Narcissis husband and working through trauma

((TR)) I hear that.


In your words I hear you finding quiet strength even if you are not feeling it yet.


Maybe this is the time to begin to just imagine the choices, so that when you’ve gathered the strength you can build a plan around those choices, speak what is true for you, create a life that feels like it belongs to you with your boys encouraging you.


Be safe. Be careful.

My husband was like this too. When I told him that remembering his verbal abuse was giving me panic attacks, his response was that he has panic attacks all the time. When I told him I was depressed, his response was that he had been depressed for years.


It didn't matter what I was feeling, or that he was causing me pain. It was irrelevant.


If I called his behavior abuse, he would explode on me. Then turn it around and say that I was the one being abusive to him. I believed him. I started to question everything I had ever done.





For me, that feeling was anger. At first, I wasn't even sure why I was angry. With time and therapy, I came to realize I was angry because he'd been abusing me for years.


You can only numb your feelings for so long. Eventually you will have to feel them. It's not pleasant.


Your instinct to run away is a good one. Try to listen to it.





I had reasons for staying too. I'm sure to the outside world they seemed stupid, but they were my reasons. Whatever your reasons are, they are valid. The very few people I tried to open up to, made me feel so ridiculous and small and completely alone because of what he was doing to me and that I was still with him. If anyone in your life has done the same thing, I'm so sorry. It's bad enough having to deal with your abuser, but when outsiders pile on too, it's terrible. I hope you have some outside support.


And remember, he made promises when you got married too. Is he keeping his promises?





I never got around to leaving. He ended up doing something that got him arrested and so he's gone now. If you want out, but feel trapped, build up your support network. I found a support group for DV survivors. They've been there so they don't judge. That's important. It helps to be able to talk about the abuse in a non-judgmental environment. They and my therapist finally talked me into going to a DV agency and making a safety plan once things started escalating rapidly. I did that the week before he got arrested. I'd like to think that I would have been able to actually extricate myself from the marriage, but I honestly don't know.


Feel free to PM me if you ever want to talk.

I hear you on transmuting anger (valid anger!) into numbness, TR. I'm like that with my parents and abuser brother since I live in the same house with them still. Expressing the anger, in however small a way, would get me into trouble so I turn it into numbness or self-harm.

Are you able to feel anger in a safe space such as with your T?

T often wants me to be assertive with my parents and brother even though they often react with anger or guilt trips.

Keep in mind that your anger is valid even if your H will only react dismissively, hurtfully or cruelly.

We have talked about me being angry in session. Expressing it and voicing it as anger, without being pushed to the very edge of my control, is something that I can't seem to do.

Last week I was talking about my mom and how she makes me SO angry. My counselor made the comment that I didn't sound angry in the least bit. He was talking about my tone of voice and what I was saying about it.

What's ironic is that I was so mad internally that I was seeing silver sparkles on the outside of my vision. I looked that up and its a sign of your blood pressure shooting up very high.

So I WAS angry and internally felt it, but to my counselor he saw no anger.

Seems to me right now that that is a learned protective skill.

I wasn't allowed to be angry when I was young either. I guess I adapted.

When I do show emotion in my voice if I am talking to him about something that frustrates me or makes me angry, he takes great offense to it and accuses me of hollering or "chewing his ### out" which I don't do. He just turns it back onto me. So it really isn't worth it if it gets redirected at me.