Don't Let a Narcissist Erode Your Self-Confidence
If you doubt your worth at all, a narcissist will hone in on this and take every opportunity to shatter your self-confidence and self-esteem. This is especially true if you’ve had an adverse childhood where emotional and psychological abuse became your norm. A relationship with a narcissist can become your comfort zone even if it is destroying you, as you try to resolve your childhood abuse with a different perpetrator.
I want to share a story I wrote for a women’s empowerment book a few years ago. It is my own story.
Have you ever felt like you’re not good enough? That you don’t deserve the money and success other people have? If so, you’re far from alone. Most of us feel this way at some point in our lives.
We are not born with these thoughts already installed in our brain. Someone planted these seeds during our childhood, or perhaps when we were in the midst of a bad relationship. If we believe there’s even a grain of truth to the remarks that we hear, we internalize these thoughts: and over time they become beliefs, which in turn become our reality. It’s a bit like downloading a computer virus. We don’t know that it happened until we go to the program and find that the virus has corrupted it. If our program called “Life” isn’t working as well as it should, it could be riddled with thought viruses.
I recently had an encounter with a thought virus I was sure had been deleted from the hard drive of my mind. I was adopted by my parents when I was very young, and I was dating a guy who had issues with adoptees. His first wife had been born with fetal alcohol syndrome, adopted out, and later became an alcoholic. As a result, he believed all adoptees must be flawed in some way.
We don’t know that it …
happened …
I am a professional life coach and have undergone extensive training in letting go of limiting beliefs. Even so, this guy really pushed my buttons. I was immediately overcome by shame, remembering my mother telling me as a child that I might have bad blood because she didn’t know where I had come from. As I opened my mouth to defend myself against this guy’s remarks, I realised what I was doing. I was giving away my power and going back to that girl who had to please everyone, achieve high marks, and get the promotions to prove to the world that she wasn’t an axe murderer. Essentially, I was trying to justify my existence.
Who would I have been if I had run with my mother’s story? Someone afraid to have kids in case they turned out ‘bad’? A woman scared of success in case anyone saw through my professional veneer to my potentially evil core? Luckily, as it happens, I have a strong sense of justice and an inquiring mind, and my mothers story of my ‘bad blood’ just didn’t stand up. It was never true; it was just a construct of my mother’s own fears. The true story is that I’m a successful self-made woman with two beautiful adult children. My mission is to energise, empower and elevate other women, so they can speak and live their truth with joy.
The lesson I learned is not to hide my light under a bushel. We are not better or worse than anyone else; we are ourselves, with our own passions and talents. Beware of people wanting to put you into a small box and limit you with a label of their own creation, born from a place of fear. Don’t let someone else’s version of your story hold you back from the life you want. You are amazing, you matter and you are enough!