The Cost of Staying: How Narcissistic Relationships Slowly Erode Your Sense of Self -- Part 3 of Narcissistic Abuse Blog Series
- Randi Camirand
- Jan 17
- 3 min read
Updated: Jan 24
When the Spell Breaks: Healing After Narcissistic Abuse
You didn’t lose yourself overnight.You didn’t wake up one day and suddenly feel disconnected from who you are. What happened was far quieter—and far more insidious.
In emotionally abusive and narcissistic relationships, the loss of self happens slowly, through a series of adaptations that once helped you survive.
This is the cost of staying.
How You Learned to Disappear
When you are in a relationship where your reality is consistently challenged, minimized, or dismissed, your nervous system learns to adapt in order to maintain connection and safety.
Over time, you may have learned to:
Minimize your needs so you wouldn’t be seen as “too much”
Doubt your perceptions because you were told you were overreacting or imagining things
Stay quiet to keep the peace, even when something felt deeply wrong
These behaviors didn’t come from weakness.They came from intelligence, sensitivity, and a nervous system trying to survive in an unsafe emotional environment.
Survival Is Not a Personality Flaw
Many women leave narcissistic or emotionally abusive relationships believing something is wrong with them.
They describe themselves as:
“Too accommodating”
“Bad at boundaries”
“Conflict avoidant”
“People pleasers”
But these traits didn’t appear randomly. They were shaped in response to relational conditions where expressing truth led to punishment, withdrawal, or chaos.
What looks like passivity is often self-protection.What looks like self-doubt is often learned mistrust of your own knowing.
Survival strategies become costly when they are no longer needed—but that doesn’t make them shameful.
The Nervous System Cost of Staying Too Long
Remaining in a relationship where you must constantly monitor tone, mood, or emotional weather takes a profound toll on the body.
Over time, many people experience:
Chronic anxiety or hypervigilance
Emotional numbness or dissociation
Confusion around decision-making
A sense of being “cut off” from themselves
Exhaustion that rest alone doesn’t fix
This isn’t because you’re broken.It’s because your system was under prolonged relational stress.
Healing Begins When the Spell Breaks
Healing doesn’t start with forcing confidence or setting perfect boundaries.It begins when you recognize that the version of you who stayed was doing the best they could with what they had.
As the spell breaks, you may begin to notice:
Small moments of clarity
A return of sensation or emotion
A growing intolerance for self-abandonment
Grief for what you lost—and relief that you’re no longer disappearing
This is not regression.This is reorientation.
A Gentle Invitation Back to Yourself
In my work as a therapist and Realization Process meditation teacher, I help women reconnect with their own inner authority after narcissistic abuse—not by fixing themselves, but by coming back into relationship with their own embodied truth.
Healing happens when your body learns it no longer has to stay small to stay safe.
If you recognize yourself in these words and are ready to begin rebuilding trust with yourself, you don’t have to do it alone.
You are not alone. I am available for individual sessions, when you are ready.
In the meantime, here are some Resources For Your Healing Journey:
Read blog posts from my series When the Spell Breaks: Healing from Narcissistic Abuse. https://www.randicamirand.com/blog/categories/healing-from-narcissistic-abuse
Follow my Women’s Wintering Well Series on Instagram for almost daily self-care reminders. https://www.instagram.com/randicamirand/
10 Grounding Practices for Women
Visit my Homepage www.randicamirand.com
Learn more About Me and My Approach https://www.randicamirand.com/about
Learn about my Women’s Online Meditation Classes and email sign up to receive notifications. https://www.randicamirand.com/womens-meditation-classes
Check out The Blog for therapy insights and self-help tips.
