Healing From Narcissistic Abuse

How is it that people stay for years and even decades in toxic, dysfunctional, or abusive relationships?

It may start with your first date - or so do you think as you are very likely unaware of all the generational trauma that has been bestowed upon you. Before you know it, you find yourself trapped in an abusive and toxic relationship, where everything that you give is taken for granted by this person.

(Note: For clarity purposes, I’m using the pronoun “them” to talk about the abuser, as an abusive person can have any relationship with you, any gender, any age, any background, any level in society, or any ethnic origin. It’s not a demographic that you can pinpoint and avoid in a general statement. They often are bright and amazing in their specific fields of expertise, and at first sight (based on how they look like, or what they’re doing, you cannot know for sure if they are an abuser or a wonderful person. This is how they get away with their distorted behavior, leaving their victim speechless, and turning the remaining people around their victim against the victims themselves because they seem so wonderful and amazing.)

It starts with some little silly things that are no big deal, you just realized how much you didn’t think about that. It keeps on going when you are asked to comply with their every need and want, letting you know with a simple thank you (when they even say thank you!) that you did good or with an avalanche of reproaches when you did not satisfy their (ever-changing) expectations.

After a while, at some point, they continue by letting you know that you betrayed them (but how did they come up with such a strong accusation? What if it would be true and you did indeed betray them?) that you cheated on them (often not a fact, just an idea in their minds that they would project on you as if you would have acted this way). It goes continually, with periods of relief and periods of intensified verbal fights.

And it ends up in violent fights where they yell at you to tell you that you are worse than the worst people they've ever known, and you yell back at them that you did everything in your power to please them and that you never did the wrong things they are reproaching you… It goes on and on, and sometimes (not every time, of course), they want to silence you because, in their distorted view of the world, you are the problem in their lives. Silencing you can go from life-threatening menaces to beating you up in various creative ways. On rare occasions, the abuser ends up killing the victim, but that’s a tiny percentage of the cases compared to all the people who suffer from abusive relationships every day.

After having experienced such violent fights, you often feel at your lowest point of resilience. You feel that you deserved it, and you start to think that you did something wrong as they keep on telling you that you are the one who put them in such a heightened state of rage and anger, as you dare stand up against them. Then you remember having heard somewhere that we are all fully responsible for our lives… hence, you are the only responsible person in this situation and nobody will ever take that away from you. It becomes your burden that even Jesus Christ (if you’re Christian or the divinity of forgiveness in your belief) cannot dissipate from you.

After a while (sometimes hours, sometimes days) you receive a visit from your abuser who kindly brings you gifts… how generous! And they look loving and caring again compared to the loneliness of your chastisement. They become your savior when you have become their abuser with your wrongdoings (if only there was something real and tangible, but even when you look for it, the reason for their wrath was not worth such a display of madness, not over such little things without consequences.

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