Recovering From Narcissistic Abuse Quotes

In a psychopathic relationship, their strengths are fake and your flaws are manufactured.

If someone’s opinion of you goes from sky-high to rock bottom, this isn’t normal.

You know intuitively that love is not insulting, criticizing, cheating, and lying. Love does not make you feel suicidal. Love does not mock you for having hurt feelings.

Psychopaths provide shallow praise and flattery only in order to gain trust. When you actually need emotional support, they will typically offer an empty response—or they will completely ignore you. With time, this conditions you not to bother them with your feelings, even when you need a partner the most, especially during times of tragedy or illness. You will begin to notice that you are never allowed to express anything but positive praise for them.

They gaslight you into believing that your normal reactions to their abuse are the problem—not the abuse itself.

Psychopaths do not actually feel the love and happiness that they so frequently proclaim. They oscillate between contempt, envy, and boredom. Nothing more.

if you find yourself playing detective with someone, you should remove them from your life immediately

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

The psychopath is constantly provoking drama, rivalries, and competitions. What separates them from everyday drama queens is their ability to appear innocent in all of it. They make subtle suggestions, then sit back and watch as others go down in flames for them.

The Psychopath Free Pledge: 1. I will never beg or plead for someone else again. Any man or woman who brings me to that level is not worth my heart. 2. I will never tolerate criticisms about my body, age, weight, job, or any other insecurities I might have. Good partners won't put me down, they'll raise me up. 3. I will take a step back from my relationship once every month to make sure that I am being respected and loved, not flattered and love-bombed. 4. I will always ask myself the question: "Would I ever treat someone else like this?" If the answer is no, then I don't deserve to be treated like that either. 5. I will trust my gut. If I get a bad feeling, I won't try to push it away and make excuses. I will trust myself. 6. I understand that it is better to be single than in a toxic relationship. 7. I will not be spoken to in a condescending or sarcastic way. Loving partners will not patronize me. 8. I will not allow my partner to call me jealous, crazy, or any other form of projection. 9. My relationships will be mutual and equal at all times. Love is not about control and power. 10. If I ever feel unsure about any of these steps, I will seek out help from a friend, support forum, or therapist. I will not act on impulsive decisions.

Healing from psychopathic abuse is a long journey. It is neither linear nor logical. You can expect to swing back and forth between stages, perhaps even inventing a few of your own along the way. It is unlike the traditional stages of grief, because you have not truly lost anything—instead, you have gained everything. You just don’t know it yet.

You cannot circle around the pain and discover the happiness you deserve. You must travel through the pain and embrace all of the challenging feelings and difficult ups and downs that are the essence of the grieving process. For a long time, it may seem as if you will always be hurting . . . until one day you will find that you turned a corner and found a lovely new world you never could have imagined.

Your path may be painful, but it is also special. The universe has different plans for you. Remember, there are others who have permanently destroyed any path to the spiritual world. Psychopaths have no place there, and it is why they hate empathetic beings. You are a nagging reminder of something they will never find. They will die here in the material world, with no deeper connection to this great universe.

Psychopaths project and blame you for their own behavior. They accuse you of being negative when they are the most negative people in the world. They gaslight you into believing that your normal reactions to their abuse are the problem—not the abuse itself. When you feel angry and hurt because of their silent treatment, broken promises, lying, or cheating, there is something wrong with you. When you call them out on their dishonest behavior, you’re the abnormal one who is too sensitive, too critical, and always focusing on the negative.

We forget in order to survive our childhoods, when we are totally dependent on our parents' goodwill; but to recover from such childhoods, we must begin by remembering-the bad and the good.

Many survivors find that they didn’t really know how to express sadness or anger throughout most of their lives. They were instead expected to be a cheerful servant to everyone around them. And so they developed this stubborn light in their hearts that always sought to see the best in everything, no matter how much the evidence pointed to the contrary.

what are your insecurities? Get out a piece of paper and make a list. This will save your life down the road. Once you’re aware of these traits, you will also become aware of the people who try to manipulate them. And even better, you can begin to make changes—to better yourself and improve your life.

But that’s the magic of alone time! You are completely and 100 percent in control of your own happiness. You can imagine anything you want, transforming a bad mood into a good one. Or maybe you want to feel the bad mood fully, in which case you can cry all you want, and nobody can judge you. When you’re alone, there’s no pressure to be someone you’re not. For a while I actually used to need time alone in order to remember who I was. When we’re constantly surrounded by people—especially toxic influences—it becomes really easy to forget ourselves. We get caught up in drama, gossip, and negativity.

Everyone messes up every now and then, but psychopaths recite excuses more often than they actually follow through with promises. Their actions never match up with their words. You are disappointed so frequently that you feel relieved when they do something decent—they condition you to become grateful for the mediocre.

They begin to inject as much drama into the relationship as they possibly can, throwing you into impossible situations and then judging you for reacting to them.

Unlike people with other mental disorders, psychopaths are keenly aware of the impact that their behavior has on others. That’s half the fun for them—watching people suffer.

He or she was only an illusion, a mask the psychopath created in order to mirror and manipulate you. As crushingly hard as it is and as much as it hurts, the only way to find freedom is to stop believing in that illusion.

In an argument, a “teller” will frequently remind you of how well they treat you, even after blatantly hurting you. A “show-er” will simply share their point of view without trying to twist the conversation in their favor.

You start to see that you’ve never behaved like this in any other relationship, and it’s not because they were special. It’s because they were actively working against you from the moment they chose you. You look back at all of the things that once made you feel paranoid, now able to see that every instance of abuse & neglect was calculated and intentional. And finally, you come to the horrifying realization that the love of your life—the person you trusted with all your heart—had set you up for failure since the very beginning.

It’s also not normal to trash an ex and then hang out with them on a daily basis.

No matter how much they screw up, they will always pass off their pathetic behavior as comedy—a mask to minimize their failures.

In normal relationships, flaws are flaws and strengths are strengths. In a psychopathic relationship, their strengths are fake and your flaws are manufactured.

There is no closure with psychopathic relationships, only acceptance. 

When you recover from Narcissistic abuse, look for courage in your heart. You can rebuild as long as you never surrender.

During and after the relationship, you’re a victim of abuse. You were manipulated, insulted, degraded, belittled, and neglected. Full responsibility for this goes to the psychopath.

Unlike any other mental disorder, psychopaths are keenly aware of the impact that their behavior has on others. That’s half the fun for them—watching you suffer. They pick up on insecurities and vulnerabilities in a heartbeat, and then make the conscious choice to exploit those qualities. They know right from wrong, and simply choose to steamroll straight through it.

Delayed arrogance is common in sociopaths. When you first meet, they’ll seem unusually innocent, humble, childlike, and thoughtful. But as time goes by, they inevitably transform into a monster: manipulative, arrogant, and neglectful.

You find yourself explaining the basic elements of human respect to a full-grown man or woman. Normal people understand fundamental concepts like honesty and kindness. Psychopaths often appear to be childlike and innocent, but don’t let this mask fool you. No adult should need to be told how he or she is making other people feel.

Psychopaths settle for targets who don’t truly see their nasty behavior. If you’re reading this now, that means the psychopath could never settle for you, because over the course of months, years, or decades, you saw through the facade. They need someone who won’t catch on. Ever.

Start healing those wounds and understand that your insecurities were manufactured. You were not yourself—you were manipulated. The real you is kind, loving, open-minded, and compassionate. You do not need to question these things anymore.

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

your emotions were raped and it’s going to take a long time for them to come back again.

Your thoughts & emotions scattered everywhere, making it impossible to find clarity and truth.

You will become stronger than you could ever imagine. You will understand who you are truly meant to be. And in the end, you will be glad it happened.

your friends will wonder why you didn’t speak up sooner. They will not understand that you didn’t even know you were in an abusive relationship.

Unkindness and superficiality frustrate you when they never did before.

your healing process should not revolve around giving or withholding attention from someone else. You should be going No Contact because you genuinely believe that you deserve better. This is someone who manipulated, lied, abused, and deeply hurt you.

does it really matter if your ex was a psychopath, a sociopath, a narcissist, or a garden-variety jerk? The label doesn’t make your feelings any more or less valid. Your feelings are absolutes.

Recovering from family scapegoating requires recognizing that being the ‘identified patient’ is symptomatic of generations of systemic dysfunction within one’s family, fueled by unrecognized anxiety and even trauma. In a certain sense, members of a dysfunctional family are participating in a ‘consensual trance‘, i.e., a ‘survival trance’ supported by false narratives, toxic shame, anxiety, and egoic defense mechanisms, such as denial and projection.

As you recover, you will feel more conscious of your surroundings. Freed from the ‘fog’ of your pain, fear, and confusion, you will awaken and see the world revealed as never before. You will begin to observe things, especially yourself. You will be aware of what you do and why you do it. You will begin to observe your own behavior and attitudes.

In their interpersonal relationships, this leads to early idealization in the honeymoon phase, where they groom you to become a constant source of positive energy—temporarily satisfying their pathological feelings of emptiness. But because they are also angry and impulsive, you quickly start to discover that there won’t be any room for your own happiness. Once you fail to meet their rapidly shifting standards, you will be devalued and criticized until you have nothing left to offer to them.

You think to yourself, “If they can just understand why I’m hurt, then they’ll stop doing it.” But they won’t. They wouldn’t have hurt you in the first place if they were a decent human being. The worst part is, they pretended to be decent when you first met—sucking you in with this sweet, caring persona. They know how to be kind and good, but they find it boring.

As human beings, we have this incredible gift—the ability to make another person feel wonderful. With a word, a gesture, or a quiet smile. It’s what makes the world beautiful. A normal person would probably call this love.

There are more sociopaths among us than people who suffer from the much-publicized disorder of anorexia, four times as many sociopaths as schizophrenics, and one hundred times as many sociopaths as people diagnosed with a known scourge such as colon cancer. —Dr. Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door

Avoid those who tell you how nice they are, how generous they are, how successful they are, how honest they are, and how important they are. Instead, search for the quiet ones who show these qualities every day through their actions.

Emotional abusers condition their victims to feel ashamed, inadequate, and unstable. This is because they are cowards, incapable of healthy relationships with strong and self-respecting individuals. Oftentimes, they choose targets who are unusually successful and idealistic, because these people have more to lose. But abusers cannot control someone with such qualities, and so they break down the target’s self-esteem through belittling, teasing, and manufactured jealousy. The target may have perfectionist tendencies, striving to meet the abuser’s impossible standards. This results in a strange dynamic where the abuser is idealized, despite being lazy, dishonest, and unfaithful, while the victim is devalued, despite putting more effort into this relationship than ever before.

During a relationship with a psychopath, you are likely to experience a range of emotions that you’ve never felt before: extreme jealousy, neediness, rage, anxiety, and paranoia. After every outburst, you constantly think to yourself, “If only I hadn’t behaved that way, then maybe they’d be happier with me.” Think again. Those were not your emotions. I repeat: those were not your emotions. They were carefully manufactured by the psychopath in order to make you question your own good nature. Victims are often prone to believe that they can understand, forgive, and absorb all of the problems in a relationship. Essentially, they checkmate themselves by constantly trying to rationalize the abuser’s completely irrational behavior.

But as the psychopath transitions from two “stable” relationships, they need something to fill the void in between. Although they likely don’t even have the next target scouted out yet, they already know they’re not staying with you. But to you, the relationship means everything—it’s attention and appreciation you’ve never experienced before.

Whatever you needed most, they validated and provided. Pay special attention to the things they obsessively flattered. These are what you’re looking for.

To draw you closer, the psychopath creates an aura of desirability—of being wanted and courted by many.

Even if you come back to them later with an apology, they will permanently despise any target who once dared talk back to them.

good people make you feel good and bad people make you feel bad.

However, the truth is: no one can fill the void of a psychopath’s soul.

They’ll maintain the shallow illusion of success & happiness, no matter what happens.

They put forth as little effort as possible and then step it up when you try to disengage.

Psychopaths are cunning, cold, and very aware of their own behavior. They take on three different personas in order to make you doubt your own sanity!

here’s where I introduce “The Detective Rule.” The idea is simple: if you find yourself playing detective with someone, you should remove them from your life immediately.

A psychopath’s perfect target is idealistic, forgiving, generous, and romantic.

no one can fill the void of a psychopath’s soul.

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

I want to clarify that one of the worst things we can do with a narcissist of any kind is actively battle against this person. Nothing makes a narcissist happier than the chance to be a true victim. They seem primed to fall to the floor, a dramatic hand to their foreheads, and cry out, “Why?

Instead, they used words and promises to brainwash you into giving, giving, and more giving. So when they not only don’t appreciate it—but actually destroy you—you’re left feeling broken and empty.

They don’t miss you, they miss controlling you and messing with your mind. That deep sorrow, that overwhelming feeling of loss they’re expressing—it seems so genuine, but that isn’t real. They’re panicking because they lost control and they want desperately to get it back. To get you back in line.

The difference lies in how you act upon those insecurities. Psychopaths see them as a way to manipulate & control. Empathetic people, on the other hand, seek to cure insecurities with love and compassion.

You’re a survivor of emotional abuse—and you can escape this trap. Just remain calm, patient, and always kind to yourself. Someday you will be able to talk about this experience eloquently and believably.

Instead of feeling shameful like most normal people would, when the psychopath cheats they actually go out of their way to ensure you know about their infidelities—without ever admitting to them, of course.

With psychopaths, you never know where you stand. You live in a constant state of uncertainty, wondering each day whether or not they care about you. Your entire life is consumed by this day-by-day struggle.

After grooming you to be dependent & compliant, they use this power to manufacture desperation and desire. In a whirlwind of overwhelming emotions, your fantasy gradually shifts into an inconceivable nightmare.

The psychopathic relationship cycle is not some accidental byproduct of insensitivity and emotional thickness. It is a calculated, personalized process that psychopaths use to methodically torture their victims.

This is someone who manipulated, lied, abused, and deeply hurt you. As you develop self-respect, you should come to understand that this is all more than enough reason to remove someone from your life—permanently.

Inside all of us is a power which wants to expand and improve. This force gives us grand images of being bigger and better than we currently are. It’s not there by accident; life has an agenda. It wants to evolve.

Toxic people condition us to ignore our intuition, and we must learn to trust it again. Instead of judging outwardly, we need to perceive inwardly. When we start focusing on our own feelings, this is where the healing begins.

This is what happens when you enter the psychopath’s reality—all of their gossip and lies start to distort your own reality. Because here are the two realities you must choose from: The psychopath is normal. Everyone else is jealous, ill-intentioned, and self-serving. The psychopath is jealous, ill-intentioned, and self-serving. Everyone else is normal.

Psychopaths are parasitic, emotionally stunted, and incapable of change. Once this individual is gone from your life, you will find that everything begins to make sense again. The chaos dissipates and your sanity returns. Things will be normal once again.

These are the Cluster B personality disorders, and based on the statistics above, they are found in more than one in every seven people—over 15 percent of the population (I’m rounding down, to account for comorbidity). Now consider that most of these people are highly functional, nonincarcerated, active members of society. So given the raw numbers, it’s highly likely that you unknowingly pass by one of these cunning manipulators every day on your way to work—perhaps even today, when they served you your morning coffee. So what’s the problem? The problem is that the general public knows virtually nothing about these incredibly pervasive disorders.

Like sandpaper, the psychopath will wear away at your self-esteem through a calculated mean-and-sweet cycle. Slowly, your standards will fall so low that you become grateful for the utterly mediocre. Like a frog in boiling water, you won’t even realize what happened until it’s far too late. Your friends and family will wonder what happened to the man or woman who used to be so strong & energetic.

One day, we wake up to the narcissist’s cunning masquerade. We watch their fake mask slip off their face. Everything becomes crystal clear. We see right through their phony disguise. To anyone who’s dealt with the pain and torment of a narcissist, a silver lining is a sign of hope. Hope that someday you can break free from the abuse. Hope to rebuild a better life. Hope to find comfort and peace within. Hope to recover from your trauma. Hope to embrace a brighter future. We can no longer unsee their hideous charade. We accept how lethal a malignant narcissist is. We actively set healthy boundaries. We walk away from hurtful relationships. Like the Phoenix, we rise above the fiery ashes. We stand up, dust ourselves off, and march forward.

The recovery process is the beginning of your new life. You’ll look back at old dynamics, wondering how you ever tolerated such toxicity. As I mentioned earlier, you might even feel embarrassed about your past behavior. This regret is your self-respect kicking in, reminding you that you’re different now.

After the breakup, they will openly brag about how happy they are with their new partner, where most normal people would feel very embarrassed and secretive about entering a new relationship so quickly. And even more surprising, they fully expect you to be happy for them. Otherwise you are bitter and jealous.

No matter what they do, they always seem to have a fan club cheering for them. The psychopath uses these people for money, resources, and attention—but the fan club won’t notice, because this person strategically distracts them with shallow praise. Psychopaths are able to maintain superficial friendships far longer than relationships.

Your current situation fits every one of the criteria for this disorder:   Exposure to a traumatic event. Yes, relationship abuse from someone you love is traumatic and life-altering. Persistent re-experiencing. Yes, through the mean and sweet cycle, you were repeatedly subjected to their abuse. Persistent avoidance and emotional numbing. Yes, this is the coping mechanism you adopted to excuse their behavior. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal not present before. Yes, you begin to feel these during the delayed emotions stage, ultimately manifesting as anxiety and fear. Duration of symptoms for more than 1 month. Yes, most survivors will require anywhere from 12-24 months of recovery before they begin to trust & love again. Significant impairment. You tell me—how do you feel right about now? I’d say impaired is an understatement.

True forgiveness comes from within, not from another person validating your compassion.

If you lash out and begin uncovering their lies, they will do everything in their power to drive you to suicide.

Psychopaths see insecurities in a very different way—a tool for manipulation and control.

Psychopaths don’t care when they takes a joke too far, and they will dismiss any concerns you might have as hypersensitive.

The psychopath’s ability to groom others is unmatched. They feel an intense euphoria when they turn people against each other, especially when it’s over a competition for them.

Empathetic people have the full spectrum of emotions so it’s like a master class for them. Also, they can suck these people of the life force they lack—giving and trusting, we make perfect targets.

Perhaps most insidious of all the psychopath’s evils: their relationship cycle. In which they gleefully and systematically wipe out the identity of an unsuspecting victim. Cold & calculated emotional rape.

The psychopath’s ability to groom others is unmatched. They feel an intense euphoria when they turn people against each other, especially when it’s over a competition for them. Psychopaths will manufacture situations to make you jealous and question their fidelity. In a normal relationship, people go out of their way to prove that they are trustworthy—but the psychopath does exactly the opposite. They are constantly suggesting that they might be pursuing other options, or spending time with other people, so that you can never settle down into a feeling of peace. And they will always deny this, calling you crazy for bringing it up.

When you are the most important person who can disappoint or inspire you, everything becomes very exciting. It also becomes quieter. Because it’s a lot easier to be a quiet, genuine version of you than it is to frantically maintain a loud version of you that isn’t really you at all. If you find yourself desperately trying to prove to the rest of the world that a certain version of yourself is the real you, then it’s probably not the truest version of you.

They plant little seeds of poison, whispering to everyone, idealizing them to their face, and then insulting them behind their backs. “Insulting” doesn’t really even capture the subtlety of a psychopath’s gossip. Instead of overtly trashing people, psychopaths paint themselves as victims. Someone is always wronging them in one way or another. So instead of being a backstabbing gossiper, they come across as a sympathetic victim of everyone else’s bad behavior.

You find that you’re set off by the most obscure triggers, unable to enjoy a date or some time with an old friend. You’re on high alert the entire time, constantly looking out for manipulation & red flags. The slightest jokes will offend you. That feeling of dread in your heart never seems to go away—warning you that anyone and everyone could be out to hurt you. And then, after you spend time with others, you over-analyze the experience and come up with a list of reasons that this person shouldn’t be in your life anymore. Then you feel awful for thinking those things, guilty and ashamed that you could be so disloyal.

Those willing to listen to your psychopathic story for hours on end are, unfortunately, not likely to be people who are truly invested in your recovery. Vultures often seem exceptionally kind and warm at first. They want to fix you and absorb your problems. They are fascinated by your struggles. But sooner or later, you will find yourself lost in another nightmare.

If you follow these simple points, you will find permanent freedom from toxic bonds:   I will never beg or plead for someone else again. Any man or woman who brings me to that level is not worth my heart. I will never tolerate criticisms about my body, age, weight, job, or any other insecurities I might have. Good partners won’t put me down, they’ll raise me up. I will take a step back from my relationship once every month to make sure that I am being respected and loved, not flattered and love-bombed. I will always ask myself the question: “Would I ever treat someone else like this?” If the answer is no, then I don’t deserve to be treated like that either. I will trust my gut. If I get a bad feeling, I won’t try to push it away and make excuses. I will trust myself. I understand that it is better to be single than in a toxic relationship. I will not be spoken to in a condescending or sarcastic way. Loving partners will not patronize me. I will not allow my partner to call me jealous, crazy, or any other form of projection. My relationships will be mutual and equal at all times. Love is not about control and power. If I ever feel unsure about any of these steps, I will seek out help from a friend, support forum, or therapist. I will not act on impulsive decisions.

Imagine the daughter of a narcissistic father as an example. She grows up chronically violated and abused at home, perhaps bullied by her peers as well. Her burgeoning low self-esteem, disruptions in identity and problems with emotional regulation causes her to live a life filled with terror. This is a terror that is stored in the body and literally shapes her brain. It is also what makes her brain extra vulnerable and susceptible to the effects of trauma in adulthood.                              Being verbally, emotionally and sometimes even physically beaten down, the child of a narcissistic parent learns that there is no safe place for her in the world. The symptoms of trauma emerge: disassociation to survive and escape her day-to-day existence, addictions that cause her to self-sabotage, maybe even self-harm to cope with the pain of being unloved, neglected and mistreated. Her pervasive sense of worthlessness and toxic shame, as well as subconscious programming, then cause her to become more easily attached to emotional predators in adulthood. In her repeated search for a rescuer, she instead finds those who chronically diminish her just like her earliest abusers. Of course, her resilience, adept skill set in adapting to chaotic environments and ability to “bounce back” was also birthed in early childhood. This is also seen as an “asset” to toxic partners because it means she will be more likely to stay within the abuse cycle in order to attempt to make things “work.” She then suffers not just from early childhood trauma, but from multiple re-victimizations in adulthood until, with the right support, she addresses her core wounds and begins to break the cycle step by step. Before she can break the cycle, she must first give herself the space and time to recover. A break from establishing new relationships is often essential during this time; No Contact (or Low Contact from her abusers in more complicated situations such as co-parenting) is also vital to the healing journey, to prevent compounding any existing traumas.