Narcissistic abuse takes a toll on all relationships, sense of self, self-esteem, quality of life, Mental Health, and Medical Health. If you are suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, seeking help is not always easy. However, professional intervention is the first step toward healing.
With the help of a Licensed Clinical Psychologist, patients rebuild their sense of self, restructure their negative thoughts and behaviors, and regain control over their lives and relationships. Learn more about why it is important to seek treatment from a Clinical Psychologist when dealing with narcissistic abuse with this overview.
What Is Narcissistic Abuse?
Narcissistic abuse occurs when an individual with Narcissistic Personality Disorder controls, manipulates, or otherwise harms those he/she is in a relationship with. Most discussions around narcissistic abuse address the issue within romantic relationships; however, this harmful dynamic can also occur between friends, colleagues, associates, or family members.
Signs of Narcissistic Abuse
There are many indicators of narcissistic abuse. Individuals with Narcissistic Personality Disorder believe their own needs and wants are more important than those of other people. As a result, they expect special treatment and struggle to empathize with others—even people they claim to care about. These factors create unhealthy relationship dynamics and make it difficult to cultivate or maintain long-lasting relationships.
If you are suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, you may feel that others are always on the edge around you. Others most likely feel as if they are one misstep away from provoking a negative reaction. It is also common for others to second-guess themselves because they feel manipulated into questioning their thoughts, emotions, and reactions.
In romantic relationships, people find that the relationship moves fast and becomes serious quicker than expected. This rapid pace can lead to dynamics such as shared housing or bank accounts—factors that pave the way for control, manipulation, and other unhealthy power dynamics.
Similarly, financial abuse and social isolation are also common signs of narcissistic abuse. It is not healthy for a partner to control money, hobbies, free time, professional life, and other relationships. Individuals with Narcissistic Personality Disorder use these things to manipulate others and guarantee reliance on them.
Regaining Control
Control and dominance are significant aspects of narcissistic abuse. It is extremely difficult to break free from these dynamics, especially if your loved ones feel stuck in these unhealthy dynamics for a long time. Working with a Licensed Clinical Psychologist is the key to regaining control and establishing a healthy and adaptive life.
There are many aspects of control that you must work toward as you heal. You need to give up control over finances, housing, transportation, and professional life. However, the first step to accomplishing any of this is regaining control over your Mental Health.
With the help of a Clinical Psychologist, you address and process the thought patterns that stem from abuse, manipulation, and trauma that originated from your childhood patterns and attachment styles with caretakers. By understanding and correcting these negative patterns, you can rebuild self-esteem, gain resilience, and retake control over your own thoughts, emotions, and behaviors.
Improving Mental Health
Improving Mental Health is the basis of any kind of treatment with a Licensed Clinical Psychologist. Narcissistic abuse—like any other form of abusive or toxic relationship—takes a toll on your mental and emotional well-being. There are things you have to rebuild, re-learn, or even learn for the first time as part of the recovery and healing process.
In the wake of narcissistic abuse, several key therapy goals revolve around addressing, processing, and overcoming psychological challenges.
Building Self-Esteem
Narcissistic abuse negatively affects your self-worth. You might believe you are unworthy of love or incapable of emotional independence and living a fulfilling life. The abuse creates these negative voices that reinforce self-criticism and self-doubt.
Treatment from a Licensed Clinical Psychologist helps you identify your traumas and other negative experiences as the source of these doubts. From there, you can replace these negative thought patterns with healthier, more productive thoughts and habits.
Processing Conflicting Emotions
Mental Health Disorders are complicated. They leave you with thoughts and feelings that contradict each other or feel counterintuitive. Understanding these conflicting emotions—and understanding that they are valid responses to your situation—is part of processing and healing.
A Licensed Clinical Psychologist helps you understand the things you think and feel. Through professional treatment, you gain the cognitive tools necessary to handle complicated thoughts and emotions in a productive manner.
Seeing these thoughts and emotions clearly helps you maintain a healthy, productive perspective that lets you handle stress, change, and other challenges as you continue to heal and move forward with your life.
Treating Comorbid Conditions
Abuse and trauma often leads to the development of Mental Health Disorders such as Anxiety Disorders, Depressive Disorders, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and more. As you address your experiences with narcissistic abuse, you and your Clinical Psychologist must also address these and other comorbid Mental Health Conditions that arise as a result of that abuse.
Healing from these conditions takes time and professional treatment. Only by treating them alongside other symptoms and challenges of narcissistic abuse can you accomplish lasting, healthy change in the wake of your negative experiences.
Strengthening Future Relationships
People who have endured narcissistic abuse often face challenges in other relationships. They also can become abusive in relationships with other people in their lives as the only dynamic that is familiar to them. They learn to project and transfer these dynamics learned in childhood onto their adult relationships and romantic partnerships. Eroded boundaries, a poor sense of self, traumas, and other difficulties make it hard to trust others or rely on people for safety, protection, and care. Therapy from a Licensed Clinical Psychologist who is well-versed in childhood traumas, attachment disorders, relationship issues, and Personality Disorders addresses these challenges and provides you with the necessary interventions to allow you to build healthier, stronger relationships as you move forward in life.
Rebuilding self-esteem and healing from other Mental Health Conditions is a significant part of this process. It is also important to build healthier boundaries, improve communications, build social skills, learn to practice emotional regulation, and work toward realistic goals surrounding your own mental and emotional well-being.
Types of Therapy for Narcissistic Abuse
Licensed Clinical Psychologists know that every patient needs and deserves individualized treatment and a customized plan that specifically addresses the unique experiences and challenges they face. When you seek intervention from a Clinical Psychologist for Narcissistic Personality Disorder and narcissistic abuse, your treatment might include a combination of evidence-based treatment modalities, including:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
- Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
- Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PET)
- Mentalization-Based Therapy (MBT)
- Schema-Focused Therapy
- Psychodynamic Therapy
- Psychoanalytic Therapy
If you are looking for Mental Health treatment such as Schema-Focused Therapy in Los Angeles, contact Blair Wellness Group to see how our evidence-based treatment plans from a Licensed Clinical Psychologist can help you.
