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

by Ramani Durvasula

When you go no contact, be prepared for a toxic dance. The narcissistic person will alternate between angry and aggressive communication and hoovering manipulation, especially if you slip up and respond or if they realize that their anger isn’t working.

In narcissistic relationships, firewalling means having strong boundaries and walls around you so abusive “malware” doesn’t come in and using your discernment when sharing vulnerable information that could come back and harm you.

In order to firewall and protect yourself, move slowly and learn the unhealthy behaviors that should make you doubt whether you need to “download” this person.

Enablers are not necessarily narcissistic, and they may be people you retain in your life. However, to remain resistant to narcissistic relationships, you also have to develop an awareness of how others in your sphere may be giving the narcissistic person a free pass to maintain the status quo.

Finding solace in your solitude is a big part of healing from narcissistic abuse and becoming narcissist resistant.

Perfectionism is a defense and coping strategy for most survivors of narcissistic abuse who hold the eternal hope that if you could get yourself or the relationship “just right” then everything would be better.

Striving for good enough is a key to healing. Once you radically accept and realize that you are no longer trying to do the impossible—getting it “just right” for them—you can pull back on this unhealthy standard.

Allowing yourself to experience joy is a highly effective form of narcissist resistance. This isn’t about artificial positivity or listing out what you are grateful for. It’s about giving yourself permission to savor the bits of joy when they waft by.

10 WAYS TO BECOME MORE NARCISSIST RESISTANT

At the milder end of staying, you may end the relationship but opt to continue having contact.

Healing and growing while you are still in the relationship require mindful awareness of what is happening, preparing for and recovering from your conversations with the narcissistic person, being intentional, and always maintaining realistic expectations to manage the carousel of disappointment and grief.

The primary challenge of healing while staying in the toxic situation is that narcissistic people don’t really want you to heal. It’s not that they care about your healing per se, but rather that your healing means they get less supply.

All of us are naturally drawn to the familiar, and even if it is toxic, there are routines and a sense of familiarity in your narcissistic relationship that can feel comforting.

If you are going to stay in a narcissistic situation, you already have to manage the ongoing narcissistic abuse. Don’t add your own self-judgment to that.

Healing is about taking back your power, even if you do stay. As you change, become more gaslight resistant, find your voice, and stop subscribing to their version of reality, the narcissistic folks may become less focused on you.

If you stay, in most cases, there is no way to fully “work it out” with a narcissistic person. There will always be workarounds, minefields, and tension.

The temptation while staying in these relationships is to keep pushing through it because that is what you have always done. Take a moment, breathe, recalibrate, and recognize your experience.

These shoulds may be aspirational but none of us are perfect, and these are normal feelings. Catch your should-ing, recognize that it comes from a place of craving your own sense of normal and healthy, and practice self-kindness.

The narcissistic people will still invalidate you, but it’s time for you to learn a new vocabulary and stop doing their dirty work for them.

The key is to remember that boundaries are an inside job. It becomes less about you waiting for the narcissistic person to honor a boundary and more about you setting one for yourself that you can honor.

Learning boundary setting as part of healing from narcissistic abuse means being clear on your fears. Ask yourself, What am I afraid of if I were to set a boundary? Anger, the relationship ending, guilt, the silent treatment?

Boundary setting also involves your tolerances for the narcissistic person’s reactivity.

If you want to work on healing, and you are going to stay, it can be helpful to evolve toward the stance of not caring what they think, though that sense of indifference may not be possible for all survivors.

Boundaries are often a lifelong struggle for survivors, and many of you may struggle with the fear of If I set a boundary, I am afraid they will reject me or that they may get angry. The truth is, they might. Setting boundaries becomes a revelation on what your relationships are made of—if you do “lose” someone or must contend with them becoming passive-aggressive or angry in the face of your boundary, this exposes some uncomfortable truths about these relationships.

How often have you had a conversation go off the rails with a narcissistic person because you interacted with them and actually thought they were listening?

The DEEP technique gives you a quick way to remember what not to do if you want to protect yourself and avoid falling into the typical mess of being gaslighted, baited, and invalidated.

When you practice not going DEEP you do not: Defend Engage Explain Personalize

Healing while staying requires caring less about what happens to them. This is not easy; it takes lots of work to get here (yes, I am talking to you, fixers and rescuers).

Try to track how often you say, “I’m sorry,” because the frequent apologies may represent self-talk that underlies self-blame.

Engaging with the narcissist only when it is about your True North can have a greater impact, because now you aren’t arguing with them over everything and you have conserved your bandwidth for the meaningful battles.

A narcissistic relationship can be a master class in your own potential, a reminder that you are worth fighting for, you are lovable, you have an identity outside of this relationship, and you can dump the worn fairy tales and rewrite your narratives.

As long as the narcissist is living in your mind, you probably won’t like yourself. Evicting them and adjusting to the vacancy that follows from coaxing the narcissist from your mind, heart, and soul are necessary.

It’s time to consider who you are if you are no longer merely playing a role in the narcissistic person’s story.

These are old stories, so at first it may feel difficult to revise them. It’s a bit like rewriting a childhood fairy tale you’ve heard so many times that now an alternate telling seems impossible.

Instead of the narrative “I am terrible at relationships and foolishly stayed for too long in this relationship,” try “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.”

As you reshape your narrative, connect to any feeling and emotion you have and are experiencing as you go through life. Give yourself permission to express these feelings;

Ultimately, revising your narrative isn’t a wellness hack. It is about the nuance. It is not about going from “I am not enough” to “I am great,” or some superficial self-love mantra, but rather unpacking the lie of “I am not enough” and finally recognizing where it comes from and that your life story is telling you otherwise.

The narrative derived from your narcissistic relationships was a fiction. Your story, told by you, is the truth.

Psychological research highlights the value of forgiveness, and in healthy relationships it has tremendous value. But narcissistic relationships are not healthy, so all the conventional wisdom about forgiveness goes out the window.

Multiple studies suggest that forgiveness is not good for a person if it is not followed by an attempt to make amends or foster safety.

When we do account for repeat offenders and disagreeable personalities, research suggests that it would be better for your well-being if you didn’t forgive.[3]

You did nothing wrong. It’s time to stop crafting the story that you did. Forgiving yourself becomes a key step to working through the grief.

Divesting yourself from the story of the narcissist. It is about freeing yourself from the scripts and shame that the narcissistic person projected onto you.

After years of seeing yourself as the broken one, you will recognize with sadness and maybe even a weary compassion that they simply projected their brokenness, fragility, and insecurity onto you.

To understand narcissistic abuse is to decolonize psychology and push back on old theories and models that don’t make allowances for the harms of hierarchies, disparity, privilege, and traditionalism.

Remember that the world needs you—your true, whole, authentic you—so please don’t hold back. This time, put that purple dress on.