I regularly receive questions from people who wonder whether they are not the narcissist themselves. If you have been with or are dealing with a narcissist, you have often heard countless times that you are to blame for the narcissist’s behavior. Because of you the narcissist lies and cheats, because of your behavior he/she is so angry and you are the one with a problem and so on.
Doubts after narcissistic abuse
To reassure yourself and clarify this, a few important questions are important:
- “Do I have a conscience?”
- “Do I have empathy?”
- “Do I have a sense of responsibility/duty?”
- “Do I have self-reflective capacity?”
I will explain the first question “Do I have a conscience?”
By this question I mean: Are you able to consciously and with your full mind lie/deceive someone, threaten, belittle or harass someone, or have a double agenda? In other words, are you able to to (purposefully) deliberately do evil without causing your conscience to flare up?
By the second question: “Do I have empathy?” I mean:
Are you concerned about the other person? Are you sincerely involved and do you sincerely sympathize with the other person, without wanting anything in return? For example, by wanting to receive confirmation in return of how fantastic what you have done is, to nourish your self-esteem or to gain favor with others or the outside world.
This is about genuine involvement, that you sympathize with the other person, can put yourself in the other person’s shoes and want to help the other person, without feeding your own ego.
Of course, everyone has a more or less developed ego and we all like to hear that we are doing something well, but the important thing is that you do it from your heart and not to get something in return.
“Do I have a sense of responsibility/duty?”
By this I mean: Can you simply sympathize with someone else, see that they need you, be caring, look out for the other person, instead of dropping the other person like a stone if they do something that does not suit you or gives you resistance? . Especially in difficult situations. Can you be merciful?
“Do I have self-reflective capacity?”
By this I mean: Do you dare and can you look at the other person and yourself, see what is happening, without immediately blaming everything on the other person, not taking responsibility for your own behavior and closing all gates? Is someone else allowed to have a different opinion and can you look at what different behavior does to you and what you can learn from it?
If you can answer “yes” to these questions, among others, it is very likely that you are not a narcissist.
Remember that the narcissist’s negative statements have most likely formed negative beliefs in your mind, leading you to believe that you are the one who is narcissistic, selfish, untrustworthy, problematic and so on. And you have consciously and unconsciously adopted these beliefs.
Realize that the many projections have made you extremely insecure and small and you have lost your “self”. You can find your “self”, you have those possibilities at home! Unfortunately, the narcissist himself often does not. So get started with yourself and find yourself again. You are not the problem, the only problem is that you have lost your “self”. I also discuss this topic extensively and in depth in coaching and we tackle it thoroughly.
You have all the resources you need to grow into your own authentic self!
This article was written by Charlotte van der Hoeven, Narcissism Expert.
Every third Monday of the month she appears here with a column on Ze.nl
Charlotte van der Hoeven is a professional coach and therapist and has specialized in narcissistic abuse. More information about this can be found on her website www.narcismevrij.nl or on the Facebook page of Narcismevrij.nl.
