Living and coping with narcissists is a real challenge that many highly sensitive people have to face. One of the hardest things for me living with narcissists is accepting that the person you love, is not a loving person. That they truly enjoy hurting me. Recognizing the classic narcissistic traits is extremely difficult and painful, especially when you’ve been in a relationship with them for a long time, if not your entire life. When the narcissist is your parent, you grow up believing that the kind of conditional, selfish love you receive is normal and naturally you don’t question it. Consequently, it’s very common for children of narcissists to grow up and not find good friends and mates, not because they like being treated badly, but because it’s familiar with being mistreated. We are all attracted to what’s familiar, whether it’s good for us or not.
Narcissists are experts at getting what they want and playing people around them to believe their lies.
Even though the belittling, blaming, criticism and the complete lack of empathy, support and respect feel just plain wrong you can’t leave or stop loving the narcissist parent or child. Even if you have been treated this way most of your life and you know that it shouldn’t be like this.
Facing the reality that your loved one is not who you wish they should be can be too much to cope with. After all, how can a mother not love her daughter or a daughter not love her mother? It is often easier to believe the lies the narcissist tells you, that you are the one who is making life difficult, that you are not doing a good enough job, that you are not trying hard enough. And so you continue to struggle on, with the faith and the hope that if you just become the person they want you to be, everything will be all right, and that you will, eventually, be loved.
The trouble with that plan is that it never works. You will never be enough for the narcissist because they always want more. And trying to be something for someone else will only weakens your own self-esteem. So instead of getting the love you so desperately want, you work yourself further and further away from it, all the while increasingly believing that you don’t really deserve it anyway because you’re doing such a lousy job. It’s a path to self-destruction and years of loneliness.
So what is the solution? Awareness and acceptance. First, recognize what’s really going on. It is very easy for highly sensitive people, in particular, to fall prey to the manipulative motives of a narcissist and to feel guilty and depressed about it as a consequence. The key is to understand who you’re dealing with. If you are not feeling good about yourself when you’re with someone, they are probably not good for you. Trust who God says you are. Trust what Gods Word says about you. use your gift of intuition to help yourself.
If the narcissist is your mother or daughter you can’t eliminate from your life completely, accept them for who they are. They will not change. They don’t think there’s anything wrong with them. They think you are the problem. The truth is that this person is not ever going to give you the love you need and it’s only going to fuel their fire and make you feel like a doormat. Accept that they will never change. Accept that you will never get love from them. And accept that you deserve love and can get it, from someone else. Love yourself and others will love you too. Jesus loves you.