My Story of Narcissistic Abuse and Workplace Retaliation by Mark

I finally understand what happened to me!

I not just gained clarity about what I experienced, I understand what happened to me, and I experience enormous validation from Annette's words about double abuse, as I experienced that like nobody's business. God bless her heart for identifying and speaking up about this issue, as this form of abuse made it impossible for me to even address the original abuse, because the denial and obfuscation that came along with it afterwards compounded the abuse, making it deeper and more difficult for me to sift through. No one I sought help from in my situation was willing to help me in any way at all.

I experienced what I did at work. 

I was the victim of emotional and psychological abuse by a woman in a position of power over me. I don't know this person's exact psychopathology, but her behavior towards me was consistent with narcissistic abuse. Her behavior was highly covert, this person tailored what she was doing to remain out of sight and hidden behind plausible deniability. And as I was to learn much too late, her behavior was entirely intentional. It's what she wanted to do. 

She did end up screwing up really bad though, and for this, I did my best to hold her accountable. I wasn't very successful at this for the reasons you will soon read.

I experienced the cycle of narcissistic abuse (love bombing, devaluation, extreme passive aggressiveness, stonewalling, lying, gaslighting, triangulating, hoovering, and other forms of emotional abuse) that escalated into attempted career sabotage via a threat she made to me.

I reported the threat to this individual's superior and was not supported. In fact, this individual stood behind the abuser, and protected her. The needs of the abusive individual were deemed more important than mine, and I was left to my own devices, which were nothing. 

I received no support whatsoever during the entire situation. No one in management or Human Resources ever spoke to me about what I experienced, except for the site manager who told me in no certain terms to stop talking about what happened to me. She was more concerned about this individual's well being than mine. 

The only support I got was from a couple co-workers who told me "we know what happened to you and we support you, but don't tell anybody we told you that because we don't want to get in trouble for it".

I asked to be moved to a site away from this individual but the manager refused. She stuck us back together about a year later and it naturally blew up again within about five minutes. The manager started in on me, accusing me of insubordination. I told her I had told her I wanted out of that worksite when I reported the abuse the year prior and wanted it now. 

As I worked in a unionized environment, I made a formal grievance against this person and demanded the initial allegation be formally investigated. Why they were not already investigated I never got any clear rationale for.

The company hired a third party to undertake the investigation and after a 30 minute call, the investigator told me what this person did to me was the most blatant case of bullying / harassment (what this person's behavior was termed at the time) she had ever heard, and after speaking with the accused, would recommend I be moved to a different worksite.

That's what she said, simple as that.

But that's not how it worked out. 

I can't speak as to the motivation of all the people at that company who started in on me with more emotional and psychological abuse following my site departure, all I can say is that I clearly offended people in management by holding this person accountable, and I needed to be punished. 

The abuse I experienced from these people who chose to participate in my take down was both covert and overt, involving in one case a vague threat made to me that "I wasn't going to like working in the office" I was being assigned to next, to more covert forms of passive aggressive behavior meant to convey to me the message that I wasn't wanted there and should leave.

I experienced being shamed for being the victim of abuse at work, being othered for it, being blamed for it, being invalidated, devalued and dehumanized, all for being abused. 

I experienced smearing via gossip mongering, defamation, character assassination, and culminating in what can only be characterized as a constructive dismissal. 

My work life was made so awful by so many people I was ultimately forced to choose between being psychologically and emotionally safe and having an income. Leaving, in the end, was not a difficult decision for me.

If I had been supported to deal with the initial abuse concerns then and there, I don't think I would be here doing this. Because the company became so abusive to me following the disclosure, it compounded what I was going through and made it exponentially worse to deal with.

I even went to a local workplace bullying advocate to try to get help for myself on this issue. There was none to be had there either. This person knew the site manager personally and I expressed my concerns about this person supporting the abuser and not supporting me. She told me categorically there was no way this happened, "as I know her and she'd NEVER do THAT." (She did.) She asked me to write up a summary of my experiences, which I did and provided to her. 

Not only did I never get a response, I never heard from her again.

I was shuffled between a variety of worksites – I learned this is a common event in constructive dismissal cases – and at the last worksite I experienced full-on mobbing from a band of colleagues. 

Mentally and psychologically I was finished. I became so depressed I couldn't get out of bed. I had registered at a local university for a post degree program and had to drop out as a result. I ended up suicidal and in a local psychiatric ward.

I registered a formal complaint of misconduct against the initial abuser with her professional governing body. Somehow the narrative got flipped and I was told it was my fault, despite them not even seeking out the third party investigation that was completed that supported everything I said. As I read it, I was equal parts disgusted and sick to my stomach. It was clear it had already been decided to whitewash this and have me tossed under the bus once again, as if I hadn't been run over enough times by that point. The investigation as I read it was a complete joke, it had more holes in it than a sieve. I wrote an entire page of questions they failed to answer and or follow up on. 

I was so emotionally dysregulated by this point due the endless fighting with zero support I lost it on these guys. I went up one side of them and down the other three or four times in rapid succession. No doubt this reaction was used against me to blame me, discredit me, shame me, and pathologize me. 

I was so done with being failed yet again the next set of documents they sent over I walked over to a nearby dumpster and flung it in, unopened. I never heard from them again. 

I rode out my medical leave but was refused extension by the insurance company as in their words to me: we don’t deny what you went through there, we just don't cover that.

I resigned the next week as it was clear beyond the shadow of a doubt that the employers were both unable and unwilling to provide me with an emotionally and psychologically safe worksite free from the abuse I had experienced during the last 6 years I spent there. 

I got no help, I got no support. In my corner, there was not even one. 

I was given the message that I was weak and a loser because I was abused by a woman. So, I did the only thing I knew how to do, and that was stuff it and do my best to move on with my life, which I did to the best of my ability. 

If any psychologist wants to understand why men stuff and don't deal with feelings/traumas/issues in their lives, I would hope that they read my story as many times as they need to until the answer magically pops out at them. 

For a number of reasons the therapy industry today is so biased against men, I don't just believe it can't help those of us who legitimately need help, I believe, from my own experience, it largely doesn't want to help those of us who legitimately need help.

I would even go as far as to say as an industry it's totally fine with all of us suffering alone without support because in today's extremely polarized sociocultural milieu, the only bad people on planet earth who apparently need to change are men. The last time I checked, things like personal failures and weaknesses, mistakes, abuse and crime are all products of human nature, and are not the exclusive responsibility of one specific gender.

I lost all of the friends I had at that time in my life, work ones due to them disappearing from my life as a result of whatever smear campaign story they heard about me, or me disappearing from theirs because I was just done being failed by others. So naturally I isolated, and when I reached the point of self forgiveness, I began to see that isolating was a completely logical and sensible response to what I went through.

For a spell I think I could have been accurately characterized as a misanthrope, but I emerged out of that as that's not who I really was. Because I had experienced so much nasty judgment, I became hypervigilant and suspicious of intent whenever people would ask me how I was. Why would I talk about how I felt at all, or ask for help from anybody? All I ever got was judgment, condescension, patronizing remarks, unwanted advice, toxic positivity, or pure, unadulterated apathy. So in my mind the question was why, why would I ever tell you anything about myself?

So I continued to stuff and it just sat there fallow for literally years while I tried to move forward with my life with these invisible injuries unseen and unacknowledged by anyone apart from myself.

I didn't have another full time job until more than a year later. I spent most days staring at the wall in a daze. Problems compounded and began to morph. I found some book in a store around that time that had a title that spoke immediately to what I was experiencing - the title was, or something close to this, "Now That I Am No Longer Employed, Who Am I?" I bought it and propped it up against my TV. I would stare at it for hours, just letting that question spin in my mind.

Despite near incapacity, I had a new mountain to climb: having to start making plans for a new career despite still actively recovering from having my self esteem and self confidence shredded.

It was very difficult and there were a few false starts and plans that did not work for various reasons. I did find one through sheer fluke of circumstance via self employment that didn't just work, but gave me a sense of pride and accomplishment. The fact that I wasn't going to treat myself like a piece of garbage was an added bonus to the self employment experience.

As we learn in this process, the toxic behavior of abusive people often times doesn't stop even when relationships end and abuse victims move on with their lives. I ended up being cyberstalked by the initial abuser for six years after I quit until the last time - I told the company multiple times she was doing this - when I advised the company's HR department and they finally acted. I don't know what they did exactly, but the message clearly got through as I never heard from the initial abuser again.

I was also being stalked by another individual from the company that I reported at the same time, and while he was able to stay away from me for a time, he resumed stalking me in public three years later. He last made an attempt to contact me last year when he left an insulting note on my car windshield at a local establishment while I was inside.

He hasn't come back since, but knowing how this individual operates, I know he will, it's just a matter of time.

It has taken me ten years to come to a place where I feel capable of dealing with this stuff. In this time I had many bad experiences with therapists. Many duds, many people who had checked out of their job years before and were just there for the regular paycheck, and a couple really atrocious ones.

I had one who thought she was some kind of a self aware Buddhist spiritual superstar and in the middle of me sharing some deeply personal story, she started laughing.

Apparently to some belief systems other people's intimate pain is, in actuality, hilarious.

There were plenty more of these, but I didn't completely give up on the profession entirely. I had heard, ironically from something the initial abuser had told me years earlier, that EMDR was effective in treatment of past trauma experiences, so I decided to give it a try.

The first one I went to I found it absolutely did work, but I ended therapy with that person as it was a bad fit.

The next one I went to was fresh right out of school and when we hit a snag during the second session, she didn't know what to do so I left her and searched for another.

The next person I saw was located far from where I am in a smaller midwestern city, known for agriculture, quiet, rural Christian values, and their very well known football team. Something said, take a gamble on this woman. So I did.

I was shocked to have found an expert in narcissistic abuse in that city, and she was. We started EMDR and hit the same snag immediately. The difference was this time she knew what to do. She told me the block, the inability to access feelings related to the work abuse, had traumatized me so significantly my mind would not let me go there. She said the block existed to protect me as I wasn't ready yet to process what had happened then. So we continued doing other work, and several months later, I had to stop therapy with this person as I could no longer afford it. Due to my financial situation, I still can't afford therapy, so I am forced to piecemeal something together based on what I can find on the internet. .

I'm at a point where I don't believe I need any more therapy to address these issues. I've come so far on my own finding various resources like The MEND Project to help me. I don't feel I need to pay someone $200 an hour to help me do the same.

Apart from The MEND Project, I am getting a lot from Jordan Peterson's videos on narcissistic abuse on YouTube, how he talks about this issue really registers with me. I sit for hours and write down what he says and re-read it afterwards. He understands this form of abuse profoundly and has not just helped me understand what the initial abuser saw in me that enabled her to abuse me in the extremely covert ways that she did, but what I need to address in myself to ensure I don't go through an experience like that again.

I want to thank Annette again for her work on bringing Double Abuse to light, it was the first time I have felt validated hearing her talk about how awfully she was treated when she came forward with her abuse allegations.

Personally I was made to feel like I was the problem for experiencing abuse, and double abuse I believe needs to be reckoned with on a governmental level via legislation. It should legally be considered abuse and be added to the criminal code. So should narcissistic abuse, even though society is not ready for it I believe people that betray others in this incredibly damaging and destructive way need a criminal record as a consequence for their behavior.