Part of the reason narcissistic abuse is so damaging is the rejection. Rejection is at the core of many behaviors done by narcissists. Not hearing someone is rejecting them. Not allowing someone to have any rights is rejection. Mocking & criticizing someone is rejection. Failing to protect a child is rejecting them. Not being validated is rejection.
Rejection hurts, whether you’re a child or adult, & no matter who does the rejecting. However, it seems to me a child rejected by a parent hurts more than anything, & the pain often continues well into adulthood. There are ways to cope however.
You have to realize that a parent who abuses (rejects) their child is the one with the problem, not the child. I know, that is a tough thing to really get a good grasp on, but it is vital that you do! A child cannot do anything that forces her parent to reject her- that is on the parent.
When your parent rejects or hurts you, ask God to tell you the truth about the situation. As soon as possible, get into prayer. Ask God, “Is my parent right in what she said about me?” “Did I deserve to be treated that way?” or any other questions you may have, then wait on Him to speak to you. God cannot lie. He will tell you the truth, & it will heal your wounds! I have done this many times. God has carried me through some incredibly painful experiences by simply speaking His truth, the real truth, to my heart.
Look at the situation from your parent’s perspective. If your parent is a narcissist & you aren’t, this can be kind of tricky, but I encourage you to try it. It will show you the depths of their dysfunction, which will help you to understand that you aren’t the problem. For example, my mother has always had problems with my looks. I look absolutely nothing like her, but instead look like my father’s family, in particular my grandmother. Looking at it through my mother’s eyes, I can see how this is a problem. My mother told me she assumed I would look like her when I was born, but I didn’t. She hates her in-laws, all of them, & here I am, looking like them instead of her. Her mother in-law to boot! Does that mean it was OK for her to be so hyper critical & cruel to me about my looks? Of course not. But, understanding that showed me that I’m not the repulsive, ugly creature she always treated me like, & my mother has problems to treat me that way! In fact, my grandmom was a beauty in her youth, so I consider it an honor to look like her.
Accept the fact that your parent isn’t capable of loving you in a normal, healthy way that a parent should love a child. This one is hard & very painful, but you need to do it. If you don’t, you might cling to the hope that she’ll change. Instead, you’ll constantly be disappointed that your parent didn’t treat you better this time when you saw each other. Your parent not changing has nothing to do with you- no one can make another person change. Instead, it has everything to do with your parent not wishing to change, to be emotionally healthier.
Talk about your pain. Pray. Talk to a trusted friend or relative. Write in your journal. Get the hurt & pain out of you so it doesn’t poison you.
Be prepared- you may feel anger that you’ve never felt before. The more you heal from narcissistic abuse, the more you see things through a healthier perspective. That means that what was once normal for you suddenly you see as incredibly dysfunctional or abusive. This is going to make you angry. I started getting angry at my mother a few years ago for ordering me around like I was her personal slave rather than asking me to do thing for her. All my life, that was just how she was. No biggie. Once I got much healthier, I realized I deserve better than to be bossed around so disrespectfully, & it made me very angry. As the anger rises up in you, don’t be afraid of it. Don’t ignore it, because it won’t just go away. Find healthy ways of dealing with it. Talk to God about it. Vent to someone close. Write scathing, angry letters that you don’t show to anyone. Just get the anger out of you!
Cynthia Bailey-Rug, Christian Author 
Excellent post, Cynthia! I’m in the midst of the ‘devalue and discard’ stage and it is hard. Coming to terms with rejection is not easy at all. What has helped is my deepening walk with God and a new found knowledge of narcissism. Making an effort to understand my mother has helped me move beyond just observing and disliking her. Thank you so much for this post and for obeying the call of God on your life (I feel like I can’t say this enough!!). I’ve found journalling, prayer, counselling and just talking it out have really helped me release the anger. I’m trying to get out for more walks and outdoor runs now that the weather is better. Any other suggestions for anger-releasing outlets?
LikeLike
Thank you Nadia! You are too kind. ❤
I'm sorry.. it's really hard to come to terms with that rejection. It really does draw you closer to God & He helps you get through so much, doesn't He? 🙂
Releasing anger takes a lot of time & energy, so even though you're doing so many good things, it'll still take you some time. One thing I've found very helpful too is to really feel the anger. I know, it's scary if you weren't allowed to do it growing up, but it gets easier as you get more practice. Feel that anger, get it out of you however works best (for me, it's prayer & journalling about it). You may need to do that a few times for an incident, but it does work. Remember too, the Bible said be angry but don't sin. Anger is OK! It has a purpose- to let people know when something is very wrong. Forgiveness will come, just not overnight. Hope this helps!
LikeLiked by 1 person
That does help–thank you!! I’m learning how to feel anger. It is sooooo very foreign. At first, I resisted it. My counsellor and others have been instrumental in encouraging myself to feel the anger, rage and frustration that had been stifled for so long. Thanks for saying that I might need to do it a few times for an incident. There’s one memory lately where I’ve been feeling the anger come back again and again. Nice to know this is a natural part of working through it.
LikeLike
You’re welcome! Glad it helps!
I’ve never understood people who say they can just let things go. They must be freaks of nature.. lol I think most of us, especially those who have been abused, really have to feel it before we can let things go.
Ugh, that’s rough, when you think of something & the anger keeps coming back. Been there quite a few times myself. It’ll get better in time. Just get angry about it as much as you need to. When I journal, I let it all out- bad language, name calling & all. It helps purge all that nasty stuff out.
LikeLike
I think that when people say they have “let it go” what they’ve actually done is to suppress their emotions. As long as they do that they’ll live in denial and never heal. Abuse and its consequences must be faced. It only gets worse over time.
LikeLiked by 1 person
That’s a really good point.
LikeLike
I don’t know whether this will help. I thought about my anger as poisonous bubbles coming to the surface from deep within me, and bursting when they got to the surface. I too, got angry about the same things over and over, but there’s a lot of anger to release. I write my anger out in a notebook app on my tablet – bad handwriting, bad spelling and bad words, and then delete it straight away. As my mother has passed, she is no longer here to add to what she has already done, so I feel it’s not so hard for me as I’m only dealing with past abuse and not present as well, but I do remember what it’s like.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What a wonderful idea!
LikeLike
To explain further, I see the poisonous bubbles of anger as my suppressed feelings about events that should not have happened to me, and things that were dumped on me, that do not belong to the soul that God gave me, and the person He created me to be. I once heard a preacher say “We come to the Lord as sinners, and then spend all our time pretending that we’re not.” So I’ll own and take responsibility for my own sins, but I don’t need to own and hang on to anybody else’s. Here ends today’s sermon, with apologies to Cynthia – this is your blog, not mine.
LikeLiked by 1 person
No apologies necessary, Angela! Your input is very valuable! I love it when people help others in my group or on my blog. Isn’t that what God wants us to do, help each other?
LikeLike
You’re a tough woman and I’m glad it sounds like you’re dealing with the situation.
I and my kid recently got away with my kid from a narcissist. They were trying to convince my kid that I was crazy and that they needed to stay with them instead. They were using their position as a recent graduate of the Behavioral Science program to get to my kid. The residue left on my kid is hard to deal with but I’m trying.
LikeLike
Thank you. Yes I am. It’s much easier to deal with now that my parents are out of my life. Now instead of focusing on them- how to cope, what to say to avoid rages, etc- I can focus on myself more.
Wow.. I’m so sorry you’ve experienced this! How awful! Thank God you two got away before it got even worse!
LikeLike
I am currently dealing with this. What is worse, it is occurring in my house. My mother is currently going through great lengths to avoid me. So much so that she looks for windows of opportunity to sneak in and out of the house. I have grown tired of telling her to stop that because it is unnecessary. I have grown more resentful because to me it’s another rejection by a “family member” I have already talked to her about it and she brushes me off, essentially invalidating my feelings. I start to think of how much I over extended myself emotionally for her only to be brushed off. Everything came to a head one day when I came home. She pretty much ran out of the kitchen to her room. I reacted when I script asked why are you running? To which she began angrily responding with lies to cover herself. I got very angry and started to tell her how wrong she has been, how she has treated me with such disregard with her comments and action leading uptown being totally ignored. In the moments when I allowed her to speak, I could t help myself three months of being criticized, lied to, ignored and talked about disrespectfully – I had a lot to say, she comes at me with her perception of how I have treated her, lies about what friends told her, and eve threatened to pack up and leave. My response was that she was being a jackass, and yes I cussed- a lot. She wasn’t pleased but I did t care. My home childhood I had been cussed at, threatened, criticized, it all came up like the vomit on the excorcist.
I told her not to threaten me, and if she wanted to leave then to leave. My vent co not her until she finally left for wherever the hell she goes during the day. I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was being made to feel uncomfortable inmh house, she was developing a superficial relationship with my daughter through material items and my husband was also pretty angry and offended by her avoidance of him. I told her I did it signup for this nonsense and she should leave because it’s damaging my family’s dynamic.
Her response was to gutsy my heart strings by telling me that she is mentally ill and that she attempted suicide. I told her that is not something to use against me, and that she needs to seek therapy for professionals.
I told her that her lack of wanting to find healthy ways of getting better is causing her illness to spread and that my fear situation my daughter will not only catch it, through what she observes it will think this mother daughter relationship is normal. What is truely terrifying is that my daughter has already started to react to the distance my mom has put inplace because it puts tension in the house.
I have been consuming a lot of literature,yourblog included o how to recover from this especially learning what I a started to uncover about my experiences with her.
I still feel a lot of animosity toward her because the invalidation, neglect,rejection is ongoing. My friend says by getting angry I am giving her power- especially since I had the outburst. I disagree. My outburst was liberating. I released,in two languages-well argued- everything I felt from the past to the present. All she had to retaliate were old tactics she thought would work.
I felt no remorse and had no sympathy for her because I kept seeing her looking for ways to escape or lie her way through it. I told her all I needed from her when she arrived was for her to be my mother, to care and not criticize. She did t hear any of that because she kept blaming and finger pointing, it was all about her feelings. So I ignored her and continued talking whether she was in the too or not.
I am trying to journal again but I find myself in overload many days. I am trying to keep positive friends around me as much as reasonably possible without draining g them and I am trying to rewrite my relationship with my daughter. I feel ultimately I will need therapy and she will need to leave my house. I do t care what my brothers would say. I have a gut feeling for the sake of my own recovering she cannot physically be here.
(Sigh) I don’t know. I have been working on reading self help books, going to start praying and revisit my relationships with my loved ones. I feel like I am perpetuating the cycle because it is what I know onto my husband and daughter. I have cometo realized how emotionally selfish I have been to my husband and I am looking to change that. So I stead of sealing out someone who is actively rejecting me, I am actively seeking someone who actively seeks and loves me.refocus myself you know.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m so very sorry for what you’re going through with your mother. There are no easy answers with narcissists, unfortunately. The best thing you can do is pray. Ask God to guide your words & actions with her.
At least you’re learning from this- that is a good thing. Like you mentioned with your husband- that is an important revelation! You can’t fix something if you don’t realize it’s a problem.
Your outburst.. lots of times I would agree that yelling & cussing gives them power, but sometimes, I think God allows it for a reason. May 2016, I had a huge fight with my parents & yelled & cussed at them. Afterwards when I prayed, God said He wanted them to see how badly they hurt me. Not sure why, but obviously it had a purpose. No doubt the same thing is true with your mother- it had a purpose.
Best of luck to you in your situation!!
LikeLike