Looking for you everywhere
Losing yourself after Narcissist Abuse
Healing after a traumatic relationship is particularly challenging because of the unsettling realization that you’ve lost connection with yourself. There is a profound sense of losing who you once were—or who you thought you were—as though that version of you no longer exists. This alarming loss of identity often leaves a void, making it difficult to identify your own likes, dislikes, desires, or boundaries. How can you move forward in life when you no longer recognize who you are?
Emotional Exhaustion
There are many reasons why a loss of identity may happen. Months or years spent in a relationship with a narcissist leaves you drained and depleted, because the dynamics of that relationship demand impossible amounts of time and energy. Narcissists and toxic people require unceasing attention, and take up a lot of space in your mind; continuously generating new needs, requirements, expectations. They will spin urgent situations and dramas out of just about anything, insisting that the people closest to them deal with all their exigent predicaments, all this on an ongoing basis. This is exhausting and makes it difficult for those near them, to focus on your own needs.
Narcissist in Your Head
When you are not with them, they may send upsetting messages, accusing, triangulating, guilt mongering or whatever they think will keep them in your head at any given time. Messages or phone calls may be cryptic, incomplete, badly worded, or outright abusive, degrading, fear inducing. All designed to hijack your mind so you are only thinking about and trying to decode them.
This also applies to when they don’t make themselves available, if they don’t show up when they are expected to, such as to important gatherings. This may cause disappointment to children and other family members, or social embarrassment with friends, co-workers. They may not answer messages, keep you waiting and wondering where they are, what they are doing, and any number of things. It applies when they deploy ‘silent treatment’ methods, and you are left with trying to unravel what may have caused their upset, and how to deal with it now. Again, they make sure they are at the forefront of your mind, and not focusing on your own values and things important to you.
Lowering your Standards
Loving these people, whether they are partners, or family members means that there is a lot of compassion, empathy, and deep desire to make the relationship work, somehow. We make excuses for their behaviour, fabricate reasons why its ok, or ‘understandable’ that they behave as they do. We spend a lot of energy trying to understand and unravel their behaviour.
We look for common ground in order to make some connection and understanding, and find that the narcissist will never rise to levels of better behaviour, where they don’t lie or cheat or example. Instead, in frustration you start to drop your standards and allow your boundaries to be breached. Infractions of your value systems begin to erode who you are.
Self Abandonment
In relationships with narcissists, we may walk of eggshells, try to anticipate their behaviour, diffuse potential conflict, pre-empt their likes and dislikes, and cater to whatever we think will result in a harmonious life with them.
The narcissist becomes too big in your mind and their demands, preferences, issues begin to take precedence over everything else. Family, friends, work, hobbies get neglected, and it is completely understandable that so much focus on them leads to the abandonment of self. We lose who we are and this is a terrible betrayal of the self.
Going back to Toxic Relationships
Every time you leave and reconnect with the narcissist, you lose self esteem. Most people who leave a toxic relationship like this, will go back several times. It is because of the cognitive dissonance; how can they be the perfect partner one minute, and an abuser the next. There is a strong trauma bond attachment, like an an addiction, and the pull to go back is overwhelming.
There may be strong vows and resolutions to stay away from them this time, you may write out all the reasons to leave and stay gone, promises to friends and family that this time it is for good. Every time you break these resolutions and go back, self esteem is damaged more. You cannot even keep a word to yourself, not even for a short while. It is truly crazy making, and to feel that you are doing this to yourself on top of everything else, makes it all the worse.
The Obsession
Reading about narcissist personality disorder, watching videos, and participating in online forums is helpful and educational, and it is helpful to validate all that happened to you. It does however continue to keep the focus largely on the narcissist. At some point it is necessary to begin to shrink the narcissists in your mind, and to begin to increase and raise up the self that is you, the self that has been abandoned.
Looking for yourself after a Relationship with a Narcissist
The greatest part of this healing journey is re-discovering yourself once again, and rebuilding on a new and solid foundation of who you are.
Doing this is a huge part of the entirety of the healing process, it is about gradually shrinking the narcissist or toxic person in your mind, and replacing that with a deeper presence of YOU.
It is a mindful practice of sorts, noticing things about and around you, then deciding which of those things to incorporate and expand upon, and which ones to put away or discard.
In doing the activities which follow here, the difficulty will be in separating the narcissist from the things you love and care about, as you will no doubt have shared a lot of these with them. You will reclaim it all back in time, but for now, focus on the things where your perception of beauty and the things that bring you joy is the strongest and brightest.
Building on what Resonates
Create a list of all the things that have deep meaning to you, which resonate with you uniquely – where do you find beauty, in which objects, landscapes, colours, in which parts of nature and living things, which cultural or artistic aesthetic is most like you? Who is your tribe; which nationalities, professions, interests are most like you? Which values most resonate with who you are, and who you want to be?
Include as much as you can—items in your home, things you wear, and objects you use every day. Reflect on which of these represent you and which do not. Underline the items that feel most aligned with who you are and those which you want to build and expand upon. Then, consider a plan to remove or replace the things that no longer reflect your true self. Doing this will help begin to redefine the essence of who you are, strengthen your identity, and embrace the renewed, empowered version of yourself as you heal and move forward.
Beauty as a Reflection
Think about the things you love, an activity, a place, a beautiful object or thing of natural beauty. A work of art, a piece of music, a book. Choose one of those things and write about the reasons it resonates with you, and be as detailed as you can in your description. Then change the words and rewrite your description so that it is about you. The things which attract us, which we find beautiful are reflections of who we are.
Immerse yourself in beauty and you will see your reflection in the things that resonate with your heart. Make this a daily practice: in everything you do and in the spaces and things you surround yourself with, ask yourself if it aligns with who you are and who you aspire to become.
Reconnecting with the things that bring you joy and reflecting on why they matter will help shift your focus away from the narcissist and back to yourself. This is where true healing begins—by reclaiming control over your life, re-energizing your spirit, and nurturing what truly matters to you. It’s a journey of rediscovery, leading you back to the beauty that has always existed within you.