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Starving to Death

Understanding the Hunger Within to Achieve Wholeness After Narcissistic Abuse

By NARC Troopers With Prajinta PesquedaPublished 4 years ago 5 min read
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My narcissist husband was empty in a way that was very different from my emptiness. I thought that his quest for fuel was insatiable and tragic. The constant need for external validation, for eyes and ears to hear and see, the thirst for attention, the hunger to feast on their adoration. 

I was wrong. We both held the same emptiness inside, and we both felt invisible without external fuel. Without it, we would cease to exist, we would be unseen, unheard, and unworthy. Our value as individuals was contingent on feeding the starving inner child who did little but scream and cry to be fed. 

So, out of fear, shame, and desperation, he bound that little boy and sewed his lips shut and put a cloth around his eyes and stuffed his ears before silencing him forever in a dark place of forgetting. After essentially disposing of his little boy for his own survival, his own self-preservation, he emerged with the most charming smile, dimples and twinkling adorableness as a mask, and entered the world with all the charisma and charm one could possibly possess. The horrors buried deep inside, the cold entombed and destroyed forever, all emotion effectively extinguished, he tackled the world. With a vacant space within and a chronic emptiness, he adapted and he learned. The hollow space was constantly demanding to be fed, so he figured out how to use his talents to procure the food. It fashioned him a predator, constantly on the hunt for food. A sweet and kind predator who drains his victim dry in the most courteous and charming way possible. Faking and mirroring and pretending that even he himself believed this target might just be the cone to fill him forever but eventually needing to find more feasting when the supply had nothing else to give. His intentions were never filled with malice or harm. He possessed no true emotions except contempt and envy. He just had to eat to survive, to stop the hunger. If there were any collateral damage, that's just how it had to be. He had learned to survive by shifting the blame and making himself believe they were somehow victimizing him. He had to move on. . . through no fault of his own. He was always sweet and kind and wonderful, so they should be grateful to have enjoyed someone so wonderful while they could. A guy just gets hungry and has to feed. It's nothing personal. It's survival.

And then there was my little girl standing there, constantly screaming and crying to be fed, starving and terrified, wanting to live, to be seen, to be heard. She lay in bed at night and imagined her body thin as a toothpick until it just evaporated into dust, then swelling to huge proportions as if to burst and splatter all over the room. The dissociation confirmed that she was at risk of extinction at any minute, hanging on to life by a tenuous thread. She never bothered trying to speak to mother or father, as the first was too lost in her madness to hear a frail little voice, and the latter was never present to hear. So there was persistent silence, even in moments of terror. And to make matters worse, she was a ghost. Invisible. Transparent. Without shape or form or identity.

But I didn't tie her or bind her or gag her and imprison her to effectively silence the weeping and wailing of famine and abandonment thus murdering all my emotions the way the little boy did. I wanted so desperately to survive. I had to try to figure out a way to be seen and heard and thus be a real girl. Unlike the little boy who was neglected and impoverished, she had a stable middle class 1970's childhood. But she was starving in the land of plenty.

So I just learned how to feed her. 

I constructed two ways to create a feeling of wholeness and self-worth, both toxic and both failed attempts designed by my child self to address the problem. The first was to achieve, produce, create, excel, and intellectualize. If everything else in my life was spiraling out of control, at least I could climb above the chaos and use my gifts and talents to establish some kind of value and permission to live. The second method was worse than the first. I simply attached to another person and allowed that person to "complete me." That is dangerous, especially since predators like narcissists and psychopaths are attracted to that kind of neediness and desperation like chum in the water. It is a recipe for disaster, and while it may give the illusion of wholeness, it is far from it.

The people who raised the little boy and the little girl probably had the emptiness, too. I like to call it "the howling wilderness." Their legacy was the hunger of soul, the starvation of self, the thirst for identity and wholeness. It is a generational curse in every sense of the word. So what can be done to finally become whole?

The answer cannot be found in one podcast, article, or YouTube video. You cannot Google it, purchase a workshop, attend a summit or webinar or some other self-help remedy. It is a long and complex process, slow and in spurts and stops and sputters. It requires building a toolbox with many different healing modalities.

The first steps toward self-partnering and healing the inner child lies in education and awareness. When you have achieved a full grasp of the etymology and history of the invalidation, you can begin to take the first steps toward building a self-sustaining self.

The next steps begin with self-care, the release of shame and anger, forgiveness for those who failed you, and time to feel and accept the reality of the situation and the profound pain of the wounding.

In essence, you are willing yourself into existence. You are creating an identity that did not exist before. You are finding your voice and being seen for the first time. It is as if you are giving birth to yourself. So you can expect that it will be painful. It will be messy. And it will take much longer than you'd like. But in the end, the beautiful shiny person that you are will enter the world and be resplendent and glorious.

So soldier on and be a trooper. You can't shange the past, but you can assert control over your future.

recovery
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About the Creator

NARC Troopers With Prajinta Pesqueda

Prajinta Pesqueda - educator, writer, & healing facilitator. Her intention is healing betrayal trauma from disordered partners.

Follow her articles, podcasts, vlog, and more.

Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Collaborators.

www.narctroopers.com.

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