***Trigger Warning: This post mentions self-harming behaviors. If you or a loved one needs help coping, text CONNECT to 741741 for free to speak to a crisis counselor.
Self-Harm
Narcissistic abuse can have such traumatic effects upon a victim/survivor that they may often be led to participating in forms of self-harm. Although most forms of self-harm are non-suicidal, there are instances where victims/survivors are pushed to their breaking points when it comes to dealing with narcissistic abuse. I’ve been to that breaking point.
Dealing with narcissists can lead to feelings of hopelessness. A narcissist has the ability to make one feel as if they don’t matter. Nothing done is ever up to a narcissist’s specifications, and no amount of love, kindness, or patience will ever change them. You are damned if you do and damned if you don’t. You don’t win, but you surely do lose, and you lose a lot. Continued dealing with a narcissist has often led me to the brink of even considering self-deletion.
Prior to any desire to take my own life, there have been a few issues with self-harm or self-injury. These instances of self-harm were ways for me to escape as a way to deal with unbearable circumstances. I needed to be able to cope, and I’d resort to specific activities to do so. As an autistic, those activities might be as simple as stimming. However, stimming is NOT self-harm.
Stimming is a self-stimulating behavior or are behaviors that are repetitive in nature. When I stim, I might do repetitive movements with my hands or legs and feet, make verbal sounds like humming or different mouth noises, rock my body back and forth, repeat words or phrases, spin, twirl, or tap objects, and blink my eyes extra hard and fast. I do other things too, but those are a few of the types of behaviors I can think of in how I self-regulate.
Stimming isn’t harmful until it is harmful. In some cases, someone might stim by banging their head, and this can become a problem if done so repetitively that they don’t stop and cause harm to themselves. Then there are just behaviors known as self-harming behaviors such as cutting oneself to bleed and feel the pain when emotions are numb, burning oneself or burning objects, hitting, slapping, or punching oneself, hair pulling, and wound picking. There are a host of others, but these are some of the types of self-harming behaviors.
For the most part, the only self-harming behaviors that I engaged in when I was a child was burning myself and/or cutting myself. However, I will say that self-harm was not something I participated in frequently. It was as if I went through a small phase of at first having accidents with burning myself while ironing or cooking. It was then that I developed an interest in watching and feeling the pain of those burns, nicks, and cuts. I’d peel away the scabs over and over until I didn’t feel the need to do so anymore.
Yet, I didn’t like the pain so much. It wasn’t that I couldn’t tolerate it, I just found that kind of pain a nuisance to me. I preferred not being distracted by physical pain. For me, the emotional pain I dealt with felt so strong that it was much easier for me to dissociate. Besides, I felt a lot of my emotions most of the time and having the pain of physical emotions from self-harm and mental emotions was too overwhelming. When I did go through times of numbness from not feeling any emotions at all, I’d drown myself into silence, a good book, or music listening.
One of the worst forms of self-harm that I’ve participated in was staying in a relationship with a narcissist when I knew it was time to walk away. Most times, I’d stay out of the fears I had of the unknown or the fears I had of causing the narcissist pain. However, in the long run, I was only causing further harm to myself.
I didn’t intentionally choose to be in narcissistic relationships, and I didn’t always know that I was dealing with a narcissist. Yet, when I discovered that I was dealing with a narcissist, it took me some time to break away. I didn’t intentionally choose to self-harm in this way either, but I did prolong the harm to myself by making attempts to stay when I falsely believed a narcissist would change.
I you or someone you know is involved in self-harming behaviors, reach out to someone for help. Reach out to someone who is qualified to help you – whether that be a trained therapist or crisis counselor. Seek to relieve yourself by coping in less harmful ways. Replace self-harming behaviors with more positive ways of coping.
Dealing with narcissists surely isn’t easy. I know this for sure.
My Voice Unchained 