Prisoners of War- Recovery from Narcissistic Abuse

Many people ask me what it is like surviving Narcissistic Abuse whether it was in a romantic relationship, marriage or perhaps with a Narcissistic family member and what I tell people is it’s like coming back from a war. But the other most important aspect is that we literally AMBUSHED and don’t even know that we are about to go into a war

            First and foremost, Narcissistic Abuse needs to be examined under a lens of a trained clinician, i.e., a therapist, psychiatrist, any mental health professional. It is easy to throw this term around and I continue to advocate that this experience needs to be shared, examined, and processed to see if indeed someone has experienced true Narcissistic Abuse and if the person indeed lies on the heavier end of the spectrum of narcissistic personality disorder.  There is a lot of diagnostic criteria, information gathering that needs to be done with each individual and their experience to make a succinct diagnosis. Please be mindful that there are “DECOY” social mental health influencers out there amplifying this horrible experience for many different gains. 

            When patients come in for sessions and begin to tell their experience it literally aligns with hearing a war story on a physical, psychological, and mental level.  They talk about their emotional, physical, and mental wounds. They discuss the flashbacks that they are experiencing which can include ruminating negative thoughts about themselves or others, physical and somatic complaints. I remember when I first was going through my breakup from the Narcissist, I was literally having chest pains, so much to the point that I went to the cardiologist and thought that there was something physically wrong.  I also experienced feeling like I lost emotional limbs as well, healthy ones which consisted of self-assurance, empathy, and attunement. The Narcissist had a done a great job of blowing off those healthy emotional limbs that I used to stay connected to myself and to my loved ones.     

I work with clients on rebuilding and rehabilitating these parts of themselves. Frequently when they start to talk about their battle wounds, these tend to go much deeper into childhood issues such as attachment with their own caregivers, being a witness to family’s wars that were happening in their own homes. Sometimes people will not realize it but they were watching a war zone with their family members as children and not even knowing it, and this is where we start to make these connections as well as to how we became entrenched with a Narcissist.  Our guru on Narcissistic Abuse, Dr. Ramani discusses that they are behavioral, emotional, interpersonal and cognitive impairments. Truthfully, when I start with clients that really want to do the work they are demolished physically, emotionally, economically, vocationally, spiritually, and mentally.   My clients also share that once they have come out of this horrible battle that many of their family and friends have witnessed, they also feel like REFUGES, they discuss how they have lost friends, and family to this.  They don’t have a sense of who to trust anymore, they don’t have sense of stability or home.  Other times it’s the literal sense that people literally are homeless due to the Narcissist’s destructive measures of lengthy court battles, legal fees, embezzled money the list can go on and on.  

How we get ambushed!

            Little do people realize when we encounter a Narcissist in the beginning phases of a relationship it does not feel like we are entering battle, it is like the “element of surprise from the Narcissist.  They begin to move the momentum of a relationship quickly, they do a “friendly interrogation” to see what your past traumas are, what your triggers are, why your other relationships with perhaps romantic partners or family members ended.  Once they have the INTEL, they need they begin to form that ALLIANCE they may make statements like: “I am with you all the way.” “You don’t have to do this alone.” Some even propose marriage or moving in quite quickly to build that physical alliance. They seduce you into thinking that there is ultimate safety with them.      

            Going into a deeper dive, “covert narcissists” are the masters of camouflage, especially CAMOUFLAGING their Narcissism. Again, they appear giving, aligned with the betterment of humanity, they have some consistencies in their life most likely something vocational, or friends, but they barricade their other inconsistencies very well. They may even share with you during the initial periods of the relationship that there were victims of some malicious abuse. They want you to feel the empathy and pain that they went through and once that is activated in you it almost disconnects part of our brains from understanding that this could still be the ENEMY.  Covert Narcissists can be even more problematic in the sense that they slowly poison us, sometimes it can take years and yes, I mean it I have had clients state that it was years before they knew they were dealing with a covert Narcissist.

            Just as many of survivors of Narcissistic begin to tell their “war story” it usually starts with the classic love bombing, the Narcissist is camouflaged as a hero, someone that wants to get as much intel as possible for you for future retaliation.   I also have coined a new term that happens after the love bombing and the abuse starts to become more prevalent. “Chaos bombing” it is almost as if when the abuse progresses the Narcissist switches his arsenal and starts air raiding our lives with chaos bombs, we don’t know when or what to expect. This can be in forms of intermittent love bombing one minute, to entering a rage, to the silent treatment, it all is chaos because there is no consistency in what to expect.   As the abuse continues and try to navigate this relationship you will feel like you are walking through a terrain where a LANDMINE could go off at any time, one wrong look to the Narcissist, one small attempt to setting a boundary, anything that disrupts their sense of power and just like you have landed on a landmine even further wounded.  It is through this accident that you again feel emotionally, mentally, and physically demolished, you are left with shrapnel of self-doubt, emptiness, isolation and fear that you cannot seem to remove from your body or mind.  Each time one of these landmines goes off we lose more of our self-worth.

If you suspect that are entering an ambush or that you have felt like a PRISONER OF WAR, click below to see how we can work together.