Annie Kaszina 
Abusers make you feel so resourceless that you need to be very grateful to them for whatever “resources” they deign to share with you – or more accurately boast about to you. Without your abuser – or so the legend goes – you would fail completely, in every area of our lives, And so we come to despair of ourselves. That despair can block you from rebuilding your life any time soon.
You were taught to rely on other people to tell you when you were visible – or even that you could be visible at all. Has it crossed your mind that having an invisible woman around is incredibly useful for these other, narcissistic people?
One of those lies you just don’t forget
What was your parents’ relationship with the truth like? I ask because my trip to Venice – sadly now behind me – brought up a few memories about my own parents’- complicated – relationship with the truth.
Venice, mosquitos and me
My association with Venice goes back a very long […]
How not to spot an emotional abuser
My lovely partner is a stranger to abuse world. He’s never lived there. He’s never had to recover from emotional abuse. So, what had he seen that made him say: “That man is an emotional and physical abuser”.
We were sitting in one of the few coffee bars in Venice […]
How your empathy can hinder your healing from narcissistic abuse
Have you ever thought that your empathy could actually hinder your healing from narcissistic abuse? If you haven’t, I totally get you. It is so counter-intuitive (how is that for a touchy-feely empath-resonant term?) that your superpower could actually have its problematic side. But that is […]
Have you ever been hoovered back into a relationship with a Narcissist when you knew the relationship needed to end? If so, you probably woke up days, or weeks later, wondering “What was I thinking?” when you need to know how to protect yourself.
Being in a relationship with a Narcissist means that you are constantly in their line of fire. Even when they are “nice” – by narcissistic standards – you can never relax. You know that it is only a matter of time before the other shoe drops. So, you learn to be hypervigilant.
When a narcissistic relationship ends, the person who has suffered all the abuse is not in their most resourceful mind. The victim has been subjected (by the Narcissist) to so much blame and so many (ludicrous) accusations of being the Narcissist that she gets everything back to front. All the victim’s compassion goes out to the narcissistic abuser. All her condemnation seems to fall back onto herself.
You find you are blaming yourself for provoking their toxic behaviour – when you did no such thing – and seeing getting back with them as a return to paradise.
So, how do you prevent that from happening?
For survivors of narcissistic abuse, how other people are likely to judge us can be a huge issue. When you think about it, this hardly surprising. Narcissists make an art from out of weaponizing their judgement with a view to keeping you under their control.
The problem is that that old pattern of living in terror of how other people will judge you doesn’t just go away when you leave a Narcissist.
Narcissists do things that remind you how little you matter to them all the time. They do that even when their narrative tells you something completely different. They can tell you how much they love you even while they show you how untrue that is. Or else, they can tell you and show you how little they care but still leave you in magnificent, world-class denial searching for the goodness that you know is locked deep inside them.
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