Narcissistic abuse wasn't your fault!

When you live with narcissists everything is your fault. They think it  and you think it. 

Whatever is wrong in the narcissists life is your fault. Bad day at work and they dump it in your lap by taking it out on you. You try harder because you think it is your fault, but it doesn't work. In fact, nothing you do works to please or appease them. You take on the blame that they wrongly project onto you and you wear it like a burden forever. 

Until you realise that it wasn't your fault that is!

It comes in waves after you leave, the reality that you were not to blame. It hits you out of the blue the realisations of what happened. You regret things you said or did, not even realising that you were only reacting to abuse done to you. You may have felt like a bad person when you reacted. The narcissist knows how to wind you up like a coiled spring and then let it loose when others are around. Just so they can get verification of your wild and untamed nature. So others can see how unstable you are and how wonderful they are for putting up with you.

But after you leave and time and distance is between you and your abuser you get insights into events that happened. You begin to see more clearly the sequence of events and how they did it. You see that you were not a bad person but a person who was reacting to abuse. Poked and prodded to the point of explosion you may have let off steam, said things you didn't want to say. Having the courage to re-visit in your mind or on paper those past events help to bring clarity to a muddy, unclear past. 

Then out of the blue insights come and you think ...

 'of course, that is what really happened'! 

You were tricked into believing that you were resonsible for your own abuse, that somehow you caused it, could have avoided it. But that is not true. Nothing, absolutely nothing could have been done to stop your abuser abusing. It could have been anyone, their next victim, the one before, it just happened to be you. 

Please remember that narcissistic abuse was not your fault. You will find this slowly over time. It was just a trick, gaslighting to hide the real reason. You were with an abuser. The guilt lies with them.