Thank you Izz. You get it. You absolutely get it, being a victim of it yourself. All we can do is warn others or help others maybe with our words while they are caught in it. It is an unusual hell.

I try to think of it right now that the people I love, like, cherish in this world they are the ones who deserve my energy and my thoughts. I think because I have felt the threat for so long that my brain goes in stress-mode thinking on how to avoid further situations, also all the patterns I see in all the tactics, that I have to be one step ahead. It is stressful. And it is making my energy less and I'm becoming less happy.

I still think the absolute very best thing to do with people who are psychopaths, narcissists, sociopaths is to cut them out completely and cut anyone else out that is joined in with them. Shut all gates.

Only the relationships where someone show they want to change and they do change, that can be worth one's extra attention, energy throughout, but the hopeless relationships are not.

I think sadly too in a way in our culture it is unspoken rule that the females somehow will take over their males family in a way, I have noticed this pattern and this is where I rebel. My husband once remember when I sat at the sofa, he came back (after having had an outburst) and he said I pointed at him and said "This is YOUR fault/problem" and that it then hit him that I was right.

I will refuse to be quilt tripped and manipulated any more in what role they all think a wife and mother should have, just as a tool to get back in again. Anyone I see who is with the narc gets to have the door closed in it's face.

I know in the past they have tried out of the willingness of their heart, to make me come back in again but they too have been under the spell of the narc, and begging me one minute to come back to a traditional event, when I have just said no. It don't work that way with me. I can not be welcomed one minute and not welcomed the next and run to them when, if they feel that I am welcomed again. I am a person who deserves respect at all times. Just like everyone else. I have given them way too many chances in the past. And way too many opportunities to treat me badly. They can sit in their own **** for all I care. Hell, they made it. They should sit in it. Not me.

Big hug to you