I met with a new client this week – let’s call her Marie.
Marie is a classic Lovely.
She’s lovely through and through.
She’s kind, honest, hard-working, great at her job and a very nice person.
Unfortunately Marie is distraught.
Her long-term relationship has recently ended and she doesn’t know how she’s going to survive this devastating break-up.
She’s in floods of tears as she starts to tell me her story.
I won’t go into all the details here, but suffice to say she’s in an extremely painful place.
Lovelies are very sensitive people.
They feel their feelings deeply…REALLY deeply.
Marie has been talking for about 10 minutes and already it’s becoming apparent to me that she’s been in a relationship with a narcissist.
All the classic signs are there.
Emotional abuse, intimidation, isolation from friends and family, economic abuse, coercion, controlling, gas-lighting, stonewalling behaviours and the silent treatment.
I talk about these signs in my earlier blog 5 Ways To Tell You’ve Been The Victim Of Narcissistic Abuse, so I won’t go over them all again, but you can read about them here.
It hadn’t occurred to Marie that this was the case.
She’d heard the term narcissist, but didn’t really know what one was, and certainly didn’t realise that she’d been in a relationship with one.
Obviously, there are 2 people in every relationship and usually both are partially responsible for the break up, but when one person is a narcissist and the other is a Lovely (or Empath) we have a deeply unbalanced relationship.
As Marie and I talk further and I explain more about narcissism, I can see relief begin to flood her body.
One, because she knows she has found a therapist that understands her and her situation completely, and two, because she realises she’s not going mad.
Many victims of narcissistic abuse believe they’re going mad.
She tells me that I’m describing her ex-partner to a T.
I don’t know him, but I know narcissism.
When we’re in a relationship with someone with narcissistic tendencies, we know that something is deeply amiss, but we just can’t put our finger on what it is.
We’re bamboozled by them.
We can’t make sense of things.
After a while, we stop trying to figure it all out and we just blame ourselves for everything.
Any self-esteem we have starts to crumble.
If we stay in the relationship for long enough it disintegrates completely.
When the narcissist in your life is a parent, you don’t develop any self-esteem in the first place.
There’s nothing to crumble, because your abuse practically began at birth.
The narcissist is so confident, so convincing, so utterly charming to everyone else, we surmise it must be us.
It can’t be them.
How could it be?
Everyone else thinks they’re wonderful.
A huge percentage of the Lovelies I meet have a narcissist somewhere in their life.
Sometimes it’s multiple narcissists.
I’ve had 3 major narcissists in mine 
For a sensitive person, this is often a deeply disturbing experience.
The narcissist in your life could be your parent(s) or older sibling(s).
This is very often the cause of the low self-esteem Loveliness in the first place.
If you’re gentle and sensitive, you have no choice but to become a peace-keeping, people-pleaser just to survive.
If you’re not so sensitive, or more like the narcissist, you’ll sometimes become a second-generation narcissist.
I describe this as catching fleas.
You won’t be a true narcissist, but you will display a lot of the same traits.
And you won’t be a particularly nice person.
If this is you, you’re probably not reading this blog.
It’s very difficult when you have one or more narcissistic parents.
It can lead to all kinds of mental health issues.
You will often have gone all the way through your life not feeling good enough.
Whatever you’ve done and whoever you are is met with criticism and/or disappointment.
Narcissists always have to make everything about them.
They always have to be either the best or the hardest done to.
They are broken children in adult bodies.
If the narcissism is mild and/or manageable then limiting your time with them and having very low expectations of the relationship can help you get by.
If the narcissism is at the personality disorder end of the scale (+10) you may have to go full-blown no contact.
Only you can know what you can and can’t tolerate.
When you have to go complete no contact it can be very upsetting, but a relief at the same time.
You are finally free of the toxin.
Many Lovelies with a narcissistic parent are only used to toxic love, so they have to be careful or that’s what they’ll continue to attract.
Every relationship they’re in can replicate their relationship with their toxic parent.
When this is the case, deep healing is needed to break the cycle.
The narcissist in your life could be your friend.
Many Lovelies don’t realise (till I point it out to them) that what they have with their narcissistic “friend” is not a friendship, it’s a trauma bond.
A trauma bond is an emotional bond with an individual that arises from a pattern of abuse perpetuated by intermittent reinforcement through rewards but also punishments.
There’s a power imbalance…an abuser and an abused.
Stand up to the “friend” with any kind of boundaries or fair treatment and the “friendship” collapses.
They can’t cope with being challenged or not being the superior/dominant one.
It doesn’t work for them if you’re not being their servant, shoulder to cry on and greatest supporter.
You can go back through these kinds of “friendships” and see that you haven’t actually been equal friends at all, you were simply their narcissistic supply.
Narcissistic supply is what a narcissist needs to satisfy their excessive drive for attention and/or admiration.
We definitely don’t need these kinds of friends in our lives.
The narcissist in your life could be your boss.
Many narcissistic bosses are triggered by just how popular you are with everyone and how great you are at your job.
(Every Lovely I’ve ever met is brilliant at what they do).
Remember ALL narcissists have to make everything about them.
I was bullied by a narcissistic boss in my late teens, when I first started work.
The combination of being a pleasant, positive child (aka a little people-pleasing puppy) and not having had narcissistic parents didn’t prepare me at all.
This woman had a position of power and influence in our organisation and she seemed to just hate me for no reason.
I couldn’t understand why she had it in for me all the time.
My whole experience with her traumatised me.
So much so that when I first had hypnotherapy 20 years later that was all that came tumbling out!
Eventually (after years of my suffering) she was managed out of our branch of the organisation and moved on (thank God)!
If you have a narcissistic boss that is severely impacting your mental health, I would suggest you do what you can to speak to superiors about this person’s impact on you.
If that doesn’t work (and it often doesn’t), I would consider looking for another job.
Dramatic maybe, but I believe life’s too short to be completely miserable at work.
Nothing should come above your mental health.
Are you a Lovely with a narcissist in your life?
A lot of you will be.
You have my utmost sympathy.
All isn’t lost though.
There are things you can do.
I know.
I did them.
And lived to tell the tale…
Let me help you do the same.
Once you’ve healed, you can spot a narcissist at 100 paces and you won’t ever tolerate their toxic treatment again.
This is a highly specialised area that many therapists don’t fully understand/appreciate.
Please don’t wait any longer, if this blog is ringing alarm bells for you get in touch today.
Let’s stop the abuse as soon as we can.
Much Love
(Narcissistic abuse-recoverer) Christina xx