Those emotions weren’t created by the narcissist; they were already inside you. This relationship simply tore the lid off. You used to hide your real needs to take care of everyone else. You used to swallow your pain so nobody would call you weak. You became the calm one in chaotic environments, living in your head to avoid feeling your fear of being left behind. The narcissist appeared just when you could no longer see what was truly happening in your own heart.
Through inconsistency, this connection pushed you out of “I’m fine” into the raw territory of real emotion. When love came too fast, you felt valuable. When it became unpredictable, you felt anxious and unsafe. When you were made to feel not enough, it cut into old memories you had forgotten were still there. You thought you were addicted to the narcissist, but you were really clinging to the feeling that had been awakened: the feeling of being alive, of being wanted, of being seen.
The tragedy is that your heart was awakened by someone who simultaneously suffocated it. But the awakening itself was real. This connection made you feel everything you once promised yourself you would never feel again: fear, humiliation, loneliness, the ache for unconditional love, anger you buried, and vulnerability you avoided. Without this storm, you might have walked through the rest of your life never truly knowing what your own heart needs to heal, to grow, and to become whole.
The narcissist became an exam you never asked for, but once it landed, you couldn’t ignore it. You had to face your real fears, your real needs, and your real limits. You met the narcissist to awaken emotions that had been sleeping inside you—not to drag you back to them, but to lead you back to your own heart.
Reason Three: They force you to discover the boundaries you never dared to set. Another reason this encounter was written into your story is simple and piercing: you needed to learn boundaries. Before the narcissist, you thought of yourself as kind, patient, compassionate, and giving. You saw these qualities as pure light but didn’t always recognize the shadow hiding underneath—the part that let others decide how far they could go with you. You rarely said, “This is too much.” You explained and re-explained, kept the peace even when your heart was breaking, forgave even when there was no real change, and fixed what you didn’t break.
Then the narcissist walked into your life like a final exam on this subject. They pushed past every unspoken limit, dismissed your feelings because you had been dismissing them too. They crossed lines you never drew and made outrageous demands because you were used to carrying emotional weight for everyone else. You weren’t weak; you were unprotected. The narcissist simply turned up the volume until you could no longer pretend it was normal. The discomfort you once tolerated became pain you couldn’t endure.
When rage came, you tried to calm it. When love disappeared, you tried to fix yourself. When blame was thrown at you, you tried to be better. Through that cycle, something sacred started to rise in you—a holy “no.”
7 Conditions Under Which Narcissists Collapse
Continue reading on the next page
Sharing is caring!
Leave a Comment