Narc Case Studies

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Participating in case studies has never been my thing until I learned how valuable they could be when applied to my own personal life. I had completed a few case studies while in grad school, but I didn’t consider the people involved to be “real” subjects since they were more than likely a creation of class professors to give students practice in understanding how to work with future clients and in understanding the criteria for diagnosing mental illnesses and mental disorders.

It wasn’t until I became exasperated of dealing with the trials of narcissism engulfing my own life did case studies become of interest to me. The idea of completing a person case study never occurred to me until my therapist suggested it. I was asking the age-old question as to why I attracted so many narcissists and other toxic types into my life. As much I worked on myself receiving therapy, reading self-help materials, keeping a journal, and even praying, the continuous recycling rollercoaster of toxicity within my life never ceased to end.

No matter how often I ended relationships with toxic individuals, there were surely more toxic individuals to come. When I think about it, however, I didn’t have that many relationships, but when a narcissist has ever been in my life, their exit from my life always included a mass exodus of their friends and associates (often referred to as flying monkeys). If my “friendship” ended with a narcissist, my “friendships” also ended the the associates of a narcissist. So when a narc came into my life (seemingly alone), an entrance of narc associates also entered my life even if I didn’t realize that was the case at the time and even if those associates were not as visibly present as much as the narcissist. (The narc associates were always on standby. So, it has always felt to me like a toxic smorgasbord of people have always been around me either directly or indirectly.)

Needless to say, my question to my therapist about the reason narcs were always drawn to me was met with an assignment instead of a direct answer. I was assigned to choose one narc in my life as a case study. So I chose the narc that was wreaking the most havoc within my life at that moment. It wouldn’t be long before my therapist suggested creating another case study so that I could find parallels or comparisons. The second case study was easily built from the first which led to additional case studies about other narcs. It wasn’t long before I began to unravel the answer to a question my therapist no longer needed to answer because of the revelation that these studies gave me.

So for the next few blogs I will present the narcs that have been in and out of my life through a series of case studies. My intent is not to identify them in a way to embarrass them, shame them, nor ridicule them.(Though I doubt they’re even reading my blog.) My intent is to identify the character traits that make them narcissists. These case studies may also include the description of others involved who came as somewhat of a package deal at the time the narcissists were in my life. Nevertheless, these case studies are for the sole purpose of shedding light on what I’ve dealt with in terms of narcissistic abuse.

Furthermore, these case studies are also meant to show how similar even different narcissists are in their patterns of abuse. Unlike the traditional case studies, I will spare the use of technical psychology terms where I can. I just want to impart information about the narc traits, how I discovered the narc traits, what I did to dislodge myself from each narc (if that is presently the case), and how I’m recovering from the abuse of each narc.

This by far will be a great amount of content, but I’m up for the challenge of presenting because you just might be able to relate and connect your own personal life dots where a narc (or more) in your life is concerned. I must add, though, that these case studies may not come forth at a consecutive pace. As I’m sure you can understand, narcissists are exhausting people to be around, and having to bring to recall some of the experiences I’ve had with certain narcs is even exhausting to think about. For this reason, I will publish other blog topics in between cases.

Even still, there are a few narcs in my life either preying upon me at a distance, praying to find their way back into my life, or praying that their current tactics work to presently destroy my desire to continue to blog. Yet, for each case study, I will do my best to present as thoroughly as possible. I will also acknowledge my own issues related to these experiences and how those issues made my life more difficult in terms of each narc … and this includes the red flags I saw but overlooked and how my own enabling behavior accounted for a host of my problems.

Stay tuned …