Key Points

Narcissistic abuse is real, but the term “narcissistic victim syndrome” lacks validity. Childhood experiences and personality traits can influence how someone responds to an abusive relationship. The role of the therapist is to assess individual needs, not label victims.

With so much being written about narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and narcissistic abuse these days, I’ve noticed a disturbing tendency among some uninformed people to label anyone who hurts them as a “narcissist.” The unfortunate result is that some people who have been hurt by their intimate partners now describe themselves as suffering from something they call “narcissistic victim syndrome.”

This is a catchy term that is frequently used in many online publications as if it were an actual diagnosis, despite the lack of reliable research or evidence to support its validity. Unfortunately, the frequent use of this term online is confusing to the general public, especially people trying to understand and recover from a traumatic relationship.

Before I go any further, I want to be absolutely clear: Narcissistic abuse is real. No one I know in the field of personality disorders doubts that people who meet the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder can be abusive to their partners. Anyone in a long-term intimate relationship with a narcissist is likely to experience some form of emotional abuse. Some will also experience physical abuse. Many people married to narcissists develop stress-related illnesses, both psychological and physical. The most common symptoms are a combination of anxiety, depression, hyperarousal, insomnia, feelings of helplessness, and low self-esteem.

(Note: I will use the terms narcissistic personality disorder and narcissism as shorthand ways to describe someone who qualifies for a full diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder.)

If narcissistic abuse is real, why isn’t there a diagnosis called narcissistic victim syndrome?

The primary purpose of a mental health diagnosis is to help a clinician choose a helpful course of treatment. Saying that someone has narcissistic victim syndrome is not helpful because:

Not every abuser who is called a narcissist qualifies for the diagnosis.

Not everyone who qualifies for a diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder is equally abusive.

Not everyone in an abusive relationship with a narcissist will suffer the same type or degree of psychological damage.

The term “victim” implies that the partner was a helpless target of the abuse and played no role in the difficulties of the relationship. This is not always true.

The depth of the injury often has more to do with the victim’s personality and childhood trauma than with the behavior of the narcissistic partner.

The term narcissistic victim syndrome itself does not provide enough predictive value to be useful in formulating a treatment plan. Unless the abusive partner is diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, the therapist has no way to verify that the client’s symptoms are due to being abused by a narcissist.

While it can be helpful to learn as much as possible about the abusive partner’s style to determine the appropriate treatment plan, each client will still need to be evaluated for their specific symptoms.

These factors contribute to the greatest damage:

• The person had an abusive childhood.
• One or both of their parents were narcissistic.
• The person entered the relationship with low self-esteem.
• The person is submissive and has poor boundaries.
• The person idealizes the narcissistic partner.
• The person has severe abandonment issues predating the relationship, which interfered with leaving the person when the abuse began.

Example: The Narcissistic Lawyer and His Women

I once had a strange situation that clearly demonstrated how two women can react differently to the same man with the exhibitionist form of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I was seeing two women in therapy who didn’t know each other. After a while, I realized that they were dating the same man. Neither woman knew the other.

Interestingly, their reactions to him were very different. I have changed all names and details to protect their privacy.

Woman 1: Annie. My client Annie had just started dating Mark (the narcissist), and it was clear that she considered him perfect and wanted to please him very badly. One day, she came to therapy dressed very differently than usual. When I asked her about her new clothes, she said that Mark wanted her to dress young and sexy. She also started taking baking lessons because Mark wanted her to make him a cake.

Annie had turned herself upside down in an attempt to please Mark and transform herself into the kind of woman she thought was worthy of his love. But nothing she did was good enough for him. He always found something degrading to say about Annie’s efforts to please him.

Related : 14 clear signs you’re a toxic girlfriend

Annie’s feeling that she was not good enough for Mark dates back to her early childhood. It had little to do with Mark and everything to do with Annie’s relationship with her mother. Annie’s mother was clingy and contemptuous of her. Her father left her when she was a young child. It was just them, and Annie became a substitute for her mother for her absent companion.

As an adult, Annie could neither please her mother nor completely detach from her. She described herself as stuck. That’s why Annie started therapy with me. Then Annie met Mark. She immediately shifted her focus from her mother to Mark. Unfortunately, Mark’s disapproval and his desire to make her better than herself triggered Annie’s old fears of inadequacy and made her cling to him even more.

Woman 2: Marcy. My new client, Marcy, was confident and self-sufficient. She dated Mark for a while but was not impressed by him. Unlike Annie, who worshiped him as a god to be pleased, Marcy thought he was pretentious and self-centered. Mark noticed Marcy’s confidence and tried to win her over. The fact that she wasn’t very excited about dating him made him pursue her even more. So how did it all end?

Annie lost a little of her self-esteem. She took everything Mark said as absolute truth. The more Mark criticized her, the more helpless, helpless, and depressed she became. As she told me, “I feel like I’ll never find someone as great as Mark again. I’m so depressed. I can’t eat or sleep. I think I’m going crazy.”

At the same time, Marcy decided to stop seeing Mark because she found him boring. “I don’t see why I should put up with his pretentious nonsense,” she told me. “The man is an idiot. I know I can do better.”

So how does the concept of narcissistic victim syndrome help us understand Annie and Marcy’s reactions? In my opinion, it doesn’t add any value. Annie’s problems predated her relationship with Mark, and Marcy suffered no harm from the relationship.

Summary

The concept of Narcissistic Victim Syndrome refers to a unique set of psychological problems that develop steadily as a result of an intimate relationship with a narcissist. It is assumed that there are some significant benefits to the client in being diagnosed with Narcissistic Victim Syndrome.

The reality is that clients are unique individuals with distinct histories, temperaments, strengths, and weaknesses. The treatment plan will be based on the client’s symptoms and problems, not the partner’s diagnosis.