Inner Strength

I Am a Survivor! I am a survivor of Narcissistic abuse. I continue to read, search, reflect and learn to love myself. The most amazing part of it is the road blocks and mountains of doubt that has been told to me all these years. The fear of rejection from others and the isolation that is easier to deal with. I love talking to people and I am good at it. But I also love my solo time. I have chores to get done for my job search and the most depressing part is looking at jobs available and knowing from the job descriptions that I don’t have the skill. The fight-or-flight kicks in and I just want to hide. I have to get out of this job and into something else, but the road blocks and deep seeded self-doubt that I will ever be successful can be over-whelming.

If you’re looking at it from the outside and don’t have a clear understanding about the scaring from a narcissist, you will only hear them “complaining”. In fact, the so-called complaining are real living scars the survivor is dealing with; every minute, every hour, every day. Do not ever tell a survivor of a narcissist abuser to “get over it!” because they can’t. It's not a light switch that can be turned off and all things are normal. It took years of a certain language from the narcissist to change the way the Target thinks about all things. It will take years for the Target to rewrite the language so the Target is a strong successful survivor. My writings are to help myself and hope that I can help give someone inner strength to stand strong.

Somehow, I find ways to fight through the fear to handle most struggles. The one I have yet to conquer is looking for work. It can be crippling for me and test the boundaries of my depression to new heights. I don’t talk about it much, because I’m still finding the right wording to explain it to myself, much less to others. Especially when I’m not trying to place blame onto others. I’m going to try to put it into words, please forgive me if it comes out wrong. It is a process I’m still working on. Those closest to me would do one of two things when I would share about my job searches. They would either cheer me on or talk me out of it with some line that I didn’t have the skills. If I did land something, thinking I’ll be good at it and maybe even successful at. Later down the road, those same people would start to play devils advocate with me in the thought process that it would help me. When all it was doing was increase the self doubt in my abilities to be successful in the current job. My abilities are questioned and I start to wonder if I’m able to do anything successfully. The other side to the issue is getting a job and discovering later my boss is a narcissist and is holding me back, either in income, zero advancement, or making sure to insult me every day because they don’t like the way I do something or simply because I show compassion for others.

Been working 30 years and shamefully no real skills other than customer service, which I hate with every cell in my body. But that doesn’t have anything to do with the abuse. That is 100% a limitation from my Dyslexia in the Working Memory. So, between the self doubt from outside verbal programing and the learning disability; the struggles are real! The more self aware a person can become, the easier it will be to heal in the areas that change can happen. And for me, find work that is better suited for my Dyslexia.

One of the fight or flight I’m working on is not reacting by quitting this job, because of my inner dialog. Walking away from this job would put me back on the street and that is a depressing (to tears) thought process. One of the things that helps me fight and not flight is how I eat. Limit my coffee intake, zero processed food as a daily but only as the occasional treat, same goes for sodas, and limit my liquor to as a reward only. Dark chocolate covered almonds, soy milk, coconut sugar and honey as sweeteners. Basically eat clean and happy carbs. Some days the tears still come, but I try to keep moving forward.