What a good day to remember that “narcissistic abuse” doesn’t fucking exist, people with NPD aren’t ticking time bombs with Evil Abuser Disorder, and neurodivergent people aren’t the goddamn bogeyman.
[ID: screencap of a comment on this post that reads, “My mother literally screams at me everyday over nothing and constantly gaslights, uses insults/put-downs, accusations, criticism, threats. How is that not real abuse.” End ID.]
Would you call abuse from an amputee “amputee abuse?” Would you call abuse from a depressed person “depression abuse?” Would you call abuse from someone with heart disease “heart disease abuse?” Would you call abuse from someone with cancer “cancer abuse?” Would you call abuse from someone with covid “covid abuse?”
“Narcissistic abuse” doesn’t exist because people with NPD are not more likely to be abusers. There is nothing about “narcissistic abuse” that is inherent or specific to people with NPD. Personality disorders are not shorthand for “bad, evil, abusive person.”
Abuse is abuse. “Narcissistic abuse” is an ableist invention that does nothing to help abuse victims and only serves to demonize people with NPD.
NPD will cause people to struggle with immense internalized self-loathing because they have been conditioned to believe that if they aren’t literal godlike perfection, they’re worthless and shouldn’t exist. NPD will have you convinced that criticism is a permanent damnation and mistakes can never be erased. If you can’t be perfect, you must be worthless. There are no shades of grey–you’re either on top of the world, or you’re a shitstain who needs to disappear and stop infecting the world with your imperfections. If you can’t be everything, then you must be nothing.
And ableists will look at this and say, “ah, yes, the Abuser Disorder. You’re a bad person who is nothing more than a ticking time bomb. You should die before you cause the world around you to get worse just with your presence. You awful rotten demon.”
And then when people with NPD say, hey, that’s a really fucked up thing to tell someone, and it doesn’t actually help people with NPD cope with symptoms, ableists will jump through fucking hoops to insist that asking for basic human dignity is the same as “silencing abuse victims.”
And personally I’m fucking tired of it.
Being abused doesn’t give you a free pass to demonize an entire category of people, end of story.
