Written by: Dr Norma Scevoli, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
Being in a relationship with someone who has heightened narcissistic traits or is a narcissist is very often a traumatic and damaging experience. Leaving can also be very challenging, and even after you leave, such a relationship can be hard to put behind. It can be difficult to know how to deal with the complex emotions and confusion characteristics of this type of relationship. You might struggle with the relationship's immediate or long-lasting effects on your sense of self. At times, it might even seem impossible to be able to move forward with your life and start the healing process. This article aims to help you understand how your early life relational experiences contributed to ending up in a relationship(s) characterised by narcissistic dynamics and the necessary steps to recover from narcissistic abuse, tap into your inner power and heal childhood wounds.
How childhood relational trauma can impact your adult relationships
We are more vulnerable to narcissistic dynamics in our adult life (both in our romantic relationships and friendships) if we grow up exposed to them in relationships with our caregivers. These dynamics are characterised by a power imbalance within the relationship where one has a ‘dominant’ role, and the other has a ‘submissive’ one, often needing approval.
Within the family, you might have been treated as an extension of your narcissistic parent rather than as an independent and separate individual, being praised when doing what in their mind was considered good and acceptable and being criticised when what you did, didn’t align with what they wanted.
This unconscious dynamic – among others – might have made it difficult for you to emotionally separate from your mother/father, creating a sense of emotional dependence, feeling the responsibility to prevent them from being disappointed or upset, and ensuring they remain happy. Thus, constantly focusing on meeting their needs and expectations rather than focusing on developing your sense of who you are. This, in essence, will prevent you from creating a solid connection with your core self, which may result in a more fragile sense of self.
We seek and return to what is familiar to us, even if it hurts. So, suppose you grew up in relationships characterised by narcissistic dynamics, where you learned to prioritise your caregivers’ needs while dismissing yours to satisfy their narcissistic need for control and admiration designed to keep them ‘away’ from their deep-rooted feelings of unworthiness and vulnerability. In that case, you might believe that this way of relating to others is a normal part of being in a relationship. This often results in getting ‘stuck’ in unhealthy patterns of relating where your needs are never at the forefront nor equal.
Furthermore, if your needs were never prioritised and you ended up taking care of others’ needs instead, you might have internalised the message/belief that you are worthy of love and acceptance only when you please others and satisfy their needs, thus experiencing love as conditional. Believing that you are worthy of being loved/exist only when others approve of you, consequently sacrificing what you need, leads to developing codependency traits, where ‘needing to be needed’ becomes an integral part of your identity rather than developing your sense of self (existing independently of other people’s approval). This often results in developing dependent or codependent relationships in adult life.
Our deepest, hardwired fear as children is the fear of being abandoned by our caregivers. Because keeping us safe is our mind’s priority from the day we are born, as children, we develop brilliant defence mechanisms that allow us to survive in an environment that might have been neither emotionally safe nor nurturing. For example, one might take the role of the good child and always be ‘extra good,’ pleasing others, suppressing the ‘unacceptable’ parts of themselves, and repressing all kinds of negative emotions. Although these adaptive defence mechanisms helped us as children, creating ways in which we could still perceive a sense of safety, attachment and connection to our caregivers and survive in an emotionally unsafe and neglectful environment; as adults, we no longer need them, and we only pay the price: the connection with who we are.
When you are not ‘anchored’ to your core self as a result of relational trauma in your early life experience of relationships, where expressing your needs and your true self might have been met with criticism, rejection, or abandonment, you might fear/expect the same responses in your adult relationships. Unconsciously you might recreate familiar patterns by ‘choosing’ friends and partners that cannot give you what you need (like your caregivers). This will inevitably contribute to making you feel insecure in relationships, not safe to express your needs and feelings, not able to trust your judgment and reality and needing to be needed to feel worthy of love.
The need to be needed/approved that may have developed in your childhood perfectly complements the narcissistic need for extreme attention, control, and admiration. In other words, you might end up with a partner with narcissistic traits as you find in them someone that you can ‘devote yourself to’. In contrast, your narcissistic partner finds in you someone that will always prioritise their needs, feeding into their need for entitlement, admiration, and control. This creates a dysfunctional codependent pattern that can be hard to break and become increasingly toxic.
As discussed above, our childhood experiences of relationships might have made us feel insecure and doubt our self-worth. It might be challenging to stand up for ourselves, particularly if we are in a relationship with someone that might (un)consciously take advantage of our insecurities to satisfy their need for control. However, we need to remember that a ‘narcissist’ is a complicated and challenging type of personality to deal with because of the strength of this defence mechanism, but we have a role to play. We are responsible for regulating our emotions, setting our boundaries, and meeting our needs just as much as our partner is responsible for theirs.
Narcissistic traits, abuse and codependency
Unmet emotional needs, lack of empathic attunement, abuse or neglect can also lead to the development of narcissistic traits instead of codependent ones described above. In fact, despite manifesting in very different behaviours, the centre of the problem in both presentations is the experience of relational trauma and a fragile and fractured sense of self. Narcissistic traits or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) can also develop if a child is overly idealised and not accepted/seen for who they are. These experiences create problems in the internal structure of the self, leading to the development of narcissistic traits or NPD -depending on the nature and intensity of the trauma – as a defense against a very fragile and insecure self.
If an individual develops narcissistic traits or NPD as a defense to cope with the experience of shame and trauma, they might manifest behaviours described as narcissistic defences. These unconscious behaviours aim to keep ‘dangerous’ negative emotions away from consciousness and maintain the sense of an idealised self. However, because of the very nature of these defences, the ‘narcissist’ rarely experiences any shame or guilt, thus not taking responsibility for their behaviours, which result in abusive behaviour toward the people around them, where their partners’ feelings are never validated, and their needs are never prioritised. Narcissistic abuse can therefore be very manipulative, subtle, and highly damaging. Narcissism exists on a spectrum ranging from ‘normal to pathological levels. Thus, the type and intensity of abuse can also vary depending on how high the individual is on the spectrum.
The narrative around narcissism very often depicts an over-simplified picture where narcissism and codependency are seen as opposites (evil vs. good). However, it might be more helpful to see them as two very different unconscious ‘strategies’ to satisfy the fundamental need to be loved and not abandoned, over-relying on others’ validation because they cannot provide this ‘reassurance’ to themselves.
Healing from narcissistic abuse and relational trauma
Following on from what was discussed above, here below are the necessary ‘ingredients’ to recover from the effects of the experience of a narcissistic or another type of abusive or toxic relationship and do the work to heal the deeper underlining wounds that led you to end up in that unhealthy relationship in the first place.
1. Recognise you are in a toxic relationship and identify abusive behaviours
The first step is acknowledging that you are in a toxic relationship and beginning to recognise and name the abusive behaviours you are experiencing. As narcissistic abuse can be very subtle and manipulative, a better understanding of the nature of narcissistic and, more generally, emotional abuse can help you to identify those behaviours. It is not your responsibility to save, fix or change your narcissistic partner or anyone else.
2. Understand your childhood wounds and how these manifest in your adult relationships
As part of the healing process, it is essential to understand your need to be needed/approved, the different shapes this may take, and how your early life relationships contributed to developing this need. Therapy can help you identify your childhood family dynamics to work through and restore the arrested emotional development, developing trust, confidence and compassion for yourself and consequently no longer needing to rely on narcissistic dynamics to feel accepted and worthy.
3. Set, communicate and hold your boundaries
People with narcissistic traits or NPD have an issue with respecting boundaries. Boundaries are the core of healthy relationships, and setting boundaries is a skill you can develop. To establish your boundaries, you need to connect with your core self and explore within yourself what you like or don’t like, what you are willing to compromise and accept and what you are not. Once you have these clear for yourself, it will be easier to communicate these to others. Critical points in setting your boundaries are consistency and learning to deal with the discomfort and negative emotions such as guilt that might be triggered due to other people not liking your boundaries. Accept that it is ok for them to be disappointed; learning to sit with that discomfort will allow you to break codependent patterns.
4. Bring the focus back to yourself and less on your partner
It is central to shift the focus back to your feelings, choices, and needs to heal from narcissistic abuse. Focusing on what your partner needs, want, and feels might be familiar, but in doing so, you end up neglecting yours. To heal is key to recognising your needs as important as other people’s needs.
5. Take responsibility for your actions and behaviours
While it’s central to acknowledge your experience, you must be careful not to take the victim position and blame ‘the narcissist.’ You are a warrior, not a victim. Your sense of self might be fragile due to early relational trauma and have defense mechanisms that might no longer serve you, but this doesn’t have to define all your future relationships. You can make fundamental changes only when you realise you are not a victim. To heal from narcissistic abuse, it is central to do the very thing your narcissistic partner is incapable of doing, taking responsibility for your needs and behaviours.
6. Learn to soothe yourself and manage guilt, fear, and other negative emotions
One of the most significant barriers to holding boundaries and thus standing up for yourself, especially in a relationship with a partner with strong narcissistic traits or NPD, might be your emotional reaction to their disapproval/unhappiness. You might feel guilty, scared, ashamed or anxious when setting boundaries to prioritise your needs, and you might not know how to soothe yourself. It is essential to understand that these feelings result from your childhood wounds; it does not mean you feel guilty because you are doing something wrong. You might feel guilty or scared if growing up setting boundaries led you to be rejected or abandoned.
7. Develop self-compassion
To heal from narcissistic abuse and relational trauma, self-compassion is essential. You might have developed an extraordinary ability to be kind, compassionate, understanding and forgiving towards others but find it very difficult to apply this to yourself, ending up being very self-critical in how you talk to yourself. Your inner dialogue starts at a very young age and is a combination of the internalised ways you were treated. For instance, if you had critical and demanding parents, you might use a critical and demanding tone with yourself. When you use that negative inner voice towards yourself, it is vital to notice and challenge it using a more compassionate and understanding self-talk.
8. Practice Self-care
Depending on the kind of messages you internalised within your family about self-care, it can be tricky to prioritise, more so if you are in a relationship with someone who has heightened narcissistic traits or NPD, as they will use guilt to make it very difficult for you to prioritise yourself so that you can focus on meeting their needs. This is one of the responsible dynamics in maintaining this dysfunctional, co-dependent pattern of relating. It is central to the healing process to understand and challenge your ‘resistance’ to taking care of your needs and ‘allow’ yourself to practice self-care.
9. Work on self-awareness
Healing and change start with self-awareness. You can’t heal or change something that you don’t understand. It is critical to work in getting to know the ‘wounded’ younger part(s) of yourself that keep being triggered, getting you ‘stuck’ in repeating the same patterns—recognising how those internalised roles and templates of relating to others no longer apply to your adult reality. Therapy can be the space where these younger parts can be given a voice, where their experiences can be acknowledged, slowly restoring the arrested emotional development. You can learn to provide for yourself what your childhood lacked. You can reparent your inner child by providing what you didn’t get as a child. Thus, breaking the cycle of abuse in your relationships.
You don’t have to take these steps alone
The good news is that you can break these patterns of relating and heal your childhood wounds that contribute to getting you stuck in unhappy and unsatisfying relationships.
The core of the healing process is building a stronger connection to your sense of self that may have been crippled by a lack of mirroring of emotional experiences and empathic attunement in your early life. A stronger connection with yourself will make you ‘bullet-proofed’ to any future toxic and narcissistic relationships. You will be able to recognise what isn’t good for you, value yourself and your needs, and be more assertive in saying NO. Working on connecting – maybe for the first time – with who you are and accepting all parts of yourself, trusting your reality and your judgment, and learning to reparent yourself in a nurturing and compassionate way, will finally enable you to meet the needs that were never met for your inner child.
You can create new patterns of relating to yourself and others. You don’t have to do it alone; a qualified therapist can help you through this life-changing healing experience in a safe, non-judgmental, and compassionate space.
Disclaimer: The content of this article is not a replacement for therapy or professional advice.
Dr Norma Scevoli, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Dr Norma Scevoli is a Consultant Counselling Psychologist, co-founder and Jt. MD of Resilient Wellbeing Clinic. Dr. Scevoli is passionate and dedicated to facilitating access to high-quality psychological services, actively working on reducing stigma around mental health. Dr. Scevoli works with a wide range of mental health difficulties including anxiety, depression, trauma, and stress and specialises in working with victims of narcissistic abuse and relational trauma, both in childhood and adult relationships.
