Recovering from Narcissistic Abuse
A resolved emotion is an emotion that has been able to run its full course without the interference of thought, regardless of the outcome of the circumstances.
In other words; it means that you can endure a potentially traumatic situation and go through it unscathed.
Those that do are often people who have sufficient resilience, containment, a healthy emotional foundation and a support system that has given them an advantage, and hence can rebound quicker.
Starting with a Disadvantage: Narcissistic Abuse and Childhood Trauma
When life’s adversities begin when young, this can turn the tables on you drastically.
A resolved emotion is an emotion that has been able to run its full course without the interference of thought, regardless of the outcome of the circumstances.
If your emotional foundation is shaky to start with because there never was any support or nurturing, it becomes tougher to face new challenges, and this often leads to retraumatization through recurring experiences.
What happens is that there will be emotional responses that are unfinished and that have become patterns.
It is with these emotional patterns that we deal with life, circumstances, and people, and thereby recreate some of our old situations that relate to our history.
Narcissism and Complex Trauma: When Things Don’t Go as Planned
Projection and Reenactment go hand in hand. It is a process that happens simultaneously, and there may be various layers of it at play.
Let us explore this through an example to clarify:
Anna grows up with a narcissistic mother who is more concerned about her ambitions than taking care of her children. Anna copes with her by "please-appeasing," as a means of getting some form of approval and a sense of identity. Her mother, however, has turned this against her, through using guilt, and oversteps Anna’s boundaries on a regular basis.
Both identities, the ‘pleasing’ type, which is Anna, and the overbearing, narcissistic mother, who uses control to cover her wounds and insecurity, keep each other in their place.
Seeking any confrontation, for Anna, regarding setting healthy boundaries for having her needs met is overshadowed by crippling anxiety. Her mother plays on that by using guilt.
The Wound of Wanting to be Loved, and How that Relates to a Lack of Boundaries
Partly, that anxiety relates to her still wanting to be validated and the looming fear of rejection; not being good enough, and being a failure.
Anxiety, depression and an inability to move forward in life, are some of her symptomatic expressions.
From the above example, you can see that Anna has difficulty with setting boundaries, and that relates directly to wanting to avoid rejection and failure, which rests on her fundamental need of wanting to be loved, nourished and validated.
Reenactment and Addressing the Complexity of Trauma to Heal Narcissistic Abuse
Besides a complicated relationship with her mother, Anna has difficulties in other areas of her life.
At work, or in her relationships, she often gives too much of herself because of a need to feel validated. In turn, people either abuse or shun her because there is that undercurrent of wanting emotional compensation.
Anna moves between giving too much of herself, followed by feeling hurt and frustrated as a result of being used, or through not feeling validated, isolating and withdrawing into herself.
Facing What Is and Acting on it Through Therapeutic Guidance
What Anna needs to address, is to learn to openly express her needs, boundaries, and possibly, even anger.
While learning to express her boundaries, anxiety, and guilt will present themselves, which relate directly to her more profound emotional hurt of wanting to be loved and validated, and the lack of which she has experienced.
Once she can allow herself to feel the hurt from childhood neglect, and total lack of love; to not descend further into her usual default position of pleasing, and steps up to assert her boundaries, and feeling empowered by it, she will start to move in the right direction and heal her childhood complex trauma.
How do you relate to Narcissistic bonding and the please-appease response? Leave your comment below.
so true
I believe this to be true and I feel the way and I feel most definitely
I can definitely relate to this situation 100%
This is essentially the story of my life. I am extricating myself from a 30 year marriage to a covert narcissist. 30 years of psychological abuse with its attendant manipulation, deception, scapegoating, withholding, passive-aggressiveness, blame shifting and no regard for me as his wife, the mother of his children, and a devoted, faithful partner. Recently betrayed by him with a Filippino female our children’s age, though he is 35 years older than her. Discarded deliberately and cruelly on FB, which she purposely ensured my children and I would see. Very painful. I can see how I overdo, overcompensate for others’ deficits. And sacrifice my boundaries and myself. In the name of love and devotion. I am 60 years old. I don’t know if this trauma will assist in healing the original. I can only rely on what little hope I can muster.
I can relate i to have been in a relationship for ova 30 yrs and still in the relationship
How ever have been living apart for almost 3 yrs and am at the beginning of my journey of coming to terms of what my marriage has been everything is unfolding in front of my eyes omg
I can relate to all of that abuse Tara. I’m 55 now. I went no contact when my nm tried to poison my 16yr old son against me. I then got disinherited as a punishment. She has kept me apart from my sisters since they moved away at 18. Triangulated me. Ostracised me regularly just for adultly disagreeing with her. I have anxiety and depression now and social anxiety. I told colleagues at work too much which resulted in bullying. I left after 18 yrs of working there.
So sorry you went through that. I can relate. It wasn’t my partner,the narcissist is my daughter. She’s poisoned my relationship with my grandson. She started a smear campaign against me on social media because I questioned her actions and hoped she would take accountability for them and validate my feelings. After 42 years of being a loving and caring mom,she had thrown me under the bus,this after saying I was her best friend,her rock and her greatest support. All because she came into a large sum of money and got a lot of friends and suddenly had no time for me and started to criticize and disrespect me. Her lifestyle changed,she smoked pot everyday and experimented with cocaine,and her house was always full of people who shared her lifestyle. I, however was too negative she said,to be in her life,and she didn’t have a kind word to say to me. I got Covid and was very ill,and not one phone call from her to ask how I was. When she found that many of her friends were not her friends at all as her money kept getting less,she said she wanted to try to work things out with me. There was a half hearted apology for her behavior,but it was genuine. She got new supply cruising the dating sites, and I am treated like I don’t exist again. I’m trying to put the peices back together again. I suffer from anxiety,depression and PTSD.
Hi Marla,
I completly understand you and I hope you have your family or friend.
I know to pain, that you gave it all for your family.
Our stories are différents but my feeling have some ressembling with yours.
I think we need to reconnecter with ourself even the cries and the pain and try to be happy now in what we are doing at the moment.
Wish you to heal and love life again.
Honestly,
Caroline
I too endured 30 years with a narcissist. Im57 and have recently been diagnosed with MCI from all the abuse. I know exactly how you feel. My childhood wasn’t the best and I can relate to everything you said. This was like reading my story.
This is brilliant, someone who actually understands me
Excellent.
I’ve learned a lot of information in the last two emails I have read. I now know why I have so much energy as soon as I open my eyes, and I’m in my 40s and it’s hard to read. Sounds like me and my relationships. For anyone family or spouse relationships.
Happy to hear it resonates.
makes sense
Yes I can see this
I’ve been going through this for as long as I can remember. Whether it’s from a family member or in a relationship. I’ve been blind to it until recently.
Hi Tara. I was blind to it for a long time.
Badly. I’m worse than Anna. I was put in the Scapegoat role and whatever I said was wrong. People pleased in every area: work, friends etc. I stopped appeasing my mum quite a while ago. I went NC 5 yrs ago.
It’s like I was reading a page out of my own book. Very accurate.
Child hood experiences good or bad relate to future happiness
Thank you so much I needed to read this.. been struggling for years with narcissistic relationships.
Great, it resonates.
Yes, me too.
I spent a year of hell in a marriage where I felt like nothing I did was ever good enough, was being isolated, accused of cheating repeatedly and nothing I said or did was never going to change her mind. When asked to see her “evidence” she always said no. “I don’t have to show you anything”
Resonates very well with me. Quite simply, I’m the doormat. I’ve had 45+ years of feeling guilty. I please-appease in every aspect of my life. I apologise even when I don’t actually want to, but it’s 2nd nature to me, my default reaction. I pre-empt everything around me, but especially my mother’s moods and reactions. I have a deep seated fear of rejection, and I struggle to believe anyone could love me (I am married to a man who is the opposite of my mother in every way and has so much patience with me). It’s been ingrained in me that I was an absolute nightmare of a teenager and I should do penance for the rest of my life to attone for all the trouble I apparently caused. I’m exhausted 24×7. I can’t even use my name here due to fear that she will somehow see this.
I’m a textbook case, as described. I’m sick of the carousel!
I’m a 55 year old man I’ve been without a mother for 45 yrs and a father for over 35 yrs both with tramatic endings. I’ve been in 3 narcissistic relationships and am dealing with everything mentioned. my do not ever give up attitude has brought me hear and I have never been more ready to heal.
Good to have you here, Chuck.
This is what I have been dealing with my whole life.
Classic text book people pleaser here. This scenario laid out with my mom and then my husband. He’s my x husband now.
I don’t think my parents were narcissistic but my dad was an alcoholic and my mom was filled with such bitterness and resentment that she was emotionally unavailable besides being cold and callused from being raised by an abusive alcoholic, but only towards her mother was he physically abusive. My dad passed away when I was 15. He died of a massive heart attack that, after the entire day of fighting with him, was told he didn’t love her anymore, and caused her to become even more cold and feeling abandoned by him and unloved. She stopped being a mom in a lot of ways. She stopped cooking, wasn’t home much after he passed away, worked or went on trips to help heal the pain of being left. She was always at every game or school event and did the best she knew how to while she grieved and accepted life as it was going to be. In turn, I felt like I had made her not want to be there. I felt like she didn’t have time to or the desire to just be with me and comfort me while I was grieving. We didn’t talk about him much and I felt alone. I felt like without being given any boundaries or rules, I didn’t know how to process that my dad was gone and that my mom was trying her best to heal from the last day she and her husband spent together. (My parent never argued where we could hear so we had no idea the hurt she was going through until much much later in life). I married a narcissist. I had the desire to be loved, to be important and to be seen and have someone give me the attention and the boundaries that I didn’t get as a kid. The boundaries that I was made follow or he’d leave, were ones that were impossible to follow but was made promise to follow or he would leave. I was slowly becoming isolated from my family and friends. I even wasn’t allowed to attend the going away party that my sister had before I was moved 20 hours away and began raising two kids that weren’t mine and quickly became pregnant. I was constantly being criticized and picked apart as nothing was good enough. I was to take care of everything and everyone and didn’t get a voice in how things went. I was of use. I was given love and love and then it was taken back if I didn’t act right. Gifts given but taken back if he didn’t like my attitude over wanting respect given. I was tracked and followed and spied on. I was told that it was love and the physical abuse was my fault it was happening. If I woke him for work and he didn’t want to wake up, he’d throw something at me. He didn’t keep jobs and he wouldn’t allow me to spend his money on things unless I was getting him stuff or the kids. I wasn’t allowed to discipline the children for any negative behaviors and if I tried, it would become a fight against me as I couldn’t parent correctly. Everything and anything was more important if he wanted to do it or seek it or try it. I could be placed on the back burner and take care of it all while he pursued what caught his attention and I should support him and be there to take the brunt of his anger or frustration in the events it didn’t work out. I was to cook the right meals and I was to just go along with things as he was the leader of the family. I was made quit jobs if he felt threatened by another co worker or if it meant time was taken away from him. I was bullied and controlled. I couldn’t leave the house without a million phone calls and him creating problems that made me just come home. He gave me tender moments, some of the best memories I have are in those precious moments where he would love me and give me the attention I would beg for. But only for short periods of time would he give those to me before flipping back to the chaos. Those moments made me see a side of him that made he believe that he could be or was the man I knew he could be. Later finding out that he was establishing the trauma bond. Love bombing. I was terrified of him but terrified if he wasn’t there or to leave. He used my insecurities against me to gain control of me and to break me down to rely on him and to crave validation and acceptance. I just wanted the man he was in those moments where he showed me love and kindness. He began sleeping around on me but constantly accused me of being unfaithful. He chose whatever he wanted over me and his children. He was my world and even after being split up for 4 years, I still can’t get my mind to stop craving his approval. I haven’t been able to let go and every time I come close, he senses it or something and reels me back in by either guilt trip or playing my insecurities as angles to get me to come back. Now that he’s found a new girl to manipulate and love bomb, he’s became cruel. Cruel in ways I don’t understand someone could be. He doesn’t hold himself accountable and is never to blame for anything. He cheated on his girlfriend and it was my fault. He didn’t do anything that was wrong in our relationship and even the physical abuse he claims was not happening and that I over dramatize the truth of what he did. Down plays and dismisses his role in them as me being crazy and says I need help. All I want is him to validate my feelings and acknowledge something. I want him to just be proud of me and love me. I feel crazy for saying that but I wanted him to love me the way i deserved for the last 19 years. I want him to give back what I have given him. I want so badly to not have been wrong for so long. I have begun seeing a therapist and yet I still wake up and cry and go through my day and cry and go to bed and cry. I miss the man that never was real, he only lives in my mind. I want to believe I didn’t do all of this for someone who never was real.
Reading your story resonates deeply with mine on so many levels.
I’ve spent the last two years trying to understand why, why did I deserve this treatment, what did I do wrong to him to warrant the abuse, smear campaign, isolation, depravation.
The control over me engulfed my life in every area, it started shuttle but consistent.
My X Heckle and Hyde (yes I know it’s meant to be Jeckle and Hyde but that would make him a common everyday monster),
made a game of trying to break me, turning family and friends against me. Orcastrating situations that made me look like the abuser, vollitile, a terrible mother, money hungry, lazy, user, sex fiend. Gaslighting over and over following me around the property as I’m trying to get away, him calmly but unrelenting saying things to get me to snap to then realize one of his friends had been asked to come over to help him with something (to witness me losing my shit) or realise too late that he was videoing the whole thing. to have my outburst recorded.
In the end I thought I was going crazy. Maybe I was the abuser, maybe I didn’t remember that right, my God maybe my daughter would be better off without me, maybe I should have been the good wife and allowed him to use my body whenever and however with who ever he pleased. Maybe I should have just accepted being drugged to unconscious then sodomized among other things was my fault because I didn’t put out.
In reality he with intent ruined me socially, financially, tried to get a mortgage on a house using my house as equity without my knowledge or consent. Devistated me emotionly tried to turn my/our 6yr old against me. The list goes on.
For 3 years swinging between self doubt and trying to understand why anyone would do this to another human, I have come to realize not only am I not nutts, but that I will never understand why as my brain simply does not think the way his does.
The last time I saw him 1.5yrs ago, was after learning he had started grooming our 6yr old girl, confronting him with the hard facts I saw something in him that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
His body stilled he looked straight into my eyes, his had changed from blue to oil slick black lizard cold, his smirk growing with every word said…. “you know how easy it is?”
What are you talking about? Easy what is? i asked.
“How easy it is to kill someone and get away with it. It only takes little bit of a certain something that within 20 mins of death doesn’t leave a trace. Perfect crime when you think about it”
and that’s what I hold on to. To not miss him. Seeing those shinning lizzard eyes.
So very true!
It’s like reading exactly what I went through in my childhood.
I feel my obsessive need to please and fix my wife was firstly a way to actively avoid my abusive and neglected self, avoidance and extension and amplification this process prolonged suffering and increased the trauma
Afraid to assert myself, will start to cry if I try to assert myself
I had an overbearing mother and ended up marrying a narcissist. Classic.
This is so very true: from a 47.5 year old who has only just learnt boundaries! However the ‘complete lack of love’ comments are not helpful as there are different types of love. My mother did love us enough to feed and clothe us, even though that was packaged in guilt.
This is in so many ways myself. I grew up with not only my father being a narcissist and seeing my mother being controlled by one, being raised by one to also being married to one. I am at the time in my life with pleasing other people has is not on my list. I am starting to set boundaries and making myself a priority. My husband well, he is about to be my exhusband. Everything is always just for him and his wants. He makes sure everything he wants to get it gotten while everyone else around him has to wait and he lies so much. I have caught him recently in a very large lie and still doesn’t want to admit it but shifts the blame on me and tells me everything is my fault. I actually was at a point in my life where I wanted to end my life because of him and pushing and putting me down. I can’t take his abuse anymore. I have finally just said it “abuse”
I have just left (4 weeks ago) my partner of 6 years. Not been together as long as many on here I read but long enough to now realise that it’s a toxic relationship. Everything evolved around him and his feelings. His way or no way at all. I have left many times but he has always pursued me and talked me into going back with false promises. I now realise that my life without him I feel free no pressure even though I walked away with virtually nothing. But I have my life back. Actually going to therapy which has helped me confirm that he is a narcissist and that I’m not going crazy. I moved country with him in his last ditch attempt to get me away from all the bad influences (ie my friends) biggest mistake of my life. My friends were not bad influences it was just another control issue. Nobody likes him he has no friends barely connects with his children. I am so fortunate that I only wasted 6 years. I’m 53 and now starting to regain my confidence and get back to me ❤️
I grew up very similarly to ‘Anna’. I need to learn not to people please do much in the hopes of finding a meaningful relationship. It never works out and I get prayed on because of it.
I keep trying to keep the peace and nurture the conflicts when they arise and then become resentful and react w emotional outbursts, later to be guilted and shamed for expressing my feelings or emotions. Then, I dissociate to the point of forgetting who I am.
The narcissist sounds like my mother
Very strongly. I struggle in setting boundaries and then see the effects on those around me
I relate because I would consider every little he said and he only acknowledged everyone else but me.
I had a narcissistic mother. She was very emotionally cruel to me. I used to respond by trying to please her. I was still being physically and mentally abused by her at 22 years old. Shortly after leaving home my mental health improved and I was able to reflect on how bad she was for my mental health I never returned home. I kept away from her and tried to build my own life, which I did. However I am still traumatised by my family’s ill treatment and unfortunately others who I’ve been in contact with.
I can totally relate to Anna.