It's Not You: Identifying and Healing from Narcissistic People

by Ramani Durvasula

In other words, narcissistic people make you feel small so they can feel safe.

Sustained gaslighting causes you to question reality, and it qualifies as emotional abuse.

family is to not only have endured emotional abuse but also to have the experiences of your childhood fictionalized.

Survivors of narcissistic abuse ruminate about similar things: maybe they are right; maybe this is my fault; maybe it is me.

Self-blame means that you may get harmed twice: once by the narcissistic behavior in the relationship and then by believing that you are the one who did wrong.

If you experienced childhood narcissistic abuse, self-blame was a survival strategy, a way to maintain an idealized image of the parent and meet essential attachment needs.

Children cannot divorce their parents, so they must adjust to the antagonistic conditions, and that adjustment looks like self-blame.

When you don’t know what narcissistic behavior and abuse are about, confusion will become your new normal. The confusion largely stems from not being able to conceive of another person having so little empathy; of going from telling you that they love you to invalidating you or disappearing; of taking advantage of you even when you had their back; of good days and bad days all mixed together; of understanding their histories and having compassion for them but still having them rage at you; of simultaneously struggling with duty, loyalty, and disliking people you believe you are “supposed” to like, such as your parents and family.

Children with narcissistic family systems learn to justify and rationalize seamlessly.[1] To break through those enduring patterns and finally see parents clearly in adulthood is no small task. It’s only through radically accepting that your parent or family won’t change, and also that your childhood cannot be different, that you can start to heal.

You may be grieving what you never received. If you had a narcissistic parent, you may grieve the loss of a healthy childhood, which can become magnified when you contrast your childhood with what you may be trying to give your own children. If you disengage from your family of origin, you may grieve that you never had a safe space, a sense of belonging, a soft place to land, or unconditional love.

The grief of narcissistic abuse is consistent with something called disenfranchised grief,[2] which is grief that is not acknowledged by others or socially sanctioned and supported as a loss or grief experience.

Narcissist resistance is about past, present, and future: to start chipping away at those trauma bonds, to be present so you can identify unhealthy behavior, and to make sure you don’t keep going down the rabbit hole. It is about knowing who you are, standing firm when it comes to your reality, setting boundaries that feel authentic to you,