Narcissistic abuse can lead to feelings of anxiety, self-doubt, internal shame, sadness, and confusion. If you are married to a narcissist, you may suffer from intense moments of closeness, followed by moments of extreme distance. Your partner may claim that they love you, but treat you in ways that cause you to feel unloved and uncared for. When we look at narcissistic abuse in marriages, abuse doesn’t usually start at the beginning. Wisdom Within Counseling specializes in narcissistic abuse specialists for couples. Working with a counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages can help you work through it by implementing healthy boundaries or decide to divorce.
Does narcissistic abuse start in the beginning of a relationship?
In the beginning of your relationship, you were madly in love. You may have even had a hot and heavy sex life and you felt close and you felt safe with your new lover. However, after two years or twenty years, you have now realized a patterns of their abusive behavior. You wonder if you should leave your marriage. What makes this decision difficult is that you have children together and a home together. However, when your spouse explodes in rage and anger, you feel unsafe emotionally. You have a cycle of forgiving and forgiving. After emotional abuse and narcissistic events, your spouse will buy you something, love bombing you.
To begin, book your phone consult for positive coping skills to overcome narcissistic abuse in your marriage.
Meeting with a counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages can support you in identifying and seeing their abuse tactics.
What qualifies as narcissistic abuse?
Being married to a narcissistic spouse causes you to have low self-esteem. You may wonder how your spouse will react emotionally every day.
Are you walking on eggshells in your own home?
You wonder if your spouse will be upset with you or excited to see you, and you are always unsure of when the next shoe will drop. Your spouse’s emotions are unstable. It seems like your spouse is always finding some thing wrong with what you’ve done and you could never do it right in their eyes. To note, when you make a mistake or do something wrong, your spouse shames to you, criticizes you, and belittles you. One moment they seem happy with you, and the next moment, they seem incredibly disappointed with you. Overall, it’s hard to live in an emotionally abusive situation like this. This is what living with a narcissist is like.
Working with a counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages at Wisdom Within Counseling can support regaining self-worth. You can learn to take back your power, breathe, and have boundaries rather than being so forgiving. You may find yourself in a pattern of forgiving, forgiving, and forgiving with you narcissistic spouse. Every time they have a blow up or abusive incident, you forgive them and are hopeful they will change. You and your therapist who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages can help you stop trying to make a square peg fit into a round hole.
To begin, book your phone consult for positive coping skills to overcome narcissistic abuse in your marriage.
Needing a counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages?
After years of being married to a narcissistic person, you may need help making decisions and setting boundaries. A narcissistic person will often try to exert power and control. Your spouse may have made all the decisions in your relationship and in your life for you. You might want to buy a new home, switch jobs or take part in a new hobby to build confidence and develop your own identity outside of the one with the narcissist in your life.
Working with a counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages can help you develop a healthy sense of self.
Having your hobbies and things you like to do will be very helpful in helping you be healthier. Part of healing after narcissistic abuse means having your own sense of self. For instance, you might want to join a knitting club, tennis, or take a ukulele lesson, or learn how to garden. As well, getting out of your house and being social can help you when you feel isolated by the narcissist in your life. Your narcissistic spouse may have made enough money where you didn’t need to get a job, so you spent a lot of time home, isolating.
Joining community activities such as through your local parks and recreation department, can help you develop healthy friendships and an identity outside of the relationship you have with a narcissist. As a result, your counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages can help you have a voice again.
To begin, book your phone consult for positive coping skills to overcome narcissistic abuse in your marriage.
Therapy can help you have a confident voice
You can learn to speak up and know that your voice matters. Instead of feeling like a doormat, like you have been for many years in your relationship with your narcissistic spouse, you can have a voice. Learning to speak up takes the help of a professional if you have not worked this muscle before. In narcissistic abuse therapy, you can talk about different boundaries that can help you improve friendships, and other relationships. Furthermore, counseling can help you set boundaries with your narcissistic spouse to foster healthy communication.
What is an example of a healthy boundary?
If your spouse begins yelling or screaming at you, your counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages can help you advocate for yourself. Rather than feeling like you just have to take it, you can learn to speak up and let your spouse know that when they scream at you, you don’t feel safe. If your spouse becomes domestic violent, your therapist can encourage you to call the police to protect yourself.
As well, you can learn about healthy boundaries that can keep you safer with your counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse. When you are married to a narcissistic person, you may need extra encouragement from a therapist to stay firm and maintain your boundaries. Some spouses of narcissistic people will set a boundary, but it will often slip and slide, and no longer be a boundary shortly thereafter. Wisdom Within Counseling specializes in recovering from gaslighting, love bombing, crazy making, threats, and criticism. The team of narcissistic abuse specialists help couples and adults create healthy, meaningful relationships.
You can learn how to set and maintain boundaries to for healthier relationships, long-term from working with a counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages.
To begin, book your phone consult for positive coping skills to overcome narcissistic abuse in your marriage.
Signs of emotional abuse and narcissism in a spouse
When we look at signs of narcissistic abuse in marriages, these may be different for each and every couple. One person who is narcissistic may use more threats and love bombing tactics, where and another person who is narcissistic may use more financial power and criticism.
Criticism is common in narcissistic, toxic relationships
To note, a narcissistic person often uses criticism to cause low self-worth in their victim. As well, your spouse may not even realize they are being overly critical. Some narcissists intentionally use criticism to belittle the victim. Criticism is a form of hurtful, toxic, and negative communication. You may have just cooked a delicious meal for dinner and your narcissistic spouse comes home and complains that it is too cold.
They wanted the dinner hotter and they criticize you because it’s too cold. Maybe, you made their favorite food, but all they can see is what is wrong. Narcissists may not express appreciation easily. Your narcissistic spouse may criticize you multiple times a day.
If you didn’t do something right, your spouse heavily criticizes you.
Social criticism
Your narcissistic spouse may criticize you in your home, as well as in front of friends socially. Narcissistic people often try to humiliate their victim in an effort to make themselves appear better. In a public setting, a victim of narcissistic abuse may feel insecure. This makes a victim need their narcissistic spouse to support confidence more. Narcissistic people often try to put themselves up on a pedestal, so they appear more charismatic.
The team at Wisdom Within Counseling are narcissistic abuse specialists for couples and adults. If you are low in self-worth, having panic attacks, or feeling hopeless about your marriage, the team at Wisdom Within Counseling can help.
Your narcissistic spouse might be putting you down or belittling you in front of friends, family, or causing others to side with them.
When your narcissistic spells criticizes you in front of your friends and family, this damn pinch, your self-esteem, even more. You might feel more insecure, and even less likely to leave your romantic relationship as a result.
To add, your narcissistic spouse wants you to think that you need them in order to feel confident about yourself.
To begin, book your phone consult for positive coping skills to overcome narcissistic abuse in your marriage.
Working with a therapist who specializes in narcissistic abuse and marriages can help you regain confidence. You can learn positive self-talk skills to combat the negative things your spouse has said about you. Positive self-talk can help you combat low self-esteem and low self-worth. As well, positive self-talk tools can help you lower anxiety and overcome inner criticism. The team of therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling are toxic relationship and narcissistic abuse specialists for couples and adults.
As well, your therapist can help you understand and overcome self critical thoughts from negative things your spouse was saying.
If you have a big inner critic, this could be from being in a relationship with a narcissist. It’s very hard to get the approval and praise you are looking for from a narcissist.
Working with a counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages can help you gain self-worth skills.
Meeting with counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages can help you feel confident in yourself. Learning to trust your intuition takes times. You can remember that you are amazing, talented, and strong, and you can give this praise to yourself. You may never receive the praise and appreciation you are looking for from the narcissist in your life.
Therapy for narcissistic abuse can help you learn how to refill your own bucket, and create confidence from the inside out.
You can start to debunk the things your narcissistic spouse in has said, and realize they are not true about you. It can be traumatic to hear put downs and be criticized all the time. When you are criticized or put down by your signifiant other, your therapist can help you support healing from this trauma. Essentially, your narcissistic abuse specialist at Wisdom Within Counseling can be by your side as your work through past trauma. Gaining a positive internal dialogue is a benefit of counseling with a narcissistic abuse specialist.
To begin, book your phone consult for positive coping skills to overcome narcissistic abuse in your marriage.
You can gain positive self-talk skills and confidence working with a counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages at Wisdom Within Counseling.
Financial power
In a marriage, a narcissistic person will often take the role of having financial power. Also, a narcissistic person may be the breadwinner, have access to bank account, passwords, and question your spending. For instance, you might need to buy clothes, but your narcissistic spouse tells you that you shouldn’t have bought those items because you don’t deserve them.
As well, you may also see your narcissistic spouse buying lavish gifts for themselves. When you want to buy yourself an accessory, your narcissistic spouse might withdraw money from an account without talking to you clearly about it first. You might realize that one of your credit cards has been canceled as a result of your spouse controlling financial funding.
Talking with a therapist can help you understand the power and control dynamics around finances.
You may have felt like your spouse was trying to control you by telling you what you can and cannot buy. Working with a Wisdom Within Counseling therapist who specializes in narcissistic abuse, can help you communicate what you need financially to your partner.
As well, you can come up with goals when it comes to setting healthier boundaries. Learn to communicate upfront about what you need and are expecting can be parts of narcissistic abuse counseling.
To begin, book your phone consult for positive coping skills to overcome narcissistic abuse in your marriage.
Financial independence can be a part of working with a narcissistic abuse specialists at Wisdom Within Counseling
As well, you can talk with your therapist about having your own source of income, such as getting a part-time job. For example, having your own bank accounts can be empowering. What is looks like to have your own bank account can be some thing to talk about with your narcissistic abuse therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling.
Therefore, if you feel like your spouse has been controlling with money, counseling can help. You can begin talking about these emotions with a narcissistic abuse therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling, which can be very helpful. Identifying specific things that can shift in your marriage to help you feel more independent and safe can be parts of counseling.
It is common to still feel in love with a narcissistic person even after you fight, get abused, break up, or leave.
One moment, you feel scared, and the next moment, you feel madly in love. There are high’s and low’s of the cycle of abuse are important things you can learn about in counseling. Understanding which phase of the cycle of abusive, toxic behaviors your relationship is in can be helpful. Therapy can be a safe place to gain education love bombing, crazy making, gaslighting, threats, and criticism. It is very common for victims of narcissistic abuse to experience these toxic tactics. Narcissistic behaviors cause victims fear and anxiety.
Therapy for narcissistic abuse can help you cope with anger, grief, loss, sadness, confusion, and feeling loved in healthy ways
Working with a therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling who specializes in narcissistic abuse can help you if you still feel in love with your spouse, but torn because they emotionally abuse you.
Right now, you may be toying with anger, grief, loss, sadness, confusion, love, and more. If you are feeling anxious, you can process that emotion in counseling. Another day, you may need self-regulation and anxiety coping tools from therapy. You may feel doubtful that your spouse can treat you better. Therapy can be a safe place to express anxiety, fear, and anger in healthy ways.
Working with a Wisdom Within Counseling therapist can help you better understand your past experiences with trauma and your spouse’s narcissistic abuse history.
You can talk about the threats you faced with your counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages at Wisdom Within Counseling
A narcissist will often to threaten to expose secrets that you’ve shared with them in confidence. For instance, you might have shared with a narcissist in your life, that you are bisexual, gay, or transgender. The fact that you identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, is personal information. If you share this with someone, they should not be sharing this with anyone else. Your narcissistic spouse might threaten to share private information that you have told them with other people. This creates public humiliation. Your narcissistic spouse will do this in an effort to make you obey and become submissive. This is a fear tactic.
To begin, book your phone consult for positive coping skills to overcome narcissistic abuse in your marriage.
Your narcissistic spouse is trying to make you feel scared by exposing a secret and threatening to do so.
Working with a therapist who specializes in narcissistic abuse recovery can help you identify this fear tactic. Instead of living in fear, you can learn to live with self-confidence and self-worth. What a narcissistic spouse uses for your tactics, this can make a victim stay in the relationship longer.
Right now, you romantic relationship may be very unhealthy. However, you narcissistic spouse does not want you to leave them, separate, or divorce. Often times, a narcissistic person, feeds off of the insecure energy and fear in their victim.
More so, your therapist can help you decide what’s right for you. Maybe, that means staying in your relationship and changing the power dynamics through better communication, or leaving.
If you choose to leave your narcissistic spouse, your therapist can talk about the safety plan, and how to exit the relationship calmly.
Talk about your spouse’s explosive anger with your counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse and marriage therapy
It’s very common for narcissistic spouses to explode in anger. You might be waking up in the morning, having a cup of milk, water, or orange juice. For example, you might be relaxing and your narcissistic spouse wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. Then, they are stomping their feet, making loud noises, and slamming doors.
Sadly, your narcissistic spouse does not communicate what they are needing or feeling from you or in regards to the situation.
Commonly, a narcissistic person will be passive aggressive when they are upset. Victims of narcissistic abuse may not fully understand why their narcissistic spouse is truly upset with them. It is common to feel as if you are walking on eggshells, not sure of how your spouse will feel.
To begin, book your phone consult for positive coping skills to overcome narcissistic abuse in your marriage.
When your spouse is narcissistic, they may scream, yell, and become angry in a split second.
A simple task, such as changing a roll of toilet paper or cleaning of spilt milk, can lead a narcissist into a fury. Notably, narcissistic people explode in anger out of the blue and don’t communicate needs well. It seems like their anger is like a wildfire. And, once they get angry, a narcissist is in a rage for hours. Alcohol and drugs can make the narcissistic abuse and anger explosions worse.
Dealing with and coping with narcissistic abuse in counseling
Sometimes, you decide to yell back when your spouse yells at you. Other times, you cry and have a panic attack. At times, you feel trapped because your narcissistic spouse won’t let you leave the house. Maybe, you narcissistic partner takes your keys when they are in fits of anger and rage. More often than not, you feel scared, fearful, confused, upset, and tearful in these moments. It feels like your narcissistic spouse is Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde.
Having a narcissistic spouse means that you need therapy to regain your own mental clarity. Learning which behaviors are toxic and abuse is an important first step in healing. Working with a counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages can help you gain self-regulation skills.
LGBTQIA+ affirming therapy
Narcissistic abuse can impact all types of couples. Your spouse may be abusive if you are in a same sex, lesbian, gay, or heterosexual relationship. As well, people of any gender, age, race, and nationality may be narcissistic. If your spouse is 25 years old or is 60 years old, they may be narcissistic.
To begin, book your phone consult for positive coping skills to heal through narcissistic abuse counseling.
As well, Caucasians, African Americans, Native Americans, and Hispanics can all have narcissistic traits. Men, women, transgender people, queer people, and non-binary people can all have narcissistic traits. The team of complex trauma therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in narcissistic abuse counseling.
How can working with a counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages help?
Your therapist who specializes in narcissistic abuse can help you understand narcissistic abuse. Working with a counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages can help identify fear tactics. You can learn how to remain calm and not let your narcissistic spouse rile you up. When you are in a situation where a narcissist is angry and explosive, it is not best to become explosive back.
If you find yourself getting angry, yelling, or slamming doors yourself, your therapist can help you gain self-regulation skills. Instead of yelling back, which only creates more anger in a narcissist, you can learn how to take back your power and Inner Peace Friend . Your therapist can help you do grounding skills and self-regulation skills so you are not as affected by the negative anger of your narcissistic spouse.
Gaslighting and crazy making are narcissistic traits
Gaslighting is a tactic that narcissists use to make you feel like you are crazy. Maybe, a narcissist promised they would do something for you. I promised you would go somewhere on a trip. When you bring this up to them, they tell you they never promised that. Or, narcissist, might tell you that an anger episode that occurred the previous night didn’t actually happen.
When you work with a counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages, you can learn to see gaslighting and crazy making behaviors for what they are.
When you try to talk to your narcissistic spouse about their anger, they deny it. Then, your narcissistic spouse tells you that it never occurred. This is called crazy making. Victims of narcissistic abuse start to doubt themselves as a result of gaslighting and crazy making behaviors. Narcissists will deny that certain events took place, causing their victim to doubt themselves. At Wisdom Within Counseling, your counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages can help you overcome self-doubt.
To begin, book your phone consult for positive coping skills to overcome narcissistic abuse in your marriage.
Love bombing is a toxic relationship trait that you can talk about with you counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages
Love bombing is a form of narcissistic abuse, where, after an abusive incident, a narcissist purchases their victim large gifts. Your narcissistic spouse might be giving you jewelry, a brand name purse, new technology, or an expensive car. A narcissistic person will give you gifts after an emotionally, sexually, or physically abusive episode.
A narcissist may be trying to apologize through purchasing gifts. But, they never end up changing their hurtful, unstable, toxic, angry, and negative behaviors. Why does love bombing occur? A narcissist, who love bombs may be trying to make their victim stay in a relationship with them longer.
Instead of trying to stop their negative behaviors, and how they are hurtful, a narcissist will try to win their victim over with gifts.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, your narcissistic abuse therapist can identify negative love bombing behaviors. As well, your therapist help you speak with your spouse about the behaviors hurt you. You can learn to hold your spouse accountable. And, you can talk with them about your hurt feelings. It is okay to ask your spouse to take ownership and apologize for the ways that they have hurt you. Your narcissistic abuse therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you navigate how to speak up and ask them to apologize. And, from therapy, you can recognize how they’ve hurt you more clearly.
Speaking up is a benefit of narcissistic abuse counseling and working with a counselor who specializes in narcissistic abuse in marriages
Asking your spouse to change their narcissistic behavior takes a lot of courage. When your spouse changes their behavior, they can begin to take responsibility. A mixture of individual and couples therapy can help your narcissistic spouse understand how they are acting and how it is hurtful to you. Your narcissistic abuse therapist can be a professional to support you outside of your friends and family. As you go about this process of identifying the abusive, you can work to positively change the narcissistic power dynamics in your relationship.
The team of therapists at Wisdom Within Counseling specialize in narcissistic abuse counseling.
When you think you are in a relationship with a narcissist, or know you are, therapy can help you gain self-worth tools. Relationships that are toxic and abusive can leave you physically and emotionally exhausted. When your spouse is a narcissist, you may feel a high level of anxiety every day.
Working with a narcissistic abuse counselor and complex trauma specialist can help you feel confident in yourself again.
From rebuilding your self-esteem in narcissistic abuse counseling, you can have a healthy sense of self. You can learn to identify unhealthy, toxic behaviors like gaslighting, love bombing, threats, and criticism. Instead of yelling back, you can learn self-regulation and relaxation skills. In narcissistic abuse counseling, you can stay calm and learn to take back your power. When you have a narcissistic spouse, you may doubt yourself, worry, and need emotional strength. When you feel weak, you want a therapist who really understand narcissistic abuse and fear tactics.
At Wisdom Within Counseling, you get a narcissistic abuse specialist who can empower you and help you understand the cycle of narcissistic abuse. Positive coping tools are a benefit of narcissistic abuse counseling at Wisdom Within. You might be getting stuck forgiving over and over, so you can learn to set healthy boundaries.
