5. You Don’t Recognize Yourself.
Many people modify their self-identity to accommodate an abusive relationship when they are subjected to abuse. When you go out with your friends, you’re telling me you don’t love me, your boyfriend maintains. You’d rather see them instead, he says, and you quit hanging out with your friends, you next abandon your hobbies or go after-work drinks with co-workers and finally cancel your weekly visit with your sister.
You spend time doing things that your partner enjoys, demonstrating that you genuinely care. These changes frequently result in a loss of sense of self, leaving you feeling confused and empty. You may find it difficult to enjoy life and lose sight of your goals.
4. You Have a Hard Time Setting Boundaries.
When a person engages in narcissistic abuse, they frequently have little regard for limits. When you try to set or enforce boundaries, they may challenge you, ignore you, or give you the silent treatment until you comply. You might eventually abandon your bounds totally. You promise yourself that once you’ve ended the connection or distanced yourself from a narcissistic parent, you won’t answer their calls or texts or see them at all. They might not let you go easy if they know they can finally wear you down.
Instead, they’ll keep phoning and texting you, hoping to persuade you to relinquish your limits. If you’ve been the victim of narcissistic abuse, you may find it difficult to set healthy boundaries in your interactions with others. I did an article about how to enforce boundaries with a narcissist, you can check it out.
A Book: Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men.
3. You Feel You Are Not Good Enough.
Despite the fact that you’ve had a successful job, built a good foundation for yourself, and received accolades on your accomplishments, you’ve started to feel like an imposter. No matter how many compliments you receive from others, the narcissist ignores them, and worse mocks you for them.
Narcissists mock and humiliate their victims for a variety of reasons, including the need to look superior. But the primary reason they criticize their victims’ accomplishments is the damage to the victim’s self-esteem. What better way to keep you under their control than to convince you that no matter how much you achieve, you’re still a loser underneath it all.
Unfortunately, in many cases, this works quite well, resulting in victims of this type of abuse becoming so broken and dysfunctional that they lose everything: Their jobs, their children, their homes, and most importantly, their sense of self.
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