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Before the Narcissist
Reclaiming Your Authentic Self After the Narcissist Hijacks Your Mind
The narcissist needs you to be their mother for a while so they can heal, then they discard you in an attempt to separate and become an individual. The only way a person with NPD knows to individuate is by pushing people away. They only feel they exist when they are not merged and fused with someone else which is what they do at the beginning of the narcissistic cycle of abuse. Devaluation is like growing pains and preparation to break free and become fully human as if giving birth to themselves. Sadly, it never works out as they hope, and they only go on to repeat the cycle again and again.
As Dr. Sam Vaknin so aptly says, “The narcissist tells their intimate partner, ‘If you love me, then let me merge and fuse then break your heart. I am dead inside, so let me give you my emptiness so I can come to life.’ It is an absence aspiring to become a presence by rendering their partner as empty as they are.”
Let me try to distill the critical content of this dynamic. The narcissist takes over your mind like an infestation, and long after they are gone, they remain. In a strange sense, the intimate partner becomes the narcissist and takes on that state of being after the discard. This is a tough concept for a lot of people who interpret the whole…
