by Jocelyn Davis
Every day for two years after I was half-fired from my executive position at a consulting firm, I spent a good chunk of time thinking about my ex-bosses Jim and Alex.
I say “half-fired” because I’d tried to quit. On January 30, 2013, at 7 am my time, I sent a very professional resignation letter to Alex, my immediate manager. He asked me to dial into our regularly scheduled 9 am call, which I duly did, expecting a stiff-but-cordial farewell, only to find myself on the line with Alex, CEO Jim, and a frosty-voiced lawyer named Summer. The two men stayed silent throughout the 10 minutes it took for Summer to inform me that my polite offer to stay on for a month to ensure a smooth transition was rejected, because, as of that moment, my services were no longer required.
“This was to have been a termination call,” Summer said, biting off each word like a hangnail.
Translation: “You can’t resign, we’re firing you.”
If you think they were colossally stupid to respond to the voluntary resignation of a 49-year-old, 23-year-tenured employee whom they perceived as problematic with, “Ackshully we’re terminating you without severance”—all I can say is, bullies aren’t always smart. Indeed, these particular bullies went on to waste more company time and resources slapping me with frivolous legal threats, not because I was threatening them, but because … well, I’m still not sure why. I guess my existence made them angry. Or scared.
If you’re curious to know more about that drama, check out this week’s excerpt from my book The Art of Quiet Influence. For now, suffice to say I endured many months of bullying by a narcissist, a sociopath, and their legal flying monkeys. And, although I’d checked all the boxes for self-protection—documented the abuse, walked away, lawyered up, stood my ground, sought therapy, etcetera—I was haunted.
For two full years afterward, as I walked the dog, ran errands, or did anything that allowed me head space to muse, I thought about my dementors: sometimes about Alex (the sociopath), but mostly about Jim (the narcissist). I thought about what I’d say to Jim if I ever ran into him again. I thought about what I might have done differently to avoid his wrath. I dreamed up aggressive revenge scenarios and heartwarming reconciliation scenarios. Most puzzling (or maybe not puzzling, since I’m a writer), I spent hours upon hours trying to come up with the exact right words to capture the essence of Jim’s bad character. Would he ever hear the words? Obviously not. But I wanted those words. I wanted to hone them to perfection, then etch them in gold on a black stone tablet that would float, magically, in the sky over his head until the day he died.
Part of me knew these mental antics were unproductive at best, crazy at worst. I really wanted to stop thinking about my dementor. But I couldn’t.
Dr. Ramani Durvasula is an expert on narcissistic abuse. In this video, she explores the “overlooked mental health problem” of survivor rumination. It’s the No. 1 issue raised by her clients; whether the abuse is ongoing or happened in the past, they want to know how to stop thinking about it. This type of rumination isn’t mere obsession, says Dr. Ramani. Rather, the survivor is trying to do three things:
Validate that they’re not exaggerating, that the abuse really was as bad as it felt.
Strategize how to avoid similar pain in the future.
Grieve the loss of a relationship they thought was one thing but turned out to be another.
It helps if I look at my situation in light of these three insights. First, validation: I was trying to reassure myself that I wasn’t making it up, that the emotional damage from the workplace abuse and subsequent legal abuse was real and serious. Second, strategy: I was trying to analyze Jim’s character and modus operandi so that, when I next encountered bullies like him, I could spot them earlier and take better defensive maneuvers. Third, grief: I was mourning the loss of the relationship I’d had with Jim.
That last one might seem odd. Why would anyone grieve a former relationship with a narcissistically abusive uber-boss? But that former relationship is why I ruminated mostly about Jim, not Alex. With Alex, there never was a bond; I’d pegged him as a sociopath almost as soon as I met him. It still disturbs me that he rose to a leadership position despite being totally unqualified, fooling a bunch of people (including Jim) along the way. My simple feeling at the time, however, was gratitude at having escaped his sphere of influence.
Jim, on the other hand: while in hindsight I could see his narcissistic asshattery, I had once respected him—just as he had respected me. We worked well together. I saw him as affable, straightforward, tough but fair. When business was good, he could even be charming. One colleague, caught up in the same mess and flat-out terminated (no half-firing for her) on the same day I was, later remarked: “The thing that kills me is I liked Jim. I keep trying to understand how my judgment could have been so off. What does that say about me?”
Dementor Jim haunted us both.
Dr. Ramani reviews four pieces of standard psychological advice for dealing with unproductive rumination: 1) Distract yourself. 2) Avoid triggers. 3) Practice mindfulness. 4) Set a “worry timer” and let yourself brood. She doesn’t think much of the first two tactics; they don’t allow for the “unique confusion that survivors of narcissistic abuse feel.” She’s OK with the last two: mindfulness techniques help you to be fully present in the moment, she says, and although the worry timer isn’t for everyone, finding a friend, family member, or (better yet) professional therapist who’ll give you permission to talk about your distress, as often and long as necessary, helps you to “get it all out.”
I guess it’s no surprise that a therapist thinks therapy is the answer. In my view, though, Dr. Ramani is missing a critical reason why we ruminate.
More than validation, more than strategy, more than grief, rumination in the wake of narcissistic abuse is an attempt to restore justice: not by punishing the offender, but by telling the story again and again—and again!—in the hope that one day, everyone will hear it, see it, and care about it the same way you do. “Who tells your story?” asks the closing number of the musical Hamilton. Eliza Hamilton, devastated by her husband’s attempts to justify his public infidelity, burns his letters as she sings, “I’m erasing myself from the narrative.” The survivor of cruel injustice thinks, If I can make the world accept my version of the story, or at least remove myself from the bully’s version, then justice will be served in some sense even if the bully is never held accountable.
Alas, in most cases of narcissistic injustice, we do not have narrative control. The dementor will never see the facts as you do. Your friends will never fully grasp how bad the situation was or why it hit you so hard. Casual observers probably won’t have a clue what happened and certainly won’t care.
Even you (your rational mind) will never truly get why you (your heart and soul) feel so battered. Your mind knows you’ve sustained a moral injury, that you’ve been punched in the emotional gut, and it wants to help. So it does what it does best: It thinks. It talks. It tries to fix. But an injury such as this can’t be fixed, only healed. And your fix-it mind (Buddhists call it the monkey mind) isn’t the healer; your Core Self is.
Here are three ways to tap into your Core Self, heal the wounds, and stop the haunting.
Let your mind busy itself with rumination. It’s awfully good at it, so enjoy the show! Don’t set a worry timer. Simply have fun with the revenge fantasies, the do-over scenarios, the brilliant psychological analyses, the reconciliation scenes, the smackdowns, and tell-offs. If you can share them with a friend or therapist, great. If you can write them down or set them to music, even better. Know that these mental shenanigans are just your monkey mind doing its thing, and don’t take them too seriously.
The cliché is true: living well is the best revenge. More importantly, living well feeds your Core Self. So, whatever living well looks like for you, do more of that. Hang out with family and friends. Make soup. Play golf. Go mountain biking, train for a 10k, dance or sing with the kids. Start a business. Get a new job and kick ass. Join the PTA and organize the rummage sale. Watch trashy TV. Volunteer at the animal shelter. Work in the garden. Build things. Read things. Write things. Doesn’t matter what it is; if it feels like home, do a lot of it.
Trust, wait, sleep. Here’s another mostly true cliché: time heals all wounds. Trust that your Core Self knows how to heal you, even if it isn’t able to explain the process to your rational mind. Wait in the faith that your Core Self will get you through the valley of shadows, even if it doesn’t know your ETA. And one more thing: prioritize sleep above all, because sleep is when your Core Self is in full charge and healing can ramp up.
It took me several years, several books, and a whole lot of sleeps to shake off the hauntings of my workplace bullies. Dementors can be scarily persistent! But in the end, they are mere wraiths: full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Jocelyn Davis writes about leadership, history, and mental health. Her latest book is Ticket to Madland, a memoir of mental illness.
Learn more at JocelynRDavis.com.