My Narcissist Ex Gives Me Cognitive Distortions
Hi everyone, at the beginning of last month I experienced a sudden breakup with my ex without any sign. At first I felt extremely sad and angry, but as the time passed, I began to realize this relationship was not really healthy and there were already a lot of warning signs before the breakup. Then, I did some research by myself and surprisingly found out my ex is a very typical narcissist. I was love bombed by him at the beginning of our relationship, then he started to gaslight and manipulate me over smallest things in life. He is a covert narcissist type and always acts so well that all of our mutual friends and myself could never tell he is this toxic type of person before this breakup happened. I told them he actually gaslighted me and gave me a lot of false accusations and all of them felt unbelievable, because they all thought he is a kind-hearted and gentle person. Right now I don't really feel sad but instead, I feel extremely traumatized because he covered himself so well and this is really the first time I deal with this kind of person who completely lacks of any human compassion (that's true and sometimes I even feel like he's more like a reptile than a human😰) I understand there are quite a lot of survivors of narcissists because the harm they bring are extremely deep and toxic, and right now I feel I don't have any courage to trust or to even socialize with people, because I cannot determine what's true and what's fake all thanks to him 🫤 I am not sure if anyone has specific advice for this kind of situation, and I really appreciate the help and understanding of all of you!
Good and evil is a choice, and I hope all of us will still choose love and kindness even after we got hurt! 🙏🏻
@wojiaozly123 Definitely sounds like a covert narcissist. They can be really good at hiding behind the masks they have. It really messes up your head having someone like that come into your life. It is traumatizing. The love bombing is amazing isn't it? That's how they get in. The little things they do to make you feel loved and cared for. I was- God I was surprised - no one ever professed to care about me as much. They study people. Learn what makes them tick. Mirror them. The gaslighting is just to make you doubt yourself - so you end up filtering everything through them. You wind up trusting them more than yourself. They keep score . Everything you've ever done wrong gets thrown in your face anytime there's a disagreement. They prey on your weaknesses and minimize your strengths. By the time the end arrives you don't even recognize yourself anymore. It's hard to trust people again. It's hard to share anything of yourself with anyone because in the back of your mind you think - what if it happens again?
Thank you so much for your honest reply and suggestion! 🙏🏻 Talking about the 3rd party as a new supply, to be honest I don't know and I don't want to know anymore because at this moment I have blocked everything about him. If I find out it's real it will only give me more severe hurt 😢, so it's the best for me to not know anything and just stick on the fact that he has disappeared from my life forever and my suffering is over 🪷
I am sorry that it also happened to you, and indeed those covert NPDs hide themselves so well so they in general have rather better reputation in your circle until you start to deepen your relationship with them 😰 Thank you so much again for your advice, and yes I also do my own online research about NPD and survivor experience, watch YouTube videos and talk to my therapist. Because the trauma is so deep, even my therapist told me that it takes time to heal and I have already done the best I can 😢 Right now I am just trying to practice some mindfulness and breathing exercise everytime I think about him, and let my physical body to process this pain. I understand even it hurts so much right now, it will heal one day and the pain will eventually subside 🙏🏻
I am posting this experience here on 7Cups because I believe there must be much more NPD survivors and we really need to help and support each other, since the PTSD NPD brought to us is so profound and toxic 😢 But at least we get each other's back and we all know even though we have been hurt by NPD, we are much stronger than them because we will never choose to hurt others as they do, and I also believe they will eventually receive their karmas as time passes after people find out their true faces💀
@wojiaozly123 I'm glad you have a therapist to work with through it. It really does help to have people to talk to about it. I've noticed that with talking about it - those red flags become more apparent
Yesterday I had a phone call with my dad and I then found out most of my toxic relationship patterns came from my family (unfortunately both my parents are narcissists 🙁) I always felt sad and scared by no reason, and today I finally realized it all comes from my past codependency issues and trauma!
To be honest, right now I felt very angry not only to my ex, but to everyone who did not respect and had taken advantage of me before 😡 Yes I am a highly-sensitve person but it DOES NOT MEAN these people can take my empathy for granted 💀 I used to think I have the responsibility to take care of the emotions of people around me, but right now I just want to take care of myself and I will never carry anyone's emotional burdens ever again!! If people don't respect me, I will kick them out from my way no matter what kind of relationship it is 🚫