Narcissism Sells

But Then Boom …

I lost myself.

Trading One Platform For Another

I don’t know what happened, but I stopped posting on Instagram for nearly a year. Even though I was beginning to quickly accumulate a following, I fell into a state of despair. I became fatigued with the grind of it all and walked away.

Some of the narcissistic abuse recovery coaches that I followed, in particular, I also followed on YouTube. There, I found myself stuck within a whirlwind of drama. I quickly began to realize that the topic of narcissism as it relates to the personality disorder is a huge franchise for many so-called narcissistic abuse recovery coaches.

Narcissism has become a huge money-making topic. Trauma sells, and that’s unfortunate. It’s often not even the trauma of the person wielding the topic that sells. It’s the trauma and suffering of others who don’t seem to realize their trauma and pain are being exploited by narcissistic people or actual narcissists.

Everywhere I turned, I found a guru until I realized the game some of them were running on unsuspecting survivors of narcissistic abuse. It appeared as if narcissism had all become a game to some people, and that is beyond me. Even more than a game, it became a way for some of these people to amass an astounding following of people who appear to cater to the needs of these narcissistic people – their need to be seen, heard and validated in a way that they could have never received before.

Reconsidering My Ways

I didn’t think my passion for posting content about narcissistic abuse was supposed to be so hard. I didn’t want to be a part of a competition. Something about that Instagram and YouTube air didn’t feel right for me. I stuck with it for a while, but I grew tired with the façade of it all and just left. After a year, I did return back to Instagram, but it no longer felt the same for me.

I still posted information, but it was so infrequent that I started not to care. I’ve considered shutting down my page altogether, but in light of current changes in my life, I don’t know yet. I don’t know that my information really matters when it seemingly repeats the same information as everyone else. I don’t need to be different, but I do need to feel like the information I present is considered important and not just regurgitated stuff.

I halted for a time to reconsider my focus and my purpose. The original focus was to lead people to my blog so that I could tell my story. My original purpose was to show people that they are not alone in their struggles as victims and/or survivors of narcissistic abuse. I realized that my ways of going about it were all wrong, and perhaps even self-serving in some way. That’s not what I want to be.

I Grew Fatigued …

For a time, I became too fatigued to even focus on this blog, let alone Instagram. Yet, I pushed myself to produce content for both. All the while, I battled a lot of emotional setbacks. I’d also become frozen in time with a post I’d written … unable to push through. That’s when I realized how healing this blog had become to me and how important it was to keep reaching into my past.

I still had a lot of healing to do. So it was great to remember, but blogging is still hard and so is pushing educational content … at least for me … much harder than I thought. It’s more than just writing. Every single emotion I have gets an exercise in blogging and creating content. Every part of me gets a release of much needed healing. It was then that I realized that my need to create content was more about spreading awareness and healing than being like anyone else or trying to gain followers.

My message will reach who it’s intended to reach. But then there was Twitter …

Find out about my Twitter experiences in the next post.