The Nature of Evil and NPD Families

Ever read this book?

This book saved my life when I was around the age of 18-19 and read it. It was a book that impacted my life greatly and snatched me from the abyss, my family had set me upon the edge of. There are scapegoats who succumb to soul murder.  I could have been one of them. They become at one with their abusers via Stockholm Syndrome or are destroyed due to mental illness and even suicide in the worse cases.

That was my first inclination it was THEM [who was the problem] and not ME and a short time before I made my first escape.

I don't agree with Peck on everything.  I am a born again Christian [John 3:7], yes the type that believes in bible prophecy and more but he is definitely right about many qualities of evil. He cracks the nature of evil and how it is a false face, a mask, a sheep in wolves clothing.

Those who hate the light love the darkness and they are the enemies of those who seek after truth and goodness in this world. Those who live in the lie, do not want truth. They hate truth-tellers who tend to be the ones scapegoated in the family. They twist things to their own ends. They do operate in shadows with a smile on their face in public while stabbing people they desire to in the back. They do turn others to evil except for those of us who escape.

Psalm 68:6King James Version (KJV)
⁶ God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains: but the rebellious dwell in a dry land.

Notice the above verse says God bringeth out those which are bound with chains. Many ACONs understand the concept of being bound with chains, mentally and even physically. Going NC is having the chains smashed. My own chains to these wicked people simply lasted too long. Blinded by the messages in society to "love your family" even as my stomach ached around them, I worked too hard, too long going to empty dry evil wells. Inside my soul, I felt the coldness and darkness around them and knew something was very wrong.

 There are spiritual components to narcissistic abuse. I know it altered my life spiritually and otherwise. The spiritual battle between good and evil are happening for many of us.  I believe there are families where evil rules, and I came out of one. At times I have struggled with worrying I am evil just for coming from this family but have taken this to God in prayer. We all have faults but there is a big differences between a narcissist/sociopath and a well intentioned person with a conscience that knows right from wrong.  Does this mean every member is evil? Every human being has their our own wickedness to struggle with but most malignant narcissists have made a choice for evil and infested our families with it. Emotions, empathy, nostalgia, goodness, closeness, softness are stamped out by their sociopathic feet and focus on appearances.

Growing up, my parents would slap me in the face screaming, "You are too sensitive!". All feelings were hated except for anger, even joy and laughter was met with suspicion and jealousy. They tried to train me to be evil telling me I needed to buck up, shut up and go with the system. My parents both lived in spiritual darkness and were/are slaves to the system. My father would instruct me in the ways of "getting over". They did not want me close to others, and did not want me to show empathy.  I refused which made them angrier and angrier and their hate of me grew. In other words, my desire to be a "good" person even as I was in my period of religious seeking and desiring morality and idealistic goals for my life was something they desired to thwart. This is the greatest way any parent could fail.

 Among narcissists and sociopaths, any love is seen as "weakness". This message was conveyed to me constantly. Both parents hated any idealism, altruism, any love of art, any desire for greater things, later my religious faith would be under attack. One main reason I am separate from most of my relatives is covered in scripture too where Jesus warns about division coming within families.

Luke 12:53
The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.

In other words I was surrounded by stone cold brutes who rejected and spit on everything I held dear. Mentioning God despite their feigned appearances of piety would sooner earn one a smack then any deep conversations. Those simply did not exist.

My father told me, there was no such thing as real friends. How sad. He would tell me how he only trusted my mother [she betrayed him massively behind the scenes] and there were no friends who would have his back. Looking back on this comment, I am sure she set things up that way for him.  Friends may have told the truth to my father or realized the degree of control he was under by his wife.  My father would tell me I was "too weak" and needed my personality to change to succeed in the world. Imagine an Aspie under those pressures.  I remember laughing around my friends accidentally in front of my parents and being punished for it where they would make fun of the very fact I was laughing! Even as I went NC last year, both my NM and GC sister would complain about the very fact I had friends.

Cockroaches flee when the light gets turned on them. Malignant narcissists fight to shut you up.  They don't want you talking. This is the reason for the years of campaigns to devalue and silence those who speak the truth. They plug the ears of those around you. There is no goodness where there is no truth. Their hatred for the truth is one reason they have turned on you!

When did I first suspect my family was evil? Very young. Get hit enough times, get locked in your room for hours and hours or have your hair pulled out by it's roots or smacked into your brother's head on purpose where your father grabs your head and knocks it hard into your brothers, you know you are not surrounded by kindness.  I knew even young, I was lied to all the time. I knew something was very wrong with my parents very early on. Other mothers soothed, smiled and hugged their children. They did not gaze upon their daughters with absolute disgust. [mine only had disdain for me even during my thinner years.] They did not push them into their bedroom when disgusted and lock the door leaving them in there for hours. They did not laugh to friends about leaving their baby for hours in a crib unattended, or about how one way-ward baby sitter used the door-locks on the bedroom room doors of her children all weekend while she partied with her boyfriend. I looked at  parents on TV shows like on The Brady Bunch, Little House on the Prairie, and Happy Days and noticed they were totally different.  While they corrected their children at times, showed them love, did not hit them and considered them as fellow human beings. My Mom of choice was Carol Brady and Dad of choice was Pa Ingalls [Michael Landon]. I knew TV parented me probably more then my parents did.

When I was an 18, I faced the facts that things had gotten even more sick. I insisted on going away to college but sadly still trapped in the place of hoping one day success and more would bring love from my parents right before I made my first no contact.. Evil seemed to grow even worse in my family.  My father had literal fistfights with my brother in the hallways of our 6 bedroom suburban house next to the country club. My GC sister while always the favorite changed massively in her teens. The day she stabbed a large serving fork into the wall going after my brother in full bore rage, told me she was modeling herself after my parents. What caused this fight? It had to do with him messing up the VCR for the taping of her and my mother's favorite TV show-General Hospital which they still watch 30 years down the road every day. She started screaming at me and my brother all the time to clean and be neater. She desired to model herself like my mother and basically became her and this worsened as we all aged. Instead of breaking away from my mother, she became more closely enmeshed. She never had a teenage rebellion but walked in footsteps laid out by my mother and part of that process was the closing down of her conscience and spirit. Later I will talk more about thralldom in this article but she definitely was in thrall to my mother as well. She had no problem just flat out lying. One high school friend, upon seeing a picture of my sister, was in shock, "That doesn't look like her at all!". Evil changes the countenance, and my sister's now dark eyes and clouded pinched face reveal her insides.

The spiritual changing of my sister is one thing I am not sure I will ever be able to get over. Why you may ask? I remember when she loved me as a child and I her despite my mother's evil influences. I still have letters we wrote each other. That person is no longer here. I seriously feel like someone who had a sister die and in many ways I am.  This is something evil can do. When someone turns away from the light multiple times it shows, it vanquishes their very soul. Yes I would go so far to say that is exactly what happened. The light in the eyes switches off.

I want my nieces and nephews to be good people, but with her as an example I am deeply worried. To be frank, she has gotten so bad, I was getting the willies around her in our last conversations.

With the side relatives, such as Aunt Confused living with us from time to time and Aunt Scapegoat even once, I was surrounded by lies, denial, substance abuse, overt mental illness and cloying, scrapping and bowing sickening subservience to narcissists. Most of the relatives were sick too and succumbed to evil. Even that cousin who used threatening language on me a few weeks ago would never dare to challenge a family narcissist in the same fashion, she saw me as a "safe target".  Her mother was on the pedestal never to be questioned.  One ironic thing was how she screamed at me for having worked so hard all her life. She is one scapegoat that took on her donkey load and more at the behest of the narcissists, don't blame me for that one! That was one way things worked too, they would never speak out against a narcissist even if angry. Cowardice RULES among the evil. Neither aunt ever defended me to the narcissists but would help them out every step of the way. The wicked ensured that my family life was run like a Gestapo office with clicking heels, betrayals and lies around every corner and boot-lickers making it tough for everyone.

Peck writes:

"It is my experience that evil seems to run in families. ^{p 80} If evil were easy to recognize, identify and manage, there would be no need for this book. But the fact of the matter is that it is the most difficult of all things with which to cope. ^{p 130} [Evil] will contaminate or otherwise destroy a person who remains too long in its presence. ^{p 65}


Evil does run in families. Both sides of mine are massively infected. One thing about the wicked is yes they will contaminate others, they will turn others toward evil. I saw the influence on my father from my mother. She would get others to team up with her to destroy others. You were either on her team and one of her choice people or someone she went after. She would flatter those she wanted to please--people more on the sidelines not privy to all her evil deeds and would gang up people against those she hated. I obviously saw her in action when it came to my brother's ex-wife. My mother had this way of bonding with other people over a "hate-fest" of another soul, where they would clamor to join her in trashing the target so she would like them. Hours and Hours of conversation flowed upon the negative attributes of her focused on scapegoat of the hour. I saw this time and time again. I know I was a target too. Otherwise how did I lose so many within my family?

I think about the evil I witnessed, being abandoned myself in the big city, the abuse, cruelties and medical neglect. I even have thought about how most people with severe disabilities are not thrown away by their families like yesterday's trash, but treated with kindness and mercy. I told one friend that in a support group, sometimes it got painful watching parents who were even there for their adult children struggling with the challenge of depression. These were families where the people loved each other and not where narcissists were out to destroy someone. Even the evil I know others have faced, Aunt Scapegoat and Aunt Confused, disturbs me to this day. The lies, and more measure up to the ceiling.

I had one odd moment of doing some recent family research in an old newspaper online was finding out even my father's mother- my paternal grandmother, was sued by one woman she had got committed to the insane asylum back in the 1950s for $25,000. This woman claimed my grandmother along with a friend gave false testimony so she would get tossed in the loony bin. Let's just say that I now highly suspect a grandmother who died when I was the age of one, was evil too.   The strain of coldness and cruelty seems to go very far back. So wonder my father was ready to commit his own sister.

My mother's constant sneers and mockery of others was frightening. I would look at other children with their parents and feel something die inside, knowing they were loved and I was not. Like the son Roger in the book, who Peck writes about whose parents never take his feelings into account, my mother made the choice to be insensitive.  My father was no better. His violent rages showed his black heart.

[Evil is] the exercise of political power--that is, the imposition of one's will upon others by overt or covert coercion--in order to avoid...spiritual growth...Because their willfulness is so extraordinary--and always accompanied by a lust for power--I suspect that the evil are more likely than most to politically aggrandize themselves.....There is a remarkable power in the manner in which they attempt to control others.^{p 78}
[In describing one of his patients, Peck says] Charlene's desire to make a conquest of me....to utterly control our relationship, knew no bounds. It seemed to be a desire for power pure
ly for its own sake. ^{p 176} She wanted the reigns in her hands every moment. ^{p 158}

One thing about my father is while he was a narcissist too, he was in thrall to my mother, same as Hartley the milquetoast weak husband to Sarah in "People of the Lie." Notice how Hartley did Sarah's bidding at every step even as she insulted him emasculated him and called him nothing. He reacted with depression but still never challenged her. My mother and father screamed and yelled at each other without fail, with my mother making constant demands of my father, leaving him no energy for anyone else but in the end whatever she said went. I can't even recall one time where he made a stand against her or didn't submit to her wishes. This is true for my entire family come to think of it. I am the only one who has ever "rebelled".

His "thralldom" to my mother allowed him to be led by the nose into even worse behavior. Peck goes into thralldom of evil in this book and says that Hartley was in thrall to Sarah. Charlene while more of a borderline type sociopath also too expected complete control in any relationship.

 My father would have his rare moments were it seemed he wanted to change to be a better person but it vaporized under her spell. There were times he tried to get close to me, but she would shut it down in an instant. She had a way of goading him on and having him erase all his vestiges of kindness encouraging meaner and colder behavior. To please her, he chose wickedness. He put her on a pedestal treating his own children like objects but he made this choice to submit to evil.

 One aspect of evil, and one reason the Bible warns to depart from the wicked, is they are indeed a bad influence. Bad company corrupts good manners. If you are around people who are mean, you can become meaner yourself.  He chose his wicked behavior in the end and joined her in malignant narc-hood. As my father literally beat on my brother ripping and tearing his hair out and knocking him about for getting Cs instead of As on his report card, there was no doubt in my mind he was evil as well.  His mother never tried to protect him or me either for that matter. No normal person would watch their child get beaten and sit there idly by. Most of the time she complained and tattled on us children to earn his rage. Living with both screaming, screeching, hitting, mean people, I knew they were evil very early on. I was scared of both my parents quite actively by the age of 5. They terrorized me.

Peck is right that the wicked desire power above all else. They don't want your love, kindness, or friendship. They don't want to share the inside of their heart with you or anyone else. They want your submission. I almost went NC, Christmas of 2012 instead of June of 2013. This was the time, my mother made the rules that no one was to talk about certain topics, during a family event and I protested in a shared email with the family, she literally got the whole family to gang up against me as I wrote, "I am a Christian and cannot be told not to talk about God at all" and "We are adults no one should be telling us what to talk about." All the cowards in this exchange backed her up as they threw me under the bus to keep her pleased. It did not escape my mind, that she was always the one chosen, while I was nothing to these people. My brother wrote, "Personally I think if Mom wants us to follow these rules, it's her choice".

During the two minute present drop-off on Christmas of 2012, I have the horrific memory of her giant SNEER walking down my apartment hall to dump the presents turn around and leave. Spiritually that day watching this parade, I felt utter spiritual darkness.  Her husband obediently followed her like a puppy out the door even when I asked them to stay a few minutes.  I think this is because she knew I had relented and failed to go No Contact that week. In other words, this smirking Joker's smile was her way of saying, "You have lost and I have won". I had seen this face other times before but been somehow blind to it. How sick was that? While I knew I failed that day to break away, it strengthened my resolve to do so. Today I know my abandonment in the big city in severe poverty was part of the grooming process.

The evil deny the suffering of their guilt--the painful awareness of their sin, inadequacy, and imperfection--by casting their pain onto the other through projection and scapegoating. They themselves may not suffer, but those around them do. The evil cause suffering. The evil create for those under their dominion a miniature sick society. ^{p 123-124}

The evil do create a miniature sick society, their own cult as it were, and my family is run like a cult, where the head narcs demand unending respect. The flying monkeys will also punish you for refusing this respect. Mine would scream about respect constantly.  I was even thinking about the cousin who called using threatening language, telling me off. I know for a fact she would never dare to talk to any narcissists she had real anger towards that way. She had been ditched by several local relatives and my own siblings and mother ignored her and treated her as nothing. She saw me as a "safe target". Talk about sick! As any scapegoated ACON will tell you, the other abused in your midst who you think would form fellow allies to help you make a stand never do. They submit and give in. I know I am totally on my own. Even some of the other abused, while they may complain about the narcissists privately to you or tell you they even agree, most will go where the power is, and never make a stand for you.
  

Human weakness and cowardice gives evil a place, and once it's in, it grows. Peck is right the evil never admit their sins. My mother never has admitted wrong doing in her entire life. I have never heard a true apology or desire to make things right with another person. She always has affirmed her superiority over every living soul. She never has admitted one mistake. My father never admitted one mistake either or ever uttered the sentence, "I am sorry." This attitude exists in my golden child sister and many others within the family. There is no meeting of minds, or discussions, there is only the submission she expects and always gets from the rest.

The evil hate the light--the light of goodness that shows them up, the light of scrutiny that exposes them, the light of truth that penetrates their deception.^{p 179} Rather than blissfully lacking a sense of morality, like the sociopath, they are continually engaged in sweeping the evidence of their evil under the rug of their own consciousness.^{p 76}

The seared wicked will never repent. With malignant narcissists, you will note they will never admit any wrongdoing. Self examination is simply not done. I know when my mother called me a liar, or told me I could not hear what she said to gaslight me, she was sweeping her evil under the rug as Peck states. It was her mode of operation to blame me for her own wrongdoings and sins. Others including me were always in the wrong. I know my mother's focus on calling me a liar was really projection, she was the liar, and in her own immorality could never be capable of any self-examination. The sad thing is years ago, I would try to make things right and even told her I knew I had done many things wrong. She merely gloated.

Evil does destroy people. I look at my health and it is definitely the result. What do you think I feel about crawling out of a family weighing this much with such severe health problems impacting so many bodily systems, when before I left, I saw nothing but lithe people with rare exceptions who had health I could not even dream of? They do cast on everything bad onto the scapegoat, so they look good next to you and that is their main focus, APPEARANCES, and having the pretense to look good.

While they seem to lack any motivation to be good, they intensely desire to appear good. Their "goodness" is all on a level of pretense. It is, in effect, a lie. That is why they are the "people of the lie". The wickedness of the evil is not committed directly, but indirectly as a part of this cover-up process. ^{p 76}
Those who are evil are masters of disguise; they are not apt to wittingly disclose their true colors--either to others or to themselves. ^{p 104} Because they are such experts at disguise, it is seldom possible to pinpoint the maliciousness of the evil. The disguise is usually impenetrable ^{p 76}....Naturally, since it is designed to hide its opposite, the pretense chosen by the evil is most commonly the pretense of love. ^{p 106}

We know that narcissists are all about appearances. They desire to look good to others. This is extreme in my mother. My mother and father wanted the world to see them as good people but did not work to actually BECOME good people. They sold their souls to mammon. They wanted success and money and embraced a dog eat dog ethos to achieve it all.  They desired power and admiration over love.

 The evil wear a false mask, one for the outside and one for at home. Many ACONs can attest how their evil parents fooled the world. Mine did big time and one continues to do so to this day. I have cousins and nieces and nephews who think my mother is this loving grandmother or aunt with arms full of presents who would never hurt a fly. They and other relatives see me as the "crazy one" for fleeing away from her and denouncing her actions.  Appearances  is why I still get birthday cards to this day. She has to write and mail one in front of her husband to assure him that she is a "normal" mother and I am the cruel daughter who ignores them. Every ACON can attest to how their sociopathic and/or malignant narcissist mother or father fooled others. The world believes these disguises and this is one reason many of us go through not being believed. We will be told by others, "Your mother really loved you!" even as we share stories of horrible abuse and lies.  The narcissists know how to cover up what they really are and manipulate people into thinking they are good and decent people who only want the best for you as they actively work to destroy you behind the scenes.
The false masks fool the world, at least we are not fooled.

All in all, when I read this book at the age of 18, I knew THEN that my parents were PEOPLE OF THE LIE. This rescued me from total destruction in that I knew something with them was very wrong. That it had spiritual roots, and that I desired far more for my life and for myself. One thing I wanted to finalize here, is that Peck wrote on page 267, "Evil can be defeated by goodness". I pray to God definitely in this matter, trusting in the righteousness of Jesus Christ for my salvation, not my own. Those who seek and love truth and reject evil and lies are in a far better spiritual place then narcissists.

We should be glad we did not become them out of family systems like this. That we do desire goodness and truth. That we rejected evil. That we escaped evil and ran from it. It is not easy for me to write, that these people were and are evil and malicious. I had to face the truth though to heal and remove myself from it.