How to Forgive Yourself After Narcissistic Abuse

Many narcissistic abuse survivors struggle with guilt about many things, including staying with a narcissist for “too long”, or not going no contact with abusive family members.

However, judging ourselves only prolongs suffering unnecessarily and adds to the considerable darkness and difficulty of narcissistic abuse recovery.

Self-forgiveness can be the key that unlocks the door to a new dawn of healing, restoration of mental health, moving on, and avoiding narcissists in the future.

If you struggle with guilt, you can learn how to forgive yourself right now. Let’s see how.

1) Understand the Complexities of Narcissistic Relationships

First of all, realize that there were circumstances that made putting up with narcissistic abuse seem like a good idea at the time.

You probably had a considerable degree of attachment and/or dependency on the narcissistic person, for starters.

This is not wrong. We are all born 100% dependent on others, and we remain interdependent with others for the rest of our lives. There is nothing shameful or weak about dependency (although a narcissist will see their dependency in you and shame you for it) – so let go of that idea right off the bat.

It’s Not Uncommon to be Deceived, Manipulated and Weakened

Manipulation & Control

People with narcissistic traits or narcissistic personality disorder devote endless amounts of energy over the course of their entire lives to coercing others into propping up their fragile egos.

This involves devoting a lot of energy to manipulating others’ thoughts and perceptions about the narcissist. So narcissists get extremely good at manipulating and controlling others.

Most people are not manipulators or skilled in defending against their tactics. You would have to be a manipulator or have been taught how to defend yourself to recognize skilled manipulators quickly and prevail against them.

Even highly sophisticated, intelligent, experienced, worldly-wise people get fooled by good manipulators. Con artists have made billions this way.

Simply understanding how you have been manipulated by a narcissist takes a lot of mental energy and time. Narcissists hide their selfish and ruthless tendencies behind an attractive façade.

It is completely normal to invest a lot of time and energy in these relationships, only to realize later the extent to which you’ve been manipulated.

You made yourself vulnerable because that is what intimate relationships are all about. It is not your fault that a manipulator trampled on that and betrayed you.

Any guilt for that rests squarely on the narcissist’s shoulders.

Gaslighting and Self-Doubt

Narcissistic abuse means gaslighting, the undermining of your ability to trust your own perceptions.

Traumatizing narcissists skillfully use lies, distortions, confusion generation, and blame-shifting to alienate us from our own selves.

We lose our subjective perspective and treat ourselves like objects – looking at ourselves from the outside (through the narcissist’s distorted lens) in.

You have most likely been cut off from your instincts and did not even recognize that you were in a narcissistically abusive relationship for a long time. By then the patterns were in place.

• In addition to gaslighting, the experience of being treated as if worthless also instills self-doubt
• In addition, your vulnerabilities got weaponized & used against you

Gaslighting & mistreatment eroded your self-confidence and made it seem like a bad idea to trust your instincts and take decisive action.

So have some self-compassion; you were in an extremely difficult situation.

Isolation

Narcissists often isolate their partners from their friends and family members, which makes you feel alone and trapped. Overt or subtle smear campaigns may have been going on. Narcissists curry favor and undermine the status of those who spot or call out their narcissism.

This isolation hindered your ability to garner the support necessary to break free from the narcissistic abuser.

And it’s hard to make a big move like that without strong support.

Power Imbalances

Also, the power dynamics within a narcissistically abusive relationship are skewed in favor of the narcissist, making an escape seem impossible.

Fear of retaliation or escalation of abuse can be a significant barrier to leaving. Narcissists may have threatened or demonstrated violence, smear campaigns, or escalations of abuse when you stood up for yourself in the past. This probably caused you to believe that leaving could trigger a dangerous response from the narcissist.

Narcissistic abuse also probably hindered the development of your abilities and confidence, making you feel helpless and incapable of striking out on your own.

Narcissistic abuse is a complex and difficult situation to extricate oneself from in a disempowered state. So give yourself a break.

You Were Never Given the Tools to Deal with Narcissistic Abuse

Effectively dealing with a narcissist, especially in a close relationship, requires an intuitive, bullshit-detecting, strong, assertive, confident, no-nonsense-tolerated, decisive mindset.

Children aren’t born that way; somebody has to encourage them to develop those qualities. For many of us, those qualities were strongly discouraged or even dangerous to have during our formative years.

Maybe your parent was narcissistic or otherwise abusive or neglectful. As a dependent child, standing up to an abuser upon whom you are completely dependent and who you love (your parents) would have been a dangerous thing. Unfortunately, decades later, standing up for yourself still feels like a bad idea. You were groomed for abuse.

Or maybe your parents simply laid a guilt trip on you and ignored you every time you protested about your needs not being met. You were required to stuff your anger, and “be nice” before you could be admitted back into the society of the family.

Or, maybe you were raised in a way that discouraged the development of boundaries and intuition about unhealthy people and relationships.

Say that an uncle or aunt or family friend didn’t feel right to you; you did not like something about them. You may have been forced to deny your intuition, “make nice” and hug the creepy person anyway.

• You may have gotten the message “Don’t be rude!”
  • (Feel guilty for enforcing your boundaries)  
• Over time you internalized this

Fast forward a few decades and you find yourself not allowing yourself to even recognize abuse, much less stand up to it. You did the best you could with the tools you were allowed to develop.

You were conditioned to feel guilty for not putting up with people such as narcissists. Now you’re guilting yourself for putting up with them for so long – feeling guilty is a habit you were trained into.

When does it end?

Narcissistic abuse recovery means it ends right now.

2) Forgive Yourself to Let Go of Guilt and Heal Toxic Shame

The Reason You Need to Ditch Toxic Guilt & Shame Today

Guilt arises from violating internal values, is associated with behaviors, and can lead to positive behavior change.

Healthy guilt works like this, quickly:

1. I feel guilty about doing / not doing (whatever)
2. Yes, I’ve thought about it and I do indeed regret that; that was a mistake
3. Mental note: I’ll try not to do that again
4. Oh well, it seemed like a good idea at the time
   • To err is human; I forgive myself
   • Now I feel better, I don’t feel guilty anymore
   • I have more energy now
5. I wonder what I could do to make up for it?
   • Plan on doing those things
6. Oh well, live and learn, I think I’ll go do something enjoyable

But if you continue to guilt yourself about past actions, that’s toxic guilt.

You are not forgiving yourself, and you’re stuck at number 3. There’s very little power available to you at step 3. Guilt is a low-energy state of being.

It’s hard to move on, heal, and improve because you haven’t forgiven yourself and you don’t have much energy.

And, the more we guilt ourselves, the more likely we are to develop toxic shame. Toxic shame is about feeling bad about who you are as a person.

Toxic shame is very unhealthy and destructive. It causes low self-esteem, other negative emotions, and destructive behaviors. Here’s a partial list of the known effects of shame:

• Self-criticism, self-blame, self-hatred, self-neglect, self-destructive behaviors, self-sabotaging actions, addictions, self-mutilation, suicidal ideation, accident-proneness, perfectionism, the belief of unworthiness, intense rage, acting out against society, and perpetuating cycles of abuse.

Shame is an even lower energy state than guilt, so it’s easy to get stuck there. Being stuck in a morass of toxic shame delays you from getting better and acting better.

Have you ever been in a state where you’re beating yourself up about something, thinking it’s because of who you are as a person? How can you get out of that situation? It feels permanent. Existence is so heavy, everything is hard, and you can barely drag yourself around.

That’s toxic shame.

Self-forgiveness frees you from the prison of toxic guilt and sets the stage for healing toxic shame … which you already have enough of. The narcissist made sure of that.

• Self-compassion is an effective antidote to toxic shame.

But before you can exercise self-compassion and heal the toxic shame that narcissistic abuse causes, think about this:

• Can we really have deep compassion for somebody we have not forgiven, somebody we’re holding a grudge against?
• It’s no different with ourselves

So before we can enjoy the healing balm of self-compassion for what we’ve suffered, we need to forgive ourselves.

In case you’re still not convinced, here’s even more motivation to forgive yourself and heal toxic shame: if you do, you’ll be more accepting and compassionate toward others. That’s how it works. So if you can’t forgive yourself for your own sake, do it for the world.

Employ These Self-Forgiveness Strategies

Here are a few strategies to help you forgive yourself for staying with a narcissist for too long:

Realize That Self-Forgiveness is the Right Thing to Do

Guilt & refusing to forgive yourself is about shoulds & oughts, right and wrong, and judgments – morality.

But in the Christian faith, which is where a lot of our morality comes from in the Western world, when you ask God for forgiveness, he forgives you instantly and wipes the slate clean. He doesn’t bring it up after that.

If that’s how God treats you, don’t you think he wants you to treat yourself the same way? Wouldn’t forgiving yourself then be the right thing to do?

Or check with any spiritual teacher – they’ll all say the same thing.

To err is human. Welcome to the club.

“It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time”

This is a powerfully freeing thing to say to yourself.

In the past, we’ve all made decisions based on what seemed right at the time, often influenced by unconscious programming. Our confusion and naiveté led us to make suboptimal decisions & embrace less-than-ideal patterns.

On some level, some part of you truly did think that staying with the narcissist for as long as you did was the best course of action that was feasible for you at the time.

Maybe you knew it was a terrible option, but it seemed better than the other options. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have stayed (or still be staying) in the relationship.

We do the best we can until we know better. Learning is a process that unfolds over time.

As seemingly light-hearted as this is about a serious and consequential matter, it’s also 100% true.

Or if that doesn’t work for you, try: “It was the best I could do at the time”.

Say this to yourself right now, and realize it’s true.

Narrate Your Experience of Narcissistic Abuse in a Journal

As you journal to heal from narcissistic abuse, you will realize you were really suffering.

This will automatically dispose you to forgive yourself when you appreciate how much you were truly suffering.

Express Remorse, Apologize & Make Amends To Others

You may feel guilty because others were hurt by your decision to stay with a narcissist for too long. Children come to mind. Or your spouse may have suffered if you stayed in contact with a narcissistic parent for too long.

The past can’t be changed. However, expressing sorrow for others’ suffering, apologizing, and doing what you can to make it up to them will heal them, and allow you to forgive yourself more easily.

You will be validating the others’ experience – and this is very healing after narcissistic abuse.

You can also help them get therapy or coaching, or find support groups for them. Or whatever else is in your power.

Learn From the Experience

Embracing the art of self-forgiveness involves transforming your experiences into valuable life lessons.

Delve deep into the core of your actions and guilt to truly comprehend the reasons behind your behavior. Professional therapy or coaching can help here.

Ask yourself, what measures can you adopt to avoid repeating the same mistakes in the future? Remember, though you may have stumbled, this can serve as an enlightening opportunity to refine your decision-making process and to flourish as an individual.

Heal Toxic Shame: Practice The 3 Elements of Self-Compassion

Now that you’ve forgiven yourself, let’s start healing that toxic shame that narcissistic abuse trauma leaves you with.

1. Self-Kindness vs Self-judgment

Self-judgment is about harsh self-criticism of our suboptimal performance. It causes a downward spiral: self-criticism causes low mood, low mood causes more suboptimal performance, and more harsh self-criticism causes an even lower mood, which causes even worse performance …

Self-kindness involves extending warmth, understanding, and empathy towards oneself during times of mistakes, struggle, personal failure, or emotional pain.

Practicing self-kindness means refraining from harsh self-criticism and talking to oneself with the same care and support that one would offer to a close friend or small child who was struggling with what you’re struggling with.

2. Common Humanity vs Isolation

This element entails recognizing that suffering, setbacks, and imperfections are universal aspects of the human experience.

By acknowledging that we are not alone in our struggles, we can develop a sense of connection with others and avoid the isolating feelings that often arise from believing we are uniquely flawed or inadequate.

Common humanity reminds you that we are all human – and that making mistakes and experiencing setbacks are natural aspects of life. Everybody struggles in a major way at some point … everybody.

3. Mindfulness vs Over-Identification

Mindfulness involves being aware of our struggles and suffering, not ignoring them, but observing them from a slight distance – without identifying with them.

Remember that your struggle, your guilt, your failure … is not everything about you. Through mindfulness, you can observe your pain and struggles, allowing you to respond to them with self-compassion and clarity.

Rather than getting lost in negative self-judgment or trying to suppress uncomfortable emotions, mindfulness allows us to hold our pain and suffering with a balanced awareness, fostering emotional resilience and well-being.

Benefits of Self-Compassion

By practicing self-compassion, you can replace feelings of shame with empathy and self-love. Self-compassion has been proven to increase resilience and emotional well-being.

You might think that if you’re not hard on yourself you’ll repeat your mistakes. The opposite is true – self-compassion has been proven to increase people’s motivation to improve after failing at first.

Self-compassion allows you to recognize and accept your own imperfections with kindness, understanding, and non-judgment. This neutralizes shame. Shame relies on the belief that you are inherently flawed and unworthy of love or acceptance. 

3) Embrace Healing and Cultivate Positive Relationships

Healing from a relationship with a narcissist can be a challenging and painful process, but with dedication and self-awareness, you can cultivate positive relationships and move forward.

It will take a while to deeply heal – but what better use of your time is there? Do the work and the results will follow.

Conquer Low Self-Esteem: Develop Your Self-Esteem Practice

Narcissists destroy your self-esteem, they speak and act as if you don’t matter and have little worth.

You can start turning this around today.

Pia Mellody has a useful way of thinking about self-esteem. It’s not your idea of how worthy you are as a human -it’s not whether you are “worth less” than others or “better than” others. That has to do with your self-concept.

Your self-concept has been hammered by the narcissist and is hard to change immediately as an act of the will.

Instead, Pia Mellody says that self-esteem is a verb – a practice, an activity, a statement that you are either saying or not saying to yourself at any given moment.

Doing self-esteem means you are mentally saying the following words to yourself at any given moment:

• “I matter, as I am.” 
  • Because I have inherent worth
  • Because I’m human and I exist
  • Even if I screwed up big time

This is a habit you can start working on now, it’s fairly easy to believe, it makes you feel good, it gives you energy, and it tends to make you treat others as if they matter also.

Say this to yourself now: “I matter, as I am.”

Take Care of Yourself

• Seek professional help, such as therapy, coaching, or support groups
  • Being with people who’ve been there or who “get it” will help you realize you’re only human and that lots of other great people struggle with the same things
• Set small, attainable goals for emotional healing and self-improvement
  • Even tiny forward momentum requires courage
  • Exercising courage neutralizes guilt & shame
• Start saying “no” to overextending yourself

Get Some Safe & Supportive Relationships

Developing a support network is critical for healing from a narcissistic relationship.

Friends, family, coaches or therapists, and support groups can provide a safe space to share experiences and learn from others who have gone through similar situations.

Additionally, cultivating positive relationships is essential to offset the impact of the previous one with the narcissist. 

Developing new relationships is terrifying to those who have suffered relational trauma. If you’re reading this article, you have most likely suffered relational trauma. Trauma disconnects us from ourselves and others. Healing involves reconnecting.

Try to find at least one safe, supportive person who can validate you, who “gets it” and “gets you”.

Jim McGee

Trauma Informed Coach

NARM-Informed Professional

I bring a blend of personal experience and professional expertise to my work. Having navigated & continuing to navigate my own journey of recovery from CPTSD, I now serve as a puzzle master & voice of experience for fellow travelers on their own path to healing.

Learn More About Me