Dealing with Overwhelming Emotions From Narcissistic Abuse, an Introduction. Comes With a Discussion on Dysregulated Emotions.

 
I found this illustration on Facebook, and when I clicked on the drawing to see whose it was, I was taken to the NICABM website to see this ad for an upcoming workshop. 

You may or may not want to take the workshop - I don't feel it is my duty to advertise for them, although I may be interested enough myself to take it. I will let you know. 

However, I don't expect this workshop to cover the stress that comes from narcissistic abuse. In fact, it looks like they go in the opposite direction and cover, briefly, snowplow parenting - a type of over-protective parenting where every distress is removed so that their child never feels any manner of distress when growing up. 

I suppose this set of circumstances can happen between spouses too, where one spouse removes every stressful situation their spouse is going through. This spouse might get rid of children that is distressing to their spouse, or the lawn mower that doesn't work as well as it should for their spouse, or talk to the spouse's boss when this boss seemingly makes too many demands on their spouse  ...  or if they are dealing with a narcissistic spouse, where everything that makes the narcissistic spouse rage is removed. 

However, when you grow up with narcissistic parenting, or snowplow parenting, it tends to influence your personality, and personality traits are much harder to change, unless "constantly changing" was your childood expectation. 

Apparently narcissistic abuse in a family, and snowplow parenting, can create dysregulated emotions in the child (dysregulated is just another fancy way of saying "overwelmed with emotion" to the point where it seems impossible to stop the emotions). 

Narcissists have dysregulated emotions when it comes to rage, anger, vindictiveness, entitlement/grandiosity, and the aggressive over-powering of others (overwhelming others with force or with their incensed emotions and rageful reactions, not letting others speak, cutting conversations short, giving the silent treatment where they treat others as though a person is invisible, acting like know-it-alls, and deciding that they have "won the argument" by making it clear they are done listening to you).

The lesson narcissists try to teach you is to "tolerate" baiting you for an emotional response, but then shame you and blame you for the response you make (typically called narcissistic baiting). The overall agenda of narcissitic baiting is to get you to drown your own needs, feelings, presence and to put taking care of their feelings first. 

And by the way, some narcissists "play the victim" instead of blaming and shaming. 

Meanwhile their "victims" often have the dysregulated emotions of grief, sadness, depression, hypervigilence (which translates to a highly alert state with anxiety they can't seem to temper), helplessness, the symptoms of trauma and exhaustion (the exhaustion translates into an inability to feel certain kinds of emotions, typically referred to as emotional exhaustion, emotional numbing, emotional blunting, emotional and physical "freezing" to the point of not making a move or decision, alexithymia and anhedonia).

"Victims" may also have internalized anger too due to betrayals, enduring too much narcissistic abuse and lack of justice, but in terms of a "victim" having dysregulated anger and rage, it is not as possible with a narcissist in your life as narcissists take every opportunity to try to stuff your emotions by out-doing, out-performing, overwhelming you, and over-powering you with their emotions, particularly rage and entitlements to get their own way (often to keep you from fighting for yourself, to keep your feelings and needs invisible and suppressed, to keep you from thinking you can express anger towards them without severe consequences, to keep you from thinking of doing anything that will compromise their power, control, and domination over you, or bruise their ego, or make them accountable for anything). 

All of the stuffed emotions make it more and more impossible to take on other highly charged emotional experiences, making "an expanding window of tolerance" seem like an impossible dream. 

However it is possible. To a large degree, and in the beginning of trying to heal, it means putting yourself into more situations and environments that are peaceful, respectful and compassionate than highly charged ones. It can be difficult if you've got a family or work situation which is stressing you out, where you feel "tapped out" and exhausted, where too much is being expected of you and you're not able to perform your best or get enough sleep, or get enough relaxation into your day. 

This is where therapy can really help. And this can be where NICABM comes in ... they mainly teach psychologists and therapists how to help clients ... even when the workshops are open to anyone. 

My main purpose for this post was to show you how dysregulated emotions in narcissists can create dysregulated emotions in you, and why you can feel emotionally depleted, or unable to feel emotions, or why you might be overwhelmed by emotions, or living with an extreme number of emotional storms day in and day out. 

Narcissists can trigger anyone into a hypervigilant, dysregulated state, but if you are not triggered and overwhelmed in other parts of your life, i.e. have peace in other parts of your life, it is easier not to get into a dysregulated state or numb out altogether around a narcissist. 

Note: Again, I'm not suggesting any healing modality, or this NICABM course, or even suggesting you have to "find a way to build tolerance for emotional distress", especially since being in a relationship with a narcissist often means the narcissist will find your happiness, your resilience, your tolerance and your peace a challenge. They do like to provoke negative emotions out of others they feel challenged by. With anyone they feel they have power over, baiting emotions out of you is just par for the course.  

I have been taking a break from writing and publishing, but I do have some posts to publish which I think can add to understanding this dynamic in more detail as well as other topics I have felt need to be covered having to do with narcissists' core personality traits. Rage is just one of them.

One type of rage is overt and very noticeable, but there is also covert rage (planned covert vindictiveness and attacks, also meant to bait emotional responses). Then there is malignant narcissistic rage, a combination of both and very difficult to live with or through if you are a victim of it. 

Until next time ...