How Writing Saved Me From A Narcissist

I always wanted to write a novel. I always knew that one day I would. However, my yearning was overshadowed by life events such as falling in love, marriage, establishing a business with my husband, buying our first home, having two wonderful children, bringing them up and having more pets in the house than sense. As cliché as it sounds – I had no time. I was too knackered spinning plates in the air. In fact, at one point when my children were very young, I even stopped reading (please don’t judge me, I’m trying to make up for it now).
At the age of 43 I decided to give it a go. It coincided with a time in my life where I was coming out of a very dark place. I was disentangling myself from a narcissist who’d been a huge part of my life for fourteen years.

Before you jump to conclusions, it wasn’t my life partner, who has been wonderfully supportive, but someone else very close to me. Someone that I will not name in fear of being dragged through hell, again. Trust me, if you know anything about narcissistic personalities, you’ll know that you should keep well away if you can. Turn yourself into a grey rock and become unresponsive, that way you won’t fuel or anger them, or get drawn into their mind games. If you suspect that you’re being played by one, you have my deepest sympathy. I can guarantee that you will feel like nothing makes sense, their actions, what they say, their logic and justifications.

They will have you doubt everything, and I mean everything in your life, including your reality, your sanity. If you’re coming out of a narcissistic relationship and are cutting ties, I really feel for you. This is the toughest thing to do, but worth it in the end. No-one can sustain living with a high level of stress forever, it will break you. The narcissist will go to extreme lengths to discredit you and your version of events. They will make up vicious lies about you. You must stay strong.

Remember, once you’re savvy to their games and know how they work, you have the advantage, not them! You can keep one step ahead. And yes, it really is like playing a game of chess whether you like it or not.
In a nutshell, writing saved me from going mad and self-destructing. It brought rhythm and a sense of calm to the upheaval, chaos and utter toxicity the narcissist brought into my world. Writing gave me strength, a sense of purpose and helped re-establish who I am. Slowly but surely, I built myself up and rediscovered a new version of myself. Someone that I liked. Eventually I started to like some of the words I’d written down on a page.

At the time I started putting pen to paper, I was mentally battered and bruised, in an extremely vulnerable place, and I needed therapy to get me through the dark oppressive days, but what really pulled me through was rediscovering my love for the written word. As terrible as my writing was when I first started and I’m in no doubt that it was terrible, I began to slowly gain confidence. Could I write a novel?
It was time to get some training. Having had no credible qualifications in English Lit. I enrolled in a couple of Guardian masterclasses to see what it was like. These one-day courses were enough to fuel my passion and move me forwards. I was hooked. On a mission. Maybe I could write that novel.

I do have an English A-level and I’ve always had a passion for storytelling, but I never received the guidance from my parents who didn’t know any better, nor from my poor state school in London, to push me into an area that I loved. Both my parents are immigrants from the Mediterranean. My father left school at the age of fourteen to work as a waiter in Venice, he then moved to London to work the restaurants and hotels, and my mother left school at the age of fifteen to work in a clothes factory.

In 2018, I embarked on Faber Academy’s Getting Started: beginners’ fiction, and that’s when I started analysing the novels I was reading. During that period a germ of an idea had formulated in my mind. An idea that was gaining pace, momentum. And so, off the back of the beginners’ course, I applied to Faber’s Advanced Writing a Novel course and got accepted in 2019.

From there, the idea for the novel grew. Soon enough, characters, scenes, plots, motives and back stories started to form. I drew inspiration from my own experiences having trained as a hypnotherapist and having survived a manipulative personality (Actually, I survived two, I worked for a narcissistic boss at a TV channel). By 2020 the book was complete. The story was finally out of my head and onto the page. I’d written a novel.

The Call of Cassandra Rose, originally known as The Hypnotherapist, was born.
A vulnerable young mother is lured by the promise of help by a hypnotherapist with her own secret agenda: Revenge.

In May 2020, Madeleine Milburn Lit Agency tweeted about their inaugural Mentorship scheme, offering representation to the selected mentees. They were my absolute dream agency. Maddy being the ultimate ‘dream-come-true’ agent. What did I have to lose? I applied on a whim, thinking not in a million years that I’d get in. I sent off my first 20,000 words, synopsis and overly gushing cover letter. The day I received the email from Maddy herself offering me representation, I think I didn’t stop shaking for a whole day.

The agency quickly got to work and requested my full manuscript which I’d believed was in pretty decent shape. I soon realised that it wasn’t. The story was rough, badly plotted and the characters were all over the place. With my first set of edit notes I had to pull up my sleeves and really sink my teeth into the story, getting to know my characters all over again, feel their voices as though they were living and breathing inside of me.

Annabelle, a self-harming mum, is lured by the promise of help when a hypnotherapy leaflet lands on her doorstep. She’s in need for someone to care for her, to listen to her, to help guide her out of the mess she’s made of her life. In desperate need of a friend, a confidante, a mother figure, she finally finds solace in Cassandra. Charming and compassionate, Cassandra is everything that is missing in Annabelle’s life. Or so she believes.

And that’s the thing when you’re in a vulnerable place, you can be blinded by charm. Narcissists can sniff you out in a room full of people. Always on the look-out for new friends, having fallen out with many people around them, they don’t want to befriend someone strong-minded and confident, they want someone passive. A plaything. They want loyalty. Someone who hangs on their every word, strokes their ego. Someone who opens up and shares their darkest fears (which will be stored in the narcissists mind to be used at a later date).

The narcissist seeks ‘friends’ that don’t quite have the balls to stand up to them even when things aren’t quite right. I was that friend, once.
A hypnotherapist can gain access to your mind – only if you allow them. Not everyone is susceptible to the trance state. For example, you wouldn’t be able to hypnotise someone who is sitting in the therapist chair with their arms crossed, shoulders raised up high, shaking their head, no. But you can hypnotise someone that is willing. Open. Now don’t panic, I’m not suggesting for one second that real life hypnotherapists are dangerous. Hypnosis can be a fantastic therapy aid, helping to break unwanted habits such as smoking, or conquering phobias such as flying. It’s used daily and effectively for a number of therapeutic reasons.

But what happens if your hypnotherapist is a narcissist, who has revenge on their mind? How low will they go to destroy you?You’ll just have to wait and see. The Call of Cassandra Rose, out Autumn 2022, published by Lume Books.

—
Sophia, a Londoner of proud Italian and Greek heritage studied Film and TV at university. In her twenties she worked in TV and post-production before turning her attention to her true passion: writing. In 2019, she graduated from Faber Academy’s Writing A Novel course and was signed by Madeleine Milburn Lit, TV & Film Agency. Her debut novel The Call of Cassandra Rose is being published by Lume Books, and is out autumn 2022. Sophia lives in North London with her husband, two children, two cats and dog named Ripley.

Website https://sophiaspierswrites.com/

The Call of Cassandra Rose

debuting autumn 2022

Annabelle seems to have it all. The perfect house, a successful husband, a darling son. But Annabelle is deeply troubled. Trapped in an unhappy marriage, failing at motherhood and unable to break free of her traumatic childhood and past, she turns to her old familiar demons of drinking and self-harm.

Set in leafy Hampstead and St John’s Wood, Annabelle struggles with her working-class roots but is also at loggerheads with her wealth, husband’s circle of friends and the mums at her son’s private school; she just doesn’t belong.

When she meets the alluring and charismatic hypnotherapist, Cassandra Rose, she is offered a way out. The lure of the trance is strong, and Annabelle is nothing if not susceptible. It’s all she can think about to the detriment of everything else in her life. Through hypnosis, Cassandra begins to unearth Annabelle’s painful repressed childhood memories. And if Annabelle can just remember what haunts her, she believes she can finally be set free.

But when Cassandra persuades Annabelle to attend an unconventional residential therapy course, things start to go terribly wrong.

Because Cassandra Rose is not the saviour. She isn’t healing Annabelle. She’s destroying her.

So when Cassandra’s own dark secrets finally come into the light, will there be enough of Annabelle left to resist her compulsion and save herself?

Or will the call of Cassandra Rose be the last thing Annabelle ever hears?

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