Most people coming out of a Narcissistically Abusive situation are suffering from trauma. They have PTSD of the complex variety. One of the symptoms of PTSD is the spinning of stories. Telling one’s story over and over again can initially help with processing the trauma. But there comes a point where it actually has the reverse effect. It keeps one stuck in the trauma. Healing your Narcissistic Abuse Story is an important part of recovery.
Talking about what happened is necessary and helpful, in the beginning. But if you continue to tell your story over and over again, to yourself or to others, you may very well re-traumatize yourself on some level every time you tell your story. You keep the trauma alive and the memories don’t get filed away where normal memories go. People with PTSD replay a memory over and over again as if it just happened. Where with normal memories, they fade in time and have less of an impact on us.
There is actually psychological reason for those suffering from PTSD to get stuck in their stories. Learning to get “unstuck” is a process of healing your narcissistic abuse story and you may need some help to get through this part.
A common story one might get stuck in is their victim story. “This is what he did to me.” Some of the victim stories I have heard are pretty intense. The individual I am talking with really has been victimized. And although I am not a fan of being stuck in your victim story, I do acknowledge that sometimes we really are victims. However, when we identify strongly with the victim archetype, and are constantly finding ourselves in situations where we feel victimized, we need to start looking at what we might be doing to continue to attract people and circumstances into our lives where we feel victimized.
I work with victims of narcissistic abuse. I call them victims because they are. They often have no idea that the person they are with is a narcissist, a pathological liar, a con man or woman, a sex and porn addict, a cheater, and completely lacking in empathy and the ability to take responsibility for his or her actions and behavior.
Narcissists misrepresent themselves and lie about who they are. They are very good at what they do and have the strong ability to use their charm and charisma to “hook” new victims. Narcissists exploit those closest to them, using them for their own gain. They gaslight, project and blame the other in such a way that the victim ends up being very confused and traumatized.
Many people I talk with will tell me “I should have known.” But how can you know? Especially if you have had no exposure to Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Most people don’t believe others could be capable of doing the things the narcissist is capable of doing. They are in such shock and disbelief that they create stories in attempt to “normalize” the abnormal, toxic behavior. The narcissist is so convincing that the victim is the one with the problem that the victim begins to believe there is something wrong with her or with him.
An example might be that a narcissist is having an extra marital affair and when the victim suspects that something is going on and confronts the narcissist, he or she immediately finds fault with the victim for bringing up such a thing. The victim is accused of being needy, insecure and jealous. The truth is that the narcissist is having an affair, but he hides it behind psychological attacks on the one who is attempting to get answers. Because the narcissist can be so convincing, the victim begins to believe she is needy, insecure, and jealous and she begins to doubt herself and find fault with herself.
The victim is conditioned to believe she is the problem and gets into a pattern of blaming herself for the issues in the relationship. So, both the victim and the perpetrator is blaming the victim. The victim has no idea she is a victim.
There is usually some kind of shocking wake up call that exposes the lies and brings the roof down on the victim. It might be that she finds evidence that he is indeed having an affair, such as a text message thread that she reads when he is in the shower. When she confronts him again about the affair and brings her evidence to the table, the focus is instantly redirected to how she invaded his privacy and this kind of behavior is exactly why he is having an affair in the first place, because she is so needy, suspicious, jealous and insecure. So even when she has evidence of the affair, she still ends up believing it is her fault.
I am using the female gender to describe the victim here, because I work with mostly women. However, the victim could just as easily be a man.
Coming out of a situation like this the victim tells her story over and over again to try and convince herself that she really isn’t insecure, needy, jealous and suspicious. She was acting on instinct. She knew something wasn’t right. But the program that there is something wrong with her is pretty deeply ingrained by this time. It can take some deep work to change the program.
A narcissist lives in a distorted reality and pulls his victims into his distorted reality with him. The victim unknowingly abandons her own reality and is absorbed into the distorted realty. She begins to believe the lies and distortions. She may begin to believe she is going crazy. She may question her own sanity and mental and emotional health. She may go to a doctor who prescribes anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medications to deal with the symptoms. She may be diagnosed with an anxiety disorder or something else, which the narcissist may run with. He may say… “See I told you that you had a problem!”
The Narcissist methodically breaks down the victim through psychological manipulation. Because the victim holds to the belief that the narcissist really loves her, cares about her and has her best interest at heart, she can’t identify the behavior as abuse. She typically accepts responsibility for the problems or tries to get him to change his behavior, which is a losing battle.
The victim may find herself walking on eggshells afraid to set him off because she will experience another round of psychological attacks on her character. Her anxiety levels rise as she attempts to manage the behavior of the narcissist in order to try and have a more peaceful environment. But it is really quite impossible to manage such an environment because the problem really isn’t with the victim. There is nothing she can do to prevent him from projecting his disowned pain onto her.
Although spinning stories is something that can happen to nearly everyone, it tends to be worse with a victim of narcissistic abuse. The victim of narcissistic abuse spins a story about what happened to her as a way of re-orienting back to her own version of realty from the distorted reality she was living in.
When I talk about spinning stories, I am referring to the process of telling the same story over and over again or obsessively repeating the story in your head. This usually is a victim story that is being repeated, because there is a true victim here and she needs to convince herself that this was not a “normal” relationship. Her knowledge that there was abuse and trauma helps her to understand that she isn’t going crazy, she has been a subject of narcissistic abuse.
This is also why victims of abuse get obsessed about researching narcissistic personality disorder, watching videos and immersing themselves in information about the abuse. It helps them to orient back to their own reality where they are not the crazy one, but the victim of abuse.
People who haven’t experienced narcissistic abuse, including many therapists, may say things to the victim of abuse that are not at all helpful. Such as “stop being a victim,” or “can’t you just get over it already? Let it go!” This re-introduces the doubt in the mind of the victim that she is crazy, there is something wrong with her that she can’t just let it go. She can’t “let it go” because the trauma is still activated, and she is trying to process through it.
When I work with victims of abuse, I listen to them tell their story, giving them a platform to be heard completely without judgement and then I validate them for what they have gone through. Sometimes it is the first time a victim of abuse has felt validated because well meaning friends, family and therapists, tend to invalidate their experience, projecting normalcy onto a situation that is far from normal.
I do bring a sense of normalcy in when I tell them that it is completely normal to feel the way they are feeling after experiencing the type of trauma they have experienced.
As I listen to the story I note the things I intuitively pick up on. I listen to where the trauma is, what the person is believing about herself or himself, as a result of the trauma, where the issues are and what is preventing them from moving forward.
Although recovery from narcissistic abuse can be a long slow process, it is much slower if the trauma is not adequately processed through. There are usually core wounds involved that tell the client that she is not enough, not good enough, unworthy of love, stupid, unattractive or a number of other core wounds and beliefs. Although these core wounds have likely been incurred in early childhood and encoded into false beliefs, the narcissistic abuse has activated these beliefs and a part of her mind accesses that the narcissist wouldn’t have treated her this way had she been good enough, lovable, worthy etc… So, she blames herself for the abuse, even after she has a conscious, rational understanding of narcissistic abuse. A conscious, rational understanding of the abuse is not enough to heal the core wounds and beliefs. A deeper process is needed.
It is time to create a story that supports you and where you want to go in your life. The death of your past is followed by the rebirth into what could be a really amazing future. Healing your narcissistic abuse story is about writing your story to reflect that amazing future. Be willing to learn from the painful experiences of your past and not allow them to rob from you the life you really want. Your past doesn’t need to equal your future. You can rise from the ashes and fly into a life that is truly worth living.
