- separate from other’s opinions, thoughts, and feelings. This includes the ability to have your own perspective despite other’s approval, disapproval, or pressure to agree (narcissistic merger).
Richard Schwartz, who created Internal Family Systems (IFS), also known as parts work, believes everyone has a Self that’s innate within. He says the way to contact this Self is to first tend to your internal parts that hold trauma, painful feelings, and negative self beliefs. Get to know these parts of you. Learn how to communicate- be in relationship with- these aspects of yourself. In relationship is the key that opens the door to your real Self. Through IFS and the process of unburdening, new space gets created inside of you. This space allows for Self to emerge from within.
Babies are born expressing themselves. Instead of care and empathy, if they are met instead with anger, cruelty, or nothing at all, this creates overwhelming and untenable stress in their bodies and developing mind. If this experience is on repeat, the baby has no choice but to shut down. When there’s no one to see, reflect, or nurture them, they go to the only place available to them. They merge with the narcissistic parent. Because this happens so young (pre-verbal), the baby will grow up as if it’s normal. Later when the child grows into a teenager and young adult, they will have a sense that something is wrong but unless they grow up around healthy family systems, they will have no idea what it is. They may become angry and not know what the anger is about. Because NFS’s are on a continuum, the degree to which genuine care and connection exists in the family will determine to what degree a baby must shut down their genuineness and real feelings to survive.
Threats, emotional neglect, emotional abuse, and abandonment are hallmarks of this type of system, and physical, sexual, and other types of abuse may also be present. All of this combined makes it impossible to stay connected to genuine feelings. It forces your raw material of Self to go underground and wait for a more hospitable time to emerge. This shut down is survival and without it, there’s a real risk of fragmentation. In other words, your psyche would be in pieces that are harder to put back tougher. Whichever way you turn, growing up in an NFS, you’re likely to lose the possession of your own mind.
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