The Story Was Not Mine

Someone had been telling my story. I just didn't know it.

Healing takes time after leaving a coercive, narcissistic dynamic.

My experience has been that my nervous system allows me to see things, to connect the dots slowly — in micro-doses, if you will. I had had daily onslaughts  that continued for months that compounded. My body’s intelligence knows when to release things so I could untangle what had happened at a much more reasonable pace.

Months after leaving people said they were worried about me.

I did not understand.

They did not seem worried directly after I escaped.

So why now?

I finally had the curtain part so I could see things more clearly.

Yet. I didn’t know how to label it, so I put this prompt in AI:

is there a word or idea for when the narc smears the victim to a secondary victim who swallows it and believes it to be true?

I was introduced to a whole new language subset.

[As disclosure, this section I will have copy/paste portions of the AI response. The experiences I write about are my own.]

Yes. There are a few concepts that get at this, but I think “smear campaign by proxy” or “triangulated smear” may be closest to what you're describing.

The dynamic is:

Narcissistic abuser → smear narrative → secondary victim → secondary victim accepts the narrative as truth → secondary victim acts on it, often against the original victim.

I believe this is what happened to me. It just took a few months for someone to say something odd and then another several weeks of me trying to figure out why she’d say what she’d said ….

Unless you’re very new to the world of trying to figure out the whole horrid dance inside the narcissistic abusive situation, you’ll have heard of “flying monkeys.” ~ I literally searched something like “what does the term flying monkeys mean in the context of narcissism.” And it referenced The Wizard of Oz. So any curious, dedicated student (me) would watch the movie….from that lens.

Flying monkeys refers to someone who is being puppeteered by the abuser himself. They don’t necessarily want their hands dirty ALL the time, so they have minions, or “flying monkeys,” who knowingly or unknowingly carry out their agenda.

The broadest term is Triangulation. The abuser recruits a third party into the conflict, often by feeding them a distorted narrative.

Smear by proxy. When the abuser gets someone else to carry out the smear or enforce the consequences.

Clarity, at least for me, is helpful. What we are subjected to is oftentimes so bazaar, it’s surreal there are actually terms or concepts to go along with our experiences. Whatever your situation is as the victim, here is the chain of what happens.

Abuser creates the narrative → secondary person believes the narrative → secondary person treats the victim according to the narrative → victim is now harmed by someone who believes they are responding appropriately.

That's a particularly nasty form of triangulation because the secondary person doesn't necessarily experience themselves as participating in abuse. They believe they are responding to the “truth.”

And this, at least for me, is extremely difficult to stomach, especially when it’s a family member or someone you trusted.

The inner conflict: intellectually you understand they have been abused themselves, had their life-force compromised, and have been living inside a dark, toxic environment with constant peppering of mistruths.

You understand that.

And.

You still feel betrayed and wonder how someone intelligent and educated, someone who knows you, can believe what they’re being told and behave accordingly, seemingly leaving their critical thinking skills far out of reach. And even more perplexing, they don’t even speak with you about it, they buy it, hook, line and sinker.

If you weren’t conflicted about this, I’d be concerned.

Much later I finally understood why they were worried about me… But they were not seeing me through my true lived experience. They were seeing me through a story.

And the story was not mine.

The story was a fabrication by proxy.

If you’re a victim of narcissistic abuse, or are supporting someone you care about through the abuse, both the intellectual understanding and the feelings of betrayal are real.

You’ll need to learn to hold both.

Because they are both true.