Healthy relationships include healthy limits and boundaries, even in your family—especially in your family. People who feel entitled to hurt you, not least by insulting you, are unsafe and hurtful people who themselves lack fundamental limits and boundaries. So it may be up to you to be the one in the relationship dynamic who has to set the boundaries. But it’s even more insidious than that: if you’re the target of family insults—in other words, if you’re the family scapegoat—every little thing you do, every little thing you say, every little thing about you will be looked down upon. Others in the family system can do and say the same or worse, and they’ll be applauded. You, however, if you’re the target, can do absolutely nothing right while everyone else does no wrong. It’s crazy-making stuff, but this is exactly how it goes in narcissistic families.
Now, other manipulative insults you’ll hear include things like, “You’re such a disappointment,” “You’re so selfish,” “Why do you have to be so difficult?” “You’re so hard to love,” “Oh my God, you’re so stupid,” “No one cares what you think,” or “You’ll never be good enough.”
Needless to say, if you heard any of these things growing up as a child, they left their mark. If you have healing work to do around the past or present experiences that you’re having with your family, it’s time now. No one has the right to diminish and demean you, your abilities, your preferences, your opinion, or your appearance—no matter who they are. Anyone who uses name-calling, targets your vulnerabilities, and/or uses your disclosures as ammunition against you is not a safe person—again, no matter who they are.
So what do you do? Well, first of all, recognize that people who land on the spectrum of destructive narcissism project a lot. This means they will often accuse you of doing and being the exact things that they themselves have done, are doing, and are in fact being. So know that upfront: whatever they’re saying may very well have absolutely nothing to do with you. It really is all about them; it’s confession through projection, friends. They are fully talking about themselves when they’re coming at you, whether they realize it or not. More often than not, that is exactly what’s going on.
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