Narcissists want to keep you feeling off-balance, which means it is essential for you to stay focused on the ingredients of a meaningful life: dignity, respect, civility, love, goodness, calm firmness, and more.  

Narcissists are committed to characteristics that generate anything but healthiness.  Their proclivity toward control, selfishness, exploitation, superiority, phoniness, and dominance makes them toxic.  Narcissists don’t just offer the opposite of a meaningful life, they consistently suppress you, building themselves up at your expense.  They need someone to be in the inferior role, and there you are.

We have a word to describe their treatment toward you.  Plain and simple, it is abuse.  A recent survey of several thousand individuals revealed that up to 40% have received significant abusive treatment at some point in their lives.  Forty percent!  

When narcissists are abusive, there are predictable patterns revealing their need to keep you subjugated to them.  For instance, they require your submission as they pursue dominance.  They will insult and demean.  They willfully cause harm, and along the way they enjoy seeing you in pain.  Needing you to feel powerless, they remove as many possibilities for choice as possible.  They can be physically intimidating.  They will spew threats.  You will be held in contempt.  You will become the recipient of very ugly anger.  They will shun you or use other passive-aggressive tactics.  They will smear your reputation.

The greatest evidence that you have fallen prey to a narcissist’s pattern of abuse is: The narcissist’s blatant disregard for you has become your norm.  It controls you and steers you into all sorts of responses that perpetuate strife.

Here are some of the most common signs that a narcissist’s abuse has become normalized:

  • When you are around other people, you actually feel amazed (and perhaps distrusting) when others are kind and understanding.
  • Reflexively, you become defensive as uncomfortable topics are introduced.
  • You operate in one extreme or the other when making personal attachments.  You are either too needy or too reluctant.
  • Likewise, your manner of maintaining opinions and preferences lean toward one extreme or the other.  You can be too rigid or perhaps you are too unsure.
  • Your anger management skills are unrefined.
  • Sometimes, you can numb out, thinking: “I can’t afford to care about things.”
  • Letting go of resentment and contempt feels like self-betrayal, as if you are giving up your power.
  • Perhaps you struggle with substance abuse or other self-damaging habits.
  • You may have moments of over-the-top defiance:  “I’ll submit to no one!!”
  • Depression, anxiety, or self-harming thoughts may become prominent.

The ultimate fallout of narcissistic abuse is the absence of love.  When a person chooses to demean you consistently, compassion and affirmation are lost.

But let’s go back to our original thought: It is essential for you to stay focused on the ingredients of a meaningful life.  Remind yourself that the abusive narcissist has zero right to establish who you will be.  That person is disqualified from any leadership over you.  Instead, love (not injury) can define you.

As you recover from narcissistic abuse, focus on multiple assertions and make them central to your thinking and being:

  • Dignity is my birthright.  I am a person of inherent worth and will apply that worth to myself.  To do otherwise makes no sense.
  • It was and is wrong for the narcissist to initiate psychological injury.  Therefore, I am determined not to allow that person’s injurious efforts to infiltrate my essence.
  • I give myself permission to withdraw from harmful people and circumstances.
  • My sadness and grief will become an impetus for goodness.
  • I own my anger and my pain.  It is real and I feel no need to reject myself because of it.
  • That said, I am willing to manage my anger and pain in ways that promote my decency.  I have healthy options.
  • When possible, I will seek harmony.  That is especially true as it relates to decent people.
  • When harmony is not possible, I’ll move on.
  • I’ll maintain healthy wariness and caution as I simultaneously develop self-trust.
  • I’ll become grounded in the objectivity that is a byproduct of radical acceptance.  I’ll become truth-based in my ways of discerning relationships.

Abusive, dominant power is inconsistent with love.  That being the case, you can resolve: “I am committed to love, beginning with a love for myself.  Abuse and dominance have no place in my life.  I refuse to dwell in it.  Instead, I will excuse myself from any relationship that offers the opposite of love and decency.”

Learn how to set boundaries.

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