Finding Myself Again: Healing from Narcissistic Abuse and Family Trauma

What happens when the person you trust the most turns out to be the one who breaks you the deepest?

For five years, I was engaged to someone I thought was my soulmate. He felt like my best friend, my safe space, the person I built my life around. But little by little, I started noticing the cracks. It wasn’t just about feeling unappreciated—it was about feeling erased.

Eventually, I realized I was stuck in a cycle of narcissistic abuse, where my needs were invisible, my emotions weaponized, and my reality constantly questioned.

Betrayal, Manipulation, and the Moment I Lost Myself

Narcissistic abuse doesn’t usually announce itself loudly. It whispers. It confuses. It twists love into performance and connection into control. For a long time, I believed my ex-fiancé really “got” me—but the truth is, he studied me to manipulate me.

He made himself the center of everything—his needs, his pain, his drama. And when I reacted emotionally? He used that against me, flipping the script until I felt like the unstable one. Reactive abuse became our routine. I lost time, energy, and parts of myself I didn’t know could be taken.

Understanding Betrayal Trauma and Self-Abandonment

Betrayal trauma hits different. It doesn’t just break your heart—it breaks your sense of reality.

You open up. You let someone see your softest parts. And when they use that vulnerability against you, the pain hits at your core. But what gutted me more was realizing how often I had betrayed myself—silencing my gut instincts, shrinking my voice, staying when my body begged me to leave.

To cope, I reverted to old habits. Emotional eating. Escaping with substances. Pushing people away. I didn’t trust anyone, especially not myself.

Narcissistic Abuse as a Mirror to Generational Trauma

This wasn’t just about my ex-fiancé. Eventually, I saw how this dynamic mirrored parts of my childhood trauma—things I’d buried, things I didn’t have words for back then.

I started seeing my stepmother in him—manipulative but quiet about it. My father always tried to “keep the peace,” but what he really did was protect the abuser, not the child. I didn’t realize then that I was internalizing toxic patterns that would shape my adult relationships.

Generational trauma isn’t just about what happened—it's about what got normalized.

Spotting Red Flags and Emotional Manipulation Early

The turning point came when I stopped justifying the red flags. I began observing, not explaining.

People show you who they are—you just have to listen. Manipulators test boundaries in small, almost invisible ways. They “joke” cruelly, make you question your memory, minimize your feelings.

If someone repeatedly makes you feel small, off-balance, or like you're “too much,” they’re showing you something. Believe it the first time.

Accountability Isn’t Cruelty—It’s Clarity

Here’s something that took me a long time to understand: if someone feels shame when held accountable, that’s about them—not you being “mean.”

I’m not responsible for someone’s reaction to being called out respectfully. I can hold people accountable without cruelty, and still not take on their emotional spiral.

Sometimes the most loving thing you can do is let someone feel the consequences of their actions—especially if they’ve never had to before.

Communication Without Blame: Rebuilding Emotional Safety

We’re not taught how to communicate. Most of us hold things in until we explode—or we lash out in defense the moment emotions enter the chat.

But blaming isn't the same as expressing. Saying “You always do this!” doesn’t hit the same as “This made me feel invisible.”

Real connection comes when we speak from the heart, not from a place of trying to win the argument. And if that kind of honesty scares someone away? Let them go.

The Myth of Disrespect: Why Disagreement Isn’t Defiance

There’s a cultural myth that says “disagreeing equals disrespect.”

But healthy relationships welcome disagreement. Fragile egos don’t.

If someone says “You’re disrespecting me!” every time you challenge them, they don’t want a partner—they want obedience. And that’s not love. That’s control.

A relationship where you can't speak your truth isn’t safe. And safety matters more than loyalty to a distorted idea of “respect.”

Reclaiming Power by Releasing the Need for Blame

Here’s the truth: I could stay mad forever. At my ex-fiancé. At my parents. At myself.

But holding onto blame kept me tied to them. It kept me in survival mode.

Healing meant realizing that while I wasn’t at fault for what happened, I am responsible for what I do next. And the most powerful thing I could do wasn’t to get revenge or prove a point—it was to let go.

Let go of blaming. Let go of fixing. Let go of needing anyone to validate my pain before I gave myself permission to heal.

From Surviving to Sovereignty: The Journey Back to Self

The grief I carried wasn’t just about the end of a relationship. It was about mourning the version of me who believed love meant sacrifice. Who believed that being chosen meant being safe.

But now? I know better.

One of the most transformative tools in my healing was Human Design. Learning about it helped me see my ex-fiancé in a completely new light—through a lens of compassion, not pain. Once I understood his design, I stopped personalizing his behavior, even when it hurt. I could finally see the energy at play, and how his actions weren’t a reflection of my worth—but of his own unintegrated patterns.

Looking back, I see how both of our not-self themes were activated when the foundation beneath us started to shake. If I had known then what I know now, I would’ve stayed grounded in myself—unshakable. I would’ve been the calm, solid space where hard conversations could be spoken, not screamed. And that alone could’ve changed everything.

Still, I wouldn’t erase it. I would go back and do it all over again.

Because this wasn’t a failure. It was a mirror. A beautiful, painful mirror that showed me where I was overgiving, overcompensating, and under-listening to my own intuition.

And for that mirror, I can only be grateful.

Healing isn’t about becoming someone new—it’s about remembering who I was before the world told me I wasn’t enough.

I’m still here. Wiser. Softer. More boundaried. And more powerful than I’ve ever been.

Everything I need has always been within me.

And I trust myself enough now to never again give that power away.