The Lingering Symptoms of Narcissistic Abuse

These long-term effects are not your fault. Healing them will take time.

The scars are mostly invisible, but they’re there. For partners of narcissists, you can even recall the person you were before. For the children of narcissists, there was no before. Survival and self-contortion was your entire existence until something happened to clue you in that not everyone lives like you.

Normal people aren’t afraid of showing their happiness for fear of a narcissist tearing it down. Normal people aren’t afraid of sharing their passions and joys. They don’t need to hide parts or the whole of themselves because those parts have been deemed unacceptable.

Awareness and self-compassion are absolutely needed for survivors as many of their struggles are actually the long-term effects of an abusive environment. And there is often a cluster of symptoms that come from narcissistic abuse.

Narcissistic Abuse Syndrome

This is a non-medical term describing a set of specific, severe, and long-term effects of narcissistic abuse and manipulation. These are the ones that can be especially debilitating:

1. Loss of self-trust

Being around a narcissist’s constant dismissal and gaslighting frequently means you start to question, gaslight, and devalue your own emotions, feelings, thoughts, desires, needs, and self-worth. These things in you were only recognized by the narcissist if they fit the narcissist’s agenda. Your own judgment was constantly undermined so that you wouldn’t use it any more; Only deference and compliance were allowed by the abuser.

2. Loss of trust in others

Operating from extreme insecurity, a narcissist dismisses any good traits in others as fake, play-acting, or driven by nefarious motives. They may be especially envious, dismissive, and disparaging of traits they themselves do not show. Or, they can publicly praise others while ripping the same people to shreds in private conversation. Continued exposure to this may leave you questioning if there truly are any kind and non-judgmental people out there. Which leads to the next thing.

3. Isolation

One of the narcissist’s most-used strategies is isolating their target from other people in order to maintain control. They can do this by disparaging and dismissing positive people in their victim’s life, or spreading misinformation for purposes of causing the public ostracization and humiliation of their victim. Either way, it makes finding support outside of the narcissist challenging, by design. Overcoming the self-protective need to isolate after narcissistic abuse can feel very lonely and difficult.

4. Indecision and Self-Abandonment

Making decisions, especially those for your own well-being, thriving, and safety can feel fraught with danger and guilt after living too long around a narcissist. Healthy choices can feel “selfish” because they do not prioritize the narcissist’s (delusional) anxieties, entitlement, and need for control. Accepting anything over the bare minimum for oneself can be hard for survivors of narcissistic abuse after years of diminished self-worth.

5. Hypervigilance, Anxiety, and Depression

Narcissists often use moral arguments to enforce compliance, casting anyone who contradicts them as bad, degenerate, and worthy of contempt. Children of narcissists can be especially affected, being in the vulnerable position of depending on these individuals for emotional acceptance and literal survival. Amygdalas and nervous systems are shaped by the constant fear of displeasing the narcissist(s) in a child’s life. This increases the chances of long-term anxiety and depression.

6. Physical Symptoms

The constant stress of dealing with a narcissist’s manipulation, criticism, and game-playing increases the chances of their victims developing serious chronic illnesses. High levels of cortisol over long periods not only cause fatigue, but headaches, digestive issues, and muscle tension. They can affect one’s reproductive system and immune system, weight, sleep, focus, and memory; All this in addition to anxiety and depression.

7. Heightened Threat Perception & Stress Responses

Besides experiencing hypervigilance, survivors of narcissistic abuse can quickly activate their stress responses of any the 4 “F”s: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn. Even long after they’ve left an abusive environment, childhood trauma survivors especially can operate as if in an unsafe environment, perceiving more threat than others and more readily displaying anger (Fight), agitation (Flight), or people-pleasing (Fawn) as a way to survive their emotionally unsafe relationships.

Alternately, these partners or children may learn to “shut down” (go limp) or Freeze (go stiff). Deliberately dulling their sensitivity with substances or avoiding stressors are also not uncommon methods of protecting themselves.

8. Self-Sabotaging and Self-Harm

Children of narcissists not only struggled without emotional support in their upbringing, their own emotional pain and vulnerability can be weaponized against them by narcissists. Lacking healthy tools and support, these individuals can reach for maladaptive ways — which may be the only ways they know — to cope with emotional pain.

9. Porous Boundaries

Saying “no” to anyone (ie. asserting boundaries), and even recognizing our own needs in a relationship are a steep learning curve after manipulation and abuse. When we were in a relationship with a narcissist, we were always held responsible for their feelings, emotions, and behavior. We might have even been expected to read and know their minds, to prevent their displeasure. It will take time to for our brains and nervous systems to get used to not “fixing” or prioritizing other people’s feelings and needs above our own. We may need to consciously learn what things are actually our responsibility and what things are not.

10. Loss of Self

Narcissistic abuse will rob survivors of many things, but the most painful will be time, and Self. Time that could have been for building up your confidence, esteem, and self-worth was instead spent tearing these down, and time will be further needed to heal and recover these.

And, besides missing out on these necessary feel-good feelings about yourself, you lost objectivity and acceptance for the parts of you that were valuable and necessary for your wholeness and well-being, such as your authentic emotional responses, your likes, and your needs. These parts of your internal GPS were simply not allowed, and many survivors may need to consciously devote more time and effort to reconnect with these parts, or to discover them for the first time.

Healing After Narcissistic Abuse

Complex PTSD takes time to heal. Years of psychological abuse from narcissists hardwire their victims’ nervous systems for survival and self-protection. Survivors learn to expect further abuse and gaslighting; they may be hyperindependent and unaware that healing from relational trauma needs relational repair.

This literal reprogramming of ourselves can take years: to unlearn old patterns and relearn new ones of connecting.

If you recognize some of the long-term symptoms of abuse in yourself, you’re not alone and you’re not defective. You survived, and it took extreme measures that became your normal.

Establishing a new normal takes many, cumulative steps.

Keep going.

Thanks for reading. Be sure to check my profile for other stories on healing from narcissistic abuse. And some good news: The Bitty Boundaries Workbook is now available!