When the narcissist emotionally destroys you.
Invalidation is when your thoughts, feelings, opinions, weight, shape, Job, relationships, it can be as severe as everything about who you and what you do is rejected, ignored, criticised and judged by the narcissist.
One of our six human needs is love and connection, to feel like we belong. It’s as essential to our mental health as water is to our physical health. Connecting to others and having a sense of belonging and validation is a core human need.
When we feel validated, we feel understood and accepted by those around us, when we are supportive of each other, when we raise each other up, we feel heard, seen, worthy, confident, loved, happy and valued.
People who have the empathy to appreciate and understand how another is or could be feeling will validate others, and those who validate others makes them feel valued when it’s reciprocated. When people acknowledge each other’s thoughts, feelings and opinions, even if they are not their own or don’t agree, they can understand the other person’s viewpoint yet be strong enough to hold onto their own views when needed while not being dismissive of others.
A narcissist, however, is lacking in Empathy, so they are incapable of validating another’s thoughts, feelings or sense of self. As the narcissistic person has deep down hidden insecurities and possibly never felt valued, they try to create this within themselves by invalidating those around them to feel valued within themselves. By putting others down, this then makes them feel superior, and when they feel superior, they feel valued, which is the wrong way to go about it as it never truly validates them. They are incapable of connecting to others on a deeper level, incapable to learn from their own mistakes or others’ mistakes, as growth is one of the six human needs. They never grow. They become stuck in that pattern of repeat, hurting others and hurting themselves. Contribution is another human need, and as they only ever contribute sometimes positive to meet a need of their own, mostly negative to meet their own needs, they end up feeling even less validation, creating more insecurities more shame, which they have only learned to burry deep, hide it, mask it, run away from it, shift the blame, deep inside they live in a very woe is me, the world is against me mindset.
What we all need to learn, as hard as it is at times, it’s up to ourselves to make our worlds work for us, to raise ourselves back up, to contribute to ourselves and others in positive ways, to know ourselves well enough to validate ourselves and those around us, so we have the help and support from genuine people, to achieve what we want from life and when that support network isn’t there, we can give ourselves the get-up and go, we can say no to the naysayers and those who Intimidate or invalidate us. Instead, we can show them it is possible. For a narcissist to change, they would have to raise their own level of self-awareness face, guilt, pain, insecurities, and so many more. As they are unable to see any faults or wrongdoings within themselves, it’s highly unlikely, yes they can falsely change at the moment to meet a need of their own, again that change is only surface level and not getting to the route cause they are only temporarily changing to manipulate others into getting their own needs met.
How do they invalidate us?
1. The Narcissists Silent Treatment. Psychological manipulation to control someone else’s mind by causing server psychological, emotional trauma.
One of the most emotionally, psychologically damaging parts of an abusive relationship is the invalidation. When a narcissist has no reaction to us, goes silent on us, we feel unimportant, invisible, irreverent, and worthless. We most often don’t understand why or what’s happening. We look for reasons for what we did. We are in the worst psychological, emotional pain. When we reach out, beg, plead, apologise, do all we can to make it up to them, and they still don’t respond, we feel more worthless.
When they do finally respond, it releases the pain and trauma they put us in, in a negative way. We then perceive this as being heard and feel validated.
This is one of the causes of trauma bonding. Why we start Walking On Eggshells around them, the intermittent reinforcement, we’ve lived the times when they will raise us high and shower us with attention, so we believe they can, we lived that reality, which is what causes the Cognitive Dissonance within our minds, where we feel confused, in a trance a daze? Believing we are depressed or going crazy as all our realities and beliefs are thoroughly mixed up due to their manipulative treatment towards us, we believe if we can just treat them right, they will treat us right.
This then gets us believing within ourselves that we are to blame. It’s all our fault because we don’t feel validated. We then falsely believe that their silent treatments, their invalidation of who we are, are because of something we did wrong and not that their actions towards us are indeed what makes them in the wrong.
When our minds get trained into believing we must do something to earn validation, it leads us to falsely believe we are in the wrong of someone else who doesn’t validate us.
As we are capable of accepting responsibility for things we haven’t even done, we are capable of looking inwards, opening up, healing our inner traumas, learning about ourselves, growing and moving forward to a much happier life.
2. Gaslighting is also a hideous form of psychological manipulation to distort another person’s reality.
As a narcissist, Denys us of our realties, our beliefs, our hopes and our dreams, our experiences. They say things like, ”that never happened, I never said that you’re just insecure, no one likes you, you’re overreacting, you’re mistaken it didn’t happen like that, I’m not talking to you about this, you shouldn’t be angry, it’s all your fault, don’t take things personally. I never said that. That wasn’t what I meant.” It invalidates our reality and our experiences, often leading us to go to them for validation and answers just to have ourselves invalidate even more.
We slowly believe the false narrative of the narcissist’s toxic words, as it becomes easier for our minds to see it that way, and we feel validated by them when we accept their lies. Our minds believe that the truth is harder to see and more painful to handle, so we run from it when in reality, that pain lasts until we face it. Once we face it all and deal with it all, accept genuinely what has happened again, connecting with those who’ve lived it, we then become validated within ourselves again.
3. Blame Shifting where the narcissist definitely did do something, yet they Twist and turn it all around onto you, so they can escape accountability and avoid taking responsibility.
With the gaslighting and silent treatments, our minds have already been trained to look towards ourselves for blame. The narcissist uses many gaslighting phrases to pass the blame onto us, the silent treatments. Hence, we self-blame, or they provoke to get a Reaction from us, then downplay or forget what they did and turn it all around to what we did, even if we didn’t do anything, they would find fault.
When someone is always picking faults at our own behaviour, it leaves us questioning what’s wrong with us. Rather than looking at reality, their blame-shifting validates our negative behaviours. No one is perfect. We all make mistakes, even with good intentions, people can act in negative ways when these are the things that are always brought up, our minds begin to subconsciously look for the negatives, look for the blame, as they never validate the good that we do, we no longer feel good about ourselves, good enough or worthy of others, leaving us with self-doubt, questioning all our behaviours and actions
When our minds are programmed to think in negative ways, we find it increasingly more difficult to find the joys in life, overwhelmed with negative emotions, often causing anxiety and CPTSD.
There are lots of steps to overcome Anxiety and CPTSD. Another to help with this is reprogramming our subconscious minds to work for us. This takes time and practice. Once you can master your own thoughts and emotions, life becomes more joyful. It doesn’t mean bad things will not happen or pain those low moments will not hit. It means you’ll be better prepared for how to handle those moments, be able to understand how to make life work for you, so when something happens In the morning like you can not find your car keys and start to think it’s going to be one of those days, then find everything about that day to make it one of those days, you’ll stop and think, you’ll find those negatives. Stop yourself, call a friend, get public transport, you’ll recognise it’s just a moment in time and doesn’t need to affect the rest of your day, you’ll find methods within your mind to overcome obstacles rather than avoid them, overcome situations, rather than let them bring you down, face the real problems rather than finding other problems.
4. Denial, the narcissist, denies us of realities and truths, always lying and hiding things, deception is their middle name, and the aim of the game is to invalidate all others, gain control and do as they please, even the breakups the Discard is done in such cruel ways to deny us closure, to leave us to try and work it all out while left in emotional turmoil, the great news is once you do learn about the narcissist personality disorder you can give yourself the closure, even with facts and evidence placed in front of them a narcissist will deny, leaving our minds confused, questioning them more, leaving us hurt and angry. At the same time, their sense of self is inflated as they feel important that others want answers, they don’t care for negative attention or positive, attention is attention, what matters to them is when they are ignored, no longer important to others, often why most will seek to destroy those who go no contact.
5. Financial Abuse, there are so many ways narcissists financial abuse people. Yet, somehow most control the money, either not wanting you to work, and finding ways so you can not, or them not working and playing the guilt card to borrow money and never pay you back, both methods invalidate your security to either have the right to earn or spend money on yourself.
6. The constant criticism, from how you look, what you wear, your shape, size, hair, they constantly go at any flaws or insecurities that you might have had, they pick us apart bit by bit, from telling us directly. Overt. “You couldn’t do that course.” To the covert, “I wouldn’t bother if I was you.” They slowly invalidate how we feel about ourselves, our capabilities, our thoughts so they can feel better within themselves.
Narcissistic people love to manipulate and invalidate, why most survivors of narcissistic abuse are left afraid to speak out, in case others invalidate them further, yet joining support groups and supportive people, just sit back and observe first make sure they are the right people, once you are ready to open up, you’ll see how you are thinking and feeling after or during a narcissistic relationship is normal, and your thoughts are valid.
There are hurt people who go around hurting people to help themselves feel better. Then there are hurting people who go around helping people as they don’t want others to feel how they feel.
No Contact with those who invalidate who you are is the best method to start recovery. Finding people who will validate you until you can start to validate yourself again helps massively.
If you can not go no contact, Retreat, rethink and only respond if you need to do so, that one response is for you, you can communicate with them, but you must understand if it doesn’t serve them, they are not listening and will seek to take you down, to gain control over you. You, however, are entitled to be who you want to be and think how you want to believe. Narcissistic people are not looking for compromise as you are. They are looking at everything single-minded and from their way only.
If you respond, state your point calmly and once, you do not need to defend your actions, thoughts or feelings to them, and most will try to take you off topic, leave them to it, know your point and stick to it. You can only compromise with those who understand give and take.
Let them know if you want that you understand their point of view, yet it’s not for you.
Make sure your behaviour matches your words. Once they take you down on one thing, they’ll go for more.
Don’t get angry. Yes, it’s hard at. First, they want you to be angry. That’s why they are doing what they do.
Creating your inner confidence and self-validation, so you observe others’ negativity and don’t absorb. Confidence is not something anyone just has. It’s something they create for themselves.
Not everything is positive. Try to find the positive in everything.
Start speaking up for yourself, no more I don’t mind, unless you genuinely don’t about that thing, start doing what you’d like to do for yourself.
Stop worrying about offending others, be tactful, yes, be humble, yes, but don’t deny yourself the truth of who you are, with good intentions, there is no wrong way or right way.
Face your Fears head-on and overcome them one by one, not easy. Start with the small ones. If it’s smiling at a stranger, keep doing it. When people start smiling back, it lifts you up, then looks for the next fear.
Dress how you want to dress, raise your head high and walk tall, dress to impress yourself.
Compliment others, genuine compliments, raising others up actually helps raise yourself up.
Focus on the good, things to be grateful for, look for something you have achieved.
Look to others for inspiration that has been achieved, and they are human just like you. They will have had their ups and downs, perhaps different to yours, yet they’ll have had them. If they can do something, you can too.
Ignore the haters. They are not for you.
Make some you time each day to sit and reflect, give yourself credit for things you have achieved, progress made and something you are proud of.
Know within yourself. You have a right to feel how you feel, accept how you feel in the moment, learn to recognise the emotions and what they are teaching you, work through them.
Don’t allow frustration to let you feel shame. We all slip up, we all make mistakes, then our minds look for. “This always happens to me.” Or. “It’s going to be a bad day.” I knew I couldn’t do it. No point trying.” We the spiral into depression, most often left with these feelings after a narcissistic relationship, remind yourself that you are human. If Thomas Edison felt that way, he wouldn’t have invented the light bulb. Instead, he said.
“I haven’t failed. I just found 10,000 ways it didn’t work.”
Tell yourself to go again, you can, and you will.
Find your strengths and skills and work to create brighter things.
Some people believe having confidence makes them narcissistic, with good intentions towards others. This simply isn’t true. Narcissist tries to build themselves up by destroying others. Good people build themselves up by helping others.
Remember, there is a difference between a confident narcissistic negative person. Their confidence is actually arrogance, and they believe they are better than all others.
Empathetic, confident person. The ability of been certain within yourself and your abilities while being kind to others.
Click on the links below to join, Elizabeth Shaw – Life Coach on social media, for more information on Overcoming Narcissistic Abuse.
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All about the narcissist Online course.
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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.
What narcissistic abuse does to you.
CPTSD.
I lived with a narcissist for 28 years and allowed him to make me question my own reality and look to him for validation. I became an alcoholic to suppress my low self esteem and pushed others away from me. I had a deep feeling of abandonment that he preyed on. I turned to my faith and God made a series of events that allowed me to escape. Your course and videos have given me the tools that I NEED to identify his actions and no longer be made but feel sorry for him and STAY AWAY. How do I join your online support group. I need to be in contact with others who have experienced my pain.
Hello, well done on staying away. Here’s a link to the women’s only group.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/2240858729468819/?ref=share
You did not include the invalidation for the case of the narcissistic gossip like my late mother. They will recruit the entire neighborhood as flying monkeys and make use of them all, not only to spy on you constantly but to extend the invalidation until it is absolute, and until you cannot have an opinion (or even a single THOUGHT) which is not subjected to the calumny and rejection of the entire neighborhood. There’s no doubt that this happens because it happened to me. She eve chased me thousands of miles so I couldn’t get away from it. When I finally “went NC” she countered by covertly drinking herself to death. It’s become an objective of mine to let the world know how dangerous these people are to a child’s mental health, and to find ways to get healthy children away from the malign influence of toxic parents like this, I’m 71 years of age and I’ve barely begun to recover from this experience.