A video clip that I watched yesterday just made me realize that losing yourself in a narcissistic relationship is a very painful process. But what is more painful than that is finding yourself after you leave them. Why? Because when you are in the relationship, the Narcissist turns you into a shell of who you used to be before meeting them. Before getting into a relationship with them, you had likes, dislikes, preferences, needs, desires, and whatnot; you had an identity. But they destroyed it. They wanted you to turn into a puppet, and they turned you into one by criticizing you, judging you harshly, to the point of you giving up on yourself. When you start finding yourself again, you experience a lot of grief. Let’s watch this small video clip together to lay the foundation for today’s episode.
Why Does a Narcissist Stare at You When You Sleep
Returning to yourself after cutting off ties with a narcissist can be a very painful process because with each step that you take towards yourself, you are reminded of all the pain that you experienced with that monster. You also feel the grief of lost opportunities, betrayal, lost love, lost dreams, and whatnot. You also feel happy because you feel free when you look at yourself in that mirror, because you know you don’t have to carry that burden, the burden of fear, anxiety, panic about what they are going to do next, what they are going to say next. With that freedom comes pain, pain of all the injuries that you still carry in your body. It’s a process worth going through, but it’s a painful one, a complex one, and there are so many layers to it. Which is why be compassionate towards yourself while you are rediscovering who you are.
Proof a Narcissist Doesn’t Have Any Friends at all
Clip reaction
Watching this video clip was not easy at all because I could see her feeling so many emotions at once. One part of me was really happy for experiencing and enjoying the freedom that she has to wear whatever she wants and to put on makeup. Yet there was this other part as well that was feeling grief and pain about not being able to do so when she was in the relationship. Out of their, a Narcissist does everything to destroy you, insecurities, and deep-rooted shame. A narcissist tries everything they can to destroy your sense of self. They ridicule and criticize the way you look and dress until you stop caring for yourself. And you may wonder why? Because they have to believe they are better than you, that’s why they shape the environment in such a way that makes their delusion become their reality. They constantly pass on comments and say nasty things about how you eat, how you carry yourself, how you interact with people, what you do with your body, and so on until you start feeling worthless, useless, unattractive, until you start giving up on yourself. And you feel like you are committing a sin by caring for yourself. For example, they may say something like, “Oh, I know why you have put on makeup today, why you have worn that dress. You want to get the attention of all the men in your office, don’t you? You want to look extra in that party; it’s all about flamboyance, isn’t it?” When that is not the case at all, you just are trying to look nice and it’s your right. But no, they don’t just say it, that’s the problem, they convince you that you are trying to cheat on them. And the unfortunate thing is, it’s brainwashing, it’s programming, and you believe that, “Yeah, maybe I am, maybe I am trying to get attention,” because they constantly say the same thing again and again in different ways, in different situations, and sooner or later it hits your subconscious and you start feeling that way towards yourself, you start hating yourself, you feel shame for a mistake that you do not make. Then what? You start minimizing yourself. Eventually, you start minimizing yourself; you start reducing your self-expression, you start hating the colors that you used to like, “Oh, those colors, they’re too bright, what’s wrong with you? Your choice is pathetic, come on, you be better than that.” It’s like you do not get any space to even breathe properly. Think about living in this kind of an environment for decades and then imagine the kind of devastating impact it can leave on your understanding of who you are, what you are allowed to do, what looks good on you, what your choices and preferences are. It gets all washed away, and what is left behind is a narcissist’s false version of who they want you to be, and you become that which, in my opinion, is the most extreme example of the Fawn response. If you do not know what that is, fawning happens when you feel helpless before the situation when fight, flight, freeze does not work, and you just do what they want you to do, the abuser, the perpetrator, in order to protect yourself from further harm. People-pleasing is also an example of the same trauma response.
5 Weird Picture Taking Habits of a Narcissist
In your case, the Narcissist who hurt you wanted you to give up on your choices, on your perceptions. They wanted you to become a reflection of the world they wanted to live in, which was purely delusional. And for these reasons, I say the narcissist you fell in love with or the narcissist who raised you never knew you. Through you, they interacted with a false, as I said, projected version of who they wanted you to be to serve their false ego, to make them feel better. So, in a way, they interacted only with your shadow, not your true self, because to coexist with such a monster, you had to hide who you really are, you had to alter your personality to survive, and that’s the reason why it becomes extremely painful to find yourself, to rebuild yourself once you leave them, once you have freedom, once you go no contact. Because you feel shame in doing so, they’re not there, they’re not saying anything at all, but there is this voice in your head that puts you down the moment you start putting on makeup again, or you start dressing nicely, you start exploring your hobby. You feel panic in your body because your body remembers what happened the last time you tried to go within and you tried to be yourself. When you do it, it’s not only the panic that you feel, it’s the grief of losing so much time and staying so far away from yourself for such a long time. For these reasons, you need to be extra compassionate towards yourself, and you need to be very slow when trying to know who you are, when trying to start your life again. You need to take it one step at a time, and if you relapse, it’s okay, don’t judge yourself. It’s not a linear process; you will take four steps forward and then three steps backwards, but you gain one step, that is your progress.
Rebuilding yourself after narcissistic abuse is akin to being reborn. You have to truly take a new birth because you have to deprogram yourself. You have to release all the projections, all the negative things they said to you about who you are, the way they defined your personality. It was in the realms of who they see themselves as but do not want to accept. So, you have to tell yourself it’s alien, it’s not mine, I am somebody they were never able to see. In fact, I am the opposite of who they saw me then, devaluing and discarding, that is your truth, and that is what you have to fully accept.
