When you meet a narcissist, the last thing you think about is all the ways they’re going to change you for the worse.
Trust me when I tell you, they are all the same. The version of you that walks into a relationship will not be the version of you that walks out of it.
These 4 versions of yourself the narcissist will push you into are not irresistible, but they will damage a part of you that you will never fully recover from.
#1 “I’m not good enough”
I’m not good enough tells your body and mind that you are broken, and that nobody will want you, or want to fix you.
I’m not good enough tells your heart that you are not loveable.
I’m not good enough keeps you from achieving your goals, or even seeing them as realistic opportunities to succeed and grow.
I’m not good enough is the very reason you are feeling so lost and low.
What I want you to do for me now, is see this version of you as a belief that was planted into your mind the day you met the narcissist.
You may have had it planted before, and the narcissist came along and watered it optimally in order for it to grow as large as possible.
Feeling not good enough is exactly how the narcissist wants you, because everything you say or do will follow from it.
You won’t go for that job.
You won’t take up any hobbies.
You won’t stand up for yourself.
You won’t see love as anything other than conditional.
You won’t make good choices for your mental or physical health.
You will become what the narcissist wants you to be, and what they can criticize you for.
If you do feel good enough and try new things, the narcissist will criticize that, too.
You think you’re good enough for that job?
You’ll never be that qualified.
You won’t make it.
There’s no way you’ll be able to achieve that.
It will go on and on, until you admit defeat.
#2 “I can’t do it”
For all the times you are told you can’t do something, soon enough, you will start to believe it yourself.
Maybe they’re right.
They obviously know me well.
I may as well not even bother trying.
Why am I wasting my time?
Good things never happen to me.
I’ve tried this before and know I can’t do it.
It’s self-talk like this that will keep you small, and prevent you from exploring the true beauty that life has to offer.
The narcissist will love that about you; making sure you aren’t taking chances that may someday pay off and lead to great things.
You don’t choose yourself because you already believe whatever it is, you’ll fail. You don’t choose yourself because you don’t live with somebody who tells you how capable you are of actually getting it done.
You aren’t inspired by a push of encouragement, but are instead held back by judgment and control.
Ponder that for a moment, because I assure you it seems little, but it has a real impact on how you live your entire life.
I can’t do that is a phrase that damages not just one choice you make, but all the choices you make.
This version of yourself is purposely negative, but you didn’t create it.
You had no hand in it other than hearing the same patterns of words from the narcissist over and over again.
It is beyond absurd to me.
#3 “I’m scared”
Feeling scared can be a normal part of life, but doing it anyway is what usually encourages people out of that version of themselves.
You can become stuck in ‘Im scared’ when a person does everything they can to keep you there. In this instance, a narcissist is that person.
Keeping you in scared mode activates a part of you that shuts down willingness to change, or try.
The resistance becomes so big that you listen to all the ways you are being taught to ignore the pull of growth, and stay small.
Being scared will prevent you from anything you can think of, from the small to the big things.
Driving a different route to work, speaking up about wanting to be considered for that promotion, visiting that foreign country and travelling alone, saying yes to yourself more.
If that wasn’t enough, it’s not even that you are scared of these things any more, because it goes beyond that.
It starts to just be that those things aren’t even options any longer, so how can they scare you? You learn to live in your own comfort, knowing that nothing is going to change, so nothing can affect you.
The narcissist guided you there, and wants to keep you there so you remain small and under their control.
This version of yourself that is scared of everything and builds an intense clump of anxiety that sticks to your chest is a version that you did not know before you met the narcissist.
You don’t want to escape this version of you. The narcissist was so slow and covert in pushing you to be scared that you don’t even realize it’s a problem until you wake up one morning and feel so detached from life.
#4 “I can’t remember”
When you live your life being unable to remember a single thing, you might want to think about how you got to that point.
Victims often question their memory as a whole when they feel like they’ve reached this point, but in fact, your memory doesn’t really have any fault to it.
You know the day, the year, what you had for breakfast, and what you need to do tomorrow.
But what you can’t remember is how you felt about something, or what your opinion is of a memory you had with a narcissist.
Why?
Because they have stripped you of your ability to think for yourself and hold those thoughts as real.
Your reality has been stolen through drastic periods of gaslighting, and now you think alike, speak alike, and agree on them with every little thing down to the finest detail.
Gaslighting is a form of control and manipulation. Narcissists do it all the time in order to keep you feeling like you’re losing your mind.
When you get to that point, they will do everything they can to swoop in and save you, telling you that everything is going to be okay.
Only a person this toxic can damage you, then pretend to want to heal you, but you cannot get better in the same environment that you got sick in.
The version of yourself that doesn’t remember, will also not remember much about your life before you met the narcissist, and how happy and vibrant you actually were.
This is purposely achieved by pulling the rug from under your feet, so you cannot compare your previously happy life with the hollow, empty one you have under their control.
