09/11/2024
Unpacking The Many Lenses On Dysfunctional Relationships
My partner Jeff Rediger and I are in Santorini now, working on co-writing our book about the health implications of narcissistic abuse and personal/ systemic oppression on the body, mind, and spirit. It’s very surreal to be writing in a cafe in Oia, in the very cradle of Western civilization, about the abuses of power that have traumatized the world century after century and are still at play in our own country as I write this.
For the purposes of the book, I’m trying to find the gentlest, most compassionate, but still clear way to talk about these dynamics- so we can break through the denial routinely practiced by so many oppressed and abused people who are under the coercive control of a narcissistic cult leader, spouse, family member, friend, or boss. And since narcissism and codependence are often two sides of the same coin, and whether you're the narcissist or the codependent largely depends on who has the most power, I also don’t want to alienate the people who might identify as being the narcissistic abuser in some dynamics, while being the victim in others. While it’s helpful to aid victims of narcissistic abuse, many victims are also perpetrators of narcissistic abuse, but they may be strongly in denial about the fact that they’re harming others in the same way they were probably harmed. So discussing these issues with the most trauma-informed, sensitive lens is critical to helping the people we seek to help.
For the purposes of getting our language right in the book, I wrote the following essay about all the different ways we might talk about such dynamics and sent what I’d written to physician Gabor Mate, Internal Family Systems founder Dick Schwartz, NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) founder Laurence Heller, and Relational Life Therapy founder Terry Real to get their opinions and feedback, and they were generous in giving me their feedback.
I thought I’d share what I sent them with the rest of you, in case it helps examine the language we use to talk about dysfunctional relational dynamics that are usually caused by relational trauma in childhood. If any of you have ideas about how to talk about narcissistic abuse without stigmatizing, labeling, or alienating people who blend with protectors that got their jobs very young because of developmental trauma, please email [email protected] and give me your feedback. I’d love help solving these issues!
As I expected, Dick Schwartz validated my concern and agreed that labels like “narcissist” tend to be totalizing and stigmatizing, when, from the IFS viewpoint, the behaviors we associate with narcissism are simply descriptions of the protectors that tend to dominate in their systems. When we acknowledge that everyone- everyone- has a Self- and everyone can heal by becoming intimate with their protectors, understanding how they think they’re helping keep us safe from overwhelming feelings, and unburdening the exiles they protect, we can hold out hope that no matter how awful some of our behaviors might be, abusive behaviors are treatable and healable.
And Gabor named that this issue is near and dear to his heart and was at the core of his message in When The Body Says No and in part of The Myth of Normal. And of course, Terry’s work is all about healing from patriarchy and treating the narcissistic tendencies both men and women can exhibit because of the imbalances of power caused by misogyny and other types of oppression. And NARM is helpful in identifying the common constellations of protectors (pride-based identifications, in NARM language) which get created because of core developmental needs that go unmet in childhood. In NARM, what we might call narcissism develops as the Trust Survival Style, when children cannot trust their parents to reliably meet their needs.
One key point we hope to make is that even the most narcissistic of individuals can change with the right treatment, which requires accountability, shadow work, and developing genuine self esteem and shame resilience so narcissistic defenses don’t prevent healing and destroy repair attempts.
The problem is that most people with these patterns have strong protectors that adamantly resist treatment. This is why most people who teach about narcissistic abuse and cult recovery, like Doctor Ramini, Rachel Bernstein, the Conspirituality guys, A Little Bit Culty podcasters Sarah and Nippy, Janja Lalich, Steve Hassan, and others, typically talk about narcissism as an untreatable tendency, one we should run away from, rather than hope to heal in couple’s therapy or family therapy. We resist that implication, because it fails to acknowledge that such protectors are still treatable, if someone is willing to endure the pain of trauma healing treatment. But we do understand why people come to such conclusions. Because if someone with narcissistic tendencies refuses to get help, then they will not ever change. And if that’s the case, we agree that you should get out- and protect yourself- and stop extending so much empathy to someone abusive just because you understand the traumas they endured, which make them behave that way.
So…we’re writing a book to help folks who are dealing with the physical health implications of people who have no interest in doing their trauma healing work or gaining Self-leadership over their abusive protectors. We’re also writing for those who are with someone who’s actually willing to do shadow work and get help with their more narcissistic protectors, so we don’t want to alienate those who actually have a chance of healing relational wounds inside their relationships. We want to help them figure out how to protect themselves and improve their health and their nervous system regulation while those they love get the right help.
Anyway, this is what I sent to the Big Boys in the trauma healing world for their feedback. I’ll share it here in case it provokes some feedback from you all.
Those with a trauma-informed understanding of personality styles, psychiatric diagnoses, developmental trauma, and attachment styles have a compassionate understanding of how childhood trauma lies at the root of how we tend to relate in many of our relationships, but especially our intimate ones. We can look at these relational dynamics through a variety of lenses.
Giver/Taker
At its most basic, I’ve heard people say things like “There are two kinds of people- those who give and those who take.” But there’s no nuance in this framework, no awareness of the fact that a lot of people who identify as “givers” and judge others as “takers” have an agenda with their giving.
My mother was one of those givers. She was incredibly generous with a lot of the young girls at her church, especially the ones who had sh*tty parents. She’d swoop in like the Susan Sarandon character in the movie The Meddler- and rescue those vulnerable kids. I would watch her get a kind of ecstatic high every time there was someone new and vulnerable to rescue, like her control freak parts were getting a hit off the chance to control someone new.
Many thought of my mother as a saint, and in many ways, she really was. But she also had an agenda- which was to control those people she rescued, especially the young preteens with their blossoming s*xuality, which Mom was dead set on shutting down. She hung money over them, promising to pay for their college and showering them with gifts, but the price was that they had to wear promise rings and swear to never have s*x before marriage.
Most broke their promise, and then that was it. They were a disappointment to her, just like I was. So was my mother really a giver? Were those little girls really takers? Or are there people out there who think they only have value if they’re over-giving? Is their giving a way to hook people who might not give them the time of day otherwise? Are those takers really greedy ingrates? Or are they simply opportunists, who might not go looking for a Sugar Mommy or Daddy, but if someone shows up and starts love bombing them, they’ll happily take?
So…while dividing people into givers and takers might seem like an easy way to decide who’s the good guy and who’s the bad guy, it’s just not that simple.
Caregiver/ Care Receiver
Some relationships are unbalanced and unequal because of disability. If one person has reasonably good mental health and the other has a severe trauma history and the mental health challenges that tend to accompany a severe trauma history, the more mentally healthy individual is likely to wind up the caregiver, while the other will be receiving more care than they’re necessarily capable of giving. Likewise, if one person is able-bodied and the other is physically disabled, the balance between giving and receiving care might be unequal. And because approximately 85% of physical illnesses are trauma-based, there tends to be co-morbidity between mental and physical health issues.
Overfunctioner/ Underfunctioner
Some simplify the giving/ taking into functionality- overfunctioning and underfunctioning. The giver might be called the overfunctioner and the taker might be the underfunctioner. But this is not so straightforward. Sometimes the one who takes more relationally and could be called the underfunctioner might be extremely high functioning professionally, even though they’re very low functioning in the home with a spouse or children. And the person who overfunctions in the home might be underfunctioning professionally and financially, not carrying their weight with paying the bills or managing the outer world. So it’s hard to overlay this clearly with the giver/ taker.
Narcissist/ Codependent
Rather than oversimplify these giving/taking dynamics into a clear perpetrator/ victim dynamic, we could use the language of addiction recovery and talk about the classic Narcissist/ Codependent enabler dynamic. In the addiction recovery space, the addict is often viewed as the more narcissistic individual- and the one who enables the addict is seen as the codependent. There’s still a tendency to demonize the narcissist and feel pity for the victimized codependent (understandably). But at least the people who 12 step their enabling tendencies in Codependents Anonymous (CODA) learn that their codependency is actually very controlling and superior. In some lenses, the more codependent one is often labeled the “caregiving subtype of the covert narcissist,” which further puts a spin on the labeling, making it even harder to discern who is really the clear victim and who is really the perpetrator.
The thing is…I see a problem with using the narcissist/ codependent label the way people like narcissism expert Doctor Ramani or cult recovery expert and podcaster Rachel Bernstein do. (I love their work, by the way, so this is not meant to undermine them.) The way they educate victims of narcissistic abuse tends to be polarizing and insulting for the ones whose trauma causes them to take on the role of “taker” or “narcissist.” It can be helpful for victims of narcissistic abuse to have a simple black and white framework- so they can make sense of what happened to them and learn the red flags to watch for so they can avoid being abused in the future.
But calling someone a narcissist and writing them off as some kind of unredeemable monster tends to leave the more narcissistic individual in a relational dynamic feeling insulted and demeaned- and empowers the more enabling one to go “one up” and see themselves as superior to those horrible narcissists. Which isn’t really trauma-informed or particularly helpful for those individuals who are maybe lower on the narcissism spectrum than the malignant narcissists and sociopaths- the ones who might be willing to do the hard work of couples therapy to get treatment for them both and actually work on the traumas that caused them to be so narcissistic.
If we decide we still like the narcissism/ codependency language but we want to get a little more precise in our trauma-informed understanding of tough relational dynamics, we can go with the language of more sensitively trauma-informed narcissism experts like Eleanor Payson, author of The Wizard of Oz and Other Narcissists. She explains, from a developmental trauma lens, how the Grandiose Narcissist might pair off with a caregiving subtype of the Covert Narcissist, otherwise known as the high-functioning codependent (the person who tries to control the narcissist in the name of rescuing, helping, or fixing.) Two different flavors of Narcissists might even pair off with each other- and each accuse the other of being the victim of their narcissistic partner.
One problem with this language is that all of these ways of talking about relational dynamics can come across to some as siding with the more “good” or “innocent” (aka. enabling or accommodating) partner and shaming the more abusive or badly behaving partner. This is sometimes necessary- to hold an abusive partner accountable for their behaviors and even press charges legally or criminally in some cases.
But it’s still not particularly trauma-sensitive or likely to break through to the badly behaving partner, who is likely to feel so attacked that they just armor up and get more defended.
Given that many trauma survivors get very defensive when they feel like they’re being criticized, this can kick off defensiveness on the part of the one who feels insulted and shamed (the Taker, the Narcissist, etc) and escalate the behavior even more. The fragility underlying the very low self esteem hiding beneath the narcissist’s grandiosity can activate all kinds of painful defenses, like denying when they hurt someone, attacking the one who is calling them out, or shifting the blame from the one who’s doing the hurting to the one who’s being legitimately victimized (aka, DARVO- Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender.)
While this labeling makes it easy to identify and discuss as a short hand, as an Internal Family Systems (IFS) practitioner, I have my reservations about using that language. Wouldn’t it be kinder to protector parts to talk about the constellation of parts that tend to go with narcissistic tendencies, like grandiose parts, entitled parts, better-than-thou parts, and firefighters that might engage in abusive behavior? Wouldn’t it be more accurate to list the codependent’s parts too- like enabling parts, people-pleasing parts, fawning parts, and parts who don’t feel worthy unless they’re rescuing?
Personality Disorders
While lay language tends to revolve about the narcissist/ codependent, in the medicalized psychiatry DSM-V realm, we can talk about the person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, or Antisocial Personality Disorder, who partners with the one with Dependent Personality Disorder. But there’s little to no trauma-informed base to this DSM-V conversation and almost zero understanding about how developmental trauma/ attachment trauma causes the symptoms of personality disorders.
Dissociative Disorders
There’s also the DSM-V spectrum of Dissociative Disorders, where the “identified patient” with a severe trauma history and a diagnosis of a Dissociative Disorder (like Dissociative Identity Disorder) might partner with someone with strong caregiver, rescuer, or martyr parts who feels a lot of compassion for what their loved one has been through and tries to stick it out, even when their loved one is severely acting out because of the fragmentation and lack of integration and communication between “parts.”
Even when the more traumatized individual might be putting their loved one through hell in the process of trying to avoid intimacy by sabotaging it, someone with more “nervous system privilege” and less of a trauma burden might be able to stay close while a trauma survivor heals childhood relational wounds in relationship. But not always. What most academic psychiatrists fail to adequately acknowledge is that these folks who develop these personality disorders or dissociative disorders did not become this way on purpose, and it wasn’t their fault. It is, however, their responsibility to get treatment, which they frequently resist.
In my experience, those with dissociative disorders can often act out in ways that are similar to the classic grandiose narcissist. But their intentions are often more innocent than someone intentionally manipulative, sociopathic, or sadistic. They might still be guilty of some of the red flags typically associated with a narcissistic personality, but there’s a child-like quality to the bad behavior and guilelessness, almost the way some people on the autism spectrum are with their struggles to engage relationally.
Autism Spectrum
Which begs the question about that. What’s the difference between people on the autism spectrum and those with dissociative disorders? There’s a great deal of overlap between the diagnostic criteria and common symptomatology. How much of the neurodiversity we see in autism is similar in those with a severe trauma history who dissociate at the drop of a hat?
Autism activists often challenge me when I write about dissociation- because the symptoms are so similar. But we know dissociation is a severe trauma symptom, one of the most severe ways we protect ourselves when the trauma is unbearable. We know that those with severe trauma have different brains and nervous systems. So are they neurodiverse? One would think so. Many on the autism spectrum also have a severe trauma history- but not all. It’s also traumatizing to be neurodiverse in a neurotypical culture. Chicken, or egg?
Falsely Empowered/ Disempowered + Golden Child/ Scapegoat
Then there are those like Pia Mellody, who runs recovery programs for substance abuse and also relational addiction programs like love and s*x addiction, with a more trauma-informed understanding of “falsely empowering abuse” (like the parentified child or a s*xually abused child who is both chosen and violated) and “disempowering abuse” (like the beaten or scapegoated child), who use other, less pathologizing or demonizing, language. For example, the child who was the “Golden Child” in the narcissistic family system might hook up with the scapegoat, and then they play out their childhood wounding with each other, with the Golden Child always needing to be “one up,” requiring the Scapegoat to always be “one down.”
But is that the same thing as the narcissist and the codependent? Does the golden child become a de factor narcissist and the scapegoat is all over those golden child adults like white on rice?
Love Avoidant/ Love Addict
In Facing Love Addiction and Facing Codependence, Mellody borrows from 12 step language and talks about the “Love Avoidant” and the “Love Addict,” and describes a version of the dysfunctional relational dynamic by this gentler, more trauma-sensitive language, which is more based on attachment styles than narcissism or codependence.
Secure Vs. Insecure Attachment
Then there’s attachment theory. In The Power of Attachment, Diane Poole Heller maps out attachment styles. For example, the Avoidant Attacher, who was emotionally neglected and ignored by caregivers and therefore feels threatened by intimacy, runs away from the Anxious Attacher, who sometimes got attachment needs met by crying harder, then pursues someone who’s running (and needs excessive space) and then feels rejected, insecure, and clingy, exacerbating the run/chase dynamic. Or the Disorganized Attacher with a history of violence from caregivers in childhood torments the Secure Attacher by distrusting someone safe, testing them in unfair or even abusive ways, and sabotaging the relationship, just when things get good.
Boundaryless/ Walled Off + One Up/ One Down
Or we can get even more sophisticated and map it out with Terry Real’s Relationship Grid, with
The Fighter (One Up & Boundaryless), The Teflon (One Up & Walled Off), The Bench Warmer ( One Down & Walled Off), and the Bleeding Heart (One Down & Boundaryless) pairing up on opposite sides of the grid.
Polyvagal
Then there’s the polyvagal lens, wherein one person with a healthier nervous system who grew up reasonably securely attached with not much developmental trauma might be more readily able to be inhabit the ventral vagal “tend and befriend” state of the nervous system, while someone else with a severe trauma history might go “dorsal vagal” and dissociate. But is the more dorsal vagal person then the more codependent one? Is the more sympathetically driven individual the narcissist? Is the ventral vagal person more securely attached? And what does that have to do with giving and taking, overfunctioning and underfunctioning? How do these systems all overlap?
Making Sense Of All The Maps
Harvard psychiatrist Jeffrey Rediger and I are co-writing a book about the physical health impacts of dysfunctional relationships on the body, especially for the one who often ends up the most victimized in the dynamic. I’m trying to get the language right- to be as trauma-informed and sensitive to developmental trauma as possible, to be as non-pathologizing and compassionate as possible, while still being clear that giving, people-pleasing, fawning, accommodating over-caregiving behaviors are likely to make someone sick.
All of these maps provide a way to make sense out of painful dynamics in past dysfunctional relationships, to assess a current relationship, decide whether to stay or go, and help identify problem tendencies as a way to improve discernment in current, new, or future relationships. But trying to understand where they’re the same and where they’re different is boggling to me!
I’m asking some experts I know in the field of mental health to crowd source this with me, but until then, I thought I’d share what I’m thinking with you all, in case some of you have wisdom, insight, and feedback you might share with me.
Again, if you feel inclined to share your feedback with me, you can write [email protected] and ask Karoline to forward it to me. Or you can just post your comments here. Many thanks for hearing me out and potentially giving me your feedback!
*Hat tip to my artist daughter, Mira Klein, for making this graphic for me!
