Have you ever wondered, “Why do I feel sorry for my abuser?”. It’s a painful cycle that gets you stuck in a toxic pattern. Let’s learn the psychology behind it!
Why do I love someone who hurts me?
Why do I feel sorry for those who mistreated me? Why do I love someone who hurts me?
What is this narcissistic force that abusers control over us? Why do we feel this attraction towards them?
I don’t talk about it when we meet them for the first time. When they push us into their orbit and bombard us with love with such intensity.
no. Why do we still feel this attraction towards them even after the assault?
After the violence, when they shower us with tears of regret, why do we feel sorry for them? Why do we care more about their pain than our own or the abuse they just experienced?
If we find the courage to leave them, why do we feel so sick of them? Guilty about what will happen to them now we leave them? Why do we long for the person who hurt us to make us feel better again?
Related: 5 Reasons Why You Still Miss Your Abusive Ex
I spoke with some of my fellow survivors and victims of domestic violence recently. They told me they struggle with empathy and asked me to talk about it. It’s a fight I know well. I know how difficult this inner struggle is.
One, says one, is when they see their ex (after not seeing them in a while). When they win in court and their ex was looking shell out of himself. She says it’s confusing.
Why do I feel so sorry for him? Despite years of abuse, he put me through it? That’s when her strength began to let her down, she told me. The time you started to fall apart.
I remember that crush on my ex. I feel so sorry for him, even after he kills me. He put his needs and feelings above mine when he told me how sorry he was, and how much he loved me.
I felt so guilty leaving him when I finally did. What will happen to him? I gave him up when he needed me! Forget the fact that I now faced life as a young single mother. My suffering and pain were beside the point.
Our sympathy is one of the main reasons why they are drawn to us.
Why are we with them in the first place. Narcissists lack empathy. They do not understand the repercussions of their actions on others. They also do not take responsibility for it.
They need to feed their inflated sense of self, or entitlement and ego from others. And the person they prey on is someone whose ability to empathize with others is very great. So much so that they put the narcissist above themselves.
We do this because we suffer from low self-esteem.
With little self-esteem, we are not good at setting healthy boundaries. Or take care of ourselves first. Therefore, we are ready to tinker with them. We think they are telling us that their behavior is our fault. We put their needs above our own.
Narcissists discover that we have an inner void of shame that tells us we are not good enough.
Related: Unwrapping the Mystery: 5 Reasons Why Narcissists Love to Ruin Birthdays and Holidays
It comes somewhere from our childhood. They know exactly what buttons to press. The ones that hurt and the ones that hurt the inner child. Also, the ones that calm us down and make us feel special and comfortable again.
When they first love us. When they express their love to us after being hurt, we are grateful for it. fills this void. Makes the void go away.
That hole was dug inside of us in childhood. Somehow our emotional needs aren’t fully met, so we don’t feel good enough. We also fear abandonment.
How ironic that we would then choose someone who does not have the ability to satisfy those needs. Who abandons us emotionally.
When we get into that cycle of abuse. One minute we feel a rush from their loving side, the next the pain is pushing us away.
Like a drug dealer, they measure love potions and then abuse us. When they take it away, the pain we feel is so great. This is because it taps into our childhood’s deepest fears. This fear of abandonment quickly comes to the fore.
We need it to soothe that inner child with love. We want them to tell us that we are good enough, that we are loved. Therefore, we become more and more in need of them. The one who hurt us to heal our pain.
What makes this cycle even more dysfunctional, is that it is just like us. Although it is our inflated ego, for our lack of self-respect. They also have an inner void of shame.
They also fear abandonment. Why when they start to reveal their weak side to us, they push us away. Just as we think the relationship will work out and we will find happiness again, they sabotage it.
Self-destruction is no happiness. We try to finish it before we give them up. Control us to put an end to those fears.
We can see this weakness beneath the arrogant, abusive exterior. This is what makes us feel the need to save them.
They need us to fix it. And by finding someone who we feel is more vulnerable than we are, we also put a medical bandage on our own inner turmoil.
Related : Have You Been the Victim of Narcissistic Triangulation?
We are drawn to these types because we subconsciously recreate feelings and patterns familiar to us from childhood.
to beat them. While we put all of our focus on their pain and needs, we can avoid confronting their pain. If they need us, they will not abandon us. Therefore, our childhood fears remained far away. We control them.
Facing shame and winning can set you free.
This is what brings us back to them. Why do we feel sorry for them. When we see them in their weak state, they regret having offended us.
When we feel guilty after leaving them in disrepair and walk out. When she was winning in court and he was frustrated, as that woman told me recently. It’s just the push of childhood buttons. There must be no need to hide our inner pain.
Those of us, known as empaths, attract narcissists who lack empathy. We fit in a devastating way.
The only way to break that power that a narcissist has over us is to fill the void of shame with self-love. Seeing the cycle for what it is and understanding this has nothing to do with love, but with control.
How to stop feeling sorry for a narcissist?
This is more difficult. Narcissists manipulate us into feeling this way so they can continue to avoid taking responsibility for their actions.
They push our fear buttons, so that we accept blame.
By doing so, we convince ourselves that there is hope for them to change. If you do this or that, things will be fine.
But this is a false hope. Only they can change themselves. Nothing we say or do can affect that. Especially when we are dealing with someone who convinces themselves that they are the victim.
We must learn to let go. I realize what are those feelings that arouse in us so intensely. Take our focus away from trying to save and fix them. Instead, heal our wounded inner child.
Once we do this, time finally heals. The power they have over us is weakened by their power. As my friend once said, it’s like a plant.
Stop watering it and eventually it will wilt. We’re starting to feel even more sorry for them, “It’s not my problem anymore!” These buttons can no longer be pressed.
