If you’ve had a narcissist in your life, be it a parent or a partner, you’re far from alone if you have been left with anxiety.
This is because the narcissist will have used all their manipulation tactics, from gaslighting to the silent treatment, to keep your mind confused, slowly leaving you with anxiety symptoms, that and the stress over a prolonged time when your mind is getting infected by the narcissist, your anxiety levels increase.
This is because you end up with so many questions about what’s actually happening as the narcissist keeps rewriting life’s events on you. You begin to question your own decision-making around the narcissist, then around yourself and the outside world.
This causes lots of issues, and when you’re under constant stress and pressure, it can lead to worsening anxiety and depression. You can then end up with sleep issues, too much sleep or not enough sleep, diet issues, eating too much or too little, you can then end up with physical health issues also.
The longer you stay in this kind of relationship or around these kinds of people, the harder it becomes to see reality and what’s actually happening to you, as your physical health declines. Your mental health declines you often end up relying on the person that’s actually making you feel anxious to help you, not knowing at the time they are the very person that is sinking you.
Just as you start to pick yourself back up, they go and pull you to pieces again with more of their gaslighting, infecting your mindset even more.
Then they swoop in to lift you back up, so you end up genuinely believing it is you. They smear your name to those around you, of just how much they are doing to help you, when in reality they are the actual cause to all these problems, as you can not see it at the moment, it becomes increasingly more difficult to see reality, it’s a never-ending cycle until you can break it, then suddenly just when you need them the most, boom they are gone.
Have they simply drained all the goodness from you? Do they believe they are the hero that’s worked so hard to help you through the bad times? Do they even see what they’ve done to you?
This all depends on the narcissist and the narcissists own awareness. Some have no idea and believe their own reality. Some know exactly what they do to you. Whether or not they are aware, they lack the empathy to care for how their behaviour affects you.
As the rollercoaster of the relationship Is happening, you don’t get the opportunity to see the situation as reality, and this is why often they are seen as the hero. You’re left looking like the crazy one, also not wanting to reach out, through pride, through ego and through fear that no one will understand what’s actually happened to you.
Then if they do discard you, you’re left heartbroken and trying to work it all out. Suddenly they are back with all those false promises that you don’t see as false, your heart fills, and you take them back. That idealisation stage is resumed, yet it’s only ever temporary. Soon enough, you’re walking on eggshells as they slowly devalue and discard you all over again.
Your instincts are screaming something at you, but you just don’t understand what, so you try again trying to deal with the issues and get the relationship back on track, as at times the relationship seemed so good, and they could treat you so right. Yet even when things are going well again, you have anxiety due to an internal fear of dread.
When you finally do break free from the damaging relationship, you start to question if it is you, mostly if they were never physically violent. You might dread going out, your self-care might be shot to pieces, you may have CPTSD and not understand the triggers at first for the anxiety, when that phone rings, or a car pulls up that sounds like the narcissist, that anxiety kicks back in. When someone says something, the narcissist used to say.
When you work out the cause and effect, you can learn to bring yourself back into reality, learning to talk to yourself rationally.
It’s extremely overwhelming, but you need to recognise and write down the events that lead to your anxiety kicking in, so you can understand the triggers.
When the narcissist is there doing things to you, that’s rational anxiety, and they do these things to gain emotional responses from you when they are not there. That is irrational anxiety that you’ve been left with, and you can heal from.
It’s normal to respond with anxiety when triggered by a past event or situation. Most people go through this after narcissistic abuse. Recognising why it’s happening helps you stop it from happening.
With the narcissist’s manipulation, they slowly send you into a trance, leaving you no longer recognising who you are, you can, and you will recover once you recognise those triggers and bring yourself back to reality. Once you understand it logically, start to deal with it emotionally, then reprogram your own mindset to think how you want to believe in the present moment. Reprogramming your mindset is hard and uncomfortable at first. In the middle, it gets messy, with a few steps forward. A few steps back, once you make it through the pain, your mind and you become happy again.
Surround yourself with positivity, caring people, films, anything positive that makes you smile to help pick yourself back up. Listening to calming music, taking a walk in nature and soaking up the beauty, meditation, exercise, try to get enough rest.
You have to work on it for yourself, and it is a process you have to go through if you want to move forward with a happier life.
Baby steps every day. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day. They were laying bricks every day.
We are all individuals, some people can learn for themselves, coping strategies to deal with anxiety, then methods to recover, however, if you are struggling to overcome this alone, please speak to your doctor as you are far from alone, some Doctors have also needed to overcome anxiety at some point within their lives, and they do understand you. You are not alone in this or how you feel.
You Can, and you will recover.
Narcissist and Anxiety.
Emotional pain.
Ruminating.
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The narcissists counter-parenting.
Elizabeth Shaw is not a Doctor or a therapist. She is a mother of five, a blogger, a survivor of narcissistic abuse, and a life coach, She always recommends you get the support you feel comfortable and happy with. Finding the right support for you. Elizabeth has partnered with BetterHelp (Sponsored.) where you will be matched with a licensed councillor, who specialises in recovery from this kind of abuse.
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