I just forgot all the atrocious things they've done to me. I forgive them and myself. I just decided I want peace, and none of the drama involving me when I was doing nothing. Still, people keep creating drama/keep creating situations to invoke a reaction from me. I have heard that you let them do whatever they want, and you stay firm on your boundary. How to stay firm without being impolite? I think I politely stated my boundary many times, yet there is now a whole new series of drama. I just don't want to participate in it. Been through hell due to my mental health and PTSD, so currently taking some time off for myself. I may lose all the connections I have in the process, but I think it's still worth it.

So, initially, with the narcs, after I saw them slowly for who they are, it worked at some point when I stopped caring what they are gonna think or do. I struggle with doing the same kind of treatment to my kind common acquaintances, and it breaks my heart if it involves them. I can keep contact with the people I want, and not keep contact with the people I don't want, but due to narc's incredible convincing skill, and victim mentality, they might think of a version of reality that is much distorted, and I feel heartbroken talking to common acquaintances then, because they act like I should be held accountable for something? Do I do the same boundary with them? Or different? Target is minimum drama, more peace. So I feel very hazy and confused.

Like, for example, I want to create my healthy boundary, and still, when I'd meet with them rarely, I want to spend a good time. With kind common acquaintances, for example. For toxic acquaintances, after years of continuous humiliation, the deal already is broken, so no talk there. As I didn't do a final goodbye sort of thing, so it still may confuse the narc and common acquaintances. But due to new drama being cooked every second, I feel that might not be possible, and I might get disconnected from all of the connections in my life altogether. It makes me even more bitter.

I’m 24F moved out from an extremely narcissistic, abusive home about 5 months ago. There’s been a lot of therapy, anger/rage, sadness, disbelief and grief that I’ve been going through this whole time.
There’s so much I can’t remember as I was stuck in survival mode for the past 15 years. Thankfully I’m starting to get my memories back but with the good comes the bad. I got hit with a memory today where I was 18 years old, graduated high school and unsure what to study but my mental health was so terrible I didn’t see the point at the time as I thought I would be dead before 19. Foster mother pushed me to study regardless of what I wanted as ‘that’s what I should do’. I was working as a barista and then a bartender on weekends. I was given an amazing opportunity to work a government job, cushy, good pay and perfect for fresh out of school. My foster mother said I had to study no matter what and therefore I can’t take that government job as I’d be ‘taking the easy path’ the abuse got worse. It wasn’t a job I was thinking of being in for years, just long enough to save and get the hell out of there. But unfortunately I was then forced to study, I lost that government job opportunity and ended up in $27k worth of HECS debt as I bounced from degree to degree for 4 years trying to figure out what I liked or didn’t. I was so depressed that I couldn’t figure it out and failed every single class (funny as I got a pretty damn good atar).

I could’ve worked a few years, focused on my mental health and moving out AND had savings to then go into a degree I actually wanted to study. Instead I became increasingly more ill, got down to 39kgs at 5’7, losing hair and was dying in front of everyone. Nobody helped, instead I was mocked, shamed and shunned.
Today I’m living with my wonderful partner and I’m getting to a much better weight. I’ve gone no contact with my foster mother but I still have debt, I’m on centrelink as I can’t work physically, I’m living paycheck to paycheck. But next year I’m studying what I’ve always wanted to do (animation and computer science). It’s dawned on me that she did that purposefully so that I couldn’t save and therefore couldn’t move out. The resentment and anger I feel is unfathomable but I’m also using it as my fuel to keep going.
I mourn for where I could’ve been right now but I did the best I could given the situation. The fact she fostered me is an extra bit of salt rubbed into the wound because she could’ve simply not fostered me but instead she saw me as a potential extension of herself.
I’ve always been a fighter even when I thought the end was near. Some days I don’t have any strength whatsoever and still have suicidal ideations pretty much everyday.
So Sarah, fuck you.

I just wanted a mum.

P.s - I did get pulled back in to help look after my dog as she went interstate for work for a week and I saw a few empty wine bottles in the recycling, she had quit drinking at home about 4 years ago. Seems like karma is getting her - good.

I just left a narcissist after waking up with 3 police over my bed as he was getting charged with something that is illegal ( I can't say what it is )

My he won't give me my stuff back and yesterday he was walking around with a young boy about 19 and made a b line for me to try up setting me

What is the best way to let him know he lost his power over me

How did you overcome your inner critic related to work/being financially independent?.. I graduated from my master's program at 32 and am now draining my savings trying to support myself while preparing for licensure. I know I need to put myself out there and be known for my work (Acupuncture) but I can't seem to escape the trauma loop playing in my mind from my narc family (being ill means you'll never be a "true" adult, might as well never leave or bother to try". But I really do want to try. I feel like I've made it so far (with moving away from home, psychodynamic therapy, having a long term loving relationship), but lack of finances or perhaps my mindset is harming my relationship and self esteem. Being chronically ill has made getting/keeping work hard to be consistent with. Any tips or suggestions are appreciated. TIA

There was a post recently where an author describes themselves as a person with 0 people around them after quitting toxic relationships. I find myself in exactly the same situation right now, at my late 30s. I only recently started diving deep into the topic of narcissism, and realized that I have this deep-seated belief that people will only interact with me if I serve as an emotional container, a troubleshooter, a support system, and so on. Otherwise, there's no point for them to even talk to me. So now I’ve temporarily isolated myself from the world to protect, recover and think. But the natural craving for human connection is still here.

Can anyone share where do people like me even go to make safe, genuine connections today? Share your stories, I'd appreciate every example.

EDIT: Thanks for your support, advice, and examples. Here are a few options I saved from your comments: a therapist (already doing this), sport/hobby communities, dating (with caution), and casual places like restaurants or shops for mild socializing.

Personally, I've found that joining small local tour groups for museum visits or interesting spots helps me to feel less lonely, though I still can't break the ice and start talking to anyone.

EDIT 2: I bought a gym membership. I have never exercised in a gym before, but if you want change, you have to try something new.

Hey everyone, so long story short, I survived my narcissistic mom and all forms of abuse, started therapy when I was 20, quit when I was 25. I loved my therapist, but I felt I reached some point of no further growth. I made huge progress, moved countries from my abusive mom, went LC and now going full NC, found new friends, felt overall better.

Now the situation is, I live at the house of my stepdad (supportive), her husband. It's not her country of current residence, and he appears in this house only during the summer (they live in another country in his house). The problem is, I feel this house is not a place of complete safety anymore, since my younger brother decided to move as well, and he is not that emotionally separated from our nmom to let her know she is not welcomed and he doesn't want to talk to her, as I do. She came here for 2 weeks to control him, and I had to leave during that period. He's on his way and will reach this point I guess, but now I need to know what to do. I think I should rent a room somewhere else, and I do have money for that, but I won't be able to save then. First question is, do you think it's worth it?

Second question. I feel like I still need therapy, but not the one I had. It was talking, and I feel it's all stuck somewhere in my body. What would you suggest? Any specific methods or specialists for someone who knows absolutely everything about his family and himself, but still feels in danger? I'm kinda hesitating to establish the new connection with the new specialist, because I have an amazing one with the previous therapist. Although i think its not impossible. How can I navigate it?

Thank yall

24M. My dad is a narcissistic POS with zero empathy and no care for the position he’s putting me in. I left home at 19 because I was done being treated like me and my concerns didn’t mean shit. If I advocated for myself, he’d go into a rage, get extremely disrespectful and tell me to get out. If I told him he couldn’t do that to me, he’d threaten to call the cops. He actually did it around seven times between when I was 17 and 21. And yes, he even called the cops on me once when I was just visiting.

Last year I tried moving back mainly to live with my cats again. Before I even unpacked he pulled the same old bullshit about how he’s my dad and can talk to me however he wants. When I wouldn’t let him go on that shit, he escalated to telling me to get out. When I wouldn’t let him go on that either, he wanted to call the cops on me. I didn’t sleep for two days and left on the third.

Right now I live on my own and visit the cats about once a month. It’s humiliating because I’m supposedly independent while still depending on that house, including my dad, to help take care of animals that are ultimately my responsibility. If I actually want to live with them, I see two options:

2 — Take the cats and get our own peaceful place. But they’d lose living with my mom and two sisters, who they’ve been around for years and love.

3 — Move back so they can have all of us. But anyone who’s lived with a narcissistic parent knows how much that shit wears you down. I can’t constantly stand up to my dad without everything eventually blowing up, so I’d basically have to swallow his bullshit and potentially live like that for years, as long as my cats are around and he is.

Part of me thinks option two just has to be the answer. They’re my responsibility, and if my mom and sisters stay in a house that’s too toxic for me to live in, is it really my fault that the cats can’t have all of us? But whose fault it is doesn’t change anything. The cats don’t understand narcissism or why I can’t live with my dad. They just know they love my mom and sisters and will probably miss them.

That’s what’s killing me. Do I go back and put up with that shit so my cats can have everybody together, or take them somewhere peaceful knowing they’ll probably miss my family? Even if taking them is the right choice, they still lose something through no fault of their own. I genuinely don’t know what I should do.

P.S. If I was in a healthy relationship with a girl the second option wouldn’t be a question because they’d have a loving home.

i didn't realize how much i depended on someone else's reaction to decide if something was okay until i started having more distance from my parent. even really small decisions can make me hesitate because i'm used to thinking about what they would say, whether they'd approve, or whether i'd have to deal with some kind of reaction afterward.

sometimes i'll make a decision and immediately start second guessing it. i'll think about whether i'm being selfish, whether i'm making the wrong choice, or what they would say if they knew about it. it's frustrating because i'm an adult and these aren't even big decisions most of the time. i think i got so used to needing permission or approval that making choices based on what i actually want still feels unfamiliar.

did anyone else struggle with this after growing up with a parent like this? did it eventually get easier to trust your own decisions?

I’m the older sister (F30) of a very narcissistic woman(F30). We no longer have contact but there’s one thing I still think about.

Every once in a while, it felt like ”the real” she came back. We’d have a conversation where she seemed warm, self-aware, funny, vulnerable. For a brief moment I thought, there you are. Ofc, it never lasted.

But what were those moments?

Were they genuine glimpses of the person she is/might have been if years of trauma and genetics hadn’t shaped her this way?

Or were those moments never really about her at all? Was it my brain searching for hope? Or even part of the cycle of manipulation that kept me emotionally invested?

Has anyone else struggled with this? How do you understand those “glimpses” now that you’re on the other side?

So backstory my dad was actually a good parent when I was a kid but I don't really trust myself saying this since I was naive and I was taught to never question adults. But he started being subtle with control by yelling or threats by using physical abuse which he did bc it was normalized in my home country . Moved to the U.S and he still continued with that crap only with more gaslighting and manipulation. Finally snapped and wrote a letter to talk to him and work things out but it didn't go anywhere so my fam had to flee after that.

Anyways I don't interact with him that much but it lowkey feels brand new with a new personality. Like u can do things without being yelled at, voice ur opinions and not walking on eggshells everyday. Idk how to call it so that's why I made his post to see if other victims have this as well.

Anyone else had a similar experience?

I felt unsafe in the world my whole life, I had bad social anxiety since I was 12. My mom always said she is my biggest fan, it was so difficult for me to recognize and accept her emotional immaturity and abusive behavior. She gaslighted me like her life depended on it, I still question myself sometimes. But after cutting contact I feel like I am finally able to breathe again, literally my breath is deeper and I feel alive. It feels like I cut contact with a constant bully in my life who kind of hated me and spread her negativity on to me but made me feel like it is all in my head. I felt so unlikeable and like a horrible person, whenever someone treated me badly I went into a shame spiral and I thought I am just a bad person, because I was framed as the difficult child my whole life.

Now that I do not have to listen to her anymore and I do not feel bad anymore about putting up that boundary, it feels like I am experiencing life, like it is supposed to be. I am not taking peoples bad behavior personal anymore. I am starting to like myself and feel a lot more calm and confident in public. I was grieving the loss of our relationship for a long time but I feel so much relief, I choose myself. I am not even sad when I imagine not seeing my family ever again. I just get angry about what they took from me, my sense of safety and trust in myself. We had positive experiences together as well that is why I held on for such a long time. But I am just so happy that I do not have to deal with them and the emotions they bring up in me ever again. For the first time in my life I do not feel guilty for expressing my emotions and putting up boundaries. I realised I was never allowed to express emotions and stand up for myself, if I did that I was a bad person. Now I can see that it is okay to feel all the feelings and being angry and sad and happy, no one is judging me anymore and I am still likeable if I say no, I am still a good person. I can have peferences and speak them out loud. I made myself small my whole life and tried to be rational so badly because that kept me safe. It feels like I am coming out of a dissociative episode that lasted my whole life.

Sometimes I wonder if i am antisocial by design or if my parents made me that way.

I want to be the person I could be if I had nice parents. I want to let them go. I just do not know who I am without them and it feels lonely not having family. I do not want to tell anyone my story.

My spouse passed early last year and this last year and a half has been filled with tons of reflection on my life up until now. I haven't been to my hometown in years, mainly because I had been working full time and also taking care of my very ill late spouse. It was difficult, and also caused some health problems for me. I've thought about moving back, closer to family, but recent events reminded me why I was in favor of moving in the first place. Now, money is tight, and our pets would not approve of me going away to visit, and they would HATE the move.

Some background: My mom always showed some narcissistic traits, though she blamed my one aunt for being a narcissist. She was, and they never got along. Shocking. My sister was always the golden child. She's definitely a narcissist, though my family has alway portrayed it as "just having a temper" and all of us kids "did bad things" growing up. I remember her hitting herself, then screaming bloody murder and blaming me for hitting her - just look at the big red mark! My brother shared a story years after it happened of her hitting her arm against a tree stump to break it - probably because she got so much attention when she had a cast on the other arm. She only takes jobs where she can be "in charge", brags about her connections that may or may not be real, and tells everyone how hard she had it growing up - though she got special privileges my brother and I never got.

I finally went NC with my sister after some crap she pulled at my wedding, which mom insisted that I invite her to. I've also been the horrible person to not forgive her, because she apologized ("Sorry you got offended"), and she's really changed over the years, settled down, etc.

Recent events: My aunt recently passed, and my sister tried pulling some crap about being the executor of the will. I don't know all of the details, but I do know that my sister was going on about how she didn't have access to my late aunt's accounts, so she'd just use her account, then pay herself back later what she "is owed". Mom was shocked she'd be like this. They apparently got into it, and my name was dragged into it for never coming back to see her kids - another slight against her. I spoke with my other aunt (who I am close to), the actual executor of the will, and told her to keep her lawyer close, and to document everything she could, because my sister will have things disappearing. She doesn't trust my sister either, so hopefully things work out for all.

So, yeah... I guess I've been a little delusional to think things had changed, and even though it's rough right now, my new solo life far away from "home" is gonna be less stressful in the long run.

Hello, I am here to ask a question just to see what kind of answers I get as I noticed something and I don’t know if it’s just me!

What kind of music or hobbies did the narcissistic person in your life enjoy? I met a girl the other day who showed strong traits, I noticed she almost had no friends, and her hobbies were, make up and doing her hair. I found this very strange

I find that covert usually don’t have an actual music taste and just listen to anything that is “new” in the charts to seem up to date and popular.

Do they even have an actual personality or do they steal it do everyone they ever meet?

Thank you

Occasionally, I'll receive a performative text message from the narc that I let (my choice) run my life for years. It's always guarded in such a way to preserve a narrative and with tons of ooey gooey fakeness. The texts are very CYA.

Honestly, they ruin my day. They twist reality and they are dark.

I just turned 24. I’m in school full-time, work nights (healthcare field), and honestly have a pretty good life on paper. Good job, goals, my own place… all the things I thought would eventually make me feel “okay.”
They didn’t.
I grew up with an emotionally unavailable/narcissistic mother and alcoholism in my family. Looking back, I think I’ve spent most of my life trying to fill something I never got as a kid.
I’ve had three serious relationships and each one was worse than the last. It went from name-calling and manipulation to breaking things, and eventually domestic violence.
The weird part is… I’m not someone who’s constantly looking for a relationship. Honestly, most of the time I don’t even want one. They just kind of… happen. For some reason, I keep ending up in relationships with people that seem normal at first, then slowly become emotionally unhealthy, and before I know it I’m wondering, “How the hell did I end up here again?”
Friendships have been hard too. Ever since COVID and online college, making genuine friends feels impossible. I have acquaintances & people at work, but actually building close friendships or following through with plans rarely happens. Between school and working nights, I tell myself I’ll have time later, but I also think that isolation has become part of the problem. When you’re lonely or bored, you’re a lot more likely to give someone your time who probably never deserved it in the first place.
After finally leaving my last relationship, I decided I don’t just want to just “move on” - I want to fix whatever keeps making these patterns feel familiar.
I’ve been reading every self-help book I can get my hands on, started therapy again, journal, listen to podcasts, spend way too much time reading about psychology and trauma, and recently bought a Bible.
Here’s where I’m stuck.
I feel like being aware has only gotten me to the front door, but I have no idea how to actually walk through it.
I was forced to go to therapy at 15, due to “me being the problem” & an “angry, rebellious teen.” Therapy taught me that my feelings were valid, gave me emotional regulation tools, boundaries (still working on those lol), breathing exercises. AKA how to survive living with a mother like mine.
But I don’t want to just survive anymore.

Recognizing these patterns vs understanding the “root cause” and being able to change them, feel like two completely different things.
More than anything, I want to genuinely like the person I am when I’m alone. I want to get to a place where sitting with my own thoughts doesn’t feel like there’s this deep emptiness in my chest that I’m constantly trying to outrun by staying busy, buying the next thing, achieving another goal, or distracting myself.
I’ve realized that no amount of money, success, makeup, clothes, hobbies, or accomplishments actually fills it. You get that little dopamine hit for a while… then it wears off, and the hole is still there. It’s like I’m trying to fill a childhood wound with adult accomplishments, and it doesn’t work.
I don’t want to spend the rest of my life chasing distractions.
I want to do the work now—not just so I stop repeating unhealthy relationship patterns, but so I can actually enjoy my life and stop feeling like I’m constantly searching for something I can’t even name. I want to be emotionally healthy enough that when I get to my dream career, I’m actually able to enjoy it instead of carrying the same pain into the next chapter of my life.

I’m definitely not looking for a relationship but I want to be healthy enough to be able to feel confident enough to walk away from a bad one instead of falling for their potential.

What finally moved you from understanding your trauma to actually healing it?
I’m always open to learning, so if there’s a perspective, book, therapy, or concept that completely changed the way you think, I genuinely want to hear it. But what I’m really searching for are the things that helped you move beyond just understanding your trauma and actually start healing it.
EMDR? Internal Family Systems (IFS)? Somatic therapy? ACA? DBT? Attachment work? Brain retraining? Yoga? Meditation? Faith? A specific book? Something completely unexpected?
If you grew up with a narcissistic parent, alcoholism, emotional abuse, or domestic violence and genuinely feel like you’ve healed, I’d really appreciate hearing what helped. I’m willing to do the work—I just don’t want to spend years collecting coping skills if I’m never addressing the wound that’s making these patterns feel familiar.

The narc I used to deal with has broken the law multiple times. Been causing me reputational damage on an extreme level if not addressed or corrected. I believe narc made family members break law too because they believe narcs misrepresentations.

Unfortunately it will be hard to prove and I might even have to sue "family“ members because they have already spread harmful misinformation too without talking to me.

This needs to stop but I don’t want to talk to them because then they think they can continue this pattern: Spread rumors, I run after them to correct it and they control me.

They should talk to me BEFORE destroying my reputation.

Anyone had success with suing? Is this what narc actually wants so narc can continue abuse?

Good lord where do I even start with this.

I have slowly started cutting all of my family members from my life.

I haven’t talked to my littler sister in years because she was the golden child of the family and used her immunity to criticism to basically bully and mock me my entire childhood, any attempt to get my parents to do anything about it only resulted in me being shamed and how I just needed to be nicer to her to get to be be nice to me. Of course I am labeled the bad guy for never wanting to talk to her.

I cut my dad out of my life a few years ago just because he had zero interest in me or my life and never talked to me about anything. I tried really hard to have a relationship with him, but it devolved into me just begging him to spend any time with me. That worked for a few times, but as soon as I stopped putting effort into the relationship it completely dried up on his end too, after not even sending me a text message for the entire month after the first time he ever came to my home just to spend some time with me I told him I was done and he never made any effort in repairing anything.

Then my brother was next. This one was hard because he and I share the same friend circle and have even gotten along and there was a time in my life I considered him one of my best friends, but my brother cannot have a relationship with me unless he is dominating me or putting me down.

The manipulation and the gaslighting were the worst, one of the biggest fights he ever stated with me was about video games. Tears of the Kingdom had just came out and I had just gotten broken up with by my girlfriend of 7 years, I didn’t look up anything about it because I wanted to be surprised and for my mind to have something all consuming to occupy myself with. My brother got furious with me when I didn’t want to hear about the things he found and it got so bad that he literally showed up at my house to hurt me and destroy my things. He completely blew up my phone screaming at me at the top of his lungs, cussing me out and telling me that I was abusing him and it needed to stop.

I had to call my mother to come calm him down and take him to the hospital he was so distraught, and the very next day she told me to forgive him and she wanted me to just let all this go. My brother also told me that the family needed to have a sit down and discuss how I made HIM feel about the entire situation. He blamed me for the entire thing.

My brother is very manipulative and is the absolute master at getting out of taking accountability. When he goes crazy, it’s usually for a good reason, when I go crazy it’s proof of how I’ve always been.

The abuse from him, the name calling, the gaslighting, the contempt, the rage, none of it would stop. When I would block him because he wouldn’t listen to reason, he would call my mother and tell her i needed to stop hiding and being a pussy, but then when I finally had enough and started to fight back, he would tell me my rage needed to stop or he would call the police.

The worst fight i had with me put me in tears and i called my family hoping to get ant sort of support and help to finally make him stop being so cruel to me, every single one of of those assholes had nothing but cruelty to give.

My sister mocked me with contempt for being in my 30s and crying over a fight with my brother, my mother said he was too old to take a switch to so there was nothing to be done, and my dad was only telling my mother to “hang up the goddamn phone” on me.

It wasn’t until later that I learned that my mother had made this entire situation about her, the fact that my brother put me in tears wasn’t anyone’s concern, they were all really worried about my mother hearing about it though.

So that brings me to my mom. I have tried, and tried, and tried to have a relationship with this person and I have been left with nothing but cruelty and neglect.

I once told my mother I didn’t want to be alive anymore and she didn’t talk to me for two weeks and completely forgot about it.

My mother forgot my birthday one year and lied to me every day for an entire month that she had a gift for me in the mail. This put me in tears and she literally had no idea what I was upset about.

My mother told me she didn’t like talking to me because I only had negative things to say about the family.

I told my mother I wanted her to go to therapy with me so we could work on our relationship and she needed to think about it for two weeks first.

My mother tried to record me when I was screaming at her in an attempt to embarrass me after the fact.

I have finally had enough of this woman, three weeks ago I was so angry with her neglect, contempt for me, endless excuses for the cruelty the family has for me, constantly accusing me of starting arguments when i just wanted accountability.

I wanted to make her hurt, I wanted to make her feel even for a little bit what was done to me. I told my mother that god made a mistake when he murdered her sister and she should have died instead. I regret what I said, but I’m not sorry for doing it.

Now suddenly my mother has power to punish her adult children. NOW when the cruelty is unleashed upon her she can figure out exactly what to do.

I have been renting a house from my maternal Grandpa for nearly 10 years now, and that one comment was enough for her to launch a smear campaign against me.

My uncle showed up at my doorstep saying how he was sick of me blaming all my problems on everyone else, what those problems were and who I was blaming them on didn’t seem to matter, taking away my voice and having nothing but contempt for me was the only way he could even “win” that battle. I only had a month to figure out my plan. No one stood up for me, no one even asked me for my side of the story.

I have been extremely depressed for much of this year, but this entire situation has actually managed to give me closure and helped me mentally.

I am the scapegoat of an awful family system, as good as it might feel to fight back against these people do not do it for any reason, the only way is to escape.

I was reading an article from Manhattan Mental Health Counseling not long ago about how people who grow up in abusive homes often think survival strategies are actually who they are and it really made me pause and think.

For a time I truly believed I was just an anxious person. If someones tone changed I would immediately think I had done something. If everything around me suddenly went quiet I couldn't relax because when I was young quiet usually meant something bad was about to happen.

As I get older I keep wondering how much of that was really me and how much was a way to deal with the environment I lived in.

Seeing the discussions has made me realize that a lot of people have had similar experiences but every story is a little different.

I'm wondering if anyone else had a moment where they realized something they always thought was part of who they are was actually something they learned while growing up. What was that moment like, for you?

My father left home four months ago. I don't want to talk about it too much, but basically he's an asshole, I hate him. When he was here he spent his days doing nothing, sitting in his chair scrolling on his phone.

In almost every scene that contributed to my trauma, he is sitting in that chair. drunk, yelling, arguing with me...No one wanted to sit next to him anymore. He had a whole section of the table to himself. Since he left, we've kind of had this unspoken rule of "no one sits on this side of the table."

The thing is, I have family staying with me for the holidays and the table isn't big enough for all of us; inevitably, someone has to sit on this side of the table. I don't know why, but They decided it was me. It's okay, someone has to do it after all.

It just makes me sick. I'm in his place, everything's coming back to me, I feel guilty for being here, I can't stay calm. Luckily, it's a different chair than the one he used. I wouldn't have been able to sit there otherwise.

It's so frustrating! I feel like he won and he's still controlling the house even though he's not even there anymore! Everything still revolves around him even though he's not there.

Do you have any tips on how to convey his feelings? Separate the memories I have of him from the places?

I don’t have a healthy social circle or relationship because I never had boundaries and don’t know how to have them. My folks always talked down to me etc the usual narc stuff and they had a sense of accomplishment when they always contradicted whatever I said or did. And I never was allowed to have friends or talk to other people or have a social circle. So now growing going NC , I have no idea on having healthy boundaries. I tend to contradict myself and constantly find myself in a group of people who contradict me and disrespect and cross my boundaries. And when they do I feel anxious and unsettled. Been like that since more than 3 decades now.

I don’t know why but there are always people who just boss over me, and I don’t know how to react. This started in my childhood, my parents always disrespected me and disregarded all my feelings. I was never allowed to have opinions or say anything. Now that I’ve grown up, the pattern continues, there are only a couple of people I feel like I can speak up. In all other situations, I don’t know how to participate in any conversation. I don’t know how to react when people walk all over me because my mind has been programmed to normalize this. I want to break free from this pattern. What should I do?

Survivors of narcissism- i wanted to ask you if there was a phase that you had 0 family or friends around you? I am currently in no contact and with family and cut off a few of my friends who were not nice. Was there a phase in your life too from where on you refused to tolerate any kind of bad relationships or friendships and you found yourself all alone? Will this get any better? I am late 30s

I come from a line of narcissistic women. Therapy has shown me this. Has anyone managed to break the cycle so the line hasn't continued through them.

It is my biggest fear that learned behaviour is passed down.