So for me when I was really stressed during the beginning of the no contact fase, i got very thin. Now i am feeling much better and healed so much already, but the last year (2 years after no contact) I started to gain a little weight (to much for my liking). I feel like it has to do with the stress that i still feel or that my body needs it to continue to heal my gut. Idk yet, what is your experience?

I went no contact with my verbally and physically abusive parents five months ago. I’m in my late 20s for context and was living with them.

According to my partner, on and off for the past five months, I wake up screaming convinced I’m still at home. This is confusing to me as I’m the happiest and safest I’ve ever been. I’m not sure how to handle this. I even feel great going to bed but I still wake up sobbing and screaming.

He is actually the one that told me about this subreddit so hoping y’all have some ideas. 🤞

Any advice would be appreciated.

the more distance i get from my family, the more i realize how much of my personality was just survival mode. being overly agreeable, apologizing constantly, reading everybody's mood before speaking, avoiding attention, all of it.

now i feel weird because i do not even know what parts of me are actually me. i know healing takes time but this part has been messing with me lately. how did you start figuring out who you actually were outside of the abuse?

What signs of healing have you noticed since going NC with your narc?

For me, I gained back the weight I lost from being so depressed and not eating. My nails have gotten stronger, and my skin is healthier. I have a much better diet now. My relationships with my loved ones improved - they knew something was off with the ex and were waiting for me to come around. I can’t remember the last time I had a panic attack. Most importantly, though, I’m happy. I’ve found peace.

Have you noticed any positive changes, whether it be physical or emotional, since you went no contact? I’d love to hear some more wins!

F29, boyfriend 35, length of relationship: 1 year and 8 months.

The relationship began after a two-year friendship, during which there were already subtle signs of jealousy. After we became a couple, controlling behaviors and self-victimization intensified: constant reproaches, comparisons with other women and other relationships, accusations that I didn’t validate him enough or put him first. He showed excessive jealousy toward my former partners, insulted me-saying that I sold myself for nothing, and held me responsible for the conflicts in the relationship, saying that because of me the relationship was being destroyed because I was cold and avoidant—although this distancing was actually a response to the repeated criticism and humiliation.

He positioned himself in conflict with the important people in my life (family and friends), accusing them of ignoring him or manipulating me. He reacted with anger even in crisis situations, such as when I supported a friend who tried to end his life, interpreting everything as a sign that I was not prioritizing him. After every fight he told me that I am the most amazing human being on the planet and he was asking me never to change. That was very confusing as well. He categorically refused therapy and, in the end, ended the relationship, leaving behind a great deal of confusion, pain, and self-doubt—intensified by the fact that, alongside these behaviors, there were also extremely beautiful moments and genuine qualities in him.

At present, one of the most distressing fears is the thought that he will find someone “right” for him, and that this would confirm the idea—constantly reinforced during the relationship—that the problem was me.

I would be grateful for any advice from people who have experienced something like this.

For someone who stayed in a two months committed relationship and 5 months break ( but contact after every 10 days ) and then had a proper breakup will face withdrawal symptoms ? It has been total 3 months to breakup .I was fine a month ago but then he tried to contact and after that I am just spiralling. I was gonna unblock him and text him now but decided to come here .

I think I did something kind of unprecedented with my narcissistic ex and I need someone to explain the psychology behind it because I genuinely think I interrupted the final discard and made everything worse.

We had a huge fight and he finally left my apartment after weeks of chaos. Calling me crazy, threatening smear campaigns, trying to break my phone, involving police, all of it. Then he disappeared for two weeks like I never existed.

During those two weeks my brother tried to un***ve himself 😓. He’s been dealing with the grief of our dad dying in February.

I think that context matters because emotionally I was drowning. I just needed ONE thing in my life to stop hurting so I reached out through mutual friends trying to get my ex to contact me. My ex got the messages but NEVER REACHED OUT. I needed something familiar. Something grounding. Instead I found out he was apparently all over the city sleeping with everybody, hanging out with people he swore he hated, acting single while I was grieving and losing my fucking mind.

So out of anger and humiliation I made a dating (hook-up) profile just to force myself back into reality again. No identifying pictures or anything. I wasn’t even trying to seriously date yet.

Guess who messages me?

Him. My fucking Narcissist.

Mr. “I would never cheat on you.” Whole dating profile active and clearly not new either. I was honestly sick reading it because suddenly every gut feeling I ever had made sense. I entertained it just to see how he talked to people and how far he’d go. He gave me the address where he was staying and when I showed up he looked like he saw a ghost.

I told him about my brother and somehow we ended up trying again.

Biggest mistake of my life. HUGE.

What followed was the absolute worst phase of our relationship. He’s colder. Meaner. More distant. No sex. No chemistry. Constant tension. Constant lying and gaslighting. It felt like emotionally he had already discarded me and I dragged the relationship back to life anyway because I was desperate for comfort during one of the worst moments of my life.

Now I’m wondering if interrupting the discard made him resent me more. Like I forced a dead relationship to keep breathing for a few extra miserable months. Did he come back just because he needed a place to stay? When I go to work, he’s gone for all hours of the day and night. He always has some weird excuse as to where he’s been or what he’s been doing. What unwritten role have I broken by interrupting the final discard?

Has anyone else ever experienced this?

My mother has been a narcissist her whole life. I've noticed that about her since I was very young. When I was younger, I couldn't understand why she always had to present herself so well in front of others, but when she's at home, she's just brutal, always guilt-tripping me and denying the stuff I pointed out about her. About 5 years ago, it was just me and her, under one roof. My siblings are either married or living by themselves. Things actually got bad; I started to notice more patterns and started to question myself if narcissism, in some, could be selective. When she's with other people or with my siblings, she's totally a different person, & when she's with me, it feels like she could be brutally honest about whatever truths/POVs she has about me. One simple question for her can turn into a full-on guilt-tripping, fault-finding, and playing-victim session. So, tell me, guys, because I'm extremely confused. Can narcissism actually be selective? Is she just biased? Or am I just treated badly?

About a year ago I finally left my abusive husband of 19 years. I have recently thought of dating and have been texting someone for a bit to get to know him better. We both have kids so haven’t been able to spend time in person. We have a tentative plan to meet next week. I started thinking about what it might be like to want to spend more time with him. And I’ve realized that I’m terrified to be alone with a man again. Has anyone experienced this after abuse? I’m trying not to let fear consume me but I genuinely feel sick to my stomach thinking about it. I don’t want to waste this man’s time on my trauma. What to do?

I used to spend every birthday, every holiday, every milestone bracing for the narcissist in my life to ruin it. And they always did. That was the cycle: anticipate the wound, receive the wound, react to the wound, get called "crazy" for reacting.

This birthday was different.

My ndad sent me a "happy birthday" in a group chat where he'd been ignoring me for a week after promising money and ignoring my desperate request for help with my kids. Classic narcissist move to show up for the performance (birthday wishes in front of the brothers) while ignoring the actual need (private plea for help).

I responded with calm, clear, loving boundaries. He responded with DARVO — deny, attack, reverse victim and offender. He made himself the victim. He threw in bizarre deflections about my children. He told me I was "chastising" him by asking for basic communication.

The old me would have collapsed. Would have raged. Would have been reduced to the little girl who was told to shut up every time she spoke.

The new me? I felt the anxiety. I sat with it. I breathed. I responded from a place of wholeness, not woundedness.

And when his response came was the textbook narcissistic deflection and I felt... clarity. Not devastation. Clarity.

This is who he is. This has ALWAYS been who he is. And I am finally free of the hope that he'll be someone different.

If you're in that space where you keep hoping they'll change then let this be your sign. They show you who they are. Every single time. The freedom is in believing them.

These people hate everyone, including themselves. At the beginning they might idolize someone during the love-bombing stage, but it is only a matter of time until, due to black-and-white thinking, whether because of real or perceived harm done by the person, they switch into a destructive mode.

They are not capable of having a real relationship; what they have are facades. As an example, currently at work there is a female colleague who is a textbook NPD case. She spends enormous effort trying to be popular. She talks with lots of people and tries to make conversations engaging, but one only needs to observe it to realize that all of these interactions, even if they have gone on for months, are plastic, paper-thin, and not real. Even the things that are openly talked about are veneer-like. There is no real emotional connection, no real colour, no real beauty. It is simply not a relationship of any kind, and it will with time always end in disaster or be an active disaster.

What I think often happens is a sort of projection of one’s own state of consciousness onto someone else. For example, let’s say someone swims with a small crocodile and hugs it, etc. The moment something happens in the water, the crocodile will strike. The crocodile simply does not perceive any connection with a human being; it does not understand such things as emotional or mammalian connection. Just because someone physically looks similar to you does not mean they are spiritually similar. They may be more different from you than you are from an elephant.

There were ruthless Nazis in concentration camps who went to bars, drank beer, and hung out with people. They had colleagues; someone might even have perceived them as nice. Maybe they were considered popular within that bar. It means nothing.

You are not missing out on anything. They cannot love anyone, and they cannot have a real relationship with anyone. If you have real empathy and truly want to experience a real relationship, a real connection, you will never get it from them as long as they refuse to change and stop being who they are. They are simply wasting your infinitely precious time.

There are people in many NPD subreddits asking why they are abusive, and of course one can give many explanations as to why that is the case, but the reality is that they want to do evil, just as a rapist commits unspeakable atrocities. They commit abuse because they choose to. They are criminals of the worst kind who simply are not in jail (yet).

There are countless abusive people in this world. I do not go out of my way to know them, and I do not feel that I am missing anything. Why then would I not leave?

What does that look like?

It’s been almost two years since I left my narcissistic ex. I left when our daughter was 1.5. He was on drugs and was abusive so I was okay with raising her without him. After all this time of basically nothing from him and not caring to be in her life he decides he wants to come back into her life. I was really confused/upset because he’s made no attempts at therapy or even quitting his drug habit. Today he said he just wants to move on with his life and he wants me to basically sweep everything under the rug and it’s not a good look having a kid who isn’t in his life. I am really mad because he just wants to act like he didn’t abuse me for 7.5 years and made no efforts for our daughter since we’ve been gone. Does anyone have any experience with their narcissistic ex wanting to act like they didn’t abuse you for so long just for an act? I just feel like it’s not fair to be so evil then to just act like it all didn’t happen and go live a completely new life. I would love any advice on if anyone has been through something similar!

I’m going to list all the things she’s done + characteristics. I’m genuinely curious whether or not this is NPD (or BPD). She has mentioned the autistm spectrum but never directly said she has it. For the longest time I thought it was just avoidance or autism, NPD would come up in my mind occasionally but I’d tell myself there was no way it could be that. It’s such a weird situation because I had never even met this person IRL and yet they managed to do so much damage just online. We’re both women*

• famous/public figure

• hacked my spotify and social medias

• hacked my friend’s account to read my DMs

• accused me of doing things I didn’t

• tried to destroy me in a creative way

• told me I am evil, that I will get nothing from her, that I only like her for clout

• tried to use me to cheat on someone else

• added my favourite songs to her playlist while ignoring me

• weaponised instagram

• got angry and posted nude photos of other people on her photography account because I didn’t reply to her message for 4 days after she ghosted me for 1 month

• copied my ideas and profited off of it

• ghosted me multiple times and even didn’t reply when I told them their behaviour is scaring me/making me suicidal.

• posts photos of naked people and herself in s*xual situations when she doesn’t get her way

• posts instagram notes app poetry instead of replying directly

• writes letters to herself from a different character “To [their name], from [insert made up character name]” that seems to be based or inspired by me

• glorifies cheating and two timing in her writing saying things like “I’m bad”

• tries to compete with me even though she is more successful

• reacts every time I do something online to the point I’ve deactivated everything because if she perceives me as being happy there will be all hell to pay

• all her closest colleagues have eventually quit collaborating with her

• tries to manipulate me into polyamory

• her now bipolar ex-girlfriend used to post s*xual photos of them together on instagram and disturbing photos of hickeys (these women are late 20s btw)

• when she was angry at me she would post photos of her now ex-girlfriend’s buttcrack or nudes of herself. she also did this if i was too nice to her.

• completely takes advantage of the power imbalance between us

• her new girlfriend/situationship is a teenage girl - she met her at 17 while she was 27, took nude and s*xual photos of her at 18, and published them in a photobook under a fake name. Photos of her naked on the toilet, bloody hands, topless in bed etc. this girl is 19 and she is 29.

• when i told her she is ruining my ability to feel safe online and i hated my life because it was so frustrating having to deal with all this she posts on her instagram story that she “loves her fun life”.

• the moment i started talked about rings and marriage while she was two timing with the teenage girl she exchanged rings with her. Initially I thought she got a new ring that meant something but I was betrayed once again.

• she admits she has low empathy

• jokes that she is a pervert

• says things like “if you’re crying, I will need to see that because I’m a pervert”

• in her writing she said that she yawns in boredom when someone is crying

• she says she doesn’t recognise herself in the mirror.

• says she is scared of love yet it’s the topic she raves on about the most

• says that she can’t recall huge chunks of the day, “I am back where I started as if the day never happened.”

• lives on her own timeline and pretends that it’s a different year - instead of 2026, to her it could be 2023 or 2024.

• has to eat sour patch kids often, I assume to stop her from dissociating

• steals the style, personality and interests of whoever she is in a relationship with

• sometimes doesn’t know where she is

• writes and draws things about a hat-man or other weird scary demonic characters

for context: I have done nothing wrong to this person. They kept lovebombing and I told them I loved them (I meant it) and then the hacking, aggression and accusations came after that. I haven’t contacted them this entire year and never want to again but I can’t stop ruminating. This is very psychologically disturbing and I’m still trying to make sense of what happened and what on earth is going on with this person’s mental state

Trigger Warning: This post discusses psychological manipulation, gaslighting, identity theft, and systematic abuse tactics. Please read with caution.

I had someone in my life who I later discovered was a malignant narcissist. They did everything these predators do, and in the process, I lost all trust in the people around me who I thought I could count on. It was painful, but I eventually had to cut contact not just with them but with many of the people in that social circle who became their weapons against me. Now I'm slowly preparing for my future and healing from what I went through.

What I Learned About Their Psychology and Tactics

After going through this systematically destructive experience, I spent time researching and analyzing their behavior patterns. What I discovered wasn't just someone being difficult—this was calculated psychological warfare designed to steal my identity and destroy my reality.

The Identity Theft That Shocked Me Most The most devastating thing they did was something called "pathological projective identification." They dumped ALL their toxic traits onto me—their shame, anger, instability, and manipulativeness—while simultaneously stealing ALL my positive qualities as if they owned them. My creativity became their brilliant ideas. My empathy became their emotional intelligence. My achievements became accomplishments they took credit for.

What shocked me most was watching them get praised by others for the very qualities they'd stolen from me, while I was being criticized for the negative traits they'd projected onto me. I was being punished for their flaws while they were celebrated for my strengths. It was like watching someone wear my identity like a costume while I was left holding all their psychological garbage.

How They Made Me Question My Sanity: DARVO They used a manipulation pattern called DARVO—Deny what happened ("That never happened"), Attack my credibility ("You're mentally unstable"), and Reverse victim-offender roles ("I'm the real victim here"). I lived through this cycle repeatedly until I started questioning my own memory and perception. Research shows this actually causes brain changes that weaken your ability to process reality.

The Isolation Campaign Perhaps the most painful part was watching them systematically turn my support network against me through smear campaigns. People I trusted became "flying monkeys" who unknowingly carried out their agenda. My friends and family started believing I was the problem, leaving me completely alone. The betrayal wasn't just from the narcissist—it was from an entire network of people I thought cared about me.

How They Contaminated Hope Itself One thing that angered me most was how they weaponized hope. They'd give false promises of change during "hoovering" attempts, then mock hope itself when their lies crumbled. "See? Hope is pointless," they'd say. They wanted me to become as cynical and hopeless as they were internally.

Why I Had to Walk Away Completely

The hardest decision was cutting contact not just with them, but with many people in that social circle. When your own support network has been weaponized against you, sometimes complete withdrawal is the only path to sanity. It wasn't antisocial behavior—it was a survival strategy born from recognizing that staying connected to a contaminated network meant continued exposure to manipulation and retraumatization.

My Journey to Understanding

Now I'm slowly rebuilding my life and preparing for my future. Fortunately, I'm someone who actually enjoys solitude, so I don't feel lonely—which I consider a real blessing in this situation. I've spent a long time alone, processing what happened to me, analyzing their tactics and psychology, and putting it all into writing.

Initially, I had no idea what malignant narcissism was. I couldn't even put into words what had been done to me. When I tried therapy, I couldn't properly explain what I'd experienced. The therapists just diagnosed me with severe depression and said I was "overly sensitive" or "too anxious." It was frustrating because I knew something much more specific and calculated had happened to me, but I lacked the language to describe it.

It took a long journey of research and self-reflection to finally understand that what I experienced was systematic psychological abuse designed to steal my identity and destroy my reality. Learning about malignant narcissism gave me the vocabulary I desperately needed.

I should mention that AI has been incredibly helpful in allowing me to express all of this in language that I can now articulate clearly. Being able to process and organize these complex psychological concepts has been crucial to my healing.

I'm sharing this here because I discovered this community exists, and I hope my experience might help someone else who's going through something similar and struggling to find the words for what happened to them.

Have you experienced this phenomenon that you reflect and realize that whenever you had to spend time with the abusive person you have been in complete detachment and as they weren’t physically around you could finally breathe?

I can look at someone and sense if they're dangerous, even if others think they're nice. I've had panic attacks where I've had to leave the room because of this. I avoid crowds, hate hearing people's voices.

I also can't stand looking at blood, injuries or anyone in pain anymore because I start physically feeling it too. This never used to be me. I was always the fixer. Also very hypersensitive to physical touch, smell and sounds which again is surprising. My pain threshold's lowered a lot.

I was supposed to get stronger. What's going on?

Hi all,

Content note: mention of sexual harassment

I’ve been really struggling with letting my no contact decision settle in my body. It’s caused me stress, tinnitus to increase, and restlessness/loss of sleep. And So much of it I recognize now as I continue on a healing journey involved talk therapy and somatic healing, has to do with never having the abuse acknowledged and even the way I ultimately went no contact had to be almost like I tricked my parents and relatives. And I find that so messed up and really unsettling and disturbing and what makes this process particularly difficult is often people don’t give those of us who cut off parents specifically the same grace as they do victims of abuse by others. When I review the process of going NC for me, it’s actually been very similar to experiences of escaping sexual harassers, which is so disturbing and yet it was the only way as a narcissist will not respect your decision to go NC, at times it’s actually a trigger for them that makes them harass u even more.

And please note I know it’s not the same, but I’m speaking of similarities in what it can often take to “leave” or “escape”.

I slowly cut off contact with the entire family and went low contact first with hard rock responses before eventually saying “I’m changing my number but u can text me here still and I’ll respond on weekends” then fading away. I’m a combination of the scapegoat/abandoned child of the family so I’m sure I am now just spoken of as the cold difficult one and they’re getting supply in that way. But they don’t know where I live, where I work, and even my extended family is cut off now.

And I’m realizing this process of becoming liberated is very similar to escaping a violent domestic abuser or sexual harasser, one where you might have to change your name and number and move away. I once actually already had to do that because of a man who married into the family and began sexually harassing me online. I was young and his online subtle threats + lack of police support since apparently I couldn’t file a restraining order and could only solve it in family court, which I knew is what he wanted (attention). I simply never responded, changed my number and moved away to be left only to deal with the mental health repercussions of it all. (Note: this incident also allowed me to recognize how abusive my nmother and nsister were because of their lack of support “it’s just part of being a woman, deal with it” and sister even laughing at me).

Reflecting on both of these experiences and finding the similarities has been eerie. But it has helped it settle in my body somehow, I guess it’s giving me deep validation in a society that often views “no contact” as us being petty or unforgiving.

Now I’m also just dealing with the anger and grief of having to experience all of that growing up, I’m 35f, and much of the abuse happened even after moving out and on my own since age 17.

Sharing all this in case the comparison helps, though I know they’re not exactly the same but certainly do have some places where they can be similar.

Also, has anyone found ways of processing the grief of it all? Grieving our younger self’s?

They like it
…if we’re broken
Subbed
Shamed
Defeated
Humiliated
Subdued
Left behind
Hurt
Stamped down
Losers
Lost out….
What do I do knowing that they revel and celebrate this?
Knowing that I found a way to be ok….

Maybe it's obvious to you, but narcs are coming to this sub. They're sometimes commenting, and they learn from techniques to deal with them - they hate dr Ramani.
They obviously don't want to improve and they don't care about the damage they cause, only to pass as victims of their conditions (rings a bell?).

Be careful out there and if you don't believe me, check their subs. it's eye opening but very triggering,

PS: Case in point, see one of the comments I answered below!