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

by Ramani Durvasula

Narcissistic relationships follow a cycle. This cycle often begins with charm, intensity, idealization, or the patterns we call love bombing that draw us in. Then gradually, the “idealized” mask falls off and the expectable patterns of devaluation and discard kick in.

In a relationship you choose, love bombing is the intense and overwhelming initial process that draws you in and distracts you from seeing any red flags.

Love bombing is the “hook,” and it creates buy-in.

But one of the most pernicious elements of love bombing is that you slowly sacrifice your identity, preferences, and even aspirations to avoid losing the relationship, and you may barely notice you are doing it.

During love bombing, a toxic approach-and-avoidance cycle may also get established. The narcissistic person may engage in lots of contact, then disappear. Or if you hold back from reaching out, they will keep trying to contact you, and then once you reach out, they’ll go quiet for a while. This sets up a confusing game where you may find yourself starting to analyze every message, wondering how you should respond and what their messages mean, and you may feel relieved or excited when they finally do respond.

Of course, not all grandiose gestures at the beginning of a relationship are love bombing—even healthy relationships can be compelling and exciting in the beginning. The difference is that if you voice your needs, such as asking for more time or to slow things down in a new relationship, a narcissistic person may become angry and accuse you of not wanting a commitment. This may leave you feeling guilty, doubting yourself, and justifying the unhealthy or uncomfortable patterns. On the other hand, if you asked a healthy new partner to slow down, they wouldn’t become sullen and resentful. True romance is respectful and empathic; love bombing is a tactic.

The harder and more important work is getting yourself to a place where you are able to bring your authentic self into the situation and pay attention to how you feel in any kind of new relationship

To be authentic is to be genuine, honest, and comfortable in who you are and what you are about.

Do not devalue yourself for “falling” for love bombing; it is human to want to be desired and to enjoy romantic gestures. The harm of love bombing is that it gives you the ammunition for the justifications you make when the relationship becomes unhealthy.

A child may also have an experience of an intrusive narcissistic parent who is constantly seeking out supply from or through the child (e.g., the child being pushed to excel at a sport the parent wants so they can get the praise), and if the child doesn’t do the thing the parent wants, the parent detaches.

family members can try to win you over so they can get what they need from you,

Charm. The narcissistic person is often the most charming and engaging person in the room. It’s a grandiose and attentive mask that gets them validation. Charm is the psychological cologne they use to cover their insecurity, and it manifests in compliments, storytelling, short-term attentiveness, and impeccable manners.

Charisma. When the charm seems magnetic, compelling, or everyone is drawn to it,

You might do everything—changing your appearance, trying to impress them with what you do or say, catering to their every whim, giving up things that matter to you, doing things for their family, or making more money—to recapture and maintain their attention.

Because you are confused. You aren’t a robot who just processes red flags and runs away. You love or admire this person and want to maintain the attachment and connection. In a new relationship you may want to give it a chance; in a long-standing relationship there is history. Not only is the narcissistic person in your life seductive and compelling, so too are love and familiarity and hope.

narcissistic people may discard you by having an affair or doing things like having inappropriate text or DM exchanges without technically leaving you.

If you try to hold the narcissistic person accountable for their behavior in the discard phase, they will likely gaslight you.

During the discard phase, a note of desperation may enter the relationship. There may be apologizing, begging, and appeasing from either side. You may fight for the relationship because you feel as if you already put in so much time, effort, heartache, and money. You may try eleventh hour strategies like couple’s therapy.

Regardless of why a relationship with the narcissistic person ends, they will eventually try to suck you back in like a vacuum cleaner, thus the term hoover. Remember, for them, relationships are about control, supply, and regulation.

Because hoovering leverages hopes and narratives of being cherished and desired, a narcissistic person coming back for you can be even more seductive than the initial love bombing.

It can be incredibly powerful to think that your words finally got through to someone. For a short while they may appear to have turned a corner, and then just as you exhale and shelve your ideas of splitting up or moving out, they slowly slide back into their narcissistic patterns.

future faking is deployed as a tactic to draw you back in.

While you are healing, it is a blessing if you are not hoovered. Not being hoovered is like going cold turkey—it hurts initially, but it’s essential to healing.

The narcissistic relationship is like a riptide

that pulls you back in even as you try to swim away. The intensity, attentiveness, and highs and lows are why you swim out to where the riptide is. The abusive behavior makes you want to swim away from the riptide, but the guilt and fear of leaving, the practical issues raised by leaving (financial, safety, cultural, family), as well as the natural drive toward attachment, connection, and love are what keep you stuck in the riptide’s pull.

The good moments are what draw you in and what you want to sustain; the bad moments are confusing and unsettling.

When children in narcissistically abusive parental relationships try to set a boundary or express a need, they will often find themselves feeling abandoned or guilty when the parent either gives them the silent treatment or behaves like a victim.

the narcissist’s charm and charisma and confidence are what get us in, and the trauma bonds are what get us stuck.

Narcissistic abuse can leave you believing that there is something wrong with you.

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

That constant anxiety or depletion isn’t a weakness in you or coming out of nowhere—it’s a result of the inconsistent and emotionally abusive behavior you have been enduring.

You may call the narcissistic people out on their behavior or argue with them about taking responsibility.

You may start to blame yourself because

they gaslight you and tell you there is something wrong with you, and it feels a tiny bit plausible that maybe there is.

The more invested you are in this relationship, the more you stop pushing back on their behavior.

During this phase you may spend more time ruminating about what is happening in the relationship, playing the narcissist’s words over in your head and justifying their behavior.

detaching from your own needs, and giving in.

At this phase you may have given up on yourself. You blame and doubt yourself, have difficulty making decisions, and may even find that depression and anxiety are now taking a significant toll on your life.

your health may be suffering.

a fear of regretting walking away from the relationship because of the possibility the narcissistic person will change and the next person will get a better version of them.

You may regret that you never stretched your wings because you felt as if you were not enough.

If the relationship ends and the narcissistic person has moved on, your thoughts may focus on What did the other person have that I didn’t? and Are they going to change?

do not “self-gaslight” and blame yourself for being the “problem” because you believe you are not thinking clearly.

euphoric recall, which is the cherry-picking of the good memories

healing from narcissistic abuse difficult because it can impede you from seeing the relationship in a balanced manner, which can result in you gaslighting yourself and second-guessing your own reality (Maybe it wasn’t really that bad and I’m making too big a deal out of their behavior).

“Is it me?” is the mantra

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.

it can allow the relationship to continue, since if it’s your fault, you will keep trying to fix it.

Self-blame is self-protective; by taking on the blame, you may dodge the conflict and the gaslighting.

Basically, a person experiencing betrayal blindness may see the incriminating text on a partner’s phone, may even confront them and be gaslighted, and then just go back into life and not integrate that problematic text because to fully see and consolidate it means you have to shift your perception of them.