Is there a link between anxiety and emotional / narcissistic abuse?
So many people that connect with me that have been victims of narcissistic abuse have been left with anxiety, including me. I got curious about the link between the two and started to think about why it happens and ways that we can cope or overcome the legacy of anxiety.
This article is about what I found and what I think.
As always only take what feels right to you.
An emotionally abusive relationship will make you doubt yourself, erode your self-worth and confidence and leave you feeling confused, anxious and often depressed.
The strategies employed by emotional abusers and narcissists are so well refined that we don’t notice that they are happening. To those of us that have not been abused this sounds ridiculous, but please know that being in a relationship with an emotional abuser or narcissist is just like being in a cult. In some ways its worse because at least if you are recruited into a cult your friends and family know this and they are on high alert and they try to get you back.
When you are in an abusive situation the person that is abusing you works very hard to create a fake persona so that other people have no idea that they are so very different behind closed doors.
They put a whole load of time and effort into projecting an image of being kind, charming, caring and generally lovely – believe me it is shocking to everyone around you if you dare to say that this person is harming you, and this is perfect for your abuser because it means that you are less likely to speak up and ask for help because you will not be believed.
By the time you know that something is not right, your self-confidence is so low and you have so many confusing thoughts due to gaslighting that you are unsure of reaching out because you don’t really know what to say and you have no belief in your own decisions or assessment of the situation.
Make no mistake, it is crushing to be a victim of emotional abuse.
This kind of abuse disassembles who you once were and you lose yourself gradually but definitely as you begin to adapt your behaviour over time to avoid conflict and punishment.
You become a weird kind of subservient but always publicly protecting the fake persona for fear of consequences that are covertly threatened at all times, an insidious undercurrent in your life that makes you walk on egg shells and live in fight or flight. The world feels hostile and you are isolated with no healthy references to draw on.
I believe that the anxiety state is partly created by conditioning.
The abuser uses a cycle that gives you specific emotional highs and lows and the chemistry to match.
Think about the most famous experiment in conditioning – Pavlov’s Dogs.
The dogs were conditioned to salivate when they heard a bell because the bell was used to signal that food was coming. The sound of the bell created a feeling and a physiological response, their body chemistry changed and this made them salivate.
When you are being emotionally abused you are exposed to a cycle of things being very good and then things being very bad. When they are good you are rewarded by the abuser and they are accepting of you, they show you more kindness (or less hostility) and they may even shower you with gifts, send you text messages, want to be physically affectionate and generally be a whole lot nicer. This creates a feeling of relief in you and the happy hormones start to flood your system, it’s a chance to breathe and relax a little, and you probably tell yourself in these moments that actually they are ok and that you can make it work after all.
Since your self-worth has been so damaged and since you also crave the feeling of relief and the happy hormones, you work hard to get yourself back into favour and will adapt your behaviour to what they want in order to experience this. This is called maladaptive behaviour.
It’s not the way that you would usually behave, its an adaptation of this so that you can please them and avoid punishment / conflict and also reach for those moments of relief and the happier hormones. This maladaptive behaviour is also called “people pleasing.”
So it’s time to the good times roll!?
But you don’t feel really relaxed and happy do you?
You’re on edge and anxious and waiting for the game to change because you now it will.
That bell is gonna ring loud and clear any minute and you are not going to see it coming.
Because they like to control you and keep you in a state of fight or flight.
So you are super careful not to trigger them.
You walk on egg shells and you do what you have to do in order to keep the peace.
This is maladaptive behaviour and its actually not keeping the peace, in truth its you giving your power away because you are scared of the consequences.
Even the “happy” times are times when you are guarded and not allowed to totally be yourself.
Then you do something to trigger them or maybe they are lacking the oxygen that a good drama brings, they need you to validate them, bull them up and make them feel good.
(At their core they have massive worthiness issues.)
A quick way for them to raise their self-worth artificially and temporarily is to pull you down.
By doing this they can psychologically feel superior to you and this gives them narcissistic supply and an inflated sense of self, they are so broken and so unwilling to take responsibility that they will never do the work needed to truly bolster their worthiness and confidence by healing their past wounds and amending their toxic ways.
Once they are triggered we move onto a part of the cycle where they punish you.
There may be a favoured method or they may take a mix and match approach.
Common punishments may be the withdrawal of love and affection, ignoring you, being in a huff, going out and not coming back, not having sex with you, no longer engaging, a tantrum, flirting with other people, covert bullying, ghosting you, cooking for themselves and not you, gaslighting you and much more. Sometimes its subtle and sometimes its not, but all of the time its damaging, distressing confusing and deliberate. It’s also done in order to put you in a state of anxiety and needing to work your way back into favour, so it triggers your people pleasing pattern and every time you engage in this you lose a bit more of your sense of self and your self-respect.
They decide when you are back in favour and the “good” times start to roll again.
This is your reward – Pavlov fed the dog.
But you know that the bell will ring, and you can’t ever fully relax.
This is how I believe anxiety is created when you are in a narcissistic and emotionally abusive relationship, and its why it stays with you afterwards as well. Even if you manage to get out and regroup, you need to work really hard at overcoming this conditioning. Being aware of it is the first step to freedom and knowing that you have an ingrained pattern of anticipating a punishment and living in fight or flight.
This fires extra adrenalin around your system and can lead to adrenal fatigue and burn out, physical exhaustion as well as anxiety can be symptoms of emotional abuse.
Once you have recognised that this is a pattern that you have been struggling with its super important to be really kind to yourself. Your self-worth is likely very low and you are worn out by the time you realise what has been happening, and its so easy to start to blame yourself for getting into the situation and then staying in it.
Do your best to remind yourself that these people follow a proven system of wearing people down. You will not be the only victim of this, they are clever and they are strategic.
There may have been a past narrative from your abuser that spoke of them being victimised in past relationships and blaming anything that went wrong on the other party, they do this to garner sympathy from you and engage all of your empathic traits so that they can get more emotional investment from you as early as possible. This is not true and its probably true that they have a string of failed relationships behind them because they have done exactly the same to others before you came along, and they will go on to find new people in the future.
Really investing in your self-care is hugely important as you begin to recover to shore your emotional, physical, psychological and spiritual energy up again.
Being really aware of your self-talk can help you to identify beliefs that you may have been programmed with through gaslighting and conditioning that are simply not true.
If you have been left with ongoing anxiety that is problematic then you may need to see a doctor, never hesitate to reach out even if you feel its “borderline” your mental health matters hugely and your doctor would far rather see you than not if you are in any doubt.
I hope that this blog helps you to join up the dots on why we have anxiety when we are in an abusive situation and also how the conditioning means that it can linger even once the relationship may have ended. In my experience being able to name and claim something can bring it into the light of awareness and help us to begin to work with it and heal.
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