The consequences of growing up with narcissists are similar to what we hear from other forms of CPTSD.
For example:
You may think that everyone is attacking you. That everyone is out to get you. That everyone knows what they are doing and they are harming you on purpose, so you are living in a constant state of feeling attacked, survival mode, stress, victim-mentality and confusion. (Paradoxically, you also find narcissists very attractive. But you only figure out that you’re dating your parents (AGAIN) once they stop love-bombing you.)
It took me almost 4 decades to figure out: most people really don’t know what the hell they are doing. (And they’re not even narcissists.) Even some narcissists don’t know what they’re doing but that’s not an excuse and I honestly don’t give them the benefit of the doubt anymore.
They certainly do know what works for them.
They certainly do know how to manipulate people.
Most people, however, who are not narcs – well, they are unconscious and – okay, not very compassionate, not very sensitive, but – most of them also don’t have the intention to push you down and feel better because of it.
However, there are some borderline cases, and I don’t mean borderline personality disorder, that’s another story.
There are people who tease you and talk sh** about you or at you in order to make you reactive, in order to tear you down and they, too (like narcissists) find it amusing, but it’s simply their bad nature, like a cat playing with a mouse, they’re not a narc.
(Of course I think they’re a**holes too. Bullies.)
These a**hole cases are what I mean with borderline.
As I am aging I am realizing that most of the bad behavior people exhibit is based on insecurity and secretly feeling bad about themselves but being in denial about it. Narcs or non-narcs. It doesn’t matter. There’s a LOT of them. I am not very impressed by these people anymore. And they are so many, it just bores me to sleep.
I’m not just post narc. I’m post trash. I’m over it, done.
It’s not my problem and I don’t have the time to waste on other people’s problems anymore. I am too old for that now. I am aware of my limited time. Why do I keep writing about it? Because the fog is disappearing and I enjoy putting my realizations into words, and maybe it even helps someone. (Allegedly, my words have helped some people: cool. But I am doing most of this for myself, for my own mental clarity. And that’s wonderful. I’m worth it.)
Whenever I interact with these borderline-narc people, I’m thinking, hell, people say what you mean and if you have a problem with me, don’t make it so obvious while being a total d*ck, just go home and masturbate or eat some ice cream or do some kind of exercise, go dance the Charleston, feel better and don’t use me for your cheap games… Have a nice day. (Or don’t. I don’t care.)
The feeling of “I am wasting my time here” has become a very effective red flag for me and I quickly remove myself from ALL the situations that don’t contribute to my well-being/health, Soul or finances in any sort of way – in that succession.
Health, Soul, money – it’s either contributing or it’s a waste of time. My life has become wonderfully simple and clear as a result of that.
There once was a narc in my life and I’m almost kind of grateful to him – yes, it sounds cheesy and it probably is, but you might understand what I mean very soon.
He is the one with the chest tattoos. I will mention him a couple of times in this post.
He is the only narcissist who ever acknowledged to me: “Yes, I did play a power game with you and it probably did not contribute positively to our relationship.”
You may be forgiven for laughing about his display of intelligence. Yes, there were reasons why I liked him. Nevertheless, he’s Satan.
The fact that he calls this trauma-bond “relationship” makes me want to puke.
It was a one-sided fakelationshit. (My term and I am proud of it.)
And I think it’s obvious that these people are doing that. They probably know it, too, even though they’re often not aware of it (often they are) or it’s simply not a problem for them – it’s normal to them.
Yes, honestly and sadly, many people grew up with highly narcissistic, exploitative, weak people as “parents” who systematically treated them poorly in order to feel better about themselves. Manipulation and power games is NORMAL to these people, whether you call them narcs or not.
I don’t even want to call them narcs anymore. They don’t deserve it, they’re just insignificant.
Today my attitude is: if I ended up with a person in any kind of relationship or situation where I figure out, shit, it’s another narcissist, an actual narcissist, then I would know: shit, I still have work to do, I didn’t focus enough on myself, I didn’t uplift myself enough, I was most likely looking for some instant connection with someone else and – bam – that’s when a narcissist attaches to you, enmeshes with you and you run the risk of enmeshing with them, too.
Narcissists don’t enmesh with you when you’re connected with yourself and the universe – you won’t let them in, you won’t even waste a minute on them.
You ONLY run the risk of enmeshing with a narcissist during a time of your life when you are NOT connected with yourself, when you are already suffering and confused – or when you’re used to these types of people because you grew up with them.
I don’t agree with the opinion that “it can happen to anybody, it can even happy to very strong and happy people and narcissists are mostly attracted to successful people” – No, not everybody is attracted to people who exhibit 50 red flags on the first date and if you were truly “successful” in your life, you wouldn’t get attached so quickly to a person who exhibits 50 red flags on the first date.
If you have your health, your finances, your self-love figured out – you won’t spend 5 minutes with a narcissist. Because you’re an adult. (Because you have learned what it’s like to be an adult from your non-narc parents, if you were lucky enough to have them.) Because you’re taking care of yourself. Because you praise yourself, so you don’t need a fool who’s lovebombing you. Because you instantly identify someone who talks about soulmates and loving you after knowing you for a week or asks you for thousands of dollars or who is just way too f***ing intense – as a fraud, as an insane, mad person who needs therapy (and a bank loan).
But if you grew up with narcissists – that kind of non-acceptable behavior is CHARMING. It almost feels validating to be dating your mother/father, all of them, combined. You may be having a weird feeling of “wow, I may have hit the jackpot” while you’re descending down into hell. You don’t even realize it.
Because you don’t know anything else.
Narcissists and every other kind of exploitative persona is basically like a tick or some other sort of parasite and I don’t say this in order to devalue them, it’s simply a result of the main feature of narc relationships, or, as I call them: fakelationshits, and that main feature is exploitation.
And once you figure out, love is not giving, giving, giving (of yourself) and being OF USE to someone else, love is not exploitation, and once you figure out, hey, I don’t want be exploited, either, you will be able to stay away from narcissists.
Love is not exploitation.
Love is not even being needed.
Love is caring for someone and being cared for.
Do you think you deserve that? If not, you either already have a problem or you’re about to have one. So change your attitude about yourself ASAP.
Narcissists and other ticks simply won’t be attractive to you anymore once you no longer have the nerves to expose yourself to exploitation.
Don’t be ashamed if it takes you a while. It took me a LONG time. I figured out in 2007 that I oppose animal exploitation. But it took me until 2024 to no longer accept the exploitation of ME.
You may not be aware of your lack of boundaries — but the narcs around you certainly are.
No longer attractive – let’s be real. Let’s say it like this: about one of my narc exes I can honestly say, yes, his chest tattoos were really hot, I kind of miss those sometimes, but do I miss anything about his character and all the pain, chaos and destruction he brought into my life?
And I mean, BAD chaos, the BAD kind of chaos, not the funny kind of chaos, but the chaos where you breathe, sleep, eat and drink:
confusion and pain 24/7.
No, hell no, and hell to the no, I don’t miss ANYTHING about that guy, apart from his chest tattoos.
And if you really think about it, that’s ridiculous on my part and really sad for him.
Another thought that makes me think, wow, I have actually made it and I’m pretty much healed even though I certainly still have scars:
I am honestly not grieving ANY of these people (diagnosed Cluster Bs or highly narky people) anymore.
I don’t grieve them and I don’t miss them.
What I do miss is the person I used to be before I met them and the person I was with them.
And this sounds tacky, I know, but it’s the absolute truth.
I met a person this year and I have to say he reminds me a lot of who I was before I met the narcs and before I realized that I was raised by narcs and co-narcs.
His main trait is this: He has so much love in his heart, his own light blinds him from seeing the truth. His own light is spilling out on the people he’s looking at. Blinded by light, even if it’s your own, you can’t see clearly.
When he likes a person or loves a person, he sees ALL the good things in them and nothing negative.
I think I used to be pretty much like that. It’s also a kind of projection that may not be healthy, no matter how charming it is. You’re basically not aware of how loving and idealizing you are yourself, so when someone idealizes you – you believe them and when they try to make you question yourself or gaslight you – they totally have you under control.
I used to be that person. … Wow, everything used to impress me so much. Everything was magical. Everything was painful. I felt too much and I felt way too much for the narcs.
I wasn’t aware of how they’re just a reflection, an echo of my painful upbringing.
That person no longer exists. That person stopped existing while I was learning how vile, selfish and weak the motivations of an action can be and that a lot of it, is, in fact not my fault, but the weakness of people who claim to love me when they were truly just needing me, exploiting me – and then blaming me for their bad behavior.
I understood it mentally. I understood it emotionally.
The magic is gone. There is only connection or disconnection now.
The pain is nothing but pain. It never feels like purposeful pain anymore. There is no purpose in pain anymore. My (super-high) tolerance level was burned away.
And grieving the person you used to be … and figuring out that you don’t grieve the people who treated you poorly but you’re actually grieving your own loving heart and nature that was burned away … that takes some time.
And no, it was not naivety, it was: my nature. I always knew that “bad people” existed but I never thought they were bad on purpose in order to feel superior. Or that they pretend to be stupid in order to manipulate others. Until they TOLD me. I always preferred blaming myself instead, questioning myself – ignoring my own emotions.
That person is dead.
And it’s sad because that level of devotion can make you a very impactful person. Music and art used to touch me in a much deeper way. I also felt more, in general. (I’m more numb today: emotional scar tissue, maybe, maybe age.) However, my kind of devotion didn’t help anyone but the narcs that exploited it. Looking back I can honestly say: I was an enabler of bad behavior and it’s not something I want to be again.
Nevertheless: that person had a LOT of love in her heart. I am no longer that person and I will never again be that person. I now realize that my capacity for loving an a**hole and tolerating pain was basically otherworldly.
I am only now learning to be human.
That self-sacrificing little starseed self – is no longer.
During that time, I hope I didn’t adopt any of their bad behavioral patterns, but I can clearly see that some people aren’t able to behave in a better way and they aren’t interested in hurting people less, either. Why not?
Because their subjective and always temporary feeling of being superior is the one and only thing that makes them feel better about themselves.
I know that now about quite a few people that I used to love a lot or looked up to.
One of the saddest losses to me is losing all of my respect for a certain family member. I always hoped we’d sit at a campfire together someday. I no longer want this person anywhere near me. I will never again fight for the “love” of a highly narcissistic person, neglecting myself and devaluing my own emotions at the same time.
I no longer love others that much. I am only learning to love myself.
In 2020 I thought I had figured out self-love. (The hybris….)
Then I met some Cluster Bs.
Lesson: I personally think you know nothing about self-love as long you engage with Cluster Bs or tolerate them as partners for intimate relationships. There are many people who would disagree with this and that’s fine. You really don’t have to agree with me. I am free to learn my own lessons and to have my own opinions.
Is love for everybody? No, it isn’t. If you exploit people or other sentient beings, you’re not being loving. You’re being needy.
The positive outcomes of all my losses are: I no longer blame myself for other people’s manure and I no longer miss them. I have a lot more time and energy to devote to myself. None of that gets eaten up by parasites anymore.
And that’s the thing: you can’t do it all. You can’t love yourself and really live the life you want to live AND also, at the same time, spend years of your life on a person that gets off on putting you down, gaslighting you, exploiting you and laughs about it, thinking they’re smart for doing all of that, LOVING themselves for being an a**hole – no, they don’t see a problem with it, because it gets them what they want and you keep enabling them.
Of course you can make yourself believe that “you can do it” and that love conquers all. But that’s an illusion.
Why can’t you do it all? Why can NO ONE do it all?
Because your focus is completely off. You’re not living a life based on authenticity, but based on enabling others and very often: their bad behavior, their weaknesses.
Drop out of the nonsense and let them take care of it on their own. Very often, their lives will change for the better. They will get together with someone who doesn’t allow them to behave in the ways you completely enabled. Their new victims might be less of a victim than you. They might even make them a better person. Get out of the way. Let them handle their stuff. And you handle yours.
(If you don’t have good boundaries, you will NOT help people become better people.)
But of course, we’re proud and territorial and we want to keep the people we care about, even if they’re BAD to us.
Accepting things the way they are and choosing yourself – after years and decades of abandoning yourself, sacrificing yourself to vampires and being nothing but a thrall, an enabler, an addict – is hard.
Of course.
After all, you don’t really have a reason to trust yourself after all of this. After a life of self-neglect and self-avoidance for the sake of – what? What’s really in it for you except for being treated like you don’t even exist? – You threw yourself away and you’ve got nothing to show for it.
No, you don’t have any reason to trust yourself after all of this.
And that’s my sad, beautiful kind of new-found freedom nowadays.
Think about it.
If you have x-legs, you have a reason to do leg exercise.
If you don’t have a reason to trust yourself, you have a damn good reason to start loving and choosing yourself.
And for some of us, unfortunately, only selfish people teach us that lesson.
Every sentient being deserves a life free of suffering and exploitation.
I have always known this, but now I know that the same applies to me, too.
And this makes all the difference.
If a person doesn’t see me through a filter of appreciation, my new-found filter of self-appreciation doesn’t allow me to engage with them.
As a result, the trash takes itself outside.
First steps: Stop clinging to the trash. Stop holding on. Let them go and do their thing. With others. You’re not gonna save anyone but yourself.
But most of all:
Stop holding on to the trash, stop contacting the trash.
Instead: treat yourself as if you matter. Maybe you do?
You certainly don’t matter less than a person that treats you like trash.
Try it out, you may be surprised. I did and I will never go back to being treated like trash while holding on to the trash.
Start treating yourself as if you matter and the trash will no longer be able to keep up with you.
You will hear their negative remarks and all the things that used to hurt – and suddenly you will find yourself laughing about them.
It happened to me recently.
That narc ex with the chest tattoos, he learned about me having a new boyfriend and became nostalghic and territorial, wanting me back – but only for his power games, of course. He is not able to have a real relationship with mutual care.
He said: “Well, if you think you can live your illusions with that new guy…” (not finishing his sentence, wanting to let the imcompletion breed discomfort in my brain — so cheap, wow, what a Disney villain.)
I said: “Illusions.” and I laughed – I truly laughed because I found it really amusing that he, of all people, was talking about illusions and wanted me to think badly of my new relationship.
As I heard myself laughing I realized: Oh wow, isn’t that kind of sad for him? He really has no power over me anymore. He cannot manipulate my thoughts anymore. I TOTALLY see what he is doing now and what he has ALWAYS been doing.
He then realized himself what he had said and half-heartedly apologized for saying illusions. But that didn’t matter anymore.
He later came to my place uninvited (for the xth time) and I didn’t react to his talk until he left – the entire thing was so unilateral, it was truly ridiculous. I really saw who he was and all I could think was: the trash is taking itself outside. And he did.
What’s the secret about not reacting? Is it grey-rocking? No, not in my case. What I did was ask him the same question several times (“what do you want from me when you obviously don’t love me?” – the answer is obvious and NSFW, but I only truly dared to ask it when I didn’t care about him anymore) and stating that I can’t make him treat me well.
He was able to say all kind of nonsense to my question, trying to manipulate me into dumping my new boyfriend.
But he collapsed into himself when I said 2-3 times: “I cannot make you treat me better.” – He didn’t know what to respond to that and all of a sudden, he left like a bat out of hell, not even saying bye.
So no, my secret is not grey-rocking. My secret is you first need to understand the truth for yourself, and really accept it – and then you can say whatever you need to say from a place of strength and certainty. And if you are at that place, they might say and do stuff, but it won’t affect you anymore. You won’t be reactive anymore because you have accepted that they are selfish and there’s nothing in it for you. You will stop seeking contact and they will stop contacting you. They won’t get under your skin anymore.
Once you truly realize: THERE IS NOTHING IN IT FOR ME – nothing positive – and you stop pursuing the trash, the trash will stop pursuing you. Because they’re the only ones who are benefiting and once they don’t benefit anymore, they will leave you alone.
The catch is: you have to really get there, and I mean emotionally, not just mentally, reading some blogpost and agreeing, nodding, “yaya, I totally get it”, thinking you’re already there – no, you’re not there as long as you only know these things mentally, but not emotionally.
You have to stop loving or even respecting them. Yes, that’s gonna hurt. A lot. You have to learn to see and accept the truth and stop sugarcoating and making excuses for them. (“Oh but he had such a violent childhood” blah blah… you know the deal. Codependent manure. Try to grow some flowers on this.. everything is gonna wither away or not even sprout. But you want to make it be enough for you somehow…. you somehow want to auto-cannibalize your heart and Soul so much that you don’t care about being treated well anymore, because well, maybe you’re finally gonna be good enough if you completely sacrifice yourself? It’s such nonsense, insane, really.)
Today I can honestly say: All I miss about him is the love I had for a person who doesn’t deserve it – and, ridiculously, sometimes his chest tattoos.
Chest tattoos? Yes, but … you can always get a chest tattoo yourself. (And love yourself for it, in a superficial way, if that’s your thing.)
Sometimes you will have a painful realization about how much time and energy you used to waste on people who really don’t deserve ANY attention – and that’s been a recurring one for me – but that’s 1 million times better than living in hell 24/7.
And yes, even if you have been living in hell for many, many decades, you CAN still get out and believe me, you will get used to living with self-appreciation very fast.
And there will be no way back for anybody – not for you and not for them.
I always knew this and it used to scare me – truly, actually losing a narc – but now it’s a relief.
I’m good. I’ve suffered enough. I deserve better. And honestly – I don’t even have the nerves to tolerate any of this nonsense anymore. I wonder how I ever did. (Narc upbringing, probably.)
Get rid of your tolerance for pain, Love.
I recently had a dream where a baby and a 7 or 8 year old child were diving underwater. Looking back, I think these children were basically symbolizing myself. I had some kind of attachment to them but it was like living another life.
Then a shark showed up. And I started thinking: “What is this? I don’t dive with sharks. I don’t dive at all. This must be a dream.” And I got lucid and was able to wake myself up before the shark got too close… Yes, this would have turned into a nightmare.
I don’t really believe in demons or Satan – I think they’re tulpas – so I explicitly don’t believe in them, even though I sometimes say to a thing or a person: “this is Satan” because: it is deception or they are serving the forces of deception.
I am not christian, I am agnostic AF.
And to me, sharks, narcs, Satan – it’s all the same thing:
You get lured into nightmares,
being baited with the unmet needs from your childhood.
But hey, one day you will get lucid and wake yourself up in time. 🙂