When you’ve spent time under the thumb of a narcissist, particularly from your childhood, you might never have had an opportunity to get to know who you truly are. Narcissists typically tell us who we need to be, how to be, why to be, and who we are (in negative tones), and, in order to avoid chaos and disapproval, we tend to do whatever it is they want and accept what they tell us. So we aren’t really ourselves in this mode. We’re simply who we’re told to be or are accused of being. It’s like being stuck in a shell with the real you hidden inside.
When we make the choice to go low or no contact with the narcissists in our lives, it gives us time and freedom to get in touch with our true self. We may think that we like certain things, only to discover that we don’t…at all. Those things may have been what we were told to like or that someone assessed us as liking. And we may believe ourselves to be a specific personality type, only to discover that it isn’t us…at all. That’s who we were told to be or who we were told we were in a negative way. For example, “You need to act more like your (golden child) sibling” or “You’re so (fill in the blank with a derogatory term related to character)”. We may also feel certain ways about our appearance, based on how the narcissist in our life described us, which will typically have been unflattering. Once we have a chance to look in the mirror and really assess what we see without biases, we may discover that our physical being is not what we believed it to be, either.
If we are able to free ourselves from narcissists in whatever way we choose (boundaries, low contact, no contact), we give ourselves a new lease on life and on finding who we are, possibly for the first time ever. We generally find that we don’t need to be who we’re told to be or who we’ve always been accused of being. And that’s a real gift! Be aware, though, that it can be challenging to realize that we may have never really known the ‘real’ us. Maybe someone will ask us what we like to do for a hobby and we don’t have an answer no matter how much we think about it. Or maybe we’ll be asked to do something that we’ve been led to believe we aren’t capable of and we’re hesitant to step out of our comfort zone for fear of failure and the ridicule that typically followed from narcissists.
Here’s the thing – our lives are gifts that we should make the most of each and every day. Restricting ourselves to the confines and limits of other people’s beliefs and biases does us a great disservice and creates missed opportunities. This can all lead to guilt, grief, and depression. We owe it to ourselves to find who we are and live the life we’re meant to live. It’s no simple task but it’s well worth the effort. Find that you that you never knew.
Until next time,
Heather ~Natural Clarity Coaching~ naturalclaritycoaching.com na********************@***il.com Natural Clarity Coaching on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter
