Help for Living with a Narcissist

  I am excited! Recently I was looking for someone online and stumbled onto the website of Kim and Steve Cooper. They are an amazing couple who has faced their own issues with narcissism, healed their marriage, and gone public with it. What courage!
  It began when Kim discovered she was married to someone with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The therapist told her there was no hope, no cure, and to get out of the marriage. The information was devastating, partly because they had three children, but she didn't believe in her heart that leaving was the right thing to do.
  She began searching for information on NPD, and much of it was discouraging, but in the process she came up with a simple (not to be confused with easy) approach to healing her marriage. Today, years later, their marriage is happy, and Steve works along side her, helping others heal marriages with narcissistic partners. It's an amazing story, showing that there is hope for a large segment of people who had been deemed unhelpable.
  Narcissists aren't evil people, they are wounded people. The trauma usually happens before the age of four, and the recipient begins to believe that people are not safe, closing down emotion and relationships for anything other than superficial exchanges. NPD's can function very well in careers, but in close relationships they can be impossible (not knowing that this is how they function or that they have decided people aren't safe.) They don't trust. Attachment is extremely difficult. They will insist on their way, they delete positive comments, they often escalate arguments into abuse because of young reactive emotions, and they are easily hurt. Also, nothing is ever their fault. They are professional blamers.
  If this is a description of your partner, visit Kim and Steve's website www.narcissismcured.com and check out their resources. This is good stuff. Thanks for your vulnerability, Kim and Steve, and for turning a painful thing into healing for so many.

Perception is everything

1-11-11 is another one of those dates. If you see it as two 11's, it's neat, but if you see it as five 1's it carries that begin again feeling. I have a birthday two weeks after New Years, so I always have that chance to start my year again if I wasn't feeling particularly inspired on the first day of the new year. But isn't every day a chance to start fresh with no mistakes?

If you believe that love is truly the strongest force in the world, and you believe that God loves you no matter what, then every day is a day to live loved. And I believe it is true. It doesn't matter who you are, where you are, what you've done or what has happened to you, God still loves you and wants to be your best friend. AND He is the only connection that is totally safe. That is important because it's critical that we embrace the ugly parts of ourselves we would rather ignore or disown. If we don't, we will end up projecting them on others, and drawing to us the people who bring them up in us. God is the one who can help you untangle your life. Yes, He may lead you to other people for help--no doubt--but He is committed to helping you thrive and become everything you want to be. You are not alone. That is something to celebrate! And a reason to begin again.

1-1-11 Obviously a day for NEW Beginnings

  I wrote 1-1-11 in my journal this morning and said, "How's that for a date! Four ones. What a date for new beginnings!" My very next thought was With God all things are possible!  I realized that confidence in God's love is the ability to forget about how I look, what I'm going to do about... In fact, it is the ability to NOT worry. The more you trust Him the more you can relax. We don't have to be in control because He is. Live loved this year.
  His exact words to me were, "Confidence in My love for you gives you rest. Consciousness of My love brings relief from evil."
  I said, "Say it again."
  He said, "If you revel in my love you will relax."
  "Again!" I said, like a kid.
   "If you trust My love you will live in peace."
  One more time I asked Him to repeat it.
  "Live loved. Hold the awareness of my love in consciousness."
  What is your evil? Shame? Blame? Worry? Lack of confidence? Trust His love and rest in the confidence that you are loved. (How fitting that 1-1-11 falls on the day He created for rest!)