JACOB STRONG

40 Quotes About Dating A Narcissist That Will Help Heal Your Trauma

I must get my soul back from you. 
“Ultimately, it is not your ability to beat the narcissist at his or her own game that frightens them. Playing games with someone with no remorse or empathy is sure to fail. Rather, it is your ability to seek your own validation and move forward into your success, channeling the experiences that were meant to destroy you into your greatest victories, that is appalling to these predators. How dare their former victims become independent of their bullying and become even greater in spite of it? Oh, but they can, and they will.”
— Shahida Arabi, Becoming the Narcissist's Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself
Tagged: Abusive Relationships, bullying, Narcissist
“The difference between constructive criticism and destructive criticism is the presence of a personal attack and impossible standards. These so-called ‘critics’ often don’t want to help you improve, they just want to nitpick, pull you down and scapegoat you in any way they can. Abusive narcissists and sociopaths employ a logical fallacy known as ‘moving the goalposts’ in order to ensure that they have every reason to be perpetually dissatisfied with you. This is when, even after you’ve provided all the evidence in the world to validate your argument or taken an action to meet their request, they set up another expectation of you or demand more proof.”
— Shahida Arabi, 20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You
Tagged: criticize, Sociopath, Control
“Remember – highly manipulative people don’t respond to empathy or compassion. They respond to consequences.”
— Shahida Arabi, 20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You
Tagged: Manipulative, Control, Consequences
“Toxic people don’t argue with you, they essentially argue with themselves and you become privy to their long, draining monologues. They thrive off the drama and they live for it. Each and every time you attempt to provide a point that counters their ridiculous assertions, you feed them supply. Don’t feed the narcissists supply – rather, supply yourself with the confirmation that their abusive behavior is the problem, not you. Cut the interaction short as soon as you anticipate it escalating and use your energy on some decadent self-care instead.”
— Shahida Arabi, 20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You
Tagged: Toxic Relationships, Abuse
“Covert abuse is often the most horrific abuse there is, because there are no visible battle wounds to verify the abuse – only the aftermath of psychological terror. Furthermore, the victim is labeled as ‘crazy’ whenever they identify the abuse and call it out.’”
— Shahida Arabi, POWER: Surviving and Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse
Tagged: Abuse, Bad Relationships, crazy
“Regardless of what our vulnerabilities and wounds are, we do not deserve to be abused or mistreated. Being a trauma survivor does not mean we deserve extra wounding or that we ask for it – quite the contrary. It makes the person who is attempting to wound us by using our past wounds all the more sick for doing so.”
— Shahida Arabi, Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself
Tagged: Vulnerable, Past, Heartbreak, Abuse
“Just because your pain is understandable, doesn’t mean your behavior is acceptable.”
— Steve Maraboli, Dr. Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Tagged: Pain, Heartbreak, Abuse
“Highly sensitive beings suffer more but they also love harder, dream wider and experience deeper horizons and bliss. When you’re sensitive, you’re alive in every sense of this word in this wildly beautiful world. Sensitivity is your strength. Keep soaking in the light and spreading it to others.’”
— Victoria Erickson, Victoria Erickson, Writer
Tagged: Love, Sensitive, human
“Narcissists and sociopaths are aware of their actions and the impact of their actions – we know this not only from the voices of narcissists and sociopaths themselves but also in the way they smear their victims and the various methods they use to escape accountability such as gaslighting and projection. You cannot plot to blame someone else for your actions if you are not aware of your own blame and are attempting to escape exposure. You also cannot switch your mask rapidly from the true self to the false self when there is a witness if your behavior is not under your conscious control.”
— Shahida Arabi, Becoming the Narcissist's Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself
Tagged: Love, Hate, Abuse, Self Absorbed
“It has been my experience that the one that families call the ‘crazy one’ is often the sane one. This is particularly true in very dysfunctional families where ideas of healthy functioning are turned upside down. In these families, members often repress their authentic feelings and turn against anyone who reminds them of their unresolved issues and patterns. As a result, the truth-speakers, the ones who refuse to contain their feelings, those who challenge and humanize the toxic status quo, are often scapegoated and vilified, made to feel crazy by those who lack the courage and insight to see beyond the family's madness…If you have been labeled the 'crazy one', take heart. You are truly not alone. Most great creators and paradigm-shifters were met with fiery resistance by those afraid to grow. Whatever you do, do not allow your voice to fade away in the face of their messaging. Your voice, your vision, your ways of being, live at the heart of your unique soul's journey and are the key to collective transformation. No one has the right to bury them under a bushel of shame. No one! And remember- what is crazy to an unconscious person is often brilliantly sane to one who is awakening. Without you, we are lost. Blessed be the 'crazy' ones!”
— Jeff Brown, Soulshaping
Tagged: Soul, Spirit, Blessed
“Covert narcissists blind you with their saccharine sweetness: they present the perfect public image, routinely go on their knees to pray, say their mantras on their yoga mats, preach ‘peace and compassion,’ all the while plotting on how to best stab you in the back. In some ways, covert narcissists are worse than overt ones. At least overt ones are open about how awful they really are.”
— Shahida Arabi, POWER: Surviving and Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse
Tagged: Abuse, Bad Relationships
“My past has not defined me, destroyed me, deterred me, or defeated me; it has only strengthened me.”
— Steve Maraboli, Dr. Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Tagged: Past, strength, Destroy
“God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”
— Sylvia Plath, Mad Girl's Love Song
Tagged: Poetry, Love, Hate
“Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.”
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Tagged: Happiness, Success
“Dr. Helen Fisher discovered that the ‘frustration-attraction’ experience of obstacles in a romantic relationship actually elevates feelings of love rather than eradicating them. In fact, she noted that the brain is activated in a similar way when we are in adversity-ridden relationships as they are in cocaine addicts. Toxic love is, quite literally, a drug addiction.’”
— Shahida Arabi, POWER: Surviving and Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse
Tagged: Toxic, Addiction, Bad Relationships
“I became accustomed to the cruelty and the raging storms
The silent glare followed by the teasing eyes
The sweet nothings and the callous words
Bruising the soul and battering the mind.”
— Shahida Arabi, SHE WHO DESTROYS THE LIGHT: Fairy Tales Gone Wrong,
Tagged: Brutal, Bruise, cruel
“Leave the man who breaks your wings
And uses them as crutches
Just so he can learn to fly.’”
— Shahida Arabi, SHE WHO DESTROYS THE LIGHT: Fairy Tales Gone Wrong
Tagged: Leaving, Dreams, Doormats
“Spend even ten minutes arguing with a toxic narcissist and you’ll find yourself wondering how the argument even began at all. You simply disagreed with them about their absurd claim that the sky is red and now your entire childhood, family, friends, career and lifestyle choices have come under attack. That is because your disagreement picked at their false belief that they are omnipotent and omniscient, resulting in a narcissistic injury.”
— Shahida Arabi, 20 Diversion Tactics Highly Manipulative Narcissists, Sociopaths And Psychopaths Use To Silence You
Tagged: Toxic, Narcissist, Disagree
“Empaths are not your punching bags. Trauma isn’t a justification to mistreat others. There is no excuse to abuse someone else. While I love to help others, as an empath, I am not responsible for fixing your life or catering to your toxicity. I am not responsible for managing your triggers, walking on eggshells or telling you what you want to hear in order to keep the peace. I am not your emotional punching bag nor am I your emotional sponge. I do not exist for your pleasure or as a site for your projected pain. My responsibility is to myself – to be my own person and stay true to myself – to heal my own wounds, manage my own triggers, and engage in self-care so that I can give to others authentically without depleting myself in the process. My responsibility is to maintain healthy boundaries – especially with those who are unhealthy.”
— Shahida Arabi, Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself
Tagged: Trauma, Responsibility, unhealthy
“We can own our agency in exploring our relationship patterns without resorting to victim-blaming. Healing from narcissistic abuse or a lifetime of trauma requires that we unravel both types of wounds layered upon each other – past and present.”
— Shahida Arabi, Becoming the Narcissist’s Nightmare: How to Devalue and Discard the Narcissist While Supplying Yourself
Tagged: Relationship, Healing, Narcissistic
“You’re tone-deaf to verbal abuse. Many unloved daughters experienced put-downs, disparagement, and verbal aggression in their childhoods and all too often, they have either internalized these messages as true or have somehow come to think of them as ‘normal.’ This is especially true if the daughter is still actively working on somehow salvaging or repairing her relationship to her mother. Your inability to recognize emotional toxicity, alas, gives the narcissist a stronger foothold in your life than he otherwise would and also permits him to use additional weapons to cow, bully, and control you without your protesting. It’s another thing he likes about you.”
— Peg Streep, Why Unloved Daughters Fall For Narcissists
Tagged: Abuse, Relationships, Toxic, Emotional
“But the woman came to her then. The woman with hair of red like roses, hair of white like snowfall. She was young and old. She was blind and could see everything. She spoke softly, in whispers, but her voice carried across the mountain ranges like sleeping giants, the cities lit like fairies and the oceans – undulating mermaids. She laughed at her own sorrow and wept pearls at weddings. Her fingers were branches and her eyes were little blue planets.

She said, ‘You cannot hide forever, though you may try. I’ve seen you in the kitchen, in the garden. I’ve seen the things you have sewn – curtains of dawn, twilight blankets and dresses for the sisters like a garden of stars. I have heard the stories you tell. You are the one who transforms, who creates. You can go out into the world and show others. They will feel less alone because of you, they will feel understood, unburdened by you, awakened by you, freed of guilt and shame and sorrow. But to share with them you must wear shoes, you must go out, you must not hide, you must dance, and it will be harder – you must face jealousy and sometimes rage and desire and love which can hurt most of all because of what can then be taken away. So make that astral dress to fit your own body this time. And here are the glass shoes made from your words, the stories you have told like a blower with her torch forming the thinnest, most translucent sheets of light out of what was once sand. But be careful; sand is already broken but glass breaks. The shoes are for dancing, not for running away.’”
— Francesca Lia Block, The Rose and The Beast: Fairy Tales Retold
Tagged: Dancing, Running, Alone
“YOUR ABUSIVE PARTNER DOESN’T HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HIS ANGER; HE HAS A PROBLEM WITH YOUR ANGER. One of the basic human rights he takes away from you is the right to be angry with him. No matter how badly he treats you, he believes that your voice shouldn’t rise and your blood shouldn’t boil. The privilege of rage is reserved for him alone. When your anger does jump out of you—as will happen to any abused woman from time to time—he is likely to try to jam it back down your throat as quickly as he can. Then he uses your anger against you to prove what an irrational person you are. Abuse can make you feel straitjacketed. You may develop physical or emotional reactions to swallowing your anger, such as depression, nightmares, emotional numbing, or eating and sleeping problems, which your partner may use as an excuse to belittle you further or make you feel crazy.”
— Lundy Bancroft, Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
Tagged: Control, Power, Relationships
“It appears to me that children are wired to release fear through angering and crying. The newborn baby, mourning the death of living safely and fully contained inside the mother, utters the first of many angry cries not only to call for nurturance and attention, but also to release her fear. In the dysfunctional family however, the traumatizing parent soon punishes the child for emoting. The child becomes afraid and ashamed of her own tears and anger. Tears get shut off and anger gets trapped inside and is eventually turned against the self as self-attack, self-hate, self-disgust, and self-rejection. Self-hate is the most grievous reenactment of parental abandonment.”
— Pete Walker, GRIEVING and COMPLEX PTSD
Tagged: Self love, Self Hate
“when you are broken
and he has left you
do not question
whether you were
enough
the problem was
you were so enough
he was not able to carry it.”
— Rupi Kaur, milk and honey
Tagged: broken, Problems, Carry
“Remember that time you gave me a black heart instead of black eyes
Warped words instead of scraped knees
Yet it still hurt, just the same?
Remember that time you used your silence
to bruise my broken soul,
which could’ve just as easily been broken bones
Because sometimes contempt hurts even more deeply
than sticks and stones?"”
— Shahida Arabi, Remember That Time You Emotionally Abused Me?
Tagged: Time, Silence, Broken Soul
“You may be one of those individuals who find it hard to accept the notion that there really are people as cunning, devious, and ruthless as your gut tells you the manipulator in your life is. That is, you may even be prone to engage in ‘neurotic’ denial. If you are, even when you’re confronted with abundant evidence you’re dealing with a ruthless conniver, you may refuse to believe it, reluctantly accepting reality only after being victimized too often”
— George K. Simon, George K. Simon Ph.D., In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People
Tagged: Individual, Engage, Reality, Refuse
“While the feeling of being unloved may be true at this moment, being unloved is a lie. This is a damaging falsehood that makes children of domestic violence believe they are unworthy of tenderness or care. Of course, all children are loveable and deserve to feel that way. When they don’t, it’s confusing and terrifying to admit: My parents don’t love me. This psychic pain is the worst kind of punishment – just as destructive as physical abuse. In fact, children who feel unloved suffer as much or more psychologically as if they had been physically abused.”
— Brian F. Martin, Tony Robbins Brian F. Martin, Brian F. Martin: Invincible : The 10 Lies You Learn Growing Up with Domestic Violence, and the Truths to Set You Free (Hardcover); 2014 Edition
Tagged: confusing, Love, Suffer
“In part, trauma repetition is an effort by the victim to bring resolution to the traumatic memory. By repeating the experience, the victim tries anew to figure out a way to respond in order to eliminate the fear. Instead, the victim simply deepens the traumatic wound. Note that repetition, like shame, can draw heavily on other forms of traumatic impact: reactivity, arousal, blocking, splitting, and deprivation. Shame and reenactment simply intensify the mind-altering experience of trauma. They become allies of one another. They form a devastation combination when they are part of a trauma bond in which there has been betrayal.’”
— Patrick Carnes, Patrick Carnes Ph.D., The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships
Tagged: Victim, Experience, Betrayal
“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.”
— Judith Lewis Herman, Dr. Judith Lewis Herman M.D., Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Dr. Judith Lewis Herman M.D. (2011-11-07)
Tagged: Attacks, Credibility