You may feel sad, terrified, angry, numb and confused. Things in your relationship have gone too far. You don’t know what happened… things were so good at the beginning. You might be reading this to try to determine if you are (or were) dating or married to a narcissist.
As a professional who specializes in working with abuse survivors as well as someone who has survived narcissistic abuse… I’ve learned quite a bit about how to spot a narcissist.
Below I will identify 10 signs and patterns to look out for when trying to determine if someone is a true narcissist.
1. They describe their past as troubled and depict themselves as an innocent victim throughout their life. When you learned about their past you probably felt sorry for them or had a lot of empathy for them.
2. In the beginning of the relationship, they learn a lot of details about you and then through praise and action make you feel more special than you’ve ever felt in any relationship prior.
3. They start to describe other peoples motives as manipulative and not to be trusted.
4. They start to paint a picture of your friends and family that makes you want to distance yourself from them. You start to question the trust you’ve built with them over the years and the narcissist may even use details if shared with them against those people.
5. You begin to get accusations that you are untrustworthy or doing something behind the narcissist back. You may start to overcompensate for the narcissists trust issues. After all, you know about their troubled past.
6. People in your life who love you may start to give warnings about this person but since the narcissist has already painted them to be a certain type of way you were prepared for their reactions. You don’t believe them. They don’t know the narcissist like you do.
7. You start to isolate and just spend all your time with a narcissist. Somehow they have gotten you depending on them whether emotionally, financially, spiritually or sexually.
8. The emotional and verbal abuse starts. At the beginning of the relationship, you never received the type of special compliments you received from the narcissist. But now, things have changed. They are using the insecurities they know about you against you. They’re using the details you’ve told them against you.
9. You feel like you can’t do better. You feel not good enough, not smart enough, not attractive enough and you feel like you need them.
10. You’ve now entered hell on earth. The narcissist now feeds you small pieces of attention occasionally that keep you hoping that it will go back to the way that it was the beginning. Most of the time though you’re isolated with only them to rely on. The narcissist now has depicted you to other people as crazy just in case you ever come out about their true nature. They have turn people against you. You may now suspect that you are with a narcissist.
If at least half of these patterns and signs has happened to you, I am so sorry. Narcissistic abuse is one of the most confusing and painful things that could ever happen to someone.
The main thing I want to express in this article is that it was not your fault for ending up with a narcissist. There’s no way you could’ve known that this person was a narcissist even if you recognize one or two red flags at the beginning of the relationship. There was no way for you to know that it could’ve gotten as far as it did. Don’t blame yourself.
If you’ve been through narcissistic abuse, I’d encourage you to reach out for help. Reach back out to friends and family in your life that you used to trust. Reach out to a mental health specialist. Start to prioritize your needs.
If you have any more questions about narcissistic abuse or trauma therapy please reach out via the Metta Holistic Therapy contact page or email me directly at reneeminxtherapy@gmail.com – if you’re in crisis or an emergency please call 911.