Do you wonder if your spouse or loved one is gaslighting you? Have you thought, “I am dealing with narcissistic abuse in my marriage?” Do you wonder if marriage counseling can help you feel more secure and emotionally calm? Does your marriage have extreme high’s and low’s, and up’s and down’s that are emotionally painful? The team of therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in helping adults and couples create healthy relationships.
Our trauma therapists understand the skills needed to create a better future after narcissistic abuse from a spouse.
You might wonder if your spouse who is narcissistic can change. There is a hint of hope still left. But, you know you want a professional, who understands gaslighting, narcissistic abuse, and marriage dynamics. Your relationship doesn’t have to include high conflict fights, yelling, anger explosions, and hurtful words.
Some days, you believe your spouse, that their apologies are actually genuine. Other days, you think about ending the relationship because of how it feels toxic.
The narcissistic abuse therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in helping couples break the cycle of abuse and start creating a healthy, loving, meaningful relationship.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
As well, your narcissistic spouse is moody more often than not. They play mind games, threaten you, criticize you, and gaslight to you. At the end of the day, you have begun sleeping in separate beds. All romance, sex, and intimacy feels so far away. The memories of high conflict fighting, yelling, and the bad times seem so intense. You are feeling sad, confused, hurt, resentful, and wonder if your marriage can be saved.
You don’t want to be stuck in the cycle anymore of narcissistic abuse.
And, you wonder if staying in this marriage with narcissistic abuse is still healthy for you.
Sometimes, you feel guilty for wanting to leave because of how much you to have built together over the years. There have been good times, where you both feel close. Your mind feels confused right now from dealing with narcissistic abuse. In marriage therapy, you get a safe place to have a voice again. Working with a marriage therapist who specializes in narcissistic abuse can help you gain mental clarity. From mental clarity, you can make an intentional and purposeful decision about your romantic future.
What is narcissistic abuse in a relationship or marriage?
Narcissistic abuse can look different in each marriage and romantic relationship. However, narcissistic abuse leaves the victim, feeling hopeless, resentful, and sad.
In the cycle of abuse, many victims live in a state of denial for years in decades.
Dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy can help you create the loving, secure relationship you are desiring and deserve. You deserve to be loved in a reliable, safe way. Counseling at Wisdom Within can help you have a voice, accept the past, and vocalize your needs with your partner. If you spouse suffers from narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), the team at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in trauma bonds. Working with a NPD specialist can help you narcissistic partner make small changes and stop abusive tendencies.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
Is your narcissistic spouse nice and then mean? Is their anger unpredictable?
If you are a victim of narcissistic abuse, your partner might use a mixture of good times, and bad times to confuse you. One moment, you were having a great time, and you feel loved and supported.
The next moment, when you want love from your partner, they might be punishing you away. Narcissistic people withholding love. This pattern of withdrawing affection often learned in childhood trauma, which we will discuss later.
In your marriage, your partner might restrict control of finances or money. They might be trying to gain power over you by isolating you from your friends or family. Your partner might tell you that they love you, which very well may be true. But, the way in which they demonstrate love comes out as abuse.
Narcissistic abuse therapists specialize in couples therapy and help couples understand the root cause of narcissistic personality disorder
Often, narcissistic people have narcissistic parents. It can be a pattern of generational narcissistic abuse. Later on this page, we discuss how narcissistic abuse can be passed from generation to generation.
The narcissistic abuse therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in helping couples stop high conflict fights and overcome childhood trauma.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
Let’s talk about the cycle of abuse and narcissistic abuse.
When your partner yells at you or calls, you derogatory names and you try to talk about it with them, they act as if nothing happened. Acting as if nothing happened is a form of narcissistic abuse in relationships.
If you are living in the cycle of abuse, it is very hard to get out. Parts of you love your spouse. As well, you might feel social pressure to be the “loving , forgiving spouse.”
Often, the good times might outweigh the bad times, when you are in the honeymoon phase. When things are going well, it is just for a short period of time though.
When you were having a good time, everything feels calm. This is called a honeymoon phase. The honeymoon phase is short and followed by a narcissistic explosion or abusive episode.
Quickly after the calm and good times are over, there are tense, angry times of emotional stress and confusion.
Your romantic partner might avoid or reject you when you are seeking affection. Then, you feel guilty for having sexual needs or wanting to be loved.
When you want to connect emotionally, they put a pillow over their head.
Or, when you are excited to see them after your day of work, they walk out of the room when you are talking.
When you try to talk about an issue, they dismiss your needs.
After the calm, honeymoon phase is the tension building phase. Dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy can help adults and couples understand which phase of this cycle they are in. From that awareness, adults and couples can pause, breathe, reflect, and start breaking the cycle of narcissistic abuse.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
When tension is increasing in your marriage or relationship, and it is very common for victims of narcissistic abuse to become fearful.
In the tension building phase of narcissistic abuse, there is fear. You might become fearful that your romantic partner might take your keys. There is fear that they could prevent you from being able to drive away.
As well, you might become fearful that your narcissistic partner may threaten you, emotionally or physically.
In an abusive marriage, your spouse will threaten to use your secrets against you.
If you are gay and haven’t shared this with your family, they may threaten to out you and expose you.
Or, if you are into BDSM or kink, you narcissistic partner may threaten to out your BDSM kinks on a social media post. An abusive person knows that exposing your secrets would crush you, so the threat to do so is to gain more power over you.
Even if your narcissistic spouse never follows through with the threat, using threats is a sign you are with an abusive person.
The narcissistic abuse therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in couples counseling.
If your romantic partner suffers from narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), couples counseling can help them make lasting positive changes.
When living with a spouse with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), it is common for a victim to develop PTSD.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
Once the tension building phase is over, the cycles of narcissistic abuse escalates into an abusive incident.
Then, after the tension building fees, there is a negative abusive incident.
A narcissistic person will either hurt you, emotionally, verbally, physically, or psychologically. Each relationship is different and there are different severities of abuse. It is common for victims of emotional abuse to minimize their experience. A victim of emotional abuse may say, “Well, at least it is not physical abuse. He/She/They would never physically hurt me.” Emotional abuse from a narcissistic is just as damaging for your mental health.
Not all abuse is physical. It is important to note that if you are living in the cycle of narcissistic abuse, you may just be experiencing verbal and emotional pain. PTSD and complex trauma symptoms are common in victims of all kinds of narcissistic abuse. Dealing with narcissistic abuse can lead to a variety of PTSD and complex trauma symptoms we discuss later on. In marriage therapy and individual counseling, you can learn to stop narcissistic abuse. Couples can gain awareness and build a healthy, emotionally safe relationship.
As well, your narcissistic, abusive partner may have episodes of extreme jealousy, insecurity, and justify their anger.
Explosive, anger, emotional violence, and extreme jealousy are never healthy in relationships.
All feelings are okay to have, but the way in which these emotions are expressed in a predatory way an abusive manner is not healthy. Dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy helps partners calmly share what they are feeling. Often, a narcissistic person lacks in emotional identification skills. From counseling and learning about emotions, verbal communication of these feelings in more possible. Communication skills are essential when it comes to recovering from narcissistic abuse for the victim and abuser.
Verbal and emotional pain is just as damaging as physical abuse, even though emotional abuse does not leave bruises.
When you are stuck in a cycle of narcissistic abuse, it might feel so scary when an incident is taking place. The incident could be based in violence, such as your partner punching a hole in the wall.
Or, the incident could be physical where they physically restrain your body or hurt your body. Sexual abuse is also very common in narcissistic relationships.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
As well, after the abusive incident, your romantic partner will minimize, deny, and blame you. It’s very important to recognize that after each abusive incident, a victim starts to think abuse is normal. It is not normal to be threatened, criticized, emotionally belittled, or hurt. As well, being yelled at is not healthy or normal.
In marriage therapy, your therapist can teach you that abuse is not healthy or normal. Part of dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy is helping the victim gain empowerment. Your complex trauma therapist can help you identify a new, healthier way of living free from narcissistic abuse.
Notably, a narcissistic person may apologize after an abusive incident. A narcissistic spouse may want to change for the better, but never seems to make changes. However, the apologies are often fake. Change can’t happen without the help of a therapist who understands the cycle of narcissistic abuse and complex childhood trauma. And, a narcissistic person cannot easily change their abusive behavior without the help of a narcissistic abuse specialist, such as at Wisdom Within Counseling.
How does a narcissistic, abusive person react after they know they have made a mistake?
Your abusive, romantic partner may deny that the abuse occurred, or profusely apologize or start love bombing you.
You might receive expensive presents or gifts or even jewelry after an abusive incident. Parts of you feel hurt, confused, and fearful. Instead of actually changing behavior for the positive, a narcissistic person will try to apologize in a variety of different ways. Emotional explosion, anger, episodes, and verbal abuse are never excused by love bombing or gifts. Marriage therapy and adult counseling can help a narcissistic person identify negative behaviors. From there, they can make positive behavior changes to better repair past hurts.
What is love bombing and what isn’t love bombing?
If your partner buys you gifts, not after an abusive episode, this can be a sign of them simply loving you. However, large gift should not come right after an abusive incident, where there was explosive, anger, intimidation, or threats of physical abuse.
A gift should just be a gift, with no strings attached. If your partner is giving you large gifts in an effort to apologize after threatening, blaming, or abusing you, this is called love bombing.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
After the anger explosion or narcissistic episode phase, there is often a period of time where everything is calm and good. For a short time, you are back in the honeymoon phase where your marriage seems okay again. Essentially, it is common for partners to be stuck in a trauma bond.
If you are living in the cycle of abuse, there will always be good times followed by bad times. It is a cycle of narcissistic abuse of good times and followed by more bad times. Dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy can help couples break this toxic cycle. It doesn’t feel good for either person. Both people can benefit from marriage therapy for narcissistic abuse in different ways.
How does dealing with narcissistic abuse in a marriage lead to exhaustion, resentment, loss, and hurt?
Living with a narcissistic spouse or partner can lead a victim to experience significant mental health issues and complex PTSD symptoms. When starting the relationship, you felt in love, carefree, and confident in yourself. However, years of enduring, narcissistic abuse, and gaslighting can lead you to feel low and self-esteem. You question you reality. At times, you wonder who your real friends are. After an explosive narcissistic episode, you notice negative appetite and sleep changes.
Victims of narcissistic abuse suffer from low, self-worth, low, self-esteem, anxiety, have appetite changes, and even trouble sleeping.
It’s really common to start questioning your reality. An abusive person often does what is called, crazy making. They flip the situation around on you to blame you when they have made a mistake or error. If your partner has been cheating, it is common for them to blame you for not being loving enough.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
Lack of accountability and lack of ownership are common in a relationship with a narcissistic person.
These are key issues your couples and individual therapist will work with your spouse on. If you are married to a narcissistic person, you may feel exhausted emotionally.
It might be very hard for you to resolve conflicts in your marriage. It seems like when you want to talk, they start yelling.
As well, it is common to grief and loss about the hopes and dreams you thought you would have with your spouse.
What are signs you are experiencing and dealing with narcissistic abuse?
Essentially, your abusive marriage and romantic relationship is very unpredictable and not emotionally satisfying.
In healthy relationships, there is a secured bond and not an extreme sense of highs and lows.
Denial
It is really common for victims of narcissistic abuse to live in denial. Recognizing that you are in the cycle of abuse can bring a variety of symptoms, such as anxiety, panic, attacks, and fear of your romantic partner. This reality can be very scary for many people. Parts of you might want to walk away and leave the relationship and other part of you might stay because there have been good times.
Marriage counseling can help you understand how victims of narcissistic abuse typically respond to the cycle of of high’s and low’s.
Victim of narcissistic abuse may start to isolate themselves from friends and family.
Friends and family might be telling you to leave the relationship and you might feel bonded to your abuser. As friends and family, tell you to get out, you might feel conflicted and start to separate from them. You might see your friends and family is no longer supported if they tell you to leave a narcissistic spouse. You might feel like you have to take your spouse’s because you have children together.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
Walking on eggshells
As well, you might make efforts to keep your children more quiet when your narcissistic spouse arrives home from work if they are typically tense after work.
There is a general feeling of walking on eggshells and always being unsure of how a narcissistic spouse will respond emotionally.
One moment, your spouse is promising to never yell at you again or call you horrible names. But, within a few hours or days, they are calling you the horrible names that they promised they would never call you again.
Lack of boundaries
Victims of narcissistic abuse may often become more agreeable and let their boundaries slip.
You might become an easy-going person in an effort to placate your abusive husband or wife. Victims of narcissistic abuse often have no voice in the relationship.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
Trying to reassure without success
A victim of narcissistic abuse will always try to reassure and calm their abuser, without success.
No matter how much you try to reassure your abusive partner, they never seem to feel calm.
You might develop silence as a coping tool when reassurance doesn’t work. No matter what you try, even cooking, your narcissistic partners, favorite meals, it doesn’t seem like you make them happy.
You offer reassurance even when they accuse you of cheating, when you have been honest the whole time
Your abusive, narcissistic spouse, might accuse you of cheating on them, or being unfaithful, when you have been entirely loyal.
They may want to track your location, or keep tabs on you. Your narcissistic spouse is always suspicious and jealous.
Disassociation
You might be driving down the road and forget where you are driving to because your mind is not connected to your body.
After experiencing narcissistic abuse, which is a form of trauma, it’s normal to feel more disconnected from your body.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we offer victims of PTSD and their partners holistic, mind-body therapies for healing.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
How can you create a healthy marriage through counseling if you are dealing with narcissistic abuse?
From reflection and journaling, you have realize that they are not the person that you thought they were.
Parts of you want to accept them and work through it in marriage, counseling, but other parts of you know that you deserve better treatment in your relationship.
When you want to feel close, your partner pulls away, leaving more loss and resentment.
You are not alone, if you are married to a narcissistic spouse and struggling with narcissistic abuse in your marriage.
The team of trauma therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize complex trauma and narcissistic abuse recovery. Complex trauma symptoms are very common in victims of narcissistic abuse.
Holistic, somatic, mind-body therapies like art, yoga, music, and walking therapies can help manage PTSD symptoms.
In adult counseling and marriage therapy, how can you gain empowerment and mental calm?
Holistic therapy is such as yoga, meditation, mindfulness, art therapy, and drama therapist can help you get more in touch with your body. Music therapy can help with mind-body awareness after being in an abusive relationship. Painting can be an outlet for traumatic memories. You can paint the feeling of sadness or hopelessness after a recent fight. Creative, expressive arts in therapy offer you a language beyond words.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, we offer holistic and mind-body therapies to support in trauma recovery and mind-body connection.
Doing a mindfulness meditation with your therapist can help you create a peaceful, inner landscape and mental clarity. Meditation has been show to reduce anger outbursts and promote self-regulation skills. Self-regulation skills help you and your spouse stay calmer in what could become a high conflict fight. Painting with your PTSD therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling can allow you to get in touch with a language beyond words.
Can my narcissistic spouse heal and recover from relationship and marriage therapy?
In your marriage, when your narcissistic partner wants to heal, that change is possible.
A narcissistic person has to really want to grow and recognize how their past behaviors have been so hurtful.
It is not impossible for a narcissistic spouse to change for the better. However, they have to be 100% motivated from within themselves to make the marriage better.
If my narcissistic spouse wants to change, how can dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy help us?
Marriage therapy along with individual counseling for adults can help to heal past painful experiences related to narcissistic abuse.
Healing from narcissistic abuse means learning an entirely new way of relating to one another, resolving conflict, and sharing emotions.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
Marriage therapy can help a narcissistic understand their childhood patterns of trauma and generation patterns of narcissism
Narcissistic spouses tend to become this way from early childhood trauma. Your spouse may have had a parent who was alcoholic, sexually abusive, or physically abusive to them. Now, surviving sexual or physical abuse doesn’t lead directly to narcissism. However, having sexually, physically, or emotionally abusive parents creates deficits in adult years.
As children, we learn from our families and parents who to love one another. So, a lack of love in childhood, leads to challenges giving and receiving love in adult relationships. If you don’t learn to read as a child, it will be difficult to read books as an adult.
The same applies to learning to be in a healthy relationship. If your spouse didn’t see or observe healthy relationships growing up, it is normal for them to lack healthy relationship skills in adulthood. This is where marriage counseling can come in and support your narcissistic spouse in gaining insight on their childhood trauma and emotional skills.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
When your spouse was a little child, they probably did not get the nurturing care from a parent that they needed.
This is no excuse for abuse. However, childhood trauma can provide insight on the root cause of narcissistic personality disorder. The narcissistic abuse therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in couples counseling when it comes to dealing with narcissistic abuse.
As a survival mechanism, narcissistic abuse is often a form of self protection and lack of education on healthy relationship skills.
It takes the help of a specialist in both marriage therapy and abusive realtionships, for a narcissistic person to change and learn healthy relationship skills through the process of intensive marriage counseling. The team of therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling are a group of PTSD and trauma specialists.
With the proper education, awareness of childhood trauma, and education on how to have healthy conversations, a narcissistic person can make healthy changes for the better marriage.
If you are in a relationship with a narcissist, you are not alone. The team at Wisdom Within Counseling specializes with narcissists in marriage counseling.
The team at Wisdom Within Counseling helps couples and adults heal after narcissistic abuse from childhood and stop narcissistic abuse in adulthood.
You can gain tools to build playfulness, emotional security, and have calm conversations. Also, you can reconnect to joy and create more positive memories. Couples and adults get a safe place to slow down intense conversations. You can have communication tools to discuss challenging topics like finances, anger, sex, and politics, in a calm and effective manner. Marital therapy helps couples stop dysfunctional cycles of narcissistic abuse. The team at Wisdom Within Counseling helps you in dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy. Trauma counseling gives you a toolbox of skills that are positive for self-worth and self-care too.
To begin, click below to book a phone consult for dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
With just a few healthy communication skills, you can rebuild a loving, long-lasting, positive relationship.
Remember, we don’t learn how to have healthy relationships growing up in an abusive childhood or in school. You get a safe place to deal with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy with a trauma specialist.
Overcome criticism and yelling and learn to resolve conflict in healthy ways. Couples stuck in a narcissistic trauma bond can start to learn healthy communications that they never learned in childhood due to having abusive parents.
Overall, narcissistic abuse therapy supports you in creating a healthy, stable a foundation. This way, you can teach these healthy relationship skills to your children one day too. You can break the cycle of generational narcissistic abuse and trauma by dealing with narcissistic abuse in marriage therapy.
About Katie Ziskind and the team at Wisdom Within Counseling
Katie Ziskind is the owner of Wisdom Within Counseling in Niantic Connecticut and Florida. The team of therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling help families, teens and couples. We offer counseling in Florida, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. You can pick from holistic, mind-body therapies including painting, art, yoga, music, animals, and nature therapies to help couples heal.
We offer these therapies to help couples heal from complex trauma symptoms and self-regulate. Painting and yoga can be a language beyond words that promotes bonding and spiritual connection for couples. Furthermore, musical instruments can bring couples together in playful, presenting ways. Holistic, mind-body, somatic therapies support adults and couples in building healthy, loving, and emotionally safe relationships.
