When you spend so much time molding yourself to fit someone else’s expectations, your own identity starts to fade. Over time, you stop trusting your own opinions, likes, and even emotions because you’ve been trained to believe they don’t matter or that they’re wrong. Dr. Carol McBride, an expert on narcissistic abuse recovery, calls this the false self syndrome, where you’ve spent so long being who the narcissist wanted you to be that you no longer know who you are.
But here’s the good news: your real self is still there, buried under years of conditioning. Healing starts with small steps—asking yourself what you want, what you enjoy, and learning to trust your voice again. At first, it might feel uncomfortable, but with time, you’ll realize that you don’t need permission to be yourself; you just need to reclaim what was yours all along.
Number Five: Your Dopamine System Gets Hijacked
Narcissists manipulate your brain’s dopamine system by using intermittent reinforcement—randomly switching between love and cruelty to keep you craving their approval. Dr. Helen Fisher, a neuroscientist who studies love and addiction, explains that dopamine is the chemical of reward and motivation; it’s what makes you chase what you desire, even when it hurts you.
Just like a gambler keeps playing because the next win might be around the corner, you stay in the toxic cycle, hoping for the next moment of kindness. Your brain, flooded with dopamine during rare good times, convinces you that the highs outweigh the lows, even when deep down you know they don’t. But just like breaking any addiction, healing is about rewiring your brain to seek fulfillment without the chaos. The real reward is freedom from a cycle that was never meant to make you happy—just to keep you hooked.
Number Six: You Struggle with Decision Paralysis
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