What do I do about feeling so guilty for defying my narcissist?

One of the hardest things you have to face now is the tremendous guilt you feel for not accommodating your narcissist. After all, we're talking about a very significant person in your life. If it's your boyfriend/girlfriend, it's someone with whom you were planning to spend your foreseeable future. If a spouse, you committed yourself, you took vows. If a parent, sibling, or child, they are your flesh and blood. These sorts of relationships are not supposed to be broken.

But now you've decided to break with someone you never dreamed you'd abandon or shun. It seems absolutely crazy, and every voice in your head--along with at least a few outside your head--are telling you a decent person would find a way toward reconciliation. "You can't heal without forgiveness." "No one is beyond saving." "Your Christian duty." Yada yada yada.

Here's the thing: You, the voices in your head, your friends and advisors, and a whole bunch of self-help books are not taking one very important thing into account: Narcissistic Personality Disorder. All these rules of society, principles of human nature, tried-and-true adages are for dealing with normal human beings. Narcs are not normal human beings. In certain ways, they are not human beings at all, but more like psychological vampires, creatures that suck the joy and strength from humans. Or like aliens who take over the will of humans and force them to do their bidding.

Forgiveness means nothing genuine to people like this, because they cannot ever fathom that they have done something wrong. Reconciliation doesn't mean to them what it does to you, it only means the well of attention and devotion is no longer dry and can be tapped again. Lifelong commitment is something they cannot and will not understand, even if they stay attached to you for your entire life, like my dad did with my mom. All it means is that their victim never managed to put a stop to the abuse, like my mom failed to do with my dad.

You must keep all this in mind when you start to feel guilty. You don't feel guilty for ridding your body of an infection, for driving an intruder from your house, or for not giving your credit card to a stranger to use. You don't apologize for wanting to drive them away!

Don't mistake empty titles for true bonds. "Husband" is a label, not a character trait. So is "Mom" or "Brother." The narcissist has never functioned in your life as a real lover, father, sibling, true friend, so he doesn't get to hide behind the protection of a title.

Likewise, you need to tear down the facade you created for your narc. Most victims of narcissists manage to survive their day-to-day lives by inwardly minimize the crimes of their abusers, and believing in false versions of their narcs that actually possess the characteristics associated with their role. You may play down your husband's cruelty as "crabbiness," or your mother's insults as "having high standards." You might play up the occasional kindnesses or believe in faked acts of niceness, so desperate are you for love and affection.

The fault is not yours. Your narcissist has made a career of training you to be his puppet and think what he wants you to think. He's used positive and negative reinforcement, lying, gaslighting, threats, and every form of mental and emotional manipulation to control your feelings. You have been brainwashed to believe it's always your fault, he's always right (or at least in control), you are wrong unless you agree with him, and there's nothing wrong with him, it's all you. So naturally any disobedience on your part, much less an actual full-stage rebellion, is going to make you feel terrible guilt and fear!

What can you do about it? You have to reprogram your brain and heart. You have to deliberately counterattack, consistently and often, with reason and logic. Examine all your thoughts and feelings in the light of this new information and reality. Figure out what your narcissist is really like, what he was really doing all along. Understand how you have been duped and manipulated. Reconsider all the thoughts and feelings you used to dismiss as crazy or inappropriate. Reevaluate them and see how you were the normal one, there were real reasons for what you thought and felt. Review your past history and analyze what was actually happening. Make sense of it all in this new light.

I recommend you also express all this in some form. Journaling is really helpful in straightening out all the confusion and making ideas concrete, as well as venting pent up and buried emotions. Finding a trustworthy, loving person to talk with throughout the process is key, whether it be a friend or a professional.

I also want to suggest some specific exercises that might be as helpful to you as they were to me, So we'll look at those in the next post.