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.
When children suffer at the hands of a narcissistic abuser, some crucial brain regions are affected, including damage to the hippocampus and amygdala. These changes lead to devastating effects on the lives of these children.
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.
Perhaps most distressing is the fact that narcissistic abuse can cause neurological issues – also known as brain damage. On the plus side, the neurological changes caused by this long-term trauma can be reversed, thanks to our brain's neuroplasticity.
You may feel as if you have completely lost yourself. Narcissistic abuse is a form of brainwashing, and as such, it can destroy your sense of self-worth. You may no longer feel like the person you were before all this began.
Victims of narcissistic abuse have been reported to experience symptoms similar to PTSD, known informally as narcissistic abuse syndrome. Symptoms include intrusive, invasive, or unwanted thoughts, flashbacks, avoidance, feelings of loneliness, isolation, and feeling extremely alert.
The aftermath of narcissistic abuse can include depression, anxiety, hypervigilance, a pervasive sense of toxic shame, emotional flashbacks that regress the victim back to the abusive incidents, and overwhelming feelings of helplessness and worthlessness.
Psychological trauma from their abuse will not just go away. In fact, this type of abuse can cause long lasting post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The abuse from a narcissist is overwhelming. It is hard to identify and sufferers tend to blame themselves and continue to suffer long after the relationship is over.
According to Julie L. Hall, author of “The Narcissist in Your Life: Recognizing the Patterns and Learning to Break Free,” narcissists become more extreme versions of their worst selves as they age, which includes becoming more desperate, deluded, paranoid, angry, abusive, and isolated.
In general, it may involve intense emotional reactions and a tendency toward vindictive behaviors, but it could also lead to depression and withdrawal. Narcissistic collapse isn't a permanent occurrence once it happens. Typically, the emotional pain will decrease and the person may return to feeling their usual.
NPD Brains Work Differently
According to research, people with narcissistic personality disorder have reduced gray matter volume in areas of the brain related to empathy and increased activity on baseline images in brain regions associated with self-directed and self-absorbed thinking.
The stages of healing from narcissistic abuse typically take time, introspection, and support. However, recognizing the abuse is the first step. Furthermore, it's important to anticipate how the narcissist may react and it is essential that you have measures in place to take care of yourself.
The abuse from a narcissist will essentially cause the victim (first- or second-degree) to feel emotionally out of control and unstable. The negative memories and painful flashbacks will overpower any semblance of goodness. Depression, languishing, and general disinterest in life will become the norm.
Narcissism and its Origins
Narcissism tends to emerge as a psychological defence in response to excessive levels of parental criticism, abuse or neglect in early life. Narcissistic personalities tend to be formed by emotional injury as a result of overwhelming shame, loss or deprivation during childhood.
According to Thomaes & Brummelman, the development of narcissism begins at around the ages of 7 or 8. This is the time when children begin to evaluate themselves according to how they perceive others.
The narcissist often engages in self-defeating and self-destructive behaviours.
At the end of a relationship, narcissists may become combative, passive-aggressive, hostile, and even more controlling. People with NPD often fail to understand other people's needs and values. They are hyper focused on their egos, but do not account for how their actions affect others.
Through ongoing gaslighting and demeaning of the partner, the narcissist undermines the individual's self-worth and self-confidence, creating extreme emotional abuse that is constant and devastating.
Symptoms of Post Narcissist Stress Disorder. Emotional reactions can be: Feeling intense amounts of pain – You may recall a violent outburst from the narcissist and feel like you are being yelled at all over again. Remembering and reliving traumatising events – Narcissists are skilled at doling out punishment.
As mentioned above, the four types of trauma responses are: fight, flight, freeze or fawn.
Victims of narcissistic abuse develop coping mechanisms to survive. But once the abuse has ended, their coping mechanisms may turn maladaptive. Over-focusing on others' needs, failing to set boundaries, or doing anything in exchange for kindness may pave the way for maltreatment or abuse.
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.
Narcissists and psychopaths dissociate (erase memories) a lot (are amnesiac) because their contact with the world and with others is via a fictitious construct: The false self. Narcissists never experience reality directly but through a distorting lens darkly.