How Anxiety Teaches Me Self-Compassion After Narcissistic Abuse

Through the pain, anxiety brings beautiful gifts.

Growing up in a narcissistic family and dating narcissistic partners led me to loud anxiety and high self-judgments. Mostly I experienced pain beneath the surface of awareness, a subtle feeling of “never good enough.” After many years of numbing, I used anxiety to walk away from numerous toxic people and situations.

Now I’m discovering the gifts of anxiety, especially the way it’s slowly forced me to embrace self-compassion. Using bodywork, depth therapy, and self-love practices, I’m relating to my anxious feelings in a more helpful way.

More often, I see the blessing in the discomfort, how anxiety leads me to take action in my best interest. As I rebuild my life after narcissistic abuse recovery, I need this perspective.

Pathology experts estimate between 60 and 150 million people experience narcissist abuse in the U.S. alone. It’s so common yet nearly impossible to understand the depth of damage without direct experience. Many people experience intense anxiety during and after narcissistic abuse — a great reminder of our shared humanity.

After taking a year-long sabbatical to focus on inner work, I’m starting to reintegrate with the world socially and professionally, and my anxiety has been flaring up. I get nervous, twitchy, aching, and experience overwhelming thoughts about how messed up I am. It’s hard to remember that I deserve love for being my authentic self.

Outer relationships tend to mirror our inner world; we have to love ourselves fully before we can deeply love others. This journey to self-compassion has been beautiful, deep, and often dark, but I’m finding a greater capacity for love than I ever thought possible.

Seeing how anxiety supports me

As I strive for inner balance, I’m embracing the painful thoughts and feelings. Though being kind to myself feels like an ongoing struggle, I remember that the unbearable anxiety forced me to make positive changes.

Anxiety always looks out for my best interest, gaining my attention, spurring me to action, and leading to heightened awareness. As I work to reframe my perspective, I’ve found many ways anxiety has improved my life. Here are a few big ones:

• Leaving a narcissistic partner: Before I knew what narcissism was, I felt stress and anxiety loudly in my body. I broke up with my ex-boyfriend seven times in eight months, as I fell into a heavy depression and my self-worth dwindled. The overwhelming anxiety became too much, so I used the energy to move across the country start a new career.
• Finding depth therapy: As I was burning out of tech work in early 2020, I decided to find a therapist who could help me get to the root causes of my feelings. Despite all the pain I experienced at the time, the actions I took led me to discover narcissism in the first place, and that was life-changing.
• Unraveling patriarchal conditioning: Though healing from patriarchy feels like a massive, ongoing process, I have gained so much clarity over the past year. I continue to make loving shifts to be more authentic and in tune with my femininity. I feel so grateful.
• Leaving the tech industry: Well, I left the rat race anyway. I’m realizing now how many people want to leave tech work but can’t find the motivation to walk away from work that pays so well. I’m proud of myself for actually doing leaving.
• Creating a new life: Anxiety strengthens and energizes me; I’ve been channeling my awareness into creative projects and lifestyle design. I understand the subtlety of emotional well-being, and I sense when people and environments aren’t helpful. Mostly, I’m rebuilding my self-worth from the ground up, and that self-validation feels powerful.

Through my efforts to soothe my anxiety and my research in writing this article, it’s clear that your approach to anxiousness makes all the difference.

Identifying anxiety and exploring how you relate to it may help you uncover some of your most significant strengths and useful skills. Taking charge of your relationship with anxiety may be the most rewarding thing you do for yourself — Kristine Tye, LMFT, in “Good Therapy.”

Tye describes a few valuable benefits: higher intelligence, strong problem-solving skills, emotional intelligence, heightened self-protection, improved decision-making, self-discovery, increased productivity, life fulfillment, confidence, and leadership abilities. How cool!

By focusing on how anxiety can work for my benefit, I’ve found more balance in my life. I own how sensitive, intelligent, self-reliant, healthy, and spiritual I’ve become in the process of navigating anxiety. It’s like a blessing in a very off-putting disguise.

Overwhelming stress forced me to pay attention, which led to massive shifts in my values, lifestyle, and relationships. I feel immensely grateful.

Getting closer to anxiety

Anxiety feels very personal, our deepest fears and insecurities flashing through our minds in one long, screaming flood. God, I’m the worst person on the planet. I’m so messed up, and everyone hates me. The world is fucked.

Even after extensive research and processing with narcissistic abuse, I’ve often felt embarrassed about my anxiety. It was a feeling I had to put up with, something to hide like heavy emotional baggage. No one wants to hear about my pain. Just keep smiling.

But with persistent curiosity and practice, I can sense the physical sensations throughout my body: tense head, tight throat and upper back, fidgeting fingers, and quick movements. The anxiety is part of me. When I orphan off my emotions, I hurt myself. Unconditional self-love means accepting all of me, including parts that feel uncomfortable.

Somatic processing has been the most impactful approach I’ve found for finding some inner peace. Our bodies are incredibly wise, and working with the pain rather than against it leads to much better outcomes.

Here are a few other approaches I use to embrace and understand my anxiety:

• Inner Child Work: I visualize my child self and provide the comfort, validation, and attention she needs and deserves.
• Active Imagination: I use drawing, dancing, or singing to express specific feelings and use questions to explore deeper into what comes out.
• Shadow Work: This Jungian psychology approach includes a range of activities that help you explore a fuller range of your personality, especially the darker parts we often try to hide.
• Dream Tending: By recording dream images, emotions, and discoveries, we can explore them. Our subconscious mind communicates with us through dreams, and I couldn’t recommend this practice more highly.
• Professional Support: I experienced numerous inner work breakthroughs and insights when I began working with a depth therapist. I later found a narcissist recovery coach who has been essential in supporting my healing process.

Additionally, self-care activities like meditating, praying, journaling, walking, exercising, and creating help me feel more like myself.

Mostly, my determination to keep exploring ways to heal myself has shaped me into a healthier and more interesting human.

Opening to greater self-compassion

Self-compassion seems deceptively simple: just be kind to yourself. But for many, especially abuse survivors, trading the critical voices for kinder self-talk feels like climbing a mountain: one small, grueling step at a time.

Hearing my dark inner voices, I knew I needed to work on it, and I soon discovered Dr. Kristen Neff, a pioneering self-compassion researcher.

Most people have low self-compassion, about 70%, and we’re afraid of appearing selfish. Yet Neff’s research shows self-compassion leads to better relationships, in addition to the numerous health benefits.

Taking Neff’s self-compassion quiz, I confirmed my especially high self-judgment. This clarity motivated me to dive deeper into self-compassion. Plus, research shows the direct impact of self-compassion in reducing anxiety symptoms.

Like any habit, adjusting to self-compassion works best with small steps, adding a bit more kindness to our inner dialogue one comment at a time. I’m learning to let change happen slowly and gently.

For narcissist abuse survivors, finding effective self-soothing techniques is essential for recovery and breaking cycles. The pain and scars from our experiences never entirely go away, but we can learn to embrace ourselves with more grace and kindness.

Honoring all of my emotions

After walking away from toxic situations and people, I’m focused on finding more aligned and fulfilling opportunities and relationships. I regularly experience heightened stress and anxiety. They’re all so much better than me. I must look stupid and ridiculous.

Since discovering gaslighting, I’ve learned to trust my emotions primarily. With narcissists, your intuition is the one thing that will alert you to the unseen danger. Our bodies are incredibly wise with answers to every situation. Developing a healthy relationship with my body has been critical to my healing journey.

As I began to work with rather than against my anxiety, I felt like a light went off. I’ve started to walk away more easily. I know feeling emotionally safe is necessary for healthy relationships, and I find safety by listening to my body, not ignoring it.

When I embrace the unpleasant emotions along, I experience all of my feelings more fully. Slowly, my life is becoming more aligned with my well-being, passions, and natural rhythms.

Anxiety is a blessing in disguise, like those annoying chihuahuas alerting you to suspicious activity outside your house. It doesn’t feel good, but it serves a valuable purpose.

Sitting with anxiety kind of sucks. These emotions are very uncomfortable, unpleasant, and still feel incredibly awkward to share. Even talking to my therapist, I struggle to admit insecurities. Am I going to sound pathetic? Can’t I get over this already?

It turns out, anxiety is the “most common mental illness in the U.S., affecting around 40 million adults. Whenever I feel nervous to talk about it, I remind myself that I’m far from alone in these feelings.

The best approach has been to figure out what works for me and practice self-compassion. Those barking chihuahuas deserve love too.

Mostly, I’m learning to be patient and kind, treat myself more gently, and recognize the power in that. By sharing my anxiety, I overcome shame.

Though I grew up learning to hide any seeming weaknesses, I know now that sharing releases shame. By owning all of my feelings, it’s easier to walk away from people who don’t appreciate me, stop apologizing for myself, and find the people who love me unconditionally.

Despite feeling incredibly unpleasant, anxiety lives in my body, and it deserves my love. As I accept all the parts of myself, I feel myself becoming a more beautiful, compassionate, curious, open, brilliant, wise, and courageous human. That’s something to celebrate!

I write inspiring, uplifting, and empowering content on transformative topics. Join the Weekly Love News on my website to receive creative offerings each week (Tuesdays) in your email inbox.