Covert Abuse Quotes

With you, the psychopath acts covert, ambiguous, condescending, and always trying to keep you doubting the relationship.

People pleasing does make it easier to ignore the red flags of abusive relationships at the very early stages especially with covert manipulators. We can also become conditioned to continually “please” if we’re used to walking on eggshells around our abuser.

Dysfunctional parents do not apologise. It is one feature that the children of narcissists would instantly agree on. They will lie and justify themselves, but never accept they did anything wrong.

Covert abuse is impossible to prove, because it’s always strategically ambiguous.

This is called crazy making, and it is what narcissists do. They push to provoke bad feelings, and when they do and their victim reacts, they feel better. Somehow they transfer their state of mind onto their victims.

You do not owe anything to abusers.

Covert manipulators are quite gifted at provocation. As they learn more about you, they are investigating your weak spots and catering their comments towards what they know will hurt you the most. Knowing you’re triggered by their comments gives them a sadistic sense of satisfaction that alleviates their secret sense of inferiority and strokes their delusions of grandeur, control and aptitude. Having control over your emotions also gives them the power to effectively manipulate you and convince you that you don’t deserve any better.

Getting angry when something about their behaviour is challenged in the nicest way, is a typical reaction of a narcissistic parent.

The truth is that the happier and stronger you are, the more unhappy the narcissistic parent is, because when you feel good they lose their grip over you, and the ability to shame you.

It made me feel responsible, as well as the usual ‘everything we do is for you.’ I felt bad they had to work so hard to buy food and clothes for me, and I felt I had to justify my existence and repay them somehow.

Narcissists don’t see their children as separate people that have a right to experience life from their own angle. There is no option in their heads in which the kids will be in charge of their own lives ‘unaided’ by the narcissist. …

Passive Aggression – Being covertly spiteful with the intent of inflicting mental pain.

Abusers get one more opportunity to covertly insult the survivor when they say, “If only…”   Toxic

The emotional abuse suffered at the hands of a narcissist is on par with the psychological and mental abuse when dealing with a psychopath or sociopath.

CNs are not reflective people and are emotionally immature. They blame others; they don’t take responsibility for themselves, but instead project their own issues onto others.

Family dysfunction is progressive. It never stays the same. As it progresses, appropriate boundaries between parent and child may become nonexistent and communication becomes increasingly strained.

The narcissists strive to project a sweet and caring image of a highly moral person. From such a high stand they can judge those around them for their failings and demand they behave in a manner that serves the narcissists better.

In the Mars-and-Venus-gendered universe, men want power and women want emotional attachment and connection. On this planet nobody really has the opportunity to know love since it is power and not love that is the order of the day. The privilege of power is at the heart of patriarchal thinking. Girls and boys, men and women who have been taught this way almost always believe love is not important, or if it is, it is never as important as being powerful, dominant, in control, on top-being right. Women who give seemingly selfless adoration and care to the men in their lives appear to be obsessed with 'love,' but in actuality their actions are often a covert way to hold power. Like their male counterparts, they enter relationships speaking the words of love even as their actions indicate that maintaining power and control is their primary agenda.

By undermining you they make sure that if you complain about the narcissistic parent nobody will believe you, because they already have a certain negative image of you. Again, this abusive behaviour is just how narcissists live day to day. The plotting and manipulation is necessary to twist others around their false image.

Reasoning never works with narcissists. When caught in the game they get stroppy and angry. Their lack of emotional maturity and empathy is why the narcissistic parent cannot respond to the emotional needs of their children. They are too busy trying to get the validation they need, and that consumes a lot of their energy and effort.

Verbal abuse is a violation, not a conflict. There is a definite difference between conflict and abuse. In a conflict each participant wants something different. In order to resolve the conflict, the two people in the relationship discuss their wants, needs, and reasons while mutually seeking a creative solution. There may or may not be a solution, but no one forces, dominates, or controls the other. Verbal abuse, on the other hand, is very different from a conflict. If we describe verbal abuse from the standpoint of boundary violation, we would describe it as an intrusion upon, or disregard of, one’s self by a person who disregards boundaries in a sometimes relentless pursuit of Power Over, superiority, and dominance by covert or overt means.

Survivors who try to get help to protect themselves and their children are often seen as “hysterical, crazy, and unstable.” This is because the covert nature of hidden abuse is very difficult to put into words. Without the correct language, survivors often sound obsessed. Those of us in the recovery community know that is not the issue at all. The general public still has much to learn about hidden psychological abuse.   In

gaslighting is a major tool of manipulation. It’s about distorting your perceptions and asserting what works better for the abuser.

Children are simply unable to meet the emotional needs of an adult.

Growing up and trying to have your own values and personality is not received well, and the narcissistic parent will try to sabotage you any way they can.

Projection is a major function of the narcissistic shell. Anything the narcissists don’t like about themselves is projected onto others in order to keep their false image intact.

CNs aren’t interested in looking at their own issues or changing any of their behaviors.

CNs will seem uncertain about you and other times they will express how you are the only one for them. You never know where you stand with them.

Apparently, my parents were not worried about me being sick, because they did not suggest any such thing. My sickness was nothing but a failure of character

one of the major results of being on the receiving end of Narcissistic Abuse Syndrome is the development of PTSD

Cooperation does not equal enjoyment.

A child who is a victim of emotional incest may be isolated from others and struggle to make and maintain friendships. They can also develop depression, anxiety, and poor self-esteem

The spouses of narcissists cannot be independent or emotionally secure people. They are there to maintain the atmosphere the narcissists can thrive in, and this is the toxic atmosphere of miscommunication and tension that allows them to play their games and to be the ‘good one.

...verbal abuse is an issue of control, a means of holding power over another. This abuse may be overt or covert, constant, controlling, and what Bach and Deutsch (1980) call “crazymaking.

Covert narcissists prey on people with the right weaknesses for them to exploit. This is why the abuse is wrapped in a pretence of care, and they can get people fooled for a very long time.

Survivors often feel like prisoners in their own homes during the later stages of the relationship. They are told what they should and should not be doing and treated like children who need guidance.

The narcissists do not like to take responsibility for their negative emotions, and transfer the blame to others. Further, they don’t like to deal with any of the children’s negative feelings. My mother’s attitude was that children have no problems, and they should be a pleasure and a joy for their parent.

I want you to know that no matter what you did or think you could have done, there is no way this relationship could have thrived. Because covert narcissists do not have empathy, are self-focused, use people, and do not take responsibility for their actions, it is impossible for anyone to have a healthy relationship with them.

Emotional manipulation is emotional abuse. A person who controls your feelings and behavior with manipulation does not value or respect you or care about your well-being. Leave the relationship if at all possible, and seek professional counseling if necessary. Involvement with a skilled manipulator can result in serious and lasting harm.

It makes me feel good when people tell me how well you behave …,’ she used to say. When she was upset with me she used to threaten me with ‘You are going to make me sick, and I am going to die, and what are you going to do then?

Talking about someone to another person instead of communicating directly is called triangulation, and it is about controlling the flow of information. It is a manipulation technique that works only in families with broken dysfunctional communication, and it is a perfect tool for a narcissist. They can create tension between the members of the family and benefit from it by playing the one who solves all problems. It is another way of getting in a higher position of influence.

in the academic literature, making children responsible for the emotional well-being of the parents was referred to as emotional incest. It is a heavy burden for young children because they do not even know how to look after their own emotions yet.

A manipulator belittles a victim by using behavior or language that diminishes or mocks his or her opinions, ideas, feelings, looks, or achievements. Belittling can be accomplished non-verbally through the use of eye-rolls, scoffs, or smug smiles; and verbally by using sarcastic, condescending, or mocking tones. An abuser will sometimes disguise belittling as supposed harmless joking.

There's a widespread notion that children are open, that the truth about their inner selves just seeps out of them. That's all wrong. No one is more covert than a child, and no one has greater cause to be that way. It's a response to a world that is always using a tin-opener on them to see what they have inside, just in case it ought to be replaced with a more useful type of tinned foodstuff.

Everyone loves CNs on a surface level. They tend to not have long-lasting friendships with people who know them deeply. They may have friends who have known them for years, but don’t really know them. They are rarely without a partner. After they discard you, they usually move on quickly to another source—another target who will think they are so lucky to have found such a “nice guy” or “nice gal,” just like you did in the beginning.

Covert narcissists are different than other abusers because they purposefully project a good image of themselves to the outside world. They want to be seen as what society would refer to as ‘good people.’ It is a part of the illusion for the covert narcissists. To make the false image work they need you to play along, to enable them, to project back the false image. They become openly abusive only when their manipulation techniques fail to work.

Because the covert narcissists are not very good achievers, and because of their need for supply, they need a spouse who is easy to manipulate and who will not call them out on their bullshit – someone to deal with real life while the narcissists are busy maintaining the illusion of how great they are.

Triangulation can also look like the CN telling his girlfriend about a woman at work who keeps flirting with him. This creates an illusion of him being desirable and instills the fear of her possibly being replaced someday. Emotionally healthy people do not invoke feelings of jealousy and insecurity in people they love.

As with other relationships with CNs, there are a lot of mixed messages and intermittent reinforcement. They will make grand gestures; they might defend you in front of others. They will look out for you at times, as well as demean and devalue you. All the nice acts make you question negative thoughts you have about them.

It is important to know these are master manipulators who could fool just about anyone. People who haven’t experienced this will never fully understand. When others hear the stories, they wonder why the survivor stayed for so long. It all begins with the love-bombing stage, which lays the foundation and sets everything in motion.

Covert narcissists are likable to the outside world; they appear to be giving, humble, and kind. It is usually only the person who gets to know them intimately who sees the destructive traits. The rest of the world sees the façade, the “nice guy.” Many therapists don’t see through the mask and indeed are often impressed with how kind and aware the CN is. CNs seem to intensify their behavior around middle age; they rarely change because narcissists blame others and they usually don’t think they have a problem.

Victims do not attract narcissists. They are targeted for their light, narcissists steal what they can never have.

A son is a poor substitute for a mother.

It is the hardest and most foreign thing in the world to consider that someone who “cares” about you and treats you so well in so many ways is also sabotaging and controlling you.

Blindsided, shell-shocked, and baffled are some other ways to describe this time when the CN cuts you off quickly and heartlessly.

One of their ways of controlling is taking no personal responsibility and putting the fault on you for their bad behavior.

There’s a painful, uncanny irony that, in the name of familial love and loyalty, child sexual abuse survivors are overtly and covertly encouraged to remain silent. Family members and other caregivers will go to great lengths to deny, discredit, muzzle, medicate, or institutionalize the silence breakers. This must change. We need models of “love with accountability.

Intermittent reinforcement in the context of a relationship is when kindness and loving acts are not given consistently, but rather intermittently. In 30 Covert Emotional Manipulation Tactics, author Adelyn Birch writes, “This is an extremely powerful and effective manipulation tactic. In fact, psychology experts consider it the most powerful motivator in existence.

Silent treatment cannot be argued with, it’s based on emotions and not on logic. The line of communication is cut off, and it means the existence of the child can be reduced to nothing.

Decisions made by political leaders, as well as heads of large corporations, affect all of us. If these are made from a place where empathy does not reside, it will not end well. When empathy isn’t present in leadership, decisions are made that hold money and power as the greatest priority instead of the people who reside here and the planet that feeds and shelters us.

When you are with a CN, you learn to ignore your gut feelings, your instincts, and over time believe the narcissist more than yourself. You will come to realize that the CN has slowly programmed you to see things the way they want you to see them, and gave you messages about yourself they want you to believe so they could keep controlling and manipulating you into continuing to be their “supply.

To have the children behave in a pleasing manner, the narcissistic mothers use conditional love and fear, sending the message the kids will be shunned and the love taken away it they step out of line.

Narcissists expect you to be fit and healthy because the very reason for having children was so that they would be their supporters and allies, they are supposed to look after them and not to be a problem and a burden.

What I am talking about here is the systematic use of the punishment to demean and to avoid explanations the narcissists are not comfortable with. The control is achieved by the means of humiliating and terrifying a child.

Then the manipulator will tell you that he can’t deal with this anymore, that he’s becoming tired of your drama and your overreaction. At this point (if you haven’t done so already) you’ll have an emotional meltdown and then collapse into frustrated sobs. Then the manipulator will announce that you’re unstable or crazy or abusive or that you have an anger management problem, and says that he will leave you if you can’t get your yourself under control.

I want you to know that all the survivors I interviewed were intelligent people. Many of them were aware of psychological concepts. Some are in the mental healthcare field themselves. They are tender and have a tremendous amount of empathy. Many of them are also highly intuitive and aware of toxic behavior. They pick up when something is off with others. These are not naïve people. You can be super smart, as well as highly aware, and still be fooled by a CN.

DID may be underdiagnosed. The image derived from classic textbooks of a florid, dramatic disorder with overt switching characterizes about 5% of the DID clinical population. The more typical presentation is of a covert disorder with dissociative symptoms embedded among affective, anxiety, pseudo-psychotic, dyscontrol, and self-destructive symptoms, and others (Loewenstein, 1991). The typical DID patient averages 6 to 12 years in the mental health system, receiving an average of 3 to 4 prior diagnoses. DID is often found in cases that were labeled as "treatment failures" because the patient did not respond to typical treatments for mood, anxiety, psychotic, somatoform, substance abuse, and eating disorders, among others. Rapid mood shifts (within minutes or hours), impulsivity, self-destructiveness, and/or apparent hallucinations lead to misdiagnosis of cyclic mood disorders (e.g., bipolar disorder) or psychotic disorders (e.g., schizophrenia).

When you are with a CN, you can never win no matter what you do. They will never be fully satisfied with you. You will never be good enough in their eyes. They have to have something they can hold over you in order to control and manipulate you.

Even though many victims of narcissistic parents recall they knew something was wrong with their seemingly good parent when they were very young, as they grew up they still ended up blaming themselves for being fundamentally flawed and never good enough.

When you hold a belief strongly, it is difficult to believe something that is so contrary to it, even if the evidence is undeniable and staring you in the face. When you start opening your eyes to ways the CN has controlled, manipulated, belittled, and demeaned you for years, this is a huge reality paradigm shift. You will fight hard against the evidence no matter how obvious it is. This stirs up great insecurity, confusion, and anxiety in the body. What makes it even harder is that people around you see the CN in a positive light. Cognitive dissonance is one of the most challenging components of healing and recovery. It takes enormous mental strength to look past strong beliefs you have held and be open to looking honestly at the reality that is presenting itself.

When we were around other people, I would put on a facade, and so would she. We made others believe that our relationship was something that it was not, that she was the ideal mother, and that we were as close as you would expect any other mother and daughter to be.

Because of the way that covert narcissists operate, you may often find yourself doubting who your mother’s “true” self is, as you see her move from being warm, caring, open, and vulnerable to cold, callous, and abusive–without any warning, as if a button has been pushed.

When you first begin to realize a person you have loved and fully believed loved you is a covert narcissist, it is so hard to accept because you have seen them in such a different light for so long. It is a struggle for the brain to reconcile the man or woman you thought existed with the one who is now treating you with such anger and hostility. This is called cognitive dissonance—having two competing thoughts in your mind at the same time—and is part of the confusing feelings you might be experiencing. It is both painful and exhausting.

In some cases, the partner of an abuser may eventually come to the conclusion that something is wrong in the relationship but not know what it is. This is most common if the abuser is covert. The abuser may quietly counter nearly every comment and enthusiasm the partner expresses.

It is so easy to believe the CN is telling the truth because they act so confidently. They can sound so reasonable, and you are used to trusting them. The thing is, they are professional liars. Your body, on the other hand, is an accurate barometer that will always tell you the truth.

There are several types of narcissists. The covert type is one of the most destructive to your heart, psyche, and physical body because you are usually the only one who sees it. People who know the narcissist in your life probably think they are one of the nicest people they’ve ever met and often wish they could be as lucky as you to have a mom, husband, dad, wife, boyfriend, boss, or friend like you do. They feel the same way you did, maybe for a long time, about the covert narcissist in your life. They have witnessed the same illusion, but have not yet identified the truth.

My mom is another constant. She passed away a few years ago, but I carry all loving memories of her with me daily. She was the personification of unconditional love. I always felt fully accepted by her. I don’t ever remember her putting me down through her words or in any other way. She never

You have the most accurate barometer for truth living within you. Every time you choose to trust yourself, you are strengthening a muscle that will someday become second nature. This will trickle into every area of your life—relationships, career, everyday decisions, where to live, where to vacation, etc. You have a gold mine inside you, and the more you use it, trust it, believe in it, the more miracles you will experience. Life will take on a magical feeling. Things will seem to flow with more ease and enjoyment. Your life will unfold in a way where you feel incredibly loved because you are.

Covert narcissists seek out certain types of people. They look for people who are kind, authentic, self-reflective, nurturing, loving, and caring people with a conscience. They look for energy supplies. Without these attributes, the narcissist has no use for you, as their manipulative tactics wouldn’t work.

An important difference between overt and covert incest is that, while the overt victim feels abused, the covert victim feels idealized and privileged. Yet underneath the thin mask of feeling special and privileged rests the same trauma of the overt victim: rage, anger, shame and guilt. The sense of exploitation resulting from being a parent's surrogate partner or spouse is buried behind a wall of illusion and denial. The adult covert incest victim remains stuck in a pattern of living aimed at keeping the special relationship going with the opposite-sex parent. It is a pattern of always trying to please Mommy and Daddy. In this way the adult continues to be idealized. A privileged and special position is maintained; the pain and suffering of a lost childhood denied. Separation never occurs and feelings of being trapped in the psychological marriage deepen. This interferes with the victim's capacity for healthy intimacy and sexuality.

The discard phase is excruciating. It is also extremely confounding, to say the least. You saw your CN as one person for years, and now you see someone you don’t recognize, someone cruel and unfeeling. Your head is spinning, and your heart is devastated. You’ve never experienced betrayal, hurt, and confusion like this before.

Separating from Family Issues: January 4 We can draw a healthy line, a healthy boundary, between ourselves and our nuclear family. We can separate ourselves from their issues. Some of us may have family members who are addicted to alcohol and other drugs and who are not in recovery from their addiction. Some of us may have family members who have unresolved codependency issues. Family members may be addicted to misery, pain, suffering, martyrdom, and victimization. We may have family members who have unresolved abuse issues or unresolved family of origin issues. We may have family members who are addicted to work, eating, or sex. Our family may be completely enmeshed, or we may have a disconnected family in which the members have little contact. We may be like our family. We may love our family. But we are separate human beings with individual rights and issues. One of our primary rights is to begin feeling better and recovering, whether or not others in the family choose to do the same. We do not have to feel guilty about finding happiness and a life that works. And we do not have to take on our family’s issues as our own to be loyal and to show we love them. Often when we begin taking care of ourselves, family members will reverberate with overt and covert attempts to pull us back into the old system and roles. We do not have to go. Their attempts to pull us back are their issues. Taking care of ourselves and becoming healthy and happy does not mean we do not love them. It means we’re addressing our issues. We do not have to judge them because they have issues; nor do we have to allow them to do anything they would like to us just because they are family. We are free now, free to take care of ourselves with family members. Our freedom starts when we stop denying their issues, and politely, but assertively, hand their stuff back to them—where it belongs—and deal with our own issues. Today, I will separate myself from family members. I am a separate human being, even though I belong to a unit called a family. I have a right to my own issues and growth; my family members have a right to their issues and a right to choose where and when they will deal with these issues. I can learn to detach in love from my family members and their issues. I am willing to work through all necessary feelings in order to accomplish this.

Most likely, the discard phase will feel like the most confusing and painful betrayal you’ve ever felt in your life. The person you have loved for years and who you believed loved you back is now saying the cruelest things—things you would have never imagined possible. They treat you like a child, “teach” you, punish you, and tell you how you should behave.

CNs often use passive-aggressive means to punish you when you do not behave in ways they want. Sometimes they will give you the silent treatment, act as if they didn’t hear you, or be distant when you long for connection. They will pull away and starve you of attention and affection. They will do things to inconvenience you, disrupting your life in some way.

Coverts do have a grandiose sense of self, are preoccupied with fantasies of power, require excessive admiration, but they hide these attributes so people will like and trust them. They know if they are obvious about their self-absorbed traits, people won’t like them. They believe they are “special” and entitled, but they know it would turn people off to let that be known. They know they must appear humble to be liked and revered. They know how to play people, how to charm them. They are master manipulators. They don’t have empathy but have learned how to act empathetically. They will look you in the eyes, making you feel special and heard, make sounds and give looks that tell you they care, but they really don’t. They mirror your emotions, so it seems like they have empathy. They have observed and learned how to appear to care. They thrive upon the attention of others. People who think or act as if they are amazing are their energy supply. They have people around them who adore them, respect them, revere them, see them as special and almost perfect, and in some cases seem to worship them.

One reason covert narcissists are so damaging is because of cognitive dissonance. This is when you have two competing thoughts in your mind. You love your mom, spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend and thought they loved you the same. Yet when you look back, their behaviors make you question your beliefs about them. As you reflect, you begin to wonder, Could this person really have been controlling and manipulating me for years and I didn’t see it…or were things really my fault and I’m just overdramatizing my experience? You have a solid belief that has formed over years that this is a good person who cares about you, and at the same time, they are being incredibly cruel and controlling. The cognitive dissonance is dizzying and crazy-making.

A helpful thing to notice while you are trying to find answers is the fact that men and women who are with healthy people don’t enter words into online search engines such as “toxic relationships”; “energy vampires”; “mean spouses”; “confusing relationships”; “hidden abuse”; “subtle abuse”; “manipulation”; “narcissism”; “covert narcissism”; “sociopaths.” The same is true for people who are going through a divorce or a breakup where they just realized they weren’t a good match, or they fell out of love, or they find themselves wanting other things. If you are searching for answers because you feel utterly confused, you are on the right track because you’re smart. If your body feels weak and flustered around someone, it knows something is not right.

The more my own eyes began to open, the more overwhelming grief and anger I felt. With time, education, and support, this awakening turned into a growing strength and hope inside me. This will happen for you, too. Reading this book is going to be incredibly helpful for you as you begin to awaken to the truth of what you have been through. If you have lived with a covert narcissist, you have been held down for a long time. You have experienced the illusion of love, not the real thing. You have been lied to, manipulated, and controlled. You have not been heard or respected. You were devalued and brutally discarded by someone who said they cared about you, but in fact only cared about themselves. You have experienced an insanity-inducing relationship that is difficult to describe.

You have been through a tremendously difficult and painful experience. You have been treated terribly by someone who is selfish and doesn’t care about you. You have been given messages about who you are that are not true. You have been conned, manipulated, lied to, and brainwashed. You have been belittled, talked down to, and treated with disrespect. You were used. You have been emotionally and psychologically abused for years. You have been blamed for things that had nothing to do with you. You have been made to feel like things are wrong with you when they are not. You have been treated in a way that has made you doubt yourself. Someone who does not have your best interests at heart has controlled you. You have experienced the illusion of love, not the real thing. Not even close.

Give yourself permission to be strong. To stand up to people. To go after what you really want. You have permission to not always be nice. Instead, be picky about who you spend your time with. Give yourself permission not to accept poor treatment anymore, from anyone. You are allowed to fully be yourself. We need strong people with a heart like yours. Be the person you would want looking out for you.

Covert narcissists, as the name implies, are very good at hiding their true needy and abusive nature. And because the narcissistic mothers enjoy having small children, a presumption is created that they are good mothers. And they are not shy of actively promoting the image of the good mother – repeatedly telling you how much they sacrifice for you and brainwashing your perceptions of who they really are.

Overt narcissists tend to have shorter marriages and romantic relationships. It is common for people to be married to coverts for decades and not know they are married to one for most of the relationship. It is also common for people to be in dating relationships with covert narcissists (CNs) that go on for years. Children of covertly narcissistic parents often do not realize the truth about their mom or dad until their thirties.

The CN paints a false reality and says things about you that aren’t true, but you question yourself, wondering if they are right because they sound so confident and act like they know more than you, and you feel like you can’t think straight. They twist your words and confuse you with strange thinking. This leaves you questioning and doubting yourself constantly. You feel weak, confused, and fearful about your future. You feel alone.

If you feel hopeless, joyless, bewildered, if you second-guess yourself a lot and question whether you are too sensitive, you might be a victim of gaslighting. If you can’t figure out why you are so unhappy when you have so much good in your life, you might be experiencing this type of manipulation. Maybe you find yourself making excuses for your parent or partner’s behavior to friends and family. These are all signs you might be experiencing gaslighting.

At the beginning of a relationship with a covert narcissist, you feel incredibly valued. Then you begin to experience little things, statements they make, looks they give that begin to demean and devalue you. It is all very subtle. Over a long period of time, you are given the message by someone you love and trust that you have no value, no matter what you do, no matter how kind you are, no matter how much you do for them, you will never ever be enough for them. The cold, hard truth is you do not matter to them, and unfortunately, the message you end up receiving is that you do not matter, period. The confusing thing is that while you are being devalued, you are also experiencing kindness. You receive beautiful love letters, affection, and loving gestures. You continue to believe this is a good relationship, and your partner loves you. You tell everyone around you how lucky you are to have the partner you do because you sincerely believe that. Your friends tell you they wish their husband/wife/partner was more like yours. However, though you are saying all of these things, you don’t notice your self-image and self-worth slowly declining over time. Through the years, you notice your health isn’t great, you feel depressed, you aren’t that happy, but you contribute these things to other things in life or blame yourself. The way your CN partner treats you goes unnoticed because it has become your normal. You don’t notice the consistent devaluing because it is so subtle. You don’t realize how you feel is a result of the trauma of living with an abuser.

Birthday parties and events will be thrown for the child to elicit admiration and attention from others.  However, the child will be punished, berated and humiliated in the middle of the party in front of an audience if they behave against the expectations of the self-absorbed mother.  The party only serves to generate additional narcissistic supply for the mother, not a pleasurable event for the child.  Events are scheduled, changed, and cancelled in order to exert and announce control over the child.  They make it very apparent to the child that the mother can both give pleasure and take pleasure away by these means. 

If you were raised in a negative environment, building a negative image of yourself is natural.  Narcissistic fathers focus on flaws and fail to give praise, so that is what we embrace ourselves. When we grow up we see only the failures, the mistakes, the bad choices and how we can never measure up to the ideals we expect from ourselves. We are so used to the negativity that we forget to see the little good things. We brush off compliments. Developing positive self-talk means reversing whatever is it that your father made you believe. Accepting and enjoying compliments and your own accomplishments. Giving yourself credit for the things you did.

When Joanne met her husband and continuing for the first few years of their marriage, she was so impressed by how easily and quickly he apologized. He was better than her at apologizing, better than anyone she knew, really. Looking back, she noticed a pattern of him listening to her express how something he did or said hurt her, then apologizing, then changing his behavior for a couple days, then repeating the same old behavior. After a while, with all the other responsibilities of life, she stopped trying; she learned to just accept things about him that weren’t ideal and enjoy the good parts. He wore her down and subtly taught her it wasn’t worth the effort to confront him and tell him her feelings.

One of the things necessary for healing to take place is recognizing the truth of the relationship and that person. You experienced so many covert lies; it is incredibly helpful to be able to see clearly. The truth is you were in love with an illusion, with the person they portrayed themselves to be. At first, this is an excruciating realization. You will doubt and wonder if you are overinflating this, if they really are innocent and you’re just scared to move on. You will have a ton of self-doubt. Eventually, with education and support, you will see that your hunch, your inner knowing, is on target. In time the truth that you were in love with an illusion will feel like a relief because truth does set you free. That full realization will validate years of confusion you felt, years of unexplained exhaustion and health issues, years of sexual confusion, years of feeling less than, and years of unhappiness, along with anxiety. You lived in an unsafe environment, were demeaned and devalued for years (decades for some of you; entire childhoods for many of you). You did not experience unconditional love; you did not live with someone who treated you with respect, who cherished you, treasured you, and felt so lucky to have you in their life. No, the truth is you experienced a counterfeit. If this was a spouse or romantic partner, this awakening to the truth is excruciating because you did love that person with all your heart. You were dedicated. You were in 100%. The truth is that you were the lifeforce in the relationship. When you’re really honest with yourself, when you look back with clear vision, that life, that love you gave and felt, was never fully reciprocated.

The bond between the narcissistic father and their child exists, but it is unhealthy and not based on mutual respect and love, but on shame and guilt. Such a father projects his deepest fears of inadequacies, shame and rejection on their children, but they also do the same for their ambitions, unrealistic qualities, imagined authority and false sense of personal power, grandiosity and success. Based on these two they give their children the roles of the scapegoat and the golden child where the first one becomes the embodiment of the narcissistic fathers’ fears and the second one becomes the embodiment of their ideals. Neither of these are based in reality and are never a reflection of a child's real potential, skill, character or talent. The scapegoated child is the one who is ultimately the greatest threat to a narcissist's false sense of self-importance, and so that child will be the one to be discarded and rejected.