I don't think these authors know a thing about narcissism. "Estrangement" is a silly word when referring to parents and children and is usually misused by the offending party. Your parents say "estranged", and you say "no contact". Now, not all estrangements are no contact. Some are actually what they say they are (and some are abandonment by a shitty parent). But more often than not, the word estrangement, when coming from a parent, usually is a deflecting of the real issue at hand (which is that their child has chosen to stay away from their abusive asses).

So the two words are similar, yet they come from very different issues: 

Sometimes no contact can start out as estrangement, usually when the offended party realizes just how damaging the offensive party truly is.  But there is a huge difference between the two, as you can see. Which is why books like this really do more damage than good, because while reading it, I realized that the author lacks the ability to understand that just because a parent is crying "My daughter doesn't talk to me!" it doesn't mean that person is truly hurting.  Narcissists cry for attention quite regularly (ask my ex-husband!).  And even if they were hurting, it wouldn't matter because a hurting abuser doesn't count in the grand scheme of things.  And then they read a book that gives them instructions on how to "reach out to the other party"??  Oh goodness.  That's a recipe for disaster for their child.  Narcs don't need yet another idea in how to screw up their kids' lives, they've already done a great enough job on their own.

But apparently this author is a therapist who really buys into the whole "I have no idea why my child won't talk to me!" thing.  Anyone who panders to narcissists, you have to ask yourself, is this person a narcissist too?  

Believe me, I am in no way accusing this author of having NPD.  What I am saying is that it's easy to make those assumptions, as an adult child of a narcissist, knowing how these narcs work.  They stick together like glue and will stick up for each other with the passion of a zealot (until one of them does something bad enough to piss the other one off, and then you have an all out narc war LOL).  Those that are zealot-like, we call them "flying monkeys".  And those flying monkeys are usually codependent covert narcissists (though some are extremely overt).  So whenever you see someone being blatantly blind to the plight of the narcissist, red flags go up all over the place and you take a step back in order to better assess the situation.

I will say that it also could just be plain ignorance on the part of the author, as well.  She may not realize what narcissism truly looks like and may be easily suckered into the path of a narc without even knowing it.  But you'd think that hearing enough of these stories, she'd realize that some are just playing the part.  Hell, a majority of them are.

It's books like these that are downplaying the idea of going no contact and how ultimately hard it is for us to make that life-changing decision.  It's books like these that tells the world not to take us (the adult children of narcissists) seriously, that our families are "healable" if we just "try hard enough". 

It's books like these that need to be thrown in the trash.

Because it's books like these that can ruin with our lives and gives our narcissistic abusers the green light on harassing us and breaking the boundaries that we've build for our lives.

Just opening that book and reading the beginning gave me a stomachache.  I could see the narcissism dripping in the examples she gave of parents being upset over being estranged from their adult children.  "I have no idea why they won't talk to me!" is a common complaint from these parents.  Which is exactly what my mother tells people when I am brought up.  It's sick.  And a total lie.  Because they all know exactly why.  Or maybe they don't?  Maybe they are so deluded in their own bullshit that they really don't know what they did?  That they can't put two and two together and see how their own behavior has put them into their own predicament?

Whatever it is, I can't stand there are people out there, professionals, who take their sides.  But then again, look at our own families.  Look at all of the people who take our mother's side, even when clearly they have done some pretty evil things.


I guess we can't expect every doctor or mental health professional to not be like all the codependent flying monkeys we know.

*sigh*

Narcissism.  It's everywhere you want to be.  Even at the library.