Staring Abuse in the Face
This is the first in a series about healing from narcissistic and emotional abuse, adapted from my presentation to fellow counselors, pastors, and people-helpers at the AACC 2018 Meganational Conference.
NARCISSISTIC VICTIM SYNDROME
A quick definition of a very complex issue: NVS. If you have identified that your client may have been suffering narcissistic abuse, several things may be at play: She may have been diagnosed as borderline, or as having PTSD/CPTSD or other acute chronic stress. She may have all kinds of psychosomatic issues going on that are not responding to treatment. Everything in her hurts. Everything feels like chaos. She is barely keeping her head up and holding any thing together.
She may be asking if SHE is the narcissist because a very real outcome of being gaslighted for so long is that she begins to believe what he has said of her. She feels crazy, self-absorbed, untrustworthy, unreliable, stupid etc.
So, what you typically will encounter is a person who is absolutely terrified to reveal what’s really going on in her world – fear stemming from always being told she has nothing of value to add. And shame that she’s been a fool and didn’t see what was happening and let it go on for way too long. It’s been safer to go along with what’s been said of her rather than try to fight it, and even now you’ve got this dichotomy going on where she doesn’t trust herself and yet is desperately protecting herself. She actually isn’t really sure of what’s going on at all!
But, she knows she feels crazy and is not coping with it anymore. And she’s probably very, very angry.
It sets up this dynamic where she somehow feels deserving of the pain she’s living in, but can’t understand why or what’s really going on. It is extremely difficult to see any power or responsibility within herself to stop the harm or find healing, and has little concept of her own sense autonomy.
On top of that, her church has probably told her to simply pray more, endure more, and wait for God to step in. In effect, not only is she being abandoned at rejected at home, she is being abandoned and rejected by her church who can’t or won’t see how she is being manipulated and abused.
When her husband is not protecting her heart as God called him to, and her church is not shepherding as God called them to, she is likely a woman who is falling apart, doesn’t know how to talk about it, and barely feels worth a single breath in trying to stand up against any of it. She often finds herself defending the abuser because he so controlled his world, something in her thinks he controls healing as well. She takes on the blame and shame the narcissist has ascribed to her. And wonders why God doesn’t care enough to step in.