A narcissist is a thief of joy.
A Narcissist is a con artist, a manipulator, and a thief of other people’s joy, freedom, possessions, mental health, physical health and many more.
A narcissist isn’t just someone with inner confidence within their own abilities or who likes to post selfies and count their likes.
A narcissist is a toxic person, who can one minute be so charming and kind, and the next so hurtful and negative. They lack in Empathy. They do not care for how others feel. They exploit people. They don’t care if they’ve earned something or not. They see what they want. They manipulate, they take, as they feel entitled to do so, they also hold no guilt for the things they do and remove their feelings of shame by passing the blame onto those around them.
Whoever the narcissist was or is within your life, as most of us carry a little self-doubt, a narcissist will take that self-doubt to place you into the fear zone, where we begin to Forget Everything And Run with it due to them downplaying their behaviour, and exaggerating all of ours.
When we are emotional thinkers, and they pull on each and every emotion to use against us, from making us feel Guilty and wanting to please them to fear and conforming to their demands, to anger and Reacting to their toxic ways. Just for them to shift the blame onto us time and time again, leaving us with more self-doubt.
How do they steal happiness?
The straightforward answer is that they manipulate your thoughts.
Self-doubt. Most of us have those nagging little doubts in day to day life, normal, natural and healthy. When it comes to Self-Doubt, you either sit down and avoid altogether and then live with regrets or stand up and do it anyway. A narcissist will train you to question everything about yourself. They do this by Invalidating all your thoughts and feelings. They will put you down using your insecurities against you. Instead of loving, caring and building you up, they take you down, so you doubt your abilities in everything you say or do. They Triangulate you and play you off against others to plant those seeds of self-doubt within your mind about those around you so that the narcissist can divide and conquer and you lose your trust in others.
Emotions. It’s normal to have feelings, yet a narcissist will make you overthink every single thing you think, feel, or believe in. A narcissist will act out in some way, provoke you in some way, or Gaslight you in some way. Then, when you do speak up for yourself, it’ll be you’re too sensitive or insecure, angry, jealous, have trust issues or emotional.
Those who have emotions can be sensitive. Being sensitive isn’t just a passing mood. It’s often vital to who a person is and their values. It usually means you care for others’ feelings. You can overthink before you act or speak. To avoid hurting another’s feelings, you can absorb information and process it. You can be upset easily when people offended you because you’re a caring person. You can become upset easily over others’ hurtful actions towards you.
There is nothing wrong with being sensitive. It’s good to have feelings, and it means you care about yourself and others.
There’s everything wrong with those who use our feelings against us to provoke reactions from us. Someone who loves and cares would try to think first. If they made an error in judgment, they would sympathise, comfort, validate and communicate. They would not use your own feelings against you.
When people do things that hurt you, being sensitive is a perfectly normal reaction. The problem is not you being sensitive. The problem is them not caring about hurting your feelings.
“You’re going to feel sensitive around insensitive people.”
Empathy. A narcissist will use our empathy just like our own emotions against us. They will beg, pled, triangulate, pity play, confuse, or place that much fear into us if we conform to their demands, as we feel bad if we don’t, we feel bad when we do. Yet, we fear what they will do more than we fear our own feelings.
Enough. Most of us question if we indeed are good enough, as we are human, we make mistakes, and we make errors in judgment. We look for ways to be enough often instead of looking to be enough for ourselves. We can try to be enough for others. Often as a narcissist has already planted that self-doubt within our minds that we are not enough, we try harder and harder to please them, never realising at the time we are losing ourselves. The more we try to please them, it is still never enough for them.
Drama. A narcissist will create so much drama within our lives, and it releases cortisol, dopamine and other natural chemicals so that we literally become addicted to the Toxic cycle.
Isolation. Once we have the self-doubt, once our emotions are running on a high, when we no longer feel good enough, surrounded by drama, we become mentally, emotionally and physically drained, our minds left so confused with Cognitive Dissonance we become isolated from friends and family, from any kind of support.
Cognitive Dissonance. Everything that happens within a narcissistic relationship leaves us confused. We live in two different realities, have different values and beliefs running around our heads, living confused about reality, which way to turn and what to do.
Fear. Once we are isolated, full of anxiety and depression from the emotional overload, and left feeling crazy, stupid, living in pain not only within our hearts but also within our minds, from all those silent treatments, walking on eggshells trying to second guess their behaviour, they will fill us with so many fears, fear of being left as we’ve got no one and nothing. With how we feel when they say,” No one will love you.” we believe them. When they say,” Who would believe you? You’re crazy.” we believe them.
How to reclaim your happiness.
The straightforward answer is, make a decision to take control back of your thoughts and work on it each and every day until you succeed, and it’s getting easier, and easier, and easier, then before you know it, the next time something hard hits, and your thoughts just take care of you. Be unapologetically you, learn to think about how you want, believe in what you want, not care what others say or do, and focus on yourself. Who cares if others like you. With good intentions, there is no wrong way or right way to live your life. There is only your way.
We can study and look at the habits of happier people within our world, but most of those studies are done on wealthier people. So you can have a morning routine, you can exercise, you can meditate, you can do yoga, and you can surround yourself with happy people. Yes, this all helps, so long as doing these things actually makes you happy. They say happy and successful people get up at 4. a.m. If that’s what makes you happy, do it. If not, don’t. If you wake between 3. a.m and 6. a.m, try getting up and then going to bed earlier, rather than forcing yourself and fighting against yourself to fall back to sleep. Yes, we can learn from others living how we want to live, yet we have to adapt to what’s right for us.
Decisions. We can all choose, and then we can make excuses to talk ourselves out of that decision. Why? often fear, fear of failure, fear of judgment, fear of pain, fear of what if? And you need to change those what ifs? From what the worst thing that could happen to the best thing that could happen, make a decision, then act on it. Look at a time in your past you made a decision, went for it, and altered your life course.
Fear. Face Everything And Rise again. When dealing with those without empathy, always find a safe way out. Facing the fear of making friends, the anxiety of dating, fear of being you, fear of standing up for yourself, and as you rise, you shake, and your mind takes a seat and forgets everything you were about to say, you’ve got to stand up and do it anyway; others feel the same as you, go for what you want.
Emotions. Taking back control of your feelings, don’t worry if someone else wouldn’t feel as sensitive or as insecure, or if you’re overacting, don’t ask, would someone else think this? Ask why you believe or feel it? It’s as good or as bad as it is to you. Validate your feelings. You are allowed them. Often they are there for a reason. You feel sensitive around those who cause you to feel hurt. You feel insecure around those you can not trust. You feel anxious around those who feed your anxiety.
“Our mind controls our emotions. We control our mind.”
Find your sense of humour. Whatever it is to you, things that have happened are horrific and happened. You can not change the past. You can change your future. When we live feeling sad, we live a sad life. When we live feeling depressed, we live an unhappy life. When we take ownership of our own feelings no matter what others throw our way, when we laugh at thing that is supposed to destroy us, that laughter lifts us. Yes, some horrible things happen in life. That’s life. We get to define the meaning we give to toxic situations internally.
Give yourself some foundations to work from, and most buildings have solid foundations to stand tall. Start building your foundations today, learn your boundaries of things you will and will not accept, learn to say no, look for something you enjoy doing for yourself or things you enjoyed in the past, to give your life meaning, and think about what direction you’d like to go in, you don’t need to know how you’ll get there, just the foundations and the blueprint if that blueprint is a six-month plan or five-year plan. Just create an idea of where you’d like to be. You can always change it, just like getting in that car. If you don’t know where you are going or driving blind, you could end up in a mess. If you type a destination into the sat-nav, you might not know the final destination, but you’ll find the way, and if you spot somewhere more fun along the way, you can change the direction.
Write things down. Start putting your goals on paper, as many as you can, at least five, read the daily, add to them, cross them off once achieved and add more. You are limitless.
The power within your thoughts. Learning to take care and manage your own Thoughts correctly to serve you. Who you are, who you want to be, how you want to live, and where you want to go.
Remember, you’re allowed mistakes. We all make them. We learn to correct them. That’s how we learn and grow.
How narcissists twist the story.
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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.
Overcoming self-doubts.
Emotions.
