Self-Care - Dan Cassenti, Novelist

Concept: Narcissists regularly gaslight their victims to believe that they should not pursue the satisfaction of their own needs but instead focus only on the narcissist. When narcissists put new demands on their victims’ time, the victims often feel compelled to forego their needs to serve the narcissist. Acts of self-care are often the first shoe to drop following the start of a discovery process.

How this helps and the opposite hurts: Acts of self-care chip away at a narcissist’s control over the recovering victim’s mind. One act of self-care feels so good after a long period of dismissing needs that it encourages more. Just like a snowball rolling down a hill, acts of self-care build upon one another until the freed mind of the survivor can’t stop. Going back to a lack of self-care and primarily serving the narcissist again is the only thing that can stop the snowball’s momentum.

Examples:

A survivor abandons her narcissistic live-in boyfriend by moving out. She returns to her daily jogging routine, which she hadn’t done in months due to his complaints.
Fred hits up his favorite restaurant with his best friend rather than staying home to do his unemployed live-in girlfriend’s laundry.
Gina goes for a walk before her mother comes home from work to avoid listening to all the ways her co-workers angered her that day.

Advice: Once you start questioning the narcissist’s hold over your mind, think about your life before the narcissist and what you’ve lost since then. Please choose one or more of those losses and bring them back as an act of self-care. Once you feel how good it is to get restarted, ask yourself how you’d feel if you lost it again.

Narcissism Encyclopedia

Defenses Against