These individuals, like all individuals that are self centered never had the ability to appreciate you and your feelings and boundaries. Instead of respecting YOUR identity, you were supposed to cater to THEIR identity. This can go way back for a person who was raised to only have value when the parents got THEIR needs met.

These terms like emotional neglect and emotional abuse and emotional blackmail are all ways of describing what can happen to a child growing up where the parent or parents fail to realize their job as a parent is to help the child develop their OWN identity instead of constantly trying to control who or what that child can be. And that a parent is constantly deciding the value of the child, even in telling the child not to feel this or that. And then often parents are so busy with their own challenges and wants and needs that they fail to think about the child's needs. Sometimes without realizing it the parent actually teaches their child what to see as normal and that can lead that child down a very unhealthy road where they gravitate to the wrong people because something is familiar or someone is being nice to them only to use them.

There are times where a grievence can go back very far, a familar hurt that causes us to feel worse about a failed relationship than we consciously realize. Often a person is raised to believe they are supposed to love a parent or a sibling even when that parent or sibling isn't nice or may even be selfish. Even in religion often we are told to love thy neighbor even when thy neighbor is selfish and disrespects our boundaries. We are supposed to be good and love them anyway? Honor thy parents? Even if thy parents behave badly and are mean to each other and neglect our needs?

Growing up I watched my father be mean to my mother. And my mother would say "we have to accept people for the way they are". My father only saw something as important IF IT WAS IMPORTANT TO HIM. I remember my mother spending time to look beautiful when they went out and every single time when my mother came down the stairs my father ALWAYS found something to say to deflate her ego.

When I sit and read about narcissistic behaviors, there are so many things that I read that bring back memories of how my father treated my mother. A child has no idea what that means but THEY FEEL IT. That can cause that child to navigate their life thinking some of these behaviors are "normal" when they are instead unhealthy. Also, this can actually lead this child to gravitate to someone who is nice to them, but someone who is only being nice to them TO USE THEM.

The truth is that some people simply cannot SEE you no matter how nice you are as a person. The individual just want's an audience, a kind of fan club to service their fragile ego. You are permitted to be in their orbit as long as you are "useful" to them. What are the tells? Often a tell is "you don't make me feel good so I am discarding you". Then they will say "you did this and that when you should have done this instead", so they WANT to make sure you are left feeling you are not "good enough" and that is because this other person needed to have "all the power and attention". So, you were charmed and then discarded. You were only wonderful if you served and serviced, only given to so that you would serve. They say "I am special" otherwise I am angry. This you must believe.

This is why you feel your energy is sucked out of you. These type of individuals get good at sucking people into their drama. There was something you enjoyed, something that made you feel worthy somehow right? Well, you have to get "something" to keep you present right? They DO know this and they feed you just enough so you keep FEEDING THEM.