We all need emotional support when we’re dealing with difficult times. This is especially true when we are the target of emotional abuse.
However, it often happens that if you are dealing with narcissistic abuse, friends and family may start to withdraw from you, making them feel as though they have stopped caring.
Nothing feels more lonely than when the friends and family you depend on for emotional support start to withdraw, leaving you to deal with the trauma of being alone. It’s as if the narcissist’s accusations are true… maybe nobody cares about you anymore.
This can make you feel as though it is best to stay with the narcissist. At least they are there for you, even if you are miserable with them. More often than not, there are other reasons your friends and family start to withdraw from you, and it’s not because they’ve stopped caring about you.
Three types of supporters during your toxic relationship
Basically, there are three camps of people when it comes to helping us process the experience of narcissistic abuse.
The first camp – people who do not rely on solutions
Maybe they don’t have a history of thinking for themselves. These are the people who will immediately say to you, “Well, I don’t understand why you can’t get over this. Why don’t you just leave them? It shouldn’t be that hard.”
These are the people you obviously want to avoid going to for emotional support. They haven’t had that experience, or maybe they have, and you just don’t know about it. And you really don’t want to spend a lot of time trying to parse that.
The only way to deal with people like this is to simply stop going to them for emotional support because you don’t need additional invalidation. These people will not witness your experience. They will not offer you any real emotional support. They are dismissive and this will not help you at all.
The second camp – friends and family who may have experience with high-conflict people
These people are trying to be there for you. They’re trying, they’re listening, they’re taking your phone calls. They may offer solutions, but you may have noticed that they are also turning away from you.
Now, what I want to share with you today will help you understand where these people are coming from. Humans are generally focused on finding solutions to problems, and you may have been in a toxic relationship for some time and usually go to a specific person or group of people to help you. Things may be starting to go downhill. And you don’t understand what’s going on. It seems they are no longer interested. They are not there for you anymore.
When we try to find solutions to problems, there comes a point where if we try something over and over again and it just doesn’t work, then we have to look for another approach. And so those people in the second camp realized that there was no practical solution to your problem, as long as you were still in your toxic relationship.
They were able to see patterns. They’ve made you some suggestions, maybe they’ve offered to let you live with them or they’ve offered you money to help you get back on your feet. And you may have taken them into it and then returned to your toxic relationship. So there comes a point where they feel like there is simply nothing they can do for you, even though they really want to be there for you. There is simply nothing else they can offer.
What we want to realize here is that humans only have so much energy to put out into the world every day. Therefore, sometimes we have to set boundaries for ourselves, even with the people we love and care about the most. So if you have friends and family who are starting to avoid you a little bit, or you feel like they are pulling away, it is probably because they just feel like they don’t have more energy to put into the situation you are in.
Maybe it’s starting to affect them and maybe it’s starting to affect their other relationship dynamics. Maybe they have a spouse or child who doesn’t understand why they’re putting so much energy into trying to help you in your particular situation. These are the things we need to consider when we feel like friends and family are withdrawing. You know, there comes a time when there is nothing else they can do. They may have come to this realization. And at this point they feel they need to let you figure things out on your own. And sure, they’ll likely be there for you later. But sometimes they simply need to back off a little bit so they can try to catch up and get some of that energy back.
Third Camp – Mostly your ride or people die
They are always there for you, no matter what is going on in your life. They always tell you they have an open door for you. These people may have experienced some kind of toxic relationship or major disappointment in their lives. However, they may have started treating your relationship like you’re a drug addict, because basically, that’s what we’re dealing with here.
This is when we need to realize where they come from. Not because they don’t love you or care about you. This is when people will tell you, “I love you, but I can’t get involved in this situation anymore.” They might say, you know, don’t come back until you leave. The person does not come back until this relationship that you have is over.
These are the people who really care about you, but realize they can’t continue to offer you an outlet because the outlet is starting to affect them. It also does not help you. It’s similar to a shepherd in a rehab center. Sometimes people have to use a tough love approach because at the end of the day no one, no matter how loving and caring they are to us, can save us from a narcissist if we are not trying to save ourselves. It’s the same with addiction.
