Time to flee from all the toxic people in our lives. No human being deserves to be subjected to bullying, abuse, control, gaslighting, lying, manipulating, stalking, and all the sick and twisted things that Narcissists do.
In fact, based on my 51 years of life experience, 26 of which I spent as a highly vulnerable person with Bipolar Disorder, there are a significant number of “law-abiding” members of our society who are simply human predators.
Malignant Narcissists, Sociopaths, and, in general, those with severe and incorrigible personality disorders (and who consistently and willfully harm others) are often the very people who climb to the tops of our social, political, religious, and business hierarchies. Where they can appear “benign,” yet hurt large numbers of people.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of our mentally ill brothers and sisters, who are much more likely to harm themselves rather than others, are languishing without treatment in jails and prisons for crimes that did relatively little damage to society or other people:
“Since the start of deinstitutionalization, jail populations have increased exponentially. In 1950, American jails held about 86,500 people. By 1983 there were more than 223,500 inmates. In 2016, the last year for which data is available, the Bureau of Justice Statistics counted more than 740,700, slightly down from the peak of 785,500 in 2008.
The bureau estimates that 44 percent of jail inmates have been told by a mental health professional that they have a mental disorder. More than a quarter of the jail population – roughly 186,000 people – are believed to be in serious psychological distress.”
For now, I use all the tools at my disposal to protect myself and those I love from human predators, including keeping a healthy distance.
May we one day flip the script, free our brothers and sisters to get them into Recovery, and lock up the monsters.
INSPIRATION AND EMOTIONAL COURAGE: MENTAL ILLNESS, ADDICTION, AND RECOVERY 