What are the Healing Stages After Narcissistic Abuse?

7 min readMay 31, 2022

In my last blog I discussed the recovery process after making the discovery about narcissistic personality disorder.

This blog is about the ways in which narcissistic abuse has affected you, the ways to heal.

Healing is essential, for you to life your best life.

It’s also very important because the more you heal, the more you will be protected from narcissists in the future.

It is normal once you’ve made the realisation about narcissistic personality disorder to realise that you have narcissistic friends, partner or colleagues. These are the people that won’t be happy about any changes you make as you heal, they liked things the way they were.

The decision to make, is how much more you are willing to take from the people supposed to care about you. Sometimes you have to make decisions that are hard in the short-term, but for your benefit in the long term.

When narcissistic abuse is familiar it takes a while to realise what is not healthy or normal and not serving you.

People-pleasing

Coming from a narcissistic family, you soon learn that pleasing the narcissist is essential to your survival.

You spend your childhood, trying to please the narcissist.

This is something that you take into adulthood which manifests as people-pleasing.

This can be in your romantic relationships, friendships, with colleagues and bosses. It can affect all aspects of your life.

Coming from a narcissistic family sometimes it is difficult to identify your likes and dislikes. Your choices were based what the narcissist wanted or liked.

In some ways it’s easier to go along with what others want all the time.

However, always compromising yourself can lead to resentment, bitterness and burn out.

You feel like a doormat. Used and abused by everyone.

However, being a people-pleaser and continuing that behaviour is a choice.

Those that truly love you and accept you, will continue to do so after you stop trying to please them all the time.

People-pleasing is a habit you got into to survive. However, your survival doesn’t depend on that anymore.

Just as you got into the habit of people-pleasing you can break that habit. It will feel very strange at first because it’s unfamiliar, but the rewards from making that change will convince you it’s the best way to go.

Inability to say no

Just like people-pleasing it is very difficult coming from a narcissistic family to say no.

The narcissist would have made it very clear that your personal preferences or desires are not important to them.

‘No’ is not something you say to a narcissist. The first time you did it, it would have been made very clear that that is not acceptable to the narcissist. From that point you are afraid to ever say no.

You take that same fear into all your adult relationships until you become aware of it.

The more you say yes to things that you don’t want to the less energy you have for the things you are really interested in.

There may be people in your life that are used to you always saying yes. These people won’t like it once you start saying no. These are not your people.

You can’t expect everyone to accept the changes that you are making that make you happier or more at peace. Those that do accept it, are the keepers.

Likewise, it is very difficult coming from a narcissistic family to not justify, argue, defend or explain (jade). If you do feel the need to justify your ‘no’ with a reason or excuse, then this gives the narcissist the power to manipulate you into complying.

You can be polite, but firm with your no. And you’ll feel much better for it.

Boundaries

Coming from a narcissistic family, means that you have little or no boundaries, because narcissists don’t like or allow them.

To a narcissist a boundary is a challenge, to see if they can get away with breaking it.

Your boundaries are your rules, the things that you need to feel safe and comfortable.

No-one else has to approve or understand your boundaries, you don’t need anyone’s permissions to have them.

Imposing boundaries can be the breaking point of relationships or friendships. It’s a test of how much the other person really cares and respects you.

Anyone who doesn’t like it and therefore don’t respect your boundaries consistently is not someone who has your best interests at heart.

Over-sharing

One of these boundaries could be that you don’t over-share anymore.

Coming from a narcissist family you learn that the narcissist expects to know everything about everyone.

The knowledge that they get from this gives them the ability to sabotage your successes and your happiness.

It feels dangerous to not over-share with a narcissist, because the fear of them finding out later is greater than the desire for privacy, even if you know the consequences of sharing.

Of course, a narcissist won’t tell you that they are sabotaging you. It will be done so cleverly, so that you won’t even realise it.

They could lie and say that money difficulties are the reason you can’t continue something you enjoy, or that you are not capable of it. They will use excuses, reasons, even false concern for you, all as reasons to stop you doing something you want.

Over-sharing is something you carry into your adult life, until you recognise it and heal.

This makes you vulnerable to narcissistic friends, partners, colleagues, as it made you vulnerable to your narcissistic parent.

Sharing too much information about yourself, in the wrong context, can give others the ability to hurt and sabotage you.

Confiding in others, once you’ve built up trust with them, is important. But it takes time.

Healing triggers

Triggers are your unhealed wounds.

If you have a trigger, you are reminded of trauma you experienced and you are right back in it. The actual circumstances can be very different, but just a little something reminded you.

You can expect to act with fear, anger, a desire to run away, or the need to appease whoever triggered you. These are the trauma responses of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.

It is important to heal these wounds, because then you don’t have the triggers anymore.

These triggers can result in reacting in such a way that makes you feel bad about yourself, and then the resulting shame spiral that can take months to get out of.

Triggers can have a detrimental affect on your relationships. If you react to the trigger, before you really understand it, then you take it out on your loved ones. They don’t understand what it really going on.

Understanding what it really going on is very important.

Self-awareness is key to healing your triggers.

Once you understand that it is previous trauma resurfacing, it gives you a chance to take a moment, look into it, find out what’s at the core of it and healing it.

Unhealthy perfectionism/over-achieving

Sometimes your desire to maintain some sort of control over your life after narcissistic abuse, can manifest as perfectionism or over-achieving.

It could be that you feel once you’ve achieved your target then you will feel the worthiness that you’ve never felt before. You have to work hard to earn it.

Perhaps your narcissistic parent placed a lot of importance on your career or earnings. Once you’ve obtained that job, or salary you will finally earn their love and approval.

Maybe you think that your happiness is dependent on that job position, your further education or earnings, and once you’ve got that you’ll feel satisfied.

Whatever the reason for it, unhealthy perfectionism and overachieving is not serving you.

When it comes from an energy of desperation, proving something, or the desire to earn love it is not healthy.

It could result in the destruction, or lack of formation, or personal relationships, or your health.

Balance is the most important thing.

Confidence

As you work through these issues, understand and heal them, you will grow in confidence.

It’s a gradual process, changing these behaviours, after all you’ve spent your life in survival mode.

With the healing, too, comes the confidence in yourself, trusting yourself and your decisions. And, the more you grow the more you will know how to protect yourself from narcissists.

Confidence won’t develop over-night, it will take time but it will affect every area of your life.