Written by: Courtney Johnson MA, LPC, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
You are hypervigilant to this person's needs over your own
You constantly question yourself and believe you are wrong
Your nervous system only (slightly) calms when you have significant distance and time from this person
You get confused by continuous switching from feeling loved to feeling abandoned
You have become a different person based on this person’s specific desires of you
Do any or all of these sound familiar? Do you feel like I have just described your life? If you answered, ‘yes’, to both of those questions, you may be experiencing narcissistic abuse.
Now, let's go more in-depth with each sign.
1. Hypervigilance: constant state of assessing potential threats. When you are experiencing narcissistic abuse, the desire of the abuser is to control. This person will begin to exhibit behaviors/make statements to encourage compliance from you. You will begin to notice that with your compliance, things get better. Through this classical conditioning, you begin to anticipate their needs in order to prevent certain behaviors or statements. You are now more aware of this person over yourself, and you begin to cater to their needs while neglecting your own.
Example: This person likes the dishwasher to be filled a certain way. If it is not filled a certain way, they will say things like, “It is not hard to fill it this way. Are you stupid?!”, “You are so f*cking lazy!”, “If this doesn’t get done the way I like it, I will just have to leave you because you are incompetent”. You begin to hyper-fixate on the dishwasher and make sure it’s ALWAYS filled right so they will be happy. You even go so far as to not allow other people to fill the dishwasher for fear they will do it wrong.
The thing with this type of abuse, it is never one thing. If it’s the dishwasher, it’s also everything else you do inside and outside of the house.
2. Gaslighting: psychological manipulation to make someone question their sanity. The goal of this is to manipulate you to believe whatever they are saying often a defense to get out of wrongdoing. This creates a level of indoctrination where you constantly question yourself. This indoctrination is in the hope that you will adopt this way of thinking and begin gaslighting yourself. Leaving yourself with the task of manipulation and control, and they get to just sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labor.
Example: You ask this person why they didn’t hold the door for you when you were both walking out of the store (this person was in front of you). They say “You were behind me. How was I to know?! You’re so sensitive! It’s not that big of a deal. Get over it.”
This makes you question your reality of what is fair, right, just, and what an appropriate emotional response is. Moving forward you will begin to question yourself, and later alter your responses to avoid criticism.
3. The Nervous System: The nervous system helps all the parts of the body to communicate with each other. It also reacts to changes both outside and inside the body. You notice that you only feel “at ease” or “less stressed” or ‘keyed up’ when you are away from this person. When the person enters back into your space- physically or mentally ‒ you feel the rush of anxiety. The goal of nervous system dysregulation is to make your mind and body used to trauma, and uncomfortable when things feel at ease. Over time, the desensitization of trauma allows a person to stay in an abusive situation for much longer, because they don’t realize it was trauma.
Example: You leave the house to go grocery shopping, the store is about 20 minutes away, and as the minutes pass by your body starts to relax, muscles release, and you can almost feel a lifting off of you physically. When you begin to return home, all that goes away and tension and anxiety return.
This response is your nervous system tuning you into triggers of stress. This is a natural biological response to stressors in your environment ‒ its purpose is to protect. By not honoring the nervous system, and actively going against it, your system will begin to categorize triggers as less stressful and become desensitized to dysregulation.
4. Cycle of valuing and devaluing: a cycle where you feel close and connected with this person and very quickly enter into the phase where you feel disconnected and confused. This cycle is very confusing to the mind and body. This is another way to hijack the nervous system ‒ never allowing the system to feel safe or at ease. You begin to blame yourself for the shifting and desperately begin changing your behaviors to get “back in their good graces”. This form of manipulation is to ‘keep you in your place’ and is often a way to control a person. This control allows the person to feel like they have power over you, which makes them feel good and at ease with themselves.
Example: You and this person have just returned from a trip, it was magical and you felt so close and connected with them. Now that the two of you are home, the person begins to distance themselves from you. You question why they are behaving differently, and what has happened or changed. They begin criticizing you, being emotionally and physically absent, and blame you for the disconnect ‒ stating you “are too needy” or “you expect too much” from them.
As a response, you begin to shift your thinking and behaviors to soothe or calm them, completely neglecting yourself and that gut instinct that something is wrong.
5. Indoctrination: a process where someone else’s words, thoughts and beliefs become your own. Indoctrination is a word I use to describe the process of narcissistic abuse, where the abuser begins to change who you are to fit their needs. Remember, this person is focused on the external world and their appearance, so your fitting into that role is paramount to them. They will use all of the above manipulation tactics to change your core belief about yourself. They desire to control and power over those around them and achieve this by implanting their beliefs onto you, with the hopes they later become your own. The goal of this manipulation is to make you believe you deserve the treatment, will never be able to find better, and leave you constantly trying to make the belief not true. The indoctrination is complete and you begin gaslighting yourself, making breaking the cycle extremely difficult.
Example: Before the relationship, you were confident and never questioned yourself. Now, you question everything you do and don’t believe you are capable of making accurate decisions. You believe you are “incompetent”, “not worthy of __”, “stupid”, etc. You are a shell of the person you were before, and you don’t recognize this person in the mirror.
As a result of indoctrination, your beliefs about yourself have changed. You believe the words given to you and your life now revolves around this person ‒ their perception of you, gaining their love, avoiding their criticism, wrath or abuse, etc.
The above information is a condensed version of narcissistic abuse and not all inclusive. This type of abuse is insidious and as complex and creative as the abuser, therefore it’s not ‘one size fits all’ in regards to the way it presents. If you are questioning a person in your life or believe they have narcissistic tendencies, reach out to a specialized therapist in your area.
If you are in the state of Texas, reach out via my website to schedule an appointment.
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Courtney Johnson MA, LPC, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Courtney Johnson, founder and therapist at Onyx Counseling and Wellness Center, is a trauma therapist in Austin, TX specializing in trauma, narcissistic abuse recovery and dissociation. She believes that healing from trauma requires rewiring of the nervous system and mind body connection; trauma cannot be healed if the mind and body are not treated as one interconnected system. She uses an eclectic approach with clients in her clinic to help them heal and emerge as empowered individuals. She is trained in and uses CBT, EMDR, mindfulness, attachment theory and shadow work in her practice.
