Narcissistic emotional abuse can have really bad psychological impacts on the person being abusive especially if he was subjected to the abuse for long. Sometimes the psychological wounds caused by this abuse can last for a lifetime if nothing was done to heal them.
Some people think that leaving the abusive partner alone is enough for them to recover and heal from the abuse but that’s not true. As I said earlier, narcissists and most abusers were emotionally wounded themselves at a crucial point in their life. A narcissist can be someone who was emotionally wounded when he was a child but the fact that he left his abusers a long time ago does not make him heal and become a normal person.
So how do you heal from emotional abuse?
You must get back what the abuser took from you
A person can get into a relationship with a narcissist happy, confident about themselves, and emotionally stable but end it broken, depressed and feeling worthless. Narcissistic abuse can rob you of your self-esteem, confidence, your happiness, your social life…
It’s impossible to heal from the abuse completely before you get back what it took from you. If the abuser took your self-esteem away and left you feeling worthless, you cannot recover without rebuilding your self-esteem again. See: how to stop being overly sensitive.
There are no fixed Steps that everyone should follow
Some people think that there are fixed steps that everyone who went through emotional abuse should take in order to recover but that’s not true. For example, someone who developed inferiority feelings and low self-esteem as a result of the abuse will need to take different steps than a person whose social life got ruined by the abusive partner.
Following the wrong steps can not only prevent you from healing but it can also make you believe that you are stuck. When someone follows instructions that do not match his real problem and finds out that they are not working, he may start to believe that there is no way out. That is why it is important to understand how the abuse affected you psychologically before you follow any instructions. See: how to forget a narcissist after going no contact.
Examining your childhood
Sometimes it happens that someone who got abused in his childhood by his parents develops attraction for people who resemble his abusive parents without realising. In this case this person gets into a relationship with unhealed childhood emotional wounds only to find himself with a copy of his childhood abuser.
By the time he realises that his partner is abusive, he may think that the abuser is responsible for the entire emotional trauma that he is experiencing while in reality the abuser could have touched his already existing emotional wounds.
It is good to examine your childhood first and figure out if you were abused in any way. Try to understand if your childhood experience could have made you develop attraction for people who resemble your abusive parents. You should also try to understand whether your partner’s abusive behaviour towards you is very hurtful because it was severe or you were just so sensitive because it touched already existing emotional wounds. In case the emotional abuse started from childhood then you should heal your inner child first. See: how to deal with an emotionally abusive narcissist.