Lenora Thompson, who writes a blog for Psychcentral, wrote this post that I’d like to share. I think most of us who were narcissistic abuse victims are hypervigilant and even paranoid–always looking over our shoulder for the next attack. We assume everyone is watching and judging us all the time, but they’re not. We’ve just been programmed to think they are because we were surrounded by narcissists during our formative years who did.
No, You’re *Not* Being Watched and Judged Constantly
When you’ve been surrounded by narcissists all your life, naturally you assume everyone thinks like them. Judges you like them. Hey! It’s self-protection. But they don’t, you know.
Holocaust survivor, neurologist and psychiatrist Viktor Frankl is renowned for saying, “An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”
Being constantly watched is abnormal. Being chronically judged for anything and everything is abnormal. Hell, narcissism is abnormal, hence the name of this blog: Narcissism Meets Normalcy.
Unfortunately, abnormalcy breeds abnormalcy. It’s abnormal to be hyper-vigilant, but we developed it for self-preservation. Thus it’s normal…for us.
It’s abnormal to constantly self-criticize. But we learned to self-criticize, to anticipate every possible criticism that might be hurled our way. We learned to practice clairvoyance (thinking with the narcissist’s brain.) It was simply less painful than being blind-sided. Thus it’s normal…for us.
Read the rest of this article here.
Lucky Otters Haven 