Magical thinking is more than positive thinking. It is not simply daydreaming or “pipe dreaming” as some people might claim. According to Wikipedia, “Magical thinking is the attribution of causal or synchronistic relationships between actions and events which seemingly cannot be justified by reason and observation.” Further, Psychology Today notes evidence of Magical thinking springs up everywhere.
Believing in Santa Claus as a child or the essence of Christopher Kringle is one example of a healthy belief in fantastic thinking. That is not at all what psychologists and self-help advocates are discussing when mentioning the habit to enablers of Narcissists.
People who enable to rescue a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Anti-Social Personality Disorder, or who are guilty of co-dependent thinking are those most prone to demonstrating unhealthy levels of out there thinking. NPD and ASPD are untreatable because they are a personality TYPE, not an illness.
Anyone enabling a Cluster B person while claiming they are getting better is deceiving themselves. What’s actually happened over time is an abused person, hoping to elevate themselves somehow in status and prestige socially and in the eyes of a religious community (typically), has displayed egocentrism and willingness to help their abuser get better at ABUSING.
People with Stockholm Syndrome are simply confused. The mind breaks, trying to see the good in their abusers where very little to none ever exists.
But in a co-dependent relationship, one where the weaker social predator is being abused and dominated by a stronger aggressor but the person insists on remaining in a romantic relationship or enmeshed with a toxic family unit? That’s something entirely different.
People with magical thinking don’t just believe they can change their person. They are willing to allow everyone around them (including themselves) to be abused by a person who has not yet mastered the art of abusing in secret.
You see, Abusers who hide their dirty deeds can get away with hiding crap for years. The more they are enabled to hide sins like neglecting a child, having a sadistic streak, sexually abusing, financially abusing, etcetera, the more likely they are to have surrounded themselves with willing abuse victims who are addicted to trauma bonding.
When a magical thinker is biochemically hooked on the rush of adrenaline that being involved in a toxic relationship creates, they tend to give any excuse necessary to get their fix. That means lying to friends, family, and even themselves sometimes about why they remain enmeshed in a brutal, socially dysfunctional, and emotionally unstable relationship.
By applying magical thinking strategies — such as telling themselves and other people that the person who has most likely abused them for years (even decades perhaps) — is getting better with age or somehow changing when and if the Abuser in question has a personality disorder and is not actively engaged in Behavioral Management therapy.
A drug user or problem drinker who routinely pulls disappearing acts does not get better over time. What they get is lazier or better at hiding their addiction.
A person who sexually abuses a child, step-child, sibling, step-sibling, or grandchild does not get better over time. What they might lose is their hard-on and sex drive as they mature. Losing libido in no way makes them less leering, less inappropriate, or less DANGEROUS.
A woman who treats her biological children like shit then claims a right to parent her grandchildren does not become a better “mother” over time. She actually has become a WORSE mother for her willingness to steal the love, affection, and parenting rights of her own abused and arguably emotionally neglected son or daughter while placing them in a sibling rivalry type situation, trapped between their own toxic parent and what is sure to grow up to become a Conforming Abuser offspring.
A man who commits love fraud by lying to or pretending to love all the same things as their targeted female mark does not become more loving or honest over time. The longer they remain in the relationship with a man or woman they have deceived is more days on the linear calendar that they were successfully able to get away with lying, gaslighting, and conning.
People who are guilty of magical thinking do and say silly things like making excuses for why their abuser cheats, lies, verbally abuses them, commits financial infidelity, lies, threatens, bullies, intimidates, steals, does drugs, drinks, has sex with prostitutes, can’t stay out of the strip clubs, keeps lying about porn use or addiction, tells horrible lies and stories about former lovers or spouses who rejected them, etcetera.
Their claim is the person is either A) having a hard time B) is excused because they had something traumatic happen to them once or C) is not responsible for the life choices and actions as an adult because they had some form of difficult, emotionally impoverished, or abusive childhood.
The Dark Triad who enters the psychology field to con people into funding them a lavish lifestyle love targeting willing co-dependents. Magical Thinker is the person who claims you can CURE NPD… for the low, low cost of the Narcissist’s wallet and a misguided Enabler / VIctim’s sanity.
People desperate to meet their daydream fantasies about ideal romantic love or who long to be part of a loving family are the most likely people to fall for gaslighting ploys. Buy this book! Attend this Seminar! Surrender, wife, to fix yourself — while learning how to better support and enable your compulsively abusive, socially abusive, and borderline serial killer wannabe of a mate!
All are conned or duped into handing over dollars hand over fist to any therapist or guru who claims not only do they know how to fix the unfixable but, if you just make a few more months of payments to them, all your dreams and fantasies about living in a healthy relationship and being loved and treated well by your mate are bound to happen inevitably.
Alas, however, that’s not how Cluster B personality types work. They don’t come around, stop thinking in ways that are socially supportive rather than competitive, and what they are biologically unable to do is have enough neuroplasticity to change.
That means any therapist or guru who tells an abuse victim that if they do ABC their abuser is going to change or improve their behavior, they are gaslighting both the client and themselves if they truly believe their own snake oil sales game.
Resist the urge to embrace magical thinking about whether or not Cluster B people can be cured or ever change. What happens is most tend to mellow out over time due to old age and lethargy when it comes to the physical abuse and any violent sexual acts, but they get better at hiding situational abuse as the year’s progress.
By the time a victim starts talking about having magical thinking fantasies, chances are the victim in question has already (for quite some time) known they Abuser is just that… and they themselves find the cycle of Narcissistic Abuse exciting rather than what it actually is: namely, DRAINING.
For that reason, whether you yourself are hooked into the main vein of a Narcopath’s supply source chain or you are simply a trauma bonding fan, be mindful. If you have make-up sex with an abuser, the co-dependency, co-narcissistic HOOK is set in place.
Be smarter than that.
When feelings of I WISH start to arise, be sure you keep the faith and educate. Going low to no contact with a narcissistic or toxic thinker is the only way to physically disengage from the complex biological response magical thinking advocates have about their family members who are abusive or abuse enablers and/or their truly low caliber and abusive mates.
A healthy dose of reality check can come from reading all you can about psychology, personality types, and people with Cluster B personality disorders. If a person shows signs of being a normal person who is capable of self-reflection, honest apology, and changed behavior, that’s one thing. But if a person shows all or many of the traits of an abusive, aggressive, or socially competitive thinker?
It’s time to let the magical beast out of the cage and for Enablers themselves (as Dependent Personality Types) to get some help from a psychoanalyst themselves in order to determine the forensic psychology roots that leave them prone to abusing and neglecting their own children (or other loved ones) by exposing them to trauma, forcing residential housemates to live in an atmosphere or constant ambient abuse, and for wasting countless hours of other people’s time by asking them for help or advice on a subject that they truly have not interest or desire in taking.
A major clue to the psychology of enablers is realizing that while they themselves might not be prone to violence, they get off on the tension created by living their life exposed to the constant, lingering, pervasive threat of it. Confusing adrenal flush for healthy excitement, many Enablers mistake trauma bonding for true love, some sort of cosmic connection with a soul mate, or romantic love in a toxic relationship.
If they can tame the Beast and prove their fantasy is real — that they are involved in a relationship destined for the history books — it fuels their grandiose thinking. For a weak narcissist, hitching their rising star to a stronger social predator’s wagon in such a way that improves their status in the public eye while bolstering their own truly distorted sense of self-esteem appeals to many Abuse Enabler’s somatic nature.
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST is one example of a fairy tale where the damsel saves the Narcopath. Aspiring to live their own version of the fantasy is the goal of most hopeful enabling, Dependent Personality Disorder types, and believing that Belle is somehow going to love the Cluster B person so much that by the time he wakes up, their life will be perfect .
Since all Cluster B people tend to get worse — not “better” with age — the delusional thinking can really lead many men and women into hard times. Since love bombing, followed by grooming, followed by devaluing, followed by discard or totally treating enablers like slaves are the only eventual outcomes of such relationships, believing things like “when the kids move out” or “once he does not have any more job stress and can retire” will make an abusive person BETTER?
Seriously, readers. If you are riding the trumped-up magical thinking train on that one, please… for the sake of your friends and family having to listen to you attention seek constantly using your mate or toxic family member’s treatment of you to elicit unearned sympathy while falsely claiming victimization?
Knock that shit off. If you need someone to tell you enabling the abuse of yourself and others, followed by you attention-seeking while pretending you were not willingly there and actively participating?
Once you KNOW someone lies… one time lying = exit gate.
Once you KNOW someone is prone to making ad hominem attacks, name-calling, and being verbally abusive?
Once you SUSPECT someone of gaslighting…
Once you CATCH someone cheating, flirting, or “fishing”…
The key term is ONCE.
If a person abuses you ONCE, disengage. If you stay longer, regardless of the good intentions of your reason, if the person is Cluster B there absolutely will be some sort of progressive, downward spiraling repeat performance inevitably.
Consider yourself warned. If you have read this post, consider yourself from this moment forward being held to a higher standard karmically.
A book link is presented below that can help co-dependents stay involved with abusive people. Written by Sam Vaknin, a diagnosed Narcissist with Psychopath traits in his personality and his wife, the reflection offers candid and specific grooming and abuse enabling advice.
