Most of us see the world as a fair and good place, until we encounter a narcissist. It’s at that point that our entire belief system is destroyed, and our inner world is turned upside down. Why? Because we encounter evil in human form, something we thought only existed in stories and myths. But this is the devil incarnate in our lives. That’s when we’re left with questions that we feel nobody can answer, not even our own brain. We stay shocked, ruminating over the same things, saying the same things again and again to different people, trying to understand: what happened to me? These statements reveal a lot, primarily the shock and deep betrayal you are trying to grasp.
1. “I did not know people like this existed.”
Why would somebody say this, and when would they say it? When they have been violated in every single way imaginable, they can’t comprehend how someone can so strategically inflict pain and effortlessly lie. They can’t understand how somebody can fight tooth and nail for custody when they hardly care about their children, or how somebody can be so manipulative. How can someone distort reality just to avoid taking responsibility? How can someone compartmentalize things and minimize abuse to make it seem like the other person is being overly sensitive? How can someone not care at all about the person they claim to love, or change entirely when they lose interest? This is astounding because you’re not like that; you can’t understand how somebody can be this evil because you’re not evil. You do not have the brain of a narcissist. For them, it’s their identity, their personality. The shocking thing is, nothing is evil in being that way for them.
You are asking this question because you never thought something like this existed. However, upon encountering the narcissist’s rottenness, their evilness, if you will, you could not believe that a human can be this destructive. Probably your idea of monsters was that they come wearing horns and a red cape, and basically, you’d be able to see and recognize them. But now, you are dealing with somebody who was quite charming, calm, kind, or whatever in the beginning, and they changed into this. How? Why didn’t I know about this kind of deceitfulness? Probably because you were raised by good parents and didn’t experience narcissistic abuse before. Maybe you did not know people could be this bad. Yes, you knew to a certain degree that people could be manipulative, distort facts, and lie, but this is entirely different. This exists on an entirely different plane, and you have been there, and that world still feels alien to you.
2. “How can all of that be a lie?”
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Explain to me how all of that can be a lie when I still, to my bones, feel the niceness this narcissistic partner showed to me in the beginning. I have these good memories that tell me the opposite, and sometimes I get confused. I don’t know what is real and what’s not. It’s like inside me live two people: one kind of hates him or her, and the other just wants to give that relationship one more try. How can I bring that good person back?
This is what I hear almost every single day, and it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart because this shows the level of confusion created by the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde nature of the narcissist. The pain, the confusion, the disturbing dual reality—the dichotomous nature of the entire experience—people are left flabbergasted, wondering: how can this relationship be a lie when I felt the reality of it? I have the emotional memory. I remember feeling connected with him or her. They were there, listening, paying attention. How can you tell me it was all a lie? How can I process all of that?
They really grapple with understanding that it was nothing but a big illusion. They fail to understand that the person they fell in love with in the beginning did not exist. It’s really hard for them to accept that they were dealing with a facade, with the mask that the narcissist had intentionally put on to abuse them, to confuse them, to sell them a reality which, unfortunately, they did not know was nothing but a fabrication. This is why people say, “How can all of it be a lie?” Sometimes he was real, she was real, or at least that’s what I felt. You’re saying it was a lie?
This also shows the honesty of the person who is asking this question: for me, it was not a lie. At least from my side, I was fully invested in the relationship. I was doing everything I could to make it work. No, it was not a lie from my side. I know that. It was not a lie created by you. You did not contribute to that big deception in any way. You were just made to become a part of it, and that too non-consensually. You did not know that you were becoming a part of a narcissist’s shared fantasy, and that is what they sold you. All of it was a lie, and accepting it is like accepting the death of a person who is still alive. The irony is they are only dead to you; the person you thought they were is dead to you. That is what makes the grief so complicated and leaves you with an extreme form of betrayal trauma because you feel betrayed by somebody who does not exist. So who would you hold answerable? That’s the complexity of it all.
3. “I don’t recognize myself anymore.”
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“I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I like. I don’t know what I want. I don’t know how to move forward. I feel like I have turned into a shell.” Have you said this? If yes, drop your answers in the comments below. Do you struggle with it? Just share your experiences. Who knows, a lot of people will be able to resonate with you and feel less alone in their healing journey.
So, why wouldn’t you feel this way when the narcissist made you question every single thing that you were into? They kept you in this small cage and made you feel small about yourself so that your greatness is suppressed. You’re meant to be great as an empath, as a human being—you have that potential in you, and they hated it because they didn’t have it. They couldn’t steal it away from you, so they had to destroy it. They were jealous of you and expressed that jealousy as animosity.
Why wouldn’t you feel so disconnected from yourself when this toxic individual made you question your intuition until you lost connection? They filled your head with chronic doubt through gaslighting, twisting reality, and shaping the environment in a way to make you fail and then prove to you that you are the cause. They told you that you are overly sensitive, that you are reacting to a situation where nothing is wrong, and that you are making up things. You are interested in villainizing them and nothing else. They are not as bad as you make it seem. Things are going the wrong way because of your childhood trauma, your baggage, your issues with men (or women). They might say, “You don’t know how to treat women,” or “You are treating me like a burden because you are interested in somebody else.”
I can go on with the list, but the thing is, they truly dissociate you—not just disconnect, but dissociate is a heavier word. The emphasis is on absolute uprooting. They dissociate you from yourself. They make you go against your moral code by settling for things that you would have never settled for, like cheating. If another partner had cheated on you, you would have said goodbye, farewell. But this person convinced you that it happened because of you, that you were not giving them enough attention. So, you were burdened with guilt and shame, and you gave in. You gave them chances, thinking, “I need to make it correct. What did I do wrong for them to seek that support somewhere else? How can I provide it?
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