Some of the Effects of Childhood Narcissistic (and Other) Abuse in Adulthood

This is a topic that I’ve written about before. But there’s no doubt that it’s an important subject that bears repeating.

In the simplest of terms, the experience of being abused by a narcissist or other toxic individual – particularly as a scapegoat or black sheep – absolutely SUCKS.

The immediate, in-the-moment effects can range from shame, guilt, and fear to self-esteem and self-image issues as well as loneliness and depression, with so many more in the mix. The long-term, more insidious effects are the ones that can become a part of our lives in ways that are not all that apparent. Patterns of thinking and behaviour that emerge and we don’t question them because they just…well, they just are.

Long-term effects can grow from the in-the-moment examples listed above to become well-rooted in our psyches. On top of that can be trust issues, anxiety, relationship problems (often being attracted to other abusive personalities), self-doubt, self-sabotage, lack of self-worth and self-respect, C-PTSD, and a wide array of others.

This type of abuse slides into the very core of who we are and takes up residence there, often without our conscious knowledge. And then it negatively influences our self-concept and how we relate to the world around us. It’s common for the voices of our abusers to set up shop in our heads. After awhile, they don’t even need to do their work of putting us down in real time because we’ve been conditioned to criticize and sabotage ourselves at every turn. And, as is common, many of us unknowingly seek out relationships as we become adults, with people – friends, romantic partners, business partners – who continue on with the work of our dysfunctional families of origin or other abusers.

In any event, the damaging effects of our earliest abusers tend to keep rolling throughout our lives. Don’t get me wrong, we may still have a narc parent in our lives who continues to conduct their nonsense routine on us, but it’s typical for us to keep the tradition going in our own minds as well as bring in new abusers along the way. But it can’t continue or have the same type of impact once we raise our awareness.

What do I mean by raising our awareness? Listening to and trusting our inner voice is a great start. For instance, how do I feel around this individual? Put aside everything else and really allow those true feelings to surface. It’s likely that there will be people who are setting off inner alarm bells if we’re really paying attention. Like, “I feel completely shitty and worthless around this person”! Then, it’s helpful to think about red flags like gaslighting, smear campaigns, silent treatments, breaking trust, superiority attitudes and condescension, toxic communication, and so on (see previous posts and/or the online course offering on intuition and red flags). Are they there, those red flags blowing in the wind? Can we take off our blinders and really see them for what they are?

And if our inner voice has spoken and we’ve finally heard it, and the red flags are popping up, then what? Well, that’s an individual choice. Some people may choose to create boundaries, such as telling an abusive individual that they won’t tolerate their behaviour, etc. Or they may use the grey rock method, which involves being unresponsive, disengaged, and unemotional with someone in an effort to make them lose interest in us. Do these methods work with abusive people? Occasionally. But it generally doesn’t work well with narcissists and other really toxic entities because they’re persistent and determined. If you’re their chosen scapegoat or black sheep, they want to hang onto you because it benefits their ego. So, there’s always low contact or no contact.

But in the end, regardless of which direction we go, the most crucial part of the awareness equation is self-help and/or professional help. Those feelings and self-concepts that were created within an abusive environment are packed away inside us. They may not be obvious but they’re in there. And when we commit to eradicating them from our lives – the biases, attacks on our character, labelling, judgments, assumptions, lies – it’s more than possible to turn everything around. When we see the abuse for what it is – someone else’s attempt to feel better about themselves at our expense – then we can take steps to let it all go.

My words to you, personally, are: It’s not you. It was never you. Let it all go and allow yourself to be who you were meant to be, free from abuse. You deserve to have peace and to love yourself.

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