Narcissistic abuse leaves you feeling selfish for caring about yourself

When you think of narcissism you think of a selfish egotistical person. That person, in order to survive, depends on the goodwill, the overlooking of faults, the empathetic, kind person, as a feed for their narcissism. In order to fool you and to make you overlook their selfishness they project it onto you. They blame shift, accuse and gaslight you into thinking that it is in fact you who are selfish. If you are a sensitive empath you will be quite willing to look at your role and take responsibility for any faults in yourself. However the narcissist never will. They need you to believe that you have all the faults they have in so that they can survive the truth that they actually hate themselves. Hiding their faults usually means placing the blame on another, YOU!

There are many ways they do this but the covert narcissist has a really sneaky way of pretending they are allowing you your 'selfish' needs while backhandedly letting you know very subtly not to. They will use the shoulder shrug 'do whatever you want' (just dare) or the 'if you want to' accompanied by a babified 'poor me' stare (how can you do this to me). The overt narcissist will often just tell you no or use threats and bullying tactics. Both are having the same effect and both tactics mean the same thing. My needs are more important than yours! Your needs are selfish because they mean my needs are placed second.

It takes years to recover from that deep feeling of selfishness that wasn't even true at all. Yet everything you did do when with them will be gone over with a magnifying glass as you blame yourself for being selfish. You will think of all the things you wanted to do and without even knowing will have inside your mind the post hypnotic suggestion that they gave you in body language or words that you were being selfish. You may not even remember the exact moment but somewhere inside you are primed so that even when you leave you still take the blame.

When you finally gain the truth that you were not to blame, not selfish a deep feeling of injustice arises within you. A betrayal of trust. A feeling of hurt that you were lied to and that it was all an illusion. You start to see not only the injustic given out by the narcissist but also other injustices meted out to you and of course others.

Eventually this leads to self care. At first it feels selfish to even have any needs. Doing things for yourself before others is alien. Always having placed everyone elses happiness before your own this is a new strange skill. If you are still in contact with any narcissists in your life they will try hard to get you back to dormat status and serve them once again. People who care about you will support your healing but those who don't want you to recover will tell you you are selfish.

Add together all the things you did for the narcissists in your life. Make a list of the times when you did not do the things you really wanted to because it would upset them. What about all the times you waited on them, followed them in their hobbies or choices. You may have even done things that were morally wrong to you. There is no doubt about it that when you are in contact with narcissists you will shelve everything you wanted, hoped for and desired because you were taught your needs were not important. But now they are.

It is time to be unselfish towards yourself. To nurture and care for you. You neglected yourself. Self-care is not selfish. If you can love another the way you loved a narcissist you can love yourself.