Guilt and shame – the emotions you feel right after a huge failure, even if you are not a narcissistic abuse survivor.
As a narcissistic abuse survivor, these emotions will be felt tenfold. It is like all those years of what narcissists thought and said about you are true. Your impostor syndrome kicks in. You have been exposed.
Years of abuse and gaslighting take away your ability to see situations clearly. Your first thought would be that you are the problem.
Failures could also be due to mental, emotional, and physical health problems you have faced due to narcissistic abuse. There could be a lot of reasons for failure. Let’s explore how to deal with them.
Here are 12 ways to deal with failure as a narcissistic abuse survivor:
1. Understand that failures are a part of everyone’s life.
It is not just you. Every day, a lot of people face failures and tragedies in their lives – it is not because they ‘deserved’ it.
Everyone fails, especially the narcissists. If narcissists were truly secure about everything in their life, they would not become narcissists.
Most of narcissists’ accusations are projections.
For a narcissistic abuse survivor, failures can invite more abuse or invoke all the narcissistic abuse – gaslighting, name-calling, shaming. Hence, it becomes more difficult to look at failure as a natural part of life.
It may feel like the end of the world or that you deserve the worst. Understand that this is not how normal people look at failure. You have an exaggerated negative view of yourself due to narcissistic abuse.
2. Understand that you do not have to be perfect.
Everyone makes mistakes. It is not just you.
Narcissists may pick on you for the smallest of flaws and magnify them, making you more insecure. As a result, you may have become used to being hard on yourself for even a small mistake or failure.
You do not owe anyone anything. You do not have to be perfect and successful all the time to deserve basic respect.
Surround yourself with people who treat you like a human who deserves a break from time to time.
3. Do not share any news with narcissists.
You do not have to share your successes or failures with narcissistic people. This will be one less burden when dealing with failures.
You do not want to waste your time thinking about what the narcissists will think – they will anyway think the worst of you, so no big deal there.
Unless your failure is really public, you do not have to be very honest and open with narcissistic people and share bad news with them. If you have to lie to narcissists to get them off your back, do that too.
Narcissists will surely not share their failures in public. They will always try to project a perfect image of themselves – so they certainly do not deserve your honesty or truth.
Do not feel guilty about lying or withholding information from narcissists. See it as part of self-care.
4. Ask for support.
If you need support, ask from people you know will help you. There could also be people happy to help you.
Narcissistic abuse can lead you to believe that you are a burden, or even asking for a basic thing can make you feel guilty.
You can also seek therapy or support groups if you feel like you are in need of serious help in some aspects of your life.
5. Take your mental health seriously.
Narcissistic abuse survivors deal with a lot of mental health issues like anxiety disorders, PTSD, impostor syndrome, and OCD.
This is the time when you should care more about your mental health. Do not let these disorders run your life or cloud your ability to see things clearly.
Seek an expert, use journaling, or use guided meditations to manage and improve your mental health.
6. Take a break.
Sometimes removing yourself from an environment can help you gain a new perspective. Take time off from the situation to refresh and restart.
Travel or binge-watch a favorite show – do something that gives you genuine happiness and relief.
7. Journal your feelings.
Write down why you are feeling what you are feeling. Try to understand where that is coming from. Write down instances from before that made you feel that way. Try to find a connection.
Try to write down if any opinions from narcissistic people are coming to your mind.
Writing down can bring out a lot more from within you. As a narcissistic abuse survivor, sometimes years of gaslighting and name-calling can make you think that you are the person narcissists told you were – which is not true at all.
Write down what you think of yourself and of the situation and how you can avoid repeating it next time.
8. Write down your lessons from the failure.
Journal your takeaways from that experience. You can use it later to handle another failure or avoid making the same mistakes in the future.
9. Plan for the future.
Having something to look forward to can instantly give you motivation. Break down your next goal into smaller, achievable goals and stick to it.
Plan your day ahead of time and try sticking to it most days. Set one goal for different aspects of your life – career, health, and relationships.
10. Understand that you can and will fail again.
Keep in mind that this is not going to be the last failure of your life. You will keep on making mistakes.
The only thing in your control is to prevent making the same mistakes as much as possible and to reduce the time between a failure and moving on.
11. Practice self-compassion.
As a narcissistic abuse survivor, your first instinct would be to blame everything on yourself. Be kind and practice self-compassion.
12. Reframe negative thoughts.
Challenge your negative thoughts. You can always observe all your thoughts, but do not always believe them.
Narcissists can stay with narcissistic abuse survivors even after no contact as voices in their heads.
You can try replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. For example, you can replace “I am a failure” with “I tried, but this time it did not work out. I can try again.”
Additional Resources:
https://www.verywellmind.com/healthy-ways-to-cope-with-failure-4163968
https://hbr.org/2011/04/managing-yourself-can-you-handle-failure
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/communications-that-matter/202308/how-to-deal-with-failure
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-deal-failures-disappointments-neha-jadeja
https://pacificsolstice.com/blog/9-ways-to-overcome-failures-in-your-life