Narcissistic Abuse: You’re Not Allowed to Have Feelings
You can’t express yourself around a narcissist
If you’re in a relationship with a narcissist you might know that you need to keep your feelings to yourself. Getting a promotion, a new job, someone you cared about getting sick or a fight with a friend. All these events can make you feel intense emotions.
Anger, joy, sadness or grief are emotions that one needs to feel. Some of these emotions can even protect you from mental or physical illness.
Unfortunately, if you’re around a cluster-B individual (narcissist or borderline), you can’t express any of the above feelings.
Why?
The narcissist is an empty shell. They don’t operate like the majority of us. When someone close to them dies, they don’t feel sadness or grief. If they get a job promotion, they don’t feel joy. Their daughter wins a prize at school? They’ll not feel anything about it. Moreover, they’ll probably still be angry with her because she didn’t win the biggest prize. (you’re never enough for a narcissist)
When narcissists are traumatized as children, they develop a false self.
This self is unfortunately fake, devoid of all emotions. It is a good strategy to protect themselves from the extreme abuse they had to deal with. However, this false self only helped them when they were still at home and dependent on their abusive caretakers.
The false self doesn’t help them in their present day. On the contrary, it sabotages their mental health and relationships.
The narcissist’s jealousy
Have you ever seen the narcissist become jealous of you when you expressed an emotion? That’s because they cannot stand other people’s emotions. They know what emotions are but because they cannot feel them, they envy others who do. And they need to crush them for it.
That is why they will kill your joy when you tell them about a contest you’ve won or a new relationship you have. They’ll say things like: “Your boyfriend is not that good-looking. Couldn’t you find someone nice to go out with?” or
“I also won a contest when I was young but got a bigger prize than you”.
The goal here is to curb the enthusiasm you have for your accomplishment. If you start feeling down about your win, then you’ll not be able to feel joy anymore.
The narcissist killed their feelings when they decided to take on the fake persona as a child. This is the trade they made to escape the severe abuse they went through. They found a way to not feel the pain of the abuse but they also numbed the ability to feel joy, happiness and excitement due to it.
Understand that the narcissist will never go back to their true self.
Thus, they’ll never change. But you can change by not allowing yourself to be around them. Get out of this relationship and learn to freely express yourself. It is safe to do so!
