“Am I crazy?”

That’s the question asked by every narcissistic abuse survivor who walks through my door.

Not because they’re crazy.

Because when someone repeatedly questions your perception of what happened, dismisses your feelings, changes the story, or makes you responsible for problems they created, it can become very difficult to trust yourself.

You find yourself replaying conversations, wondering if you misunderstood. Second-guessing what you remember. You question whether you’re being too sensitive, too demanding, too angry, or simply asking for too much.

You may even find yourself thinking, Maybe it really is me.

Narcissistic abuse can leave you questioning much more than the relationship. It can affect your confidence, your ability to trust yourself, your relationships with other people, and your sense of who you are.

And sometimes, by the time you reach therapy, you aren't even sure what happened anymore. You just know that things have been way too much for a long time.

What is Narcissistic Abuse?

Narcissistic abuse describes patterns of emotional or psychological abuse where one person uses manipulation, control, devaluation, or other harmful behaviors to maintain power in the relationship. Narcissistic abuse happens in partner relationships, parent-child relationships, in friendships, and even at work. That pattern of manipulation can show up anywhere.

You don't need to determine whether someone has Narcissistic Personality Disorder in order to take your own experience seriously.

What matters in therapy is what happened to you and what that experience has left you dealing with now.

Narcissistic abuse can involve patterns such as:

• Gaslighting — denying, distorting, or reframing events in ways that cause you to question your own perceptions.

• Love bombing — intense attention, affection, or idealization that can create a powerful sense of connection and security, particularly early in a relationship.

• Devaluation — criticism, contempt, dismissiveness, or subtle put-downs that gradually erode your confidence.

• Blame shifting — making you responsible for the other person's behavior or for problems in the relationship.

• Manipulation — using guilt, fear, withdrawal, anger, or other tactics to influence your behavior.

• Intermittent reinforcement — alternating affection and rejection, closeness and withdrawal, or periods of calm with periods of conflict.

• Control — attempts to control your choices, relationships, communication, finances, or access to other people.

These patterns don't always look obvious from the outside. In fact, one of the things that can make narcissistic abuse so confusing is that the relationship may also contain genuine affection, good memories, and periods when things seem much better.

That doesn't make the painful parts less real.

You don't have to prove that it was “bad enough”

Maybe you aren't sure whether what happened to you qualifies as abuse.

Maybe there were good times too.

Maybe other people don't understand what you experienced.

Maybe you still care about the person who hurt you.

None of those things makes your experience unimportant.

You don't have to arrive in therapy with a perfect explanation of what happened.

We can start with what you know.

And we can be curious about the rest.

Reach out below to schedule a consultation.