A Piece of Your Mind
Vent your spleen. Have your say. Give us both barrels. Let us know what you really think. Such sentiments towards my kind are entirely understandable and they invariably occur post discard and sometimes post escape. There are differing rationales associated with this almost overwhelming need to speak to us about your experience of being entangled with our kind.
1. Anger. You realise how you have been manipulated, abused and taken for a fool. Your anger is substantial and you feel a pressing need to unleash that anger against us with a litany of insults and some choice language.
2. Enlightenment. You have had your epiphany and realised precisely what ensnared you, how it happened and why. You have seized this knowledge and now feel elated that you have done so. There is a sense of superiority in finally having all the pieces of the puzzle click into place and you want to confront us. You may not actually tell us what we are but you will certainly want to use the words, “I know what you are now.”
3. Unfinished Business Part One. Nearly all discards occur without you being told that the Formal Relationship is over and if you are given such notice you are rarely given any proper or adequate explanation as to why this has happened. This results in the need to confront us at a later stage in order to try to find out why what has happened, has happened.
4. Unfinished Business Part Two. This is akin to the situation above but the basis of this confrontation is in order to demand of us how we could do what we did and address your need to have us explain ourselves for what we did during the relationship.
5. To Understand. You do not know what you were entangled with and you are unable to comprehend how somebody could behave in that manner towards you after everything that you did for us. This tirade details all of the help you gave us, the advantages that you conferred on us and each and every thing you did for us in the name of love.
6. Clear the Smear. Predictably enough, you will have been smeared following your entanglement with us. You have heard all about the lies that have been peddled about you and you want to set us straight about how those comments were wrong, that you did not behave in the manner which we have described to other people and ultimately how you need to clear your name.
7. The Right to Be Heard. You have a significant desire to want to be heard, especially as our manipulation of you will have caused you to feel that you have not been listened to during the Formal Relationship. You want your voice to be heard, you need to articulate your thoughts and feelings and an opportunity to avail yourself of discharging this need is too good to pass up.
8. Convey the Pain. You remain horrendously wounded by your experience of being entangled with us and you want to let us know how badly we hurt you, how much it pains you still and how upset you are to have been treated this way.
9. Sing the Praises. Sometimes you exhibit a capacity for nobility which manages to transcend the hurt, the pain and the anger. You remain bewitched by the golden period and all those magnificent attributes that you believe we still possess and therefore rather than attack us, expound bitterness or lash out, you declare all the reasons why you still love us, why you find us mesmerising despite what has happened and you wish us well for the future.
10. Justice. It is only right that are given the right of reply to the treatment that has been meted out against you.
11. Medicine. You put up with the tantrums, the lengthy invectives, the oral onslaughts and you were pummelled by our words. Now it is the time to give us a taste of our own medicine.
Whatever the motivation may be, your need and desire to have that final confrontation with us, to purge yourself of all those thoughts and considerations is huge and is very difficult for you to resist. Indeed, most of the time you do not resist it at all, instead you look to engineer situations whereby you are able to speak to us and deliver this tirade, this riposte, this howitzer. You will seek us out in order to provide us with a piece of your mind. Is this a good thing? Well, there are two potential upsides when this is looked at from your perspective. The first is that you are able to get things off your chest. All those thoughts which have whirled around your mind for weeks on end, the ifs and buts which prevented you from sleeping, the imponderables and the unanswered have been released as you allow your words to explode from you in an outburst of emotion applicable to whichever rationale which has driven you to this point. The second is that you may well feel that you have achieved some kind of closure by engaging in this step of giving us a piece of your mind.
But what about our perspective on all of this? What does this blast, this sounding off and this diatribe mean to us? This is where giving a piece of your mind in such a manner is actually not a good thing for you to do. Why is this?
1. Sounding off in such an emotional manner, whether it is insulting us with angry words, crying with pain, savagely mauling us with a sneering and twisted face or even expressing how you still love us, just provides us with fuel and it is plentiful. You may have collared us on the telephone to vent at us. Anybody normal would end the call as they are repeatedly harangued and insulted, but not us, we will listen as we soak up all that fuel. Yes, we will be argumentative, defensive and belligerent but that is just to keep your tirade going owing to the plentiful fuel you are providing to us.
2. This is a prime opportunity for us to hoover you. If we see you are angry, we may express false contrition, if you are hurt and upset we may declare how we will make changes so everything is right, if you reminisce about our wonderful times we will offer that golden period again to you. You are giving us a glorious opportunity to hoover you and in your heightened emotional state there is a good chance this will succeed.
3. If we do not hoover at this point, you have just given us several reasons to execute a hoover at a later juncture by confirming to us that you remain adrift in the emotional state, you are fountaining with fuel and still beholden to us. The signs are good and it all points to a successful hoover in the near future.
4. You confirm to us that you have failed to grasp the logic and reason of the situation and therefore your defences are weak. This means that further manipulations can be used and they will prove effective in terms of fuel and control.
5. We take no notice of what you are actually saying. You may think that your speech is devastating, that you are landing telling blows on us, that you are assassinating our character and making us look terrible. You are not. You are playing into our hands. We are laughing at you inside.
6. You are confirming that we continue to have considerable control over you. We may be busy with a new primary source but this confirmation acts as a green light to further unleashing of manipulations against you because you are not able to let go.
The temptation to give us a piece of your mind is vast and overwhelming but if done in the usual emotional fashion of the typical empathic individual you are just giving us more of what we want, failing to hurt us and extending your own entanglement with us.
6 thoughts on “A Piece of Your Mind”
Vent Your Spleen! (Please see the Rules in Formal Info)
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
So true, part 1 – yes, there is a part 2 to my little story, but I am leaving it for the celebration of my first month of *really, truly* going no contact (the latter coincides with finding this blog over a week ago). Something to look forward to, as far as I’m concerned.
HG, I know you have heard this umpteen times before, but I am so thankful for your videos and your blog. I was afraid at first that I would simply be feeding my addiction to my ex by reading all your articles and listening to your ensnaring voice (my ex’s was pretty ensnaring too). And on the contrary, I am recovering at the speed of light. Thank you again. I see you as a teacher, and I love learning (funny, since I am a teacher, actually – of English, not my native tongue). And the beauty of it is that I am learning all this in the language I adore : English; I love your accent, too.
Right, enough grovelling !
So, on to this absolute need to give my ex a piece of my mind. The number 2 reason (enlightenment) apllied in my case, And the overwhelming temptation to give him a taste of his own medicine (nr 11), which however I managed to resist.
I decided to implement no contact (i.e., block his number, but there is a catch, and I should have changed my number) on February 3rd, without warning. I had already told him by email at the end of December never to contact me again, after another “verbal slap” in his previous text message, which was the last straw. (That one was the worst. I felt, as I read it, that I was being bludgeoned with a baseball bat, and remained in a state of shock for 30 minutes. Luckily, I was surrounded by friends at that moment.)
I had thrown away (burnt, actually) the page of my notebook with his number on it, deleted his emails, deleted all his text messages, and his number, but not blocked it as at that point, I couldn’t even bear being able to see his number in the list of “blocked numbers” – it felt like my phone would have still been infected by him.
So of course, he pretended not to have seen my email and texted me, suggesting we see each other. I repeated what I had said in a new text message, which he later that day pretended not to have fully read because just as he received it, he happened to be at the phone shop getting a new phone and switching the SIM card from one phone to the other (I did not believe a word of it, by the way). But he made enough sense of my message, he said, to get the gist and was ready to … *talk* about it !
Of course, not having come across this blog at the time, I jumped at the opportunity. Utterly useless. He shouted at me for God knows how long, not letting me put a word in (I got to talk after him, but he obviously didn’t care). The blame-shifting on his part was spectacular. I was observing all this as if studying a specimen.
I thought I would be strong enough to take it, but it was a very destructive experience indeed: even though I managed to show absolutely no emotion, his shouting hurt me physically (this is what I felt, anyhow). It was a massive blow to every atom in my body, and certainly contributed to the PTSD symptoms I suffered a few days later.
And I was silly enough to see him three more times in the course of January, even as I was experiencing PTSD. I was not yet capable of letting go, partly because I knew I hadn’t been heard during our so-called *talk*, and I was intent on getting my own back at him one way or other. And partly because I was still addicted, though absolutely hating both my addiction and the stuff I was addicted to. I also think the PTSD symptoms were a result of my enlightment, and the fact that in my head I was in the process of getting off the hook, and was suffering like hell.
In any case, the urge to give a piece of our mind is an absolute trap to be resisted at all costs, that’s for sure.
I see that “trailer trash” is a reference that translates from British English to American English. Many times I have to look up your sayings, HG. This one surprised me!
There has to be people on the outside, who think the narcissist is a douche. Sure, the “friends” and inner circle, those even less than that such as party goers who meet the N at an event who thinks he’s so funny and awesome but there has to be some people who see the N as a fool whether they speak up or not. Do you recognize this? Or is it unnoticed?
Indeed there will be others who think the narcissist is something contrary to the image he or she holds of themselves. The Upper Lesser Type A who sees himself as Mr Party is viewed as an ageing playboy who is too free with his hands. The Earnest MMR who believes he is a good person comes over as a whining gossip. The “My Way or the High Way” Lower Lesser is seen as brutish trailer trash. The narcissist will not recognise the alternative description however because the construct does not allow such recognition. Pointing it out to the narcissist is futile, it will be Challenge Fuel and that challenge must be rejected and will be rejected by the narcissism.
Yes, there were people who thought Narcx was/is a douche.
I witnessed how he behaved with them. I saw how they responded to him. I sensed something weird about it, but I convinced myself that I was with a unique person 🚩who was misunderstood and that it was my obligation to stand by my man.
Barf!
I absolutely disagree!!! I’m replying to you because I want you to engage, because I need to understand more!!!! So I can help people!!!