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

by Ramani Durvasula

Many people think, Maybe it is something about me, that is why they are treating me like this. But remember: it’s not you!

This can be difficult for survivors to accept because you have spent years mired in self-blame and thinking of course it’s you! It’s not, and the more you can disconnect from that belief, the easier it becomes to disengage.

If you make a mistake, you can acknowledge it—Whoops, I cooked that for too long or I took the wrong route—without framing it as your failure as a human being.

If you do engage with them about their narcissism, you will be served a large bowl of word salad with gaslighting dressing on the side.

As long as the narcissist is living in your mind, you probably won’t like yourself.

We are built to heal; that is life. Nature is full of examples of organisms healing and continuing to grow and thrive. A tree continuing to grow even after a branch has been cut, a starfish regenerating a leg, flowers and forests flourishing after wildfires. You are no different. Your psyche may have been torn apart by this relationship, but like all living things, remind yourself that on the hardest days, living means healing.

To be in this relationship meant to silence anything that was separate from them. Being able to identify and speak our feelings is a massive shift.

“Relationships are sometimes difficult for me, and I am learning new ways of being in relationships. I can slow down and be kinder to myself.”

I will never posit forgiveness as a path forward for any survivors of narcissistic abuse. I support survivors who choose to, and I support those who don’t—neither path is better or worse, though the research does suggest that it isn’t good for us to keep forgiving repeat offenders.

Forgiving yourself becomes a key step to working through the grief.

Thriving is often simply “I went through the entire day and didn’t hear their voice in my head once.”

You’ve got humility wired, so now learn to thrive, flourish, and reflect on yourself without shaming yourself.

The closure is you moving forward and no longer having your sense of self and purpose stolen by them.

It is about understanding, feeling, and grieving what happened to you. And then it is about having compassion for all the harmed parts of yourself: the part of you that feels not enough, the part of you that feels damaged, the part of you that feels unworthy of love, the part of you that feels like an object of abuse.

Ultimately, this messy process of recovery is trial and error.