Narcissistic Abuse 01 WHY
Why Narcissistic Abuse Can Leave You So Confused
Have you ever been in a relationship where you started questioning yourself more and more? You may love this person, yet feel anxious when they are around. You watch their mood, think carefully before you speak, and try to avoid saying or doing anything that might upset them. Then, when you are alone, you wonder why you don't feel like yourself anymore.
The relationship may have started out feeling completely different. You may have felt special, wanted, understood, and deeply connected. The person may have given you so much attention that you believed you had finally found someone who truly saw you.
When things start to change, you remember how wonderful they were before. You may keep hoping that the loving person you first knew will come back. Then, when they suddenly become loving again, you feel relieved. You may think, There you are. This is the person I fell in love with. Then the pattern starts again.
The good moments can make the difficult moments even more confusing. When someone who has hurt you, suddenly becomes loving, you may begin questioning whether things were really as bad as they felt. You may focus on the good times, and tell yourself that perhaps the relationship can still become what you hoped it would be.
You may find yourself spending more and more time thinking about their feelings. If they are angry, you want to know why. If they are upset, you want to fix it. If they are unhappy with you, you may go over the conversation again and again, trying to figure out what you should have said differently.
You may start making choices based on how you think they will react, rather than on what you actually want.
You may even apologize when you still don't understand what you did wrong.
Over time, this can change the way you see yourself. You may start wondering if you are too sensitive, too emotional, too difficult, or somehow the cause of all the problems.
This is where gaslighting can cause so much harm. Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that can make you question your memory, your feelings, or your understanding of what happened. You remember something one way, but the other person insists it happened differently. You explain that something hurt you, and suddenly the conversation becomes about what is wrong with you.
After hearing this again and again, you may begin trusting their version of events more than your own.
Your world can also become smaller. You may spend less time with friends and family because it causes problems. You may stop doing things you enjoy because there is always something else to deal with. You may change your choices simply because you already know what will keep the other person happy.
Without realizing it, you can become very good at taking care of someone else's emotions while losing touch with your own.
That can leave you feeling exhausted, anxious, confused, and strangely empty. You may still love the person. You may feel sorry for them. You may know about their painful childhood or the things they have been through, and you may believe that underneath their behavior is someone who simply needs to be loved.
So you keep trying.
You try harder. You explain more. You forgive again. You give another chance. You hope that if you can just find the right words, or become a little more patient, the relationship will finally become what you wanted it to be.
You may begin believing that if you can understand them better, love them better, or respond differently, you can change what is happening.
Being caught in this kind of relationship does not mean you are weak or foolish. Love, hope, fear, guilt, and confusion can become deeply tangled together, making it very difficult to see what is happening while you are living through it.
You don't need to know exactly what to call the behavior before you can recognize that something is wrong.
You don't have to figure out the entire relationship today. Start by paying attention to what happens to you.
Can you speak freely? Can you disagree? Can you say no? Can you tell the person that they hurt you without ending up defending yourself? Do you feel respected, or do you spend most of your time trying to keep the peace?
Do you still feel like yourself? Do you feel free to have your own opinions, interests, friendships, and needs? Or have you gradually learned to measure your choices by the other person's reactions?
Sometimes those questions tell you more than a label ever could.
Understanding why you feel so confused can be the first step toward seeing the relationship from a different point of view.
In the next post, we will look at WHAT may actually be happening beneath these confusing behaviors. Click here. →
Read more about Narcissistic Abuse: 01 WHY • 02 WHAT • 03 HOW • 04 WHAT IF • 05 Narcissistic Abuse QUESTIONS