Lurking In The Shadows: When A Narcissist Tries To Silence You
Something that I have learned about narcissists is that they are skilled at silencing their victims. A lot of their abuse is done in the dark, behind closed doors where no one will ever know or be able to find out. That’s why so much uproar is caused when the victim brings their shitty behavior into the light. They’re like roaches. Everyone experiences a roach at some point in their life. They creep up when you least expect them to, hiding in the darkest corners of your home. Once you turn the light on and expose them, they scatter. They seem to never die as you will always find them, somewhere.
Once you share about a narcissist’s wrongdoings, they’re quick to put out the flame. Turning people against you, gaslighting and denying anything that you say either to them or about them, and making you feel like the villain for saying anything at all. It’s how they maintain control. But once they realize that you’re not easy to manipulate or control, they distant themselves from you either emotionally or physically, maybe even both.
The defining moment when I realized that I had been raised by a narcissist was when I was gaslit by them for the first time. It felt like a stab to the gut because I had spent so many years idolizing and seeing them as someone who could do no wrong. They were charming, funny, everyone liked them and were in awe of their every move. But I saw through it all. I always have. In the public eye, they are the leader, the beloved, the most respected, and the one that knows everything; behind closed doors, they’re calculated, emotionally unavailable, immature, and their ego is so present it stinks up the room.
Accountability and self-awareness are words they love to throw around despite not being able to use them for their own benefit. The hypocrisy they spew is so baffling, it makes you question if they can even listen to what they say. And they tell on themselves so much.
When my abuser admitted to stalking my social media because they felt out of the loop in what I had been doing with my life, even though they hardly call me or check in on me to see how i’m doing (and the fact that I live twenty minutes away from them), it was humorous to see how buried they were in their own bullshit. You will always be the villain in a narcissist’s life. You will always be the one that’s never doing enough, that demands so much, that is so difficult to please, the one that can never just “move on”, etc. To a narcissist, you are always the problem and never them.
I’ve always had so much anxiety around talking about my traumas, especially to the ones who caused it in the first place. To the point where I struggle to tell my own therapist about every feeling/experience/moment that I have with my abuser because of the scared little girl inside who is afraid of getting in trouble for speaking up. It only took me until this year to realize that it wasn’t normal to feel this way. It wasn’t normal to still feel like a bad person for openly discussing about how your abuser has hurt you, even when you discuss it to their own face. I’ve lived with so much unnecessary shame and guilt from being confronted about sharing my story. When it comes to dealing with narcissistic abuse, speaking up, and addressing where you’ve felt wronged, it’s damned if you and damned if you don’t.
I have also realized that it’s not my fault that I have been taught to diminish and downplay my pain. To remain silent. It is, however, up to me to regain ownership and control of my narrative. When it came to my abuser, all I’ve known is how to protect their feelings, their image, and their ego. It never served me as a child and it can no longer serve me now.
Ultimately, what I have learned about dealing with narcissistic abuse is that if your words, YOUR TRUTH, ruins or ends relationships, then it was time to close the curtain anyway.
