By Jemma Simone Williams – domestic abuse survivor
Narcissistic abuse falls under the umbrella of psychological or hidden abuse. Bree Bonchay is a licensed psychotherapist with over 18 years of experience working in the field of mental health and trauma recovery. She is also the founder of WNAAD (World Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day) which occurs on June 1st every year, established in 2016, WNAAD is a growing global movement to raise awareness of narcissistic abuse and also providing public pathology education, resources for survivors, and effect policy change.
“Narcissistic abuse is a form of emotional and psychological abuse. It is primarily inflicted by individuals who have either narcissistic personality disorder (NPD, which is characterized by a lack of empathy), or Antisocial personality disorder (ASPD, also known as sociopaths or psychopaths), and is associated with the absence of a conscience. It is covert and often disguised as love and care, but it is anything but. It is not a single act of cruelty like an insulting comment or verbal abuse laced with string of profanities. It is the insidious, gradual and intentional erosion of a person’s sense of self-worth. It’s a combination of emotional and psychological abuse aimed at undermining a person’s identity with the sole purpose of obtaining control or personal gain. It can involve patterns of dominance, manipulation, intimidation, emotional coercion, withholding, dishonesty, extreme selfishness, guilt-mongering, rejection, stonewalling, gaslighting, financial abuse, extreme jealousy, possessiveness.” By Bree Bonchay to add to her, isolation, exploitation and objectification, neglect, triangulation, negative contrasting, character assassination or slander, abuse may also be physical, spiritual, or sexual.
Definition from Wikipedia – Parental narcissistic abuse is where parents require the child to give up their own wants and feelings in order to serve the parent’s needs for esteem.
From my own experience Narcissistic Abuse, is a slow death of your spiritual self, a poison injected in you daily but you are unaware that it is poison, it takes away the spark you once had. Your confidence and self-esteem gets run over by a tractor constantly. You have so many questions and many times it gets answered with lies. Your reality gets twisted and you feel like you are unable to trust your own thoughts. Your thoughts get mocked and you feel like you are really loosing it.
The most painful and saddest part is that you believe it’s you that is the problem and you are victimizing them. However, they are slowly enjoying lashing you with a baby wipe and you are crying out loud, begging them to stop; but why should they stop? You are their slave, they own you, you will obey and if you don’t you will get punished verbally and emotionally. If you dare stand up for yourself they will destroy you but you think it is love and so you stay. They belittle you, call you stupid, dumb, idiot, that you are a burden, they make you feel useless, worthless, you are not enough. After you have received your wipes and are bursting out in tears or rage then they are satisfied and begin pampering you, telling you everything is going to be okay.
You just got to trust me and so you once again start your duty as a slave, but then you realize you have needs and wants too and demands change. You are a slave; how dare you demand change from your master? Due to this, they turn up the heat on the abuse, instead of a wipe they get an electrical wire and every so often they lash you with that electrical wire and train you to destroy yourself. They create chaos so that you start saying to yourself, “I am stupid, I am Idiot, I am a burden, I am not enough, I am worthless.” Then they smirk at you because they are not doing it anymore, you are doing it to yourself and they lash you when you are not saying it loud enough.
They compare you to women, criticize your body image. You get jealous when other women are around, because in truth you feel so insecure within yourself. Other women look better than you and you are just an individual who happens to be overweight although they met you overweight. Regardless, you can be slim and they will still find something wrong with you. You find yourself walking on eggshells waiting for the next blow because you don’t know when they will attack. They give you so many promises and so you cling on to hope that they will change but it never happens, they just get worse. And during the break up if you are still breathing they get a sledge hammer and pound on you to ensure you were dead enough. They move on to their next target, someone the opposite of you and you watch your life unfold. Everything they promised you is now given to the next target. However, you realize they are just Idealizing him/her just to create the cycle all over again.
Idealize, Devalue and Discard. After the break up, you think the pain will just disappear but they are your drug and you may struggle with no contact. However, you decide to go on no contact once more and remain no contact. The scars are invisible, but it’s there, then they do a smear campaign on you, mixing truths with lies but more lies so that it sounds like truth. People don’t see your abuser as you do, all they see is a humble, sweet, caring, respectful human being. If you choose to speak out you will be labeled by them, “crazy” “abusive” and “controlling” and their flying monkeys will support them. You will feel like fighting back against the smear campaign but you realize it’s just a game and so you don’t play because you know who you are and the voices of others doesn’t define who you are anymore.
In the recovery process you struggle on forgiving yourself and for forgiving them. Along with that it is coping with the effects of Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from the trauma you have endured. You grow to understand why they did what they did and some of us may have empathy on them because we can see it’s just a hurt child within but it doesn’t make it okay. Your self-worth slowly begins to blossom, not to settle for less than what you deserve but struggle rebuilding your life from scratch. If you once didn’t love or value yourself you start doing whatever it takes to love yourself enough. Although the recovery may feel like it takes forever, because you are now growing from the inside out, ripping yourself off from the old belief system, rebirthing yourself. You hope to reach the other side of your own breakthrough of your life and that is to be fully whole, stripping away their power they once had over you by being authentic. Family, Counselors, Therapist, and Friends who are not aware of Narcissistic Abuse, don’t understand what you’re going through and tell you to just “get over it” “to just let it go” but they don’t understand the depth of your wound. You struggle to explain so that they understand but if they haven’t experience it, it will be difficult for them.
I Jemma Simone Williams refuse to be silent about Narcissistic Emotional Abuse as a Survivor, we need to speak up, if you have been tortured, bullied as I did and you feel like no one gets you because the scars are invisible. I am here and you are not alone, let’s support each other and thrive. You can e-mail address me at togetherwethrive@outlook.com
