Narcissistic Emotional Abuse
Do you suspect that someone significant in your life, past or present, may have hurt you with narcissistic traits and behaviors?
Here is an article by Shahida Arabi detailing 20 abuse tactics you might recognize. If these are painfully familiar, you might want to pursue therapy to help you recover from Narcissistic Emotional Abuse.
What does treatment for NEA look like? Well, just as with seeking treatment for any concern, first we establish a relationship and a sense of what's bothering you currently. I do something called a bio-psycho-social assessment, which means we explore how your body, mind, and social context are all influencing one another. My intake questionnaires are designed to allow you to provide much of this information up front. If you wish to use insurance, we will need to make sure I have enough information to provide a mental health diagnosis, such as depression, anxiety, or PTSD.As we begin to explore your significant relationships, past and present, in greater depth, I will help you to do the following:
Learn to recognize the precise behaviors that are abusive and how they impact you.
Identify how those behaviors are designed to get under your skin.
Notice how your current attempts to defend yourself only contribute to your own crazy-making. Break those habits as you begin to learn more effective ways of handling these situations.
Offer yourself understanding and compassion for what has brought you here.
Identify, unpack, and question the meta-messages being sent by the other person's behavior, and what those accomplish; see below.
Learn what narcissistic supply is and how narcissists use it in a particular way that causes you to feel wonderful at the beginning of a relationship and terrible at the end.
Stop trying to source love, appreciation, understanding, and reciprocity from the abusive person in your life. Recognize that it is impossible to do so. Grieve as needed. I'll be here to support you with that. This is not the only person who can love you.
Start learning how to provide these emotional nutrients to yourself, and find them from appropriate sources. This is empowering and healing.
Come up with a strategic plan of action that suits your needs and protects you while either cutting ties with the abuser(s), when possible, or managing that relationship in a way that minimizes their capacity to cause pain in your life.
Strengthen your confidence and social skills so you can focus on building healthier relationships with people who will treat you well.
In Psychological Shielding, I help you learn a discernment process that can bring tremendous clarity. You will not have this conversation with the abuser(s); you will have it with yourself, in a journal or private document, or in therapy. Below I give an outline of some steps you can take, and an example.
What is the other person saying? Note their exact words. Let's make up an example in which a narcissistic parent says, "I can't believe you left my party so quickly, after all I've done for you!" We will follow this example through to the end.
What is the meta-message the other person is trying to send me by saying this? That I am in the wrong. That I should be ashamed of my choices. That they have done a lot for me, and I am ungrateful.
How is this meta-message designed to make me feel? Guilty, ashamed, self-doubtful, small, less than.
If the other person's goal is to dominate, achieve power and control, and hoard narcissistic supply, how does this meta-message accomplish that? It puts them in the right and me in the wrong. It diminishes my value, and inflates their own. It leads to a situation in which I now feel I must apologize for my behavior, make it up to them, give more to them, or otherwise do as they wish. It also creates a barrier where I feel less able to bring up any complaints I might have about their behavior, because they can just use this against me.
Does the original message or the meta-message include my perspective fairly, distort it, or dismiss it? My perspective is not included here at all. It is quite distorted.
What is my perspective? What do I actually know to be true in this situation about my own thoughts, feelings, actions, and motives? Well, the truth is that I came to the party even though my child was sick. I hired a babysitter for the amount of time I could afford on my budget. At the party, my parent hardly interacted with me at all, and when they did, they made some backhanded comments about me in front of others that hurt my feelings but were disguised as jokes, and I couldn't really say anything without making it worse. It wasn't clear to me that my presence was wanted there. They also drank excessively, which they know bothers me. When they say "after all I've done for you," well, the truth is that there were a lot of moments in my life where I needed their support and they weren't there, or they made it all about them. In fact, I've had major milestones in my life that they ruined. At my graduation, they arrived an hour late, drunk, and threw a hissy fit about the parking situation, which took the attention away from me.
Based on this person's past behavior, how likely is it that I can count on them to understand my perspective? Not at all likely. Any time I try to bring up any of these things, they always twist the facts around, and go on the attack about something I supposedly did wrong.
What might happen if I attempt to address this situation with this person in the same ways that I have in the past? I will end up feeling more hurt, worthless, hopeless, and alone. I might resort to my own bad habits to self-medicate the pain of feeling this way.
How would a reasonable and kind person have treated me in this situation? A more reasonable and kind person would have interacted with me more at the party, introduced me to their friends in a nicer way, asked how my kid is doing, and had maybe two or three glasses of wine - not eight. When it was time for me to go, they would have thanked me for coming, hugged me goodbye, and left it at that.
Do I have any such reasonable and kind people in my life? Can I see myself creating more relationships like that? Well, right now my social network is not so great, but my coworkers are nice, and I'm building closer relationships with a few of them. I could also go to more of the group social events at my climbing gym.
What can I do to validate myself, soothe myself, or receive love, compassion, or kindness from someone who will acknowledge my perspective? I can go for a walk with my dog and call my favorite sibling, who gets it.
Do I need to grieve anything? Yes, I need to grieve that it's been painful to be treated this way by the person who raised me, and that I'll never get what I want from them.
What will help me move on with my life? I will keep talking to my therapist about this, strengthen relationships with my siblings and coworkers, and go to my climbing gym more often. When I go climbing, it builds my confidence, makes me feel healthier and stronger, boosts endorphins, and connects me to a good community. I think it will also help if I finally start working on that book project. My parent always made me feel like I wasn't good enough to write a book, but as I move on with my life, I know this is something I am fully capable of doing for myself.
