Narcissistic abuse survivors can end up afraid of strong feelings. Afraid of speaking out. Called too sensitive, too aggressive when they do speak out. If they have any well deserved feelings of anger it takes them back to the abuse. So they act on them inappropriately or block them out.
They got so used to not having their needs met that they stop having any. Their senses dull and they lose the ability to have full spectrum emotions. Instead they can start to look like the narcissist. As if they are on autopilot. Smiling when they think they should and basically being whatever is expected of them.
This kind of behaviour for the narcissist is normal. They learned very early on that feelings are to be denied, they are just trouble so they block them out completely and just play act. The difference for survivors is that underneath they feel very deeply and the Cognitive Dissonance of feeling something and acting as if they are not feeling it sits uncomfortable with them. Unlike the narcissist who has no empathy and no qualms about play acting to get what they want, the survivor, their victim, feels slowly strangled by it all. They die a death inside.
By the time they leave the narcissist they have been slowly eroded of their identity. While they slowly slip away into their shell the narcissist glows and basks in their own golden halo supplied by their victims. They drain you of everything. In fact many of them want to be you. They will steal your life and all your posessions and the people you know. When you leave you will be punished for leaving. If they didn't discard you by leaving they will have done so within the relationship. The overload of feelings when you leave can feel too much to handle. They start to come back in the form of grief. It is not until you meet other people who are supportive of who you are that real feelings start to come back. Evn then it is a long struggle to trust others with the real you because for so long being you has been denied.
It is ok to feel again. It is like walking in a dark scary place. You peep out and see that there is no one there to hurt you then you go back again and keep trying. At first everyone can appear as a narcissist but it can't be true because you are not one and other survivors who you may meet are not that either. So slowly you begin to thaw and life starts again. But getting feelings back again means you have to be prepared for strong feelings both good and bad. You have to grieve your past life with the narcissist and in doing so it opens your heart instead of closing it down because in closing down you take on the narcissists game. Some of us have to stay open so that the world knows that everyone is not a narcissist. That some people have feelings and it's ok.That the world is not totally populated by narcissists no matter how it looks on the surface. We still feel no matter how hard it is we still love.
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