I just watched the first @netflix programs on Harry & Meghan and despite media critiques, the two seem at peace and very much in love. Given the hell Harry has been through since mother’s very public death, he deserves peace and happiness. I’m so glad he & Meghan have found it. pic.twitter.com/X8fOBC3CTJ

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) December 8, 2022

I was 12 the last time I took more than a passing interest in the British royals, awakening very early to watch Diana and Charles’ wedding live on television. I didn’t tune in for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s. It didn’t seem relevant to my life, but the news of her single mom made it onto my radar. I am one too, so that branding felt less visible and sizzly on my forehead that day.

The Netflix series Harry and Meghan gave me an appreciation for how her presence in the royal family bolstered a sense of belonging for many others. That’s why it was heartbreaking to watch their exodus from royal life play out. Their own sense of belonging was broken beyond repair. At the same time, I found it riveting, inspiring, and quite relevant beyond the royal family. Bad things happen to good people. Sometimes they are hidden in plain sight behind a dignified façade. Not this time. Meghan and Harry shine light into some shady dynamics, while modeling how to emerge intact from the aftermath.

A Smear Campaign? But She Did Nothing Wrong!

Part of me still just doesn’t get it. One moment, Meghan is volunteering in a mosque kitchen, cooking side by side with women displaced by the Grenfell Tower fire. A humble community of phoenixes, they’re lifting each other up from the ashes, coping with tragedy by connecting and creating a successful cookbook. She’s traveling the globe pregnant, building bridges across cultures. Then, in the blink of an eye, she is reeling from a “campaign of negative nasty coverage” in the media and having thoughts of suicide. Wait what? How did that happen?

She brought heart, intelligence, charisma, and a social conscience to her role. People loved her. She was shining. If that is what bothered someone, it all seems so unnecessary. As Marianne Williamson said, “as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.” I suppose, unconsciously or consciously, not everyone reacts that way.

Let that aspect of Meghan’s story be a reminder to anyone who’s experienced a smear campaign and wondered what they did to deserve it. Nothing. No one deserves that. It was not your fault. Worse, it may be what you did so well that made you a target. Granted, that may not be much consolation when your life becomes a psychological minefield in which nothing is sacred and anything is fair game to be weaponized. In fact, the more sacred something is to you, the more likely it can and will be used to hurt you. That might include relationships you thought were solid, your reputation, career, financial security, or sense of place and purpose in a community. The irony of most smear campaigns is how hard the targets are trying to do the right thing all along, maybe trying a little harder than most.

I’m not diagnosing anyone, simply recognizing patterns, and the dynamics they describe within Buckingham Palace and the British media align with what I know of narcissistic abuse. It occurs not only in intimate and family relationships but also within institutions. For Meghan and Harry, it happened to be both, which doubles the impact but also opens the scope of potential benefit from their choice to tell their story, royalty or not. Besides, all narcissists think they are. Sara Bareilles was clearly a-mused by one when she penned the sassy lyrical question “who died and made you king of anything?” These covert abuse tactics have been around for eons, but as awareness is stretching to keep up with the prevalence of narcissistic abuse, smear campaigns are always part of the conversation.

The Smear Campaign Aim: to Devastate and Isolate

Harry and Meghan didn’t use that exact language, but rather a “campaign of nasty negative coverage” which has a synonymous ring, and their description fits characterizations by narcissistic abuse experts. Life coach and author Lisa Romano summarizes a smear campaign as an attack on your character designed to annihilate you with gossip and false narratives by twisting words and facts. Melanie Tonia Evans also uses the word annihilation to aptly capture the felt sense of being persecuted and cast out of the tribe. However ancient the playbook, a smear campaign is always freshly jarring to each new target, like lightning to the survival programming of our nervous systems. Author Sam Vaknin describes “abuse by proxy” via third parties (friends, family, professionals) who do their bidding, many of whom are “unaware instruments” of abuse. In divorce situations, he says, children are the “best leverage,” a notion that sends a shiver up my spine.

In Meghan’s case, the British media was well-aware, but their readership wasn’t. Dr. Les Carter outlines some other common smearing techniques, in addition to twisting the truth and outright lies. These include coyly implying things too terrible to say directly about you, demonizing those who support you, projecting their own negative traits onto you, and appealing to their own positive traits in a way intended to cast you in a negative light. Though usually disguised by plausible deniability, the acts are intentional. As Harry described, stories were not leaked to the press but planted. Meghan was not thrown to the wolves but fed to them.

If this happens to you, you are at a distinct disadvantage. The narcissistic individual or system was likely strategizing well before you become aware of any danger. You’ll feel the chilly change in the temperature of a room as you walk in. You’ll notice backs turning like dominos. Others may opt out of commitments or plans without explanation, cancel meetings or hold them without you, stop returning phone calls or emails, avoid eye contact, or simply avoid you. You won’t know why. Dr. Ramani Durvasula notes that someone may care and respect you enough to tell you what’s being said. Alternately, someone may find an accusation believable enough to confront you with it. If you panic, you’ll follow the trajectory of someone lost in the woods – in circles – becoming more disoriented. There is good news to be found on the other side of the bewilderment, but the bad news is that it may take a while to find. You will need help.

Meghan and Harry not only had to grapple with betrayal via the actions or inaction of people they loved, but with the complication of how beloved the royal family is to others. A context like that severely limits the potential support available. When others’ identity, livelihood or loyalty is tied to the person or entity abusing you, they won’t want to believe you. Emotionally it’s just easier to think “she seemed so nice, but I guess you never know someone” about one person, or two, rather than a whole group you value your connection to.

Understanding and Processing Grief and Trauma

With a nod of gratitude to Meghan and Harry, I’d like to offer a psychological compass of sorts that orients you to this territory and guides you to clarity and more solid ground. An understanding of narcissism and abuse dynamics is key. Hint: it’s all about appearances, power and control. Honoring and working through your emotions, which surely include a tremendous amount of fear and loss, is crucial.

Intellectual understanding and emotional processing are different. Emotional work to heal the vulnerabilities that have been targeted, triggered, or created by the abuse will be ongoing. In a recent large scale study verifying a link between relationships with narcissists and PTSD symptoms, Shahida Arabi particularly mentions intrusive memories and avoidance of reminders of the trauma. The upside of the healing journey is the post-traumatic growth possible as you start over with greater clarity about who you are and how you want to live.

I’d much rather talk about what prevention would look like, and that discussion is still worthwhile. Prevention efforts that are too late for one person might arrive just in time for someone else. Social conditions rendering an article like this unnecessary might begin with honoring the inherent dignity and worth of every person. Self-reflection and emotional bravery for facing our own shadows would be encouraged as a norm. Mistakes would be accepted not shamed, and honest feedback would coax us toward growth when we mess up. Humility, reciprocity, empathy, and ample humor would soften sharp edges. Love would win. Everyone would get their place in the sun. Narcissism would be a non-issue. After a smear campaign, it may seem naïve to want to live this way, but it is actually quite courageous to try. Anything else would be contributing to the problem rather than the solution.

Some people and systems are wired very differently than what I just described. The greater the disconnection from inner worth, the more other values – social status and admiration, competition, external validation, achievement, productivity, and money — are elevated. These things aren’t inherently good or bad, mind you. I like what Ram Dass once said of the ego, “use it, enjoy it, just don’t think it’s you.” A narcissistic perspective either lacks or loses the capacity to make that distinction. The admirable reflection of who they are in the eyes of others IS who they are. If honesty and a clear conscience are stronger motivators for you, it’s difficult to “get” a moral compass with the opposite orientation. Narcissistic people and systems can seem innocent of wrongdoing or harm, but not because they are. When a good image is prioritized to that extreme, I suppose they feel justified in devaluing anything deemed antagonistic to it. That will include you if you outshine them, or somehow trigger their fears of abandonment, rejection or exposure.

Conflict Reveals Character

It seems like an exhausting way to live, keeping up appearances, masking hints of vulnerability, pressure to be perfect, unresolved conflict and skeletons piling up in closets. Any sense of basic worth or “okayness” is bound to get lost or diluted along the way. This compassionate lens feels better when I’m trying to get my head and heart around narcissistic behavior, but I’ve learned it’s wise to do so from a distance.

Compassion can be disarming, so most narcissists will have skills for eliciting it and using it to their advantage. Confronted with evidence of harm they’ve done, the narcissistic inclination is not to feel remorseful or apologize, as you might hope, but to deny, deflect or even get sympathy. “Pity plays” are the psychological equivalent of assaulting someone and then playing the victim. Remarkably, emotional manipulation to flip that script often works. You might even detect a smirk of pleasure from duping and destroying.

Call me sensitive, but I don’t like conflict, especially the way it shakes loose pieces of who I don’t want to be and turns up the heat until they’re screaming for attention like the steam from a kettle. You know that squirmy feeling inside when you sense old debris in your reactions to conflict? Those gaps between how I’m reacting and who I want to be, the vague sense of shame, and the desire to be a better person, are all raw materials for growth and healing. I know this. That doesn’t make it any more comfortable. Met with some tenderness and acceptance, my raw touchy wounded places usually simmer down to coexist with the parts of myself I like better.

Some lack that capacity altogether or choose not to exercise it, their vulnerabilities and faults so effectively defended that tenderness inwardly or toward others is blocked, especially in conflict. Earnest expressions of your feelings or appeals to their humanity will be met with stonewalling. Deflection, denial and projection turn conflict into a circus. This often comes as a surprise after the harmony with positive feedback loops humming along unchallenged. The tragedy of a narcissistic orientation to life is the lack of empathy for others or oneself. Loyalty to an image squelches inner experiences that might not fit, just as it devalues people who don’t. As Harry put it, if they can’t put you in a box, the aim will be to make you irrelevant. In the language I’m more familiar with, if they can’t control you, they will try to control how others see you.

The effectiveness of many smear campaigns thrives on the absence or masking of any squirmy discomfort in someone’s character, which comes off as calm innocence to the naive eye. Dr. Ramani Durvasula speaks about how narcissists can turn on the charm and use their charisma to work a room, gaining allies for themselves, harnessing the troops against you, cutting off support. I think that’s what Harry was referring to when he calmly expressed the understanding “if you speak your truth to power, that’s how they respond.” The victims won’t present as well. The more they long for accountability or honest conflict resolution, the more their obvious distress will increase, and that will be used to portray them as crazy or unhinged.

To use the Matrix analogy, it’s as if others have taken the blue pill which infuses the narcissistic reputation with a warm rose-colored glow and poisons yours. The medicine may be sweetened with words of love and care for you, while spreading misinformation, false narratives, or even “concern” about your mental health, while directly undermining it. You’ve chosen the red pill, feel ill, and can’t unsee any of this.

Unhooking Yourself

I once read that when you’re obsessing about something, there’s a truth not being told. It can be helpful to consider who (including you) is not being entirely truthful with whom. In a house of mirrors full of distortion, there is a danger of getting obsessively stuck in the pain of experiences that aren’t seen accurately or validated, and endlessly questioning your perceptions. How do you escape such red pill quicksand?

In the Netflix series, we get a glimpse of a guided meditation Meghan and Harry utilize, presumably given to them by a therapist. “Remember that what is transpiring within the media, been created, is an illusion. When you try to prove that you’re good, and that you’re not the person they say you are, you’re taking the bait, you’re feeding the beast. It is an illusion. Your work is not to prove your goodness, you know you are, both of you.” Reconnecting with your basic goodness, feeling and internalizing what you know, is hard work when you’ve been surrounded by messages to the contrary.

When someone, like Tyler Perry in their case, notices the “institutional gaslighting” for what it is, you might want to hug him. Go ahead and hug anyone who “gets it,” but also work toward not needing that validation. As Melanie Tonia Evans points out, if you’re needing someone else to change for you to feel less traumatized, to soothe your pain, to see what you see, you’re still handing your power over. “Not my reality” is a useful mantra she offers to counter gaslighting. Lisa Romano similarly suggests refocusing when gripped with the urge to fight back and defend yourself, deciding instead what baseline emotion you want to live in, and grounding yourself in that.

Harry and Meghan had some success fighting back with a lawsuit. While noting that defending yourself is sometimes necessary, Dr. Les Carter puts more emphasis on being a person of good character, and living in dignity, respect and civility. Fighting back can, of course, be done with integrity and dignity. Dr. Ramani Durvasula suggests a careful graceful way of reaching back in with specific relationships, asking “does this sound consistent with who I am?” These are personal judgment calls you’ll need to make for yourself, moving forward.

Mentally calculating the degrees of separation between you and the abuser/s in each interaction may never go away because there’s no expiration date on their motivation to seize control of any narrative in which they behaved despicably and evaded accountability. Meghan mentioned choosing truth over peace as a guiding principle. You will weigh the benefits and risks of the two many times, for yourself and others in your life. Sometimes the risk is worth it only when necessary to preserve a relationship with someone you love. You’re likely to be well aware of the dis-ease that comes from being privy to all the turmoil and drama. You won’t want to spread it around. Relationships formed before or after the damaging one are immensely easier.

Remember Who You Are

Theologian Benjamin Jowett once said “The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.” Survivors of smear campaigns often face the question of who they are without the resources, career, reputation, or accomplishments that previously defined them. Hint: your real worth is not measurable but intangible, and you’re in a better position to connect with it when you’ve lost all trappings of the ego.

I’m reminded of my senior quote in my high school yearbook spoken by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, “People are like stained glass windows. They shine and sparkle when it’s sunny and bright but when the sun goes down their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” Finding and tending to your own inner light is a metaphor for the self-definition, self-partnering, and self-generating Melanie Tonia Evans emphasizes in her recovery program from narcissistic abuse. A less spiritual, saltier way to put it **warning salty language**: “unf*ck yourself, be who you were before all that stuff happened that dimmed your f*cking shine.”

Find Your Voice and Live Again

Novelist Ariel Dorfman said “I think to be in exile is a curse, and you need to turn it into a blessing. You’ve been thrown into exile to die, really, to silence you so that your voice cannot come home. And so my whole life has been dedicated to saying, ‘I will not be silenced.’”

The victimization, silencing and cover-up are all real. So are the dangers of getting stuck in it. Greater still and just as real are the benefits possible if you can shift from a victim mindset to a creator mindset. Taking full responsibility for healing injuries, none of which were your fault, paves the way to create new experiences from a solid emotional state. Melanie Tonia Evans refers to this as upleveling.

These steps of recovery are a partial list and far from linear. Separating them on paper is a bit arbitrary. In life, they are more interconnected like dance steps that flow together and feel more natural with practice. Hey, I think they’re playing your song. Five, six, seven, eight …