The emotional hangover when we're undergoing recovery from a narcissistic relationship is typically profound sadness and secondary to this feeling is rage. Rage that someone who professed to love you could suddenly turn around and treat you so entirely without empathy. The rage quite often is disguised as depression.
After experiencing narcissistic abuse, you may experience extreme fear or anxiety in relationships with new people. Those who leave abusive relationships may experience separation anxiety, leading them to feel panicked and disoriented when they're not with their abusers.
Be Patient
Recovering from narcissistic abuse takes time, so you will have to remain patient. This process could take months or even years, but it's worth all of the hard work and effort. You can and will move on to find healthier and happier connections with others.
After separation, it's common for a person healing from narcissistic abuse to experience complicated grief or complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). Unlike a “normal” process of mourning, complicated grief often involves a mix of emotions including anger, guilt, longing, and sadness.
Leaving a narcissist is similar to breaking a heroin addiction. It is painful and difficult, but in the end, you get your life back. In order to get yourself through the hardest parts of the initial break, you must allow yourself to experience the discomfort and anxiety, and let yourself grieve your loss.
Narcissists don't know they're hurting you. It doesn't even enter their minds. And, if you try to tell them how you feel, they get defensive and make you feel you're wrong again. In fact, they'll even rather “innocently” tell you: “I'm only trying to help you.”
Once you get the strength to leave them, the narcissist will pretend your absence doesn't bother them — and they will move on with their life. But they will not be happy. After all, your loyal love was a huge source of their supply. They will miss your adoration.
Unless they have had a lot of successful psychotherapy for their NPD, they do not feel guilt, shame, or self-doubt so long as their narcissistic defenses hold. This means that they do not think there is anything for them to regret, no matter how hurt you feel.
While people with narcissism aren't devoid of emotions, their motivations may be self-focused. They can know they're hurting your feelings, but as long as it elevates their status, they may not care. Someone living with narcissism does cry. They can feel regret, remorse, and sadness.
Chronic abuse can lead to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), especially in victims who experienced other traumas. The result of narcissistic abuse can also include a pervasive sense of shame, overwhelming feelings of helplessness, and emotional flashbacks.
Individuals in emotionally abusive relationships experience a dizzying whirlwind that includes three stages: idealization, devaluing, and discarding.
Narcissistic abuse can change a person's entire outlook on relationships. Being in an abusive relationship with a narcissist can cause a person to have long term trouble trusting themselves and others, low self-worth, body image concerns, mental health struggles, difficulty with intimacy, and so much more.
They experienced higher levels of negative emotions and walked away with particularly negative views of their ex-partner. So if you're ending a relationship with a narcissist, you may find them either especially nonchalant about the breakup or especially upset.
For a person who is narcissistic, their self-esteem is often tied to your relationship with them. When they see that you have moved on and are now dating someone else, they will feel jealous and threatened.
So yes, narcissists can miss you in the sense that they feel bad when an emotional need isn't being met when you're not around and thus they want you back in their life. They need someone to boost their ego and make them feel good about themselves.
It's true: Your narcissistic ex will remember you but not — never — in the way you hope they will, as the “great love of their life”. Most of the time they won't even think about you and you know why: They're too busy spinning their web to snare the next unsuspecting spider.
The most effective weapon to fend off narcissists is self-love. When you love yourself, it is more difficult for the narcissist to manipulate you and get under your skin. It will hurt them to know that you do not need them, that you are better off without them, and that you love yourself exactly as you are.
They cry to gain sympathy from other people
These tears occur when someone does not know any other way to meet their needs. Narcissists may also experience depression, grief, and low moods, and nearly everyone suffers physical pain at some point in their lives, which may cause genuine tears.
They will often deploy a variety of narcissistic relationship patterns such as manipulation, charismatic, and exploitational tactics in order to ensure that their own needs and wants are met. As a spouse, you may be the subject of their manipulation and abuse, while your partner treats everyone else positively.
They may say "you'll be lost without me," or "you'll never find someone like me." Don't listen, Orloff advises. It's just a trick to get you to come back to them out of fear.
They WILL move on quickly because narcissists tend to view other people (including their partners) as conveniences — and once you are no longer useful, they will move on.