Tag: npd

My Transformation Out of Narcissistic Abuse

sad woman in despair
Photo by Anh Nguyen

My Soulmate 

In 2002, I married my soulmate — the man I dreamt about meeting since I was a little girl. The man who was perfectly in sync with my thoughts and feelings. The man who knew just what to say and how to say it to make me feel like the most special woman in the world.

Slowly, that loving and considerate man began to change.  I was married to a charming, charismatic man to the outside world who demeaned and abused behind closed doors. My husband became manipulative and controlling, making me feel guilty for any and everything that went wrong in his life or made him feel devalued. He began to demand all of my time and grew angry if he didn’t receive it. I stopped doing activities with friends to please him. I began walking on eggshells, thinking about every action and choosing my words carefully to avoid conflict. If I didn’t do what he wanted, when he wanted, or how he wanted it done, I was belittled and called selfish. Whenever I expressed things he was doing to me in the relationship that invalidated my feelings, he turned the conversation around to what I did to him. It was always about him, his wants and his needs. He was never satisfied no matter how much I tried to please him and everything was continuously my fault. The real truth about him was that he didn’t become this man.  He was already like this, masking his true self when we met. 

Lack of Empathy

Whenever I was sick and required medical attention, he was angry with me complaining he had to take me to urgent care or the ER never showing any compassion for my well being.  Yet, he demanded I show empathy and take care of his every need when he was sick. He expected rewards and compliments for taking care of his children. If I decided to treat myself to a hair day or nail day, I was called a horrible mother for thinking of myself and leaving him to watch the children.

I hit my lowest point when my husband had an affair and decided he didn’t need me anymore. An affair he blamed me for because he didn’t feel “loved”. His verbal abuse ramped up to nightly rants in an effort to force me into signing a separation agreement I didn’t agree with. I lost eleven pounds during this time. I couldn’t eat because my stomach was a roller coaster not knowing what each day would entail, I couldn’t sleep because he kept me up all night ranting, and I couldn’t think straight due to sleep deprivation. I had to threaten to call the police one night during one of his rages because he just wouldn’t let up no matter how much I asked him to stop. He told me he was wasting his time being with me.  I served my purpose and he was ready to move on. I was a selfish, vindictive bitch for forcing him to stay when he didn’t want to be with me.  

When the mistress decided to leave and return to her husband, my husband mourned her for months often crying in bed at night. He began to accuse me of cheating. He constantly complained about the number of texts and phone calls I received to the point that I resorted to always having my phone on vibrate. I began to call my family and friends during my commute to and from work to connect with the outside world. He checked my phone records and called back numbers on my phone he didn’t recognize. If I was five minutes late coming home from work, I was automatically accused of being with another man and kept up all night having a senseless argument over seeing a man that didn’t exist. 

I lived in mental chaos for years until I looked at myself in the mirror one day and didn’t recognize the woman I had become. I was frail and weak with no identity. I lost myself conforming to a man who repeatedly emotionally and verbally  abused me.

The Transformation

After 16 years, I made the decision to leave the relationship. I was once a strong, independent, ambitious and vivacious woman who became mentally broken and living with PTSD. I wanted a safe environment for my children; and I wanted “me” back.  The moment I stepped foot into my tiny two bedroom apartment, was life altering. I closed my eyes as tears rolled down my face in joy while I stood in silence enjoying the peacefulness of freedom. It was the most freeing and uplifting experience of my life as if 200 pounds had been lifted from my shoulders and I could breathe again. 

As I collected my thoughts and cleared my head over the days that followed leaving my abuser, I began to devise a plan to heal my mind, body, and spirit. 

Here are some of the tools I used to identify, address and overcome my situation. 

  • I began to read and educate myself on the signs and symptoms of emotional and verbal abuse putting a name to what I experienced 
  • I discovered therapeutic journaling as a way to heal from my experience. Performing a mental brain dump of my entire relationship often crying as I put words to paper
  • I saw a nutritionist and got on an eating plan to heal my body from years of chronic stress
  • I started an exercise plan to assist with my mental health and mood
  • I began meditating ten minutes before bed every night to clear my mind for restful sleep. Something I wasn’t accustomed to getting
  • I made a list of ten affirmations to state every morning in the mirror before leaving for work to rebuild my self esteem and confidence 
  • I wrote a list of goals I wanted to accomplish over the next year to begin making up for all the years of lost time
  • I created a list of activities I wanted to do over the next six months
  • I scheduled time with family and friends to reconnect and spend quality time

Was it My Fault, An Abuse Survivor’s Story and Guide to Navigating Narcissistic Red Flags. Click here to order.

The Detrimental Impact of the Narcissistic Parent

Most women desire the fairytale relationship portrayed in movies. There’s this highly gratifying and comforting sense around the Hollywood version of love. You fall in love with prince charming, get married and start a family or some variation of that theme. However, in reality, sometimes that prince charming turns out to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It completely catches you off guard wondering what went wrong and how to fix it. Prince charming, to your surprise, is a covert narcissist. Charming and charismatic to the outside world almost to the point of a fictional comparison. Behind closed doors, the princely robes come off to reveal the monster underneath. 

The Scapegoat and the Golden Child

As you start building your family, you begin to see more subtle changes in your spouse. One child is overwhelmingly doted on and placed on a pedestal while another child is treated like a trash bin collecting all of the narcissist’s negative feelings. He specifically decides based on his own arbitrary rules who gets to be golden and who gets to be the scapegoat. 

The scapegoat is blamed for everything that goes wrong in the narcissist’s life. They are made to feel inadequate and nothing they do is ever right in the narcissist’s eyes. The golden child, on the other hand, is the “perfect” one. Nothing they do is wrong, and they are the apple of the narcissist’s eye. When they misbehave, they are never disciplined while the scapegoat is overly disciplined even in the face of evidence where both children are responsible.

As their mother, you see the difference in how they’re being treated. You voice your concerns to your spouse who gaslights you into believing you are crazy. You’re also caught up in your own battle of survival trying to avoid bouts of narcissistic rage by walking on eggshells in the presence of the narcissist. All it takes is one phrase or utterance to set the narcissist off. 

The Aftermath

Siblings in a narcissistic family are bonded by emotional trauma. They experience psychological warfare that most people wouldn’t understand or believe based on the covertness of the narcissist. The children’s sense of self-worth is so psychologically beaten out of them that it takes a long time to get it back if they are fortunate enough to do so.

The covert narcissistic parent is subtle in their emotional abuse of their children, using insinuations and subtle daggers difficult for their children to recognize. The kids are left with the impression that they aren’t good enough because they aren’t doing whatever it is the narcissistic parent is visualizing in their head. Unfortunately, the children then end up confused from the gaslighting, making them feel like a failure or inadequate, needing to strive harder to earn the love and approval of the narcissistic parent. This is exactly the goal of the covert narcissistic parent. To make new supply/victims, suppress opposition and create chaos. To them, children are and will be used as tools for the narcissist’s needs.  

The golden child develops a scattered sense of identity. Their narcissistic parent’s thoughts and feelings become their own, interfering with the child’s proper development of self. The parent expects the child to mirror all of their traits, and the child, wanting to please the parent, follows suit. The child has difficulty with their own thoughts, feelings, and opinions and typically has difficulty thinking for themselves. As a result, the child struggles with boundaries. Since the parent has no boundaries with the child, the child either grows up with zero boundaries and gets taken advantage of by others, or has such strong boundaries that they don’t let anyone in.

The scapegoat acts out in school, lashes out at others and develops extremely low self esteem. They feel that everything they do is wrong and nothing they do is ever enough.

Both children often develop severe anxiety anticipating the next narcissistic rage and wanting to avoid it at all costs, trying to conform to whatever the narcissist wants or needs. This anxiety bleeds into their everyday interaction with others. 

The children also typically develop severe depression and have suicidal thoughts. Both the golden child and the scapegoat lack self-esteem from constant criticism, demeaning remarks, and subliminal messages thrown at them from the narcissistic parent. If the children are not provided mental health therapy during childhood, their trauma can lead to trouble in their adult life. Most children require trauma therapy from a trained trauma therapist, preferably familiar with narcissism, to heal from their childhood upbringing. 

Narcissistic parents psychologically damage their children. 


Was it My Fault, now available. Click here to order my book.

Photo by Kat J on Unsplash