Living in the shadow of a disordered mind.

In this podcast, I reflect on the challenges of being in a relationship with someone who has a cluster B personality disorder like narcissism or borderline personality disorder. 

I draw attention to the grief and loss experienced in such relationships, emphasizing the need to rebuild one’s life and self. I draw on my personal experiences to highlight the difficulty of disentangling from the distorted reality created by the person with the disorder. I believe healing involves recognizing manipulative tactics and rediscovering one’s true self. This podcast aims to provide knowledge and experiences for those in similar relationships, stressing self-worth, not tolerating abuse, and understanding that abusers are incapable of love.

I encourage you to focus on self-care and value.

Transcript

What happens when we step outside of the shadow of the cluster bees disordered mind? What do we see? What do we feel? Welcome to this podcast of My Inner Torch. Well happy new year to you. This is the first podcast in this new year of 2024 and I hope and wish for all of you that this is a year of healing, a year of understanding and a year of moving forward. What happens when we step outside of the shadow of that disordered mind that is the cluster bee? Well, I wanted to read something from Maria Consiglio because you know I'm a big fan of hers. I think that she really has it down when it comes to narcissistic abuse and borderline abuse. Both of them are pretty much one of the same. She writes, There is so much grief after cluster bee abuse.

You are grieving the relationship you thought you had, the person you thought they were, the future that will never happen and the past that is never coming back. You are also grieving the person you were as well.

The sadness about the person you have become. You are grieving everything you lost, including assets, finances and sometimes even pets. One of the few things that is guaranteed in a relationship with a cluster bee is loss. You lose so much more than just a relationship. You not only have to rebuild your life, but you have to rebuild yourself because the person you were before you met the cluster bee is gone. All of that is not something you come to terms with overnight. Just one of these things has broken some people. Imagine all of them.

So when people say, why aren't you over it yet? Tell them they wouldn't understand and just be happy that they don't. Maria Consiglio. So Maria, thank you for writing that because it makes a lot of sense to me and I certainly hope that it makes a lot of sense to you as well. Most of us are so interwoven with our cluster bee. We just can't seem to disentangle ourselves from these people and we are basically trapped in the shadow of their delusional reality. I myself have been in a relationship with my wife of over 21 years for about 23 years now and I have to say that the person I see now for who she really is, is incredibly disturbing to me.

It does make me question my own judgment. It makes me wonder why and how I could allow myself to be drawn into this person's mind, to their reality, to buy into all of their things and worse yet, how I was trying to change myself to please that person, how I was trying to mold myself, how I was taking everything she would say to me to heart. Thankfully, as part of the healing process, you begin to realize that the things that they say, that the cluster bee throws at you, the thought grenades, the Darvo behavior, that victim mentality that, you know, if you actually become reactive in your reaction to their abuse, it's called reactive abuse, that they all of a sudden become the hapless victim and they point their finger at you saying, you see, you are the source for all that is wrong in our relationship. So when you come out of the shadow of the disordered mind, when you see the light, it's a very painful light and you have to stop yourself from regretting. And as Maria Consiglio says, you have to take inventory of who you are now, who you were then and how you maybe can find your way back to yourself, not to the cluster bee. We have to stop believing that we are at fault, that we somehow have made these people miserable because they tell us that we do.

Everything that is wrong in my wife's life is my fault. Even things that predate our relationship, the lies, the delusional behavior, the gaslighting is so prevalent. And the problem is when we are ignorant, we accept it. We brush it under the rug. We kind of accept it and we're kind of like, okay, maybe if I do this or maybe if I do that, something will be better. But the darkness that is on their side of the moon, of their mind, living in that shadow, we can't see. We are blind and we keep trying to buy into their reality, knowing that it's wrong, knowing that it's delusional, knowing that this relationship is somehow not right. I can look at my marriage and I can truly tell you that it's not right. There's a public side, as I've talked about in many of my podcasts, and then there's life behind the door in the shadow, in that cold, heartless shadow of the cluster bee that I dwell in.

The hypocrisy of our relationship. It's truly sad to see. So you need to think about that too.

All of us do. And I've said this in almost over 170 podcasts. Why do we not choose consciously or subconsciously to accept the truth of these relationships? Why do we create delusions? Why do we want something that never existed? Is that human nature or is that telling about ourselves? Does that make us codependent?

Does it make us trauma bonded? I've said this many times in this new year, 2024, take a hard look at your cluster bee.

Take a hard look at yourself. Take a very objective, rational view of your relationship with this person and decide, do I see myself one month from now with this person?

Do I see myself one year, 10 years? Do I see myself forever with this person? Do I deserve better?

Are there better people out there? Why am I afraid that maybe there aren't? Maybe there isn't somebody better. And I'm not talking about monkey branching like the cluster bee does, that they seek other relationships when they've used you up. I'm talking about having self-esteem, believing in yourself and knowing that there are nice people out there who will reflect back to you your good nature, your loving nature. The cluster bee will not do that.

The cluster bee will hoover you. They will breadcrumb you. They will convince you to stay with them because absolutely you're not worthy.

So stay with me. I will abuse you and use you and you're lucky to be in my presence. That's why they are called narcissists. That's why they're called borderlines. Borderlines are not narcissists and narcissists are not borderlines. Although there can be comorbidity, morbidity between the two.

Yes, indeed there can be. But the cluster bee genre is the worst, in my opinion, of the personality disorders that are out there. It's horrible. And that's why you listen to this podcast. And I certainly hope that you take away some understanding of yourself and how you can make your life better.

That is my mission. As I've said before, I'm not doing this podcast to basically have people feel sorry for me. I'm doing this podcast because I want to give the benefit of my knowledge and my experience to those of us who may be just starting in a relationship or questioning the relationship and wanting to find truth and using perhaps my relationship as a comparison, as a benchmark to say, you know what?

Yeah, no, it's dysfunctional. It's disordered and it's dysregulated. Think more of yourself as we go into 24. Make that your new year's resolution. Forget about giving up pie or ice cream or losing weight. That's great. Focus on that if you'd like, but also focus on yourself and your psyche. Make sure that you understand that you are a good and viable person and you don't deserve to be abused. And don't think that that abuse is because that person cares about you because they don't. And don't ever really think that these people truly love you in the sense of the word because they can't. And I hate to say and be the bearer of bad news because all of us want to believe, including myself, that somehow, some way our cluster B loves us somehow, some way, but I'm here to tell you that 99.9% of the time, at least in my experience, that's not true.

So you have to take that to heart. And as painful as that is, you have to remember these people are not capable of love. They are capable of projecting their pain onto you. They are capable of using you and they're also capable of leaving you. My Inner Torch at gmail.com, I always appreciate hearing from you. Please, if you do get an opportunity, leave a review on whichever platform you happen to be listening to My Inner Torch on. It goes a long way to spreading the opportunity for other people to gain some insight.

New episodes uploaded each and every Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Be well and in whatever you do, be good. This has been my Inner Torch.