Stockholm Syndrome and mindset of a cult member

[Rorey]

I'm watching Michael Cohen on The View. Joy Behar asked him how he could tolerate what OrangeAss said about his daughter. He referenced Stockholm Syndrome.

As someone who was in a 25 year relationship with a narcissist, I understand. I look back at those 25 years and wonder how anyone can forgive me for seeming to condone some of the despicable behavior of my ex-husband. How can I forgive myself?

It's like they somehow manipulate you into being a different person.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. I hope you do forgive yourself. We are wired to love, and it's not difficult for cruel people to

take advantage of our inherent need for connection.

[Rorey]

2. I guess at this point I feel more more amazed that I could be so stupid than anything else

I have the most awesome family anyone could ever have, so that helps a lot.

Looking back, I can see how I was ripe for the picking. I was still mourning the death of my previous husband, and I was incredibly lonely. I didn't even know what a narcissist was at that point.

The last 2 years have been amazing. I've learned so much. I feel like I'm doing pretty good now, and thank you for your kind words.

And now it seems that karma is happening. The ex-husband had a major health event a couple of months ago, spent over two months in the hospital, and it's unlikely that he'll fully recover. And his girlfriend gets to be his nursemaid and housekeeper. They're both getting what they deserve.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

3. I keep coming back to this, probably the best explanation I've read

for the effect Trump has on some people:

...proximity to an amoral leader reveals something depressing. I think that’s at least part of what we’ve seen with Bill Barr and Rod Rosenstein. Accomplished people lacking inner strength can’t resist the compromises necessary to survive Mr. Trump and that adds up to something they will never recover from. It takes character like Mr. Mattis’s to avoid the damage, because Mr. Trump eats your soul in small bites.


...Speaking rapid-fire with no spot for others to jump into the conversation, Mr. Trump makes everyone a co-conspirator to his preferred set of facts, or delusions.

You can’t say this out loud — maybe not even to your family — but in a time of emergency, with the nation led by a deeply unethical person, this will be your contribution, your personal sacrifice for America. You are smarter than Donald Trump, and you are playing a long game for your country, so you can pull it off where lesser leaders have failed and gotten fired by tweet...

Of course, to stay, you must be seen as on his team, so you make further compromises. You use his language, praise his leadership, tout his commitment to values. And then you are lost. He has eaten your soul.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/01/opinion/william-barr-testimony.html

Yeah, it's Jim Comey and we're all supposed to hate him, blah, blah, blah, but he completely nailed what Trump can do to people. I just finished reading Cohen's book, and Cohen, a weak man who wanted to be the tough guy, the consigliere, the valued member of the inner circle, didn't figure out what Trump really was until Trump shivved him, as he so often does when his associates get in trouble. But while Cohen was acting Trump's enforcer and bagman he was willing, even eager, to do all the nasty, unethical things Trump asked him to do, and even while Trump was abusive and insulting to him. He loved that power. It took Trump's betrayal and consequent loss of that power to wake him up, even though his wife and daughter saw what Trump was like from the beginning and constantly begged him to quit.

Trump is different from your average household narcissist in that he also possessed the lure of money and power, which was especially appealing to Cohen. Cohen wasn't just the abused spouse or child with Stockholm syndrome; he assumed the role of alter ego in Trump's dirty deals, and he liked it. Trump is able to make people do evil on his behalf, which is even worse.

[Rorey]

4. It's who they are now that matters most to me

I can hate what they did and who they were, but it's who they are today that matters most.

I don't hate Michael Cohen. For me it's like he's trying to right the wrongs, and I'm good with that.

[Miguelito Loveless]

5. Cohen conveniently

fails to note his own narcissistic tendencies. I am glad he "found his way", but kind of hard to forget his screaming at people and threatening them on Trump's behalf.

[alittlelark]

6. I fully understand. I was with one from 15-48 yrs old.

I also look back in disbelief at the 'reality' I was living in. Being the 'identified patient' in a narcissistic family groomed me for my ex-husband.

I often wonder if being raised in evangelical churches grooms ppl to accept this type of distorted behavior from 'leaders'.

[Rorey]

7. Probably not in my case

My mom was a very strong person, but not overtly affectionate. My dad was a very kind and good man. We were lutherans, so I guess we were evangelical. I quit church when I left home at the age of 17.

I met the now ex-husband when I was close to 40, and I think I was pretty strong-minded at that point. It's just crazy the way he slowly turned my life upside down. In the beginning, I thought he was a great guy. It was just a facade. And I don't think that those who haven't been sucked into that life can really understand how it can happen. I'm still baffled that it could happen to me.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

8. This part of it certainly rings true:

From a Vanity Fair interview with Cohen's daughter:

That summer day felt like all the others before it, standing alongside Trump outside the pool area, discussing what Cohen writes was “some pressing business matter, like the size of the breasts of a woman sunbathing on a lounge chair.” Somehow Trump’s attention was diverted to another skirt walking off a tennis court. “Look at that piece of ass,” Cohen recalls Trump saying, as he whistled and pointed. “I would love some of that.” It so happened that Trump was referring to Cohen’s then 15-year-old daughter, Samantha.

Cohen informed Trump of his mistake. “That’s your daughter?” Trump responded. “When did she get so hot?” When Samantha reached her dad, Trump asked her for a kiss on the cheek, before inquiring, “When did you get such a beautiful figure?” and warning her that in a few years, he would be dating one of her friends.

It’s a detail that strikes for obvious reasons: Trump’s history of icky comments about his own daughter Ivanka; the dozens of allegations of sexual misconduct that have been made against him over the years (all of which he denies); the comments he made on the Access Hollywood tape about being able to “grab” women by their genitals because he was famous. At the time, Cohen writes, Samantha wanted him to quit working for Trump. Not because of his comment about her looks, but because of the way he had demeaned her father over the years, put him down, and prevented him from making strides in his career. “She was 15 years old and she saw Trump much more clearly than I could,” he writes. “Samantha said she was sick and tired of the way Trump demeaned and degraded me, as if he needed to keep me in my place.… This was part of his cult-leader persona—his slow, incremental, relentless way of saying nasty things to me about my abilities and intelligence, things that weren’t true, until some part of me started to believe them.”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/09/michael-cohens-daughter-reflects-on-his-time-with-trump

That's typical of abusive narcissists - they run you down over and over until you internalize the insults, and then you feel you're stuck because no one else will have you. In Cohen's book he describes how Trump berates and insults his own children, especially Don Jr., and when Trump started treating Cohen the same way he was OK with it because it made him feel like he was part of the family. That's some sick shit.

[Rorey]

9. Yes definitely sick

I sometimes have a twinge of sympathy for Don Jr. when I see him obviously groveling to try to get into his father's good favor. What a sad, sad life. The entire family is very sick and dysfunctional.

I'm thankful beyond expression to be out of the sick relationship I was in. I'm just ecstatic to be devoting my life to my best friend: Me.