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Narcissistic folks are more likely to feel inconvenienced by your health issues—they do not like infirmity or other reminders of human frailty or mortality, and they are too selfish and impatient to engage in compassionate and sustained caregiving.
In so many ways, narcissistic relationships take years off your life. —
Narcissistic abuse isn’t just hurt feelings. When you are exposed to narcissistic behavior, you will experience a series of psychological reactions to it.
it’s not you. You aren’t having a strange or dramatic reaction; this fallout is happening to everyone and anyone in one of these relationships, and even money, privilege, and power don’t fully protect people.
many people come out the other side of these relationships wiser, more courageous, and infused with meaning and purpose.
You can heal whether you stay or leave, whether you see the narcissistic person every day or never again. You will shift from focusing on managing the narcissistic people in your life and blaming yourself to your own growth, self-understanding, reality, and clarity. Instead of focusing on mere survival, it’s time for you to put your energy, bandwidth, and time into thriving and flourishing.
This is no ordinary broken heart, and for many it is a shattered spirit that began in childhood or a series of invalidating relationships that shaped you, wounded you, changed you, and stole reality and your sense of self from you.
When you are actively experiencing the fallout of narcissistic abuse, you can’t imagine coming out the other side,
clearing out space, and in the new space, building a new life, finding your voice, and feeling empowered to articulate your needs, wants, and hopes, and finally feel safe. This is a process of evolving from surviving and coping to growing and thriving.
Healing means being kind to yourself, even when you get hoovered back in or burned after giving the narcissistic person a second chance. It means wisdom, discernment, and a willingness to step away from toxic people, even when other people are shaming you about forgiveness.
radical acceptance and living with the painful realization that narcissistic patterns do not change.
Narcissistic people are noisy storytellers, and they tend to infect you with their limiting narratives for you.
healing is about taking yourself back, revising the stories you were told, and rewriting them on your own terms.
she felt she had to give him a pass whenever he would go on long-winded monologues about his day,
not seeing your vulnerabilities as weaknesses but rather as valuable and integral parts of you.
giving yourself permission to be discerning, self-protective, and aware.
Your empathy makes you extremely vulnerable to the narcissistic relationship cycles of idealization, devaluation, apologies, and justifications, and positions you as a great source of narcissistic supply.
and the narcissistic person will take it without reciprocation, resulting in an asymmetric empathic reversal (all empathy out, none coming in).
narcissistic person who will let you twist in the wind with little regard for what it is doing to you.
their victimized narrative and a sullen sense of entitlement (“Everyone else gets special treatment. Nothing is fair to me”).
the act of rescuing may be a working through of your own wounds.
No matter how much you do—no matter how much money, opportunities, contacts, or time you give them—it will never be enough. You
if you are very optimistic and positive, it can be challenging to get your head around the idea that narcissistic people don’t change.
there is such resistance to the concept of unchangeability.
attracted to the positivity and validating encouragement that come from an optimist.
Optimistic people may also get stuck because of the chronic willingness to hold out hope that things can get better.
In the same way, your positivity and optimism may also fan the flames of the narcissistic person’s grandiosity and make you a prime target for a narcissistic person’s future faking.
Forgiveness in and of itself is not a bad thing. It just doesn’t work with narcissistic people.
Because they lack empathy, a narcissistic person’s concern for you won’t be what stops their behavior. In the absence of meaningful consequences and with the assumption they will be forgiven, a cycle of betrayal and bad behavior will persist.
Growing up in a narcissistic family system is a form of indoctrination. These family systems leave you feeling deflated, self-blaming, self-devaluing, and as if you are not enough.[1]
The message in these families is that you need to earn love or be a source of narcissistic supply to your parent to keep their love, or you are judged on the basis of what you can do for the narcissistic family member.
Children in these families find themselves in different roles that are designed to benefit the narcissistic parent(s) and keep the children limited
had empathy for Josh because he also came from an invalidating family. This played upon her inner rescuer and her sense of empathy, and she may have been addressing her core wounds by being there for him.
The new and unfamiliar can also raise anxiety or a sense of incompetence, which can make you feel vulnerable.
Being in a transitional phase may make you more vulnerable to getting into a narcissistic relationship.
Many narcissistic relationships get their momentum from a sense of pressure. Biological clocks, social pressure, or even a time-limited opportunity can mean that you aren’t looking at red flags
the devil you know becomes the devil you keep,
Narcissistic relationships often unfold too quickly. You may move in together too fast, get engaged too fast,
It shapes our inner worlds and makes us more vulnerable to self-blame, self-doubt, negative emotions, shame, guilt, and difficulties with close relationships.[2]
overlap and feed into each other. Your positivity may feed rescuing. Your narcissistic family and history of trauma may diminish discernment.
slow down, pay attention, be kind to yourself, and let go of self-blame.
Few of Martine’s interests were cultivated,
Despite how helpful Thomas was, something about him put Isabelle on edge. She needed him, but it was as though she felt shamed by his presence.
In narcissistic family systems, the tendency for the parent or parents to use children within the system to regulate, to view them as either supply or inconvenience,
the child may detect that taking on the role and behaviors may keep them safe
if both of your parents were narcissistic or antagonistic, these roles can become cemented to your identity and become the only way you can get your needs met.
Golden children represent something their narcissistic parent values: they may resemble the parent; are very attractive, obedient, and compliant; or are a brilliant student
The golden child’s success, appearance, or behavior is supply for the narcissistic parent, and golden children get their attachment and affiliation needs met by being what the parent wants.
But the golden child lives on a conditional and perilous pedestal, knowing that if they no longer perform or deliver, their stock may drop.
even into adulthood, if you step out of line, the narcissistic parent may take back any validation.
