THE UNEXPECTED TEACHERS

There is a wound so common that almost none of us reach midlife without brushing up against it somewhere. It can show up in families, friendships, marriages, past relationships, workplaces, and even in the people we once looked up to. Sometimes it looks like conditional love or emotional absence. Other times, it hides behind jealousy, competition, manipulation, control, or affection that seems to disappear the moment you stop playing the role someone expected of you.

The people and circumstances may be different, but the experience can leave behind something remarkably similar: confusion, self-doubt, and the unsettling feeling that somewhere along the way, you stopped trusting yourself.

If any of this feels familiar, you may already understand how difficult these dynamics can be to recognize while you’re inside them. They can quietly reshape the way we see ourselves, what we tolerate, and what we come to believe is normal. But sometimes, understanding what happened with greater awareness becomes part of finding our way back to ourselves. 💫

So let’s talk about a word we hear thrown around a lot these days: narcissism. Not as another label to place on someone, but as a dynamic we can learn from and understand differently.

A quick distinction before we go further: narcissistic traits and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) aren’t the same thing. NPD is a clinical diagnosis that should be made by a qualified professional, while narcissistic traits and behaviors can exist on a much broader spectrum. When I use the word narcissism here, I’m speaking primarily about the patterns and dynamics we may encounter in everyday relationships, not diagnosing anyone.

What We Keep Getting Wrong

We’ve become fluent in naming narcissism with quizzes, acronyms, entire feeds built around spotting it in other people. There’s real value in that; it ends the loop of “was it me?” so many of us lived in for years.

There’s something worth remembering about that question itself. If you’ve genuinely stopped to ask, “Was it me? Did I contribute to this? Is there something here I need to look at?” that willingness to examine yourself matters. Pathological narcissism is often associated with difficulty accurately reflecting on one’s own role in interpersonal problems, particularly when doing so threatens the person’s sense of self. Blame may instead be pushed outward, uncomfortable feedback dismissed, or the problem located almost entirely in someone else. So questioning yourself does not automatically mean you were the problem. Sometimes, it is simply evidence that you possess something incredibly important: the capacity for self-reflection.

And here’s what the checklists leave out: narcissism isn’t a separate species of human being. Narcissistic traits exist on a continuum, and most of us can recognize moments of defensiveness, envy, wanting to be right, or craving validation in ourselves. None of that makes you the person who hurt you. But it does remind us that healing doesn’t require dividing the world neatly into “them” and “us.”

I don’t believe in reducing anyone to a label, so here’s the plain truth: Some of these patterns may have roots in what a person learned about relationships, attachment, power, or self-worth long before we ever met them. Understanding that can offer context, but context is not the same as an excuse. Compassion doesn’t require giving someone unlimited access to us. At some point, awareness also brings responsibility for what we choose to carry forward.

Because the moment healing becomes about correctly labeling someone else, we risk losing sight of what healing was supposed to be about in the first place : ourselves.

The Body Keeps Score of What the Mind Explains Away

We can understand a difficult dynamic intellectually and still notice its effects in the body. A familiar tone of voice, a certain interaction, or even someone’s presence can bring up tension before we’ve consciously made sense of why. Understanding what happened doesn’t always mean our stress responses disappear with it.

This is where understanding the patterns is only part of the picture. We can learn every manipulation tactic in the book and still have a nervous system that reacts to what feels familiar.

Our bodies were there for those experiences too, and repeated stress can leave us more reactive to reminders long after we understand what happened. For some people, healing therefore includes more than making sense of the story: it can also mean learning to feel safe in the present through supportive relationships, therapy when needed, and practices such as breath, movement, grounding, or stillness.

Raising Your Frequency So It Simply Doesn’t Stick

Here’s where I want to go somewhere most articles on this topic won’t: energy. Not necessarily as something mystical, but as something we often experience through the body before we’ve found the words for it. Psychology has a name for part of this: interoception, our ability to sense and interpret what’s happening inside the body. Sometimes the body registers a change before our conscious mind has fully made sense of it. Those sensations are information rather than proof; our minds still interpret what they might mean through context, memory, and previous experience.

And sometimes, those subtle signals are worth paying attention to. Manipulation, triangulation, or control aren’t always obvious when they first appear. Sometimes the pattern begins with intense attention or admiration before gradually shifting into criticism, devaluation, entitlement, or a growing mismatch between what someone says and how they actually behave.

Sometimes, this can look like breadcrumbing: offering just enough attention, affection, or hope to keep someone emotionally invested without offering anything truly consistent or secure.

And recognizing these patterns doesn’t mean searching ourselves for some unresolved wound that somehow let them in. Sometimes what keeps the door open is simply our immense capacity to trust, empathize, love, or give someone the benefit of the doubt or the fact that we haven’t recognized the pattern yet. Once we do, the door becomes much easier to close.

You’ve probably heard them called energy vampires, and the comparison to a leech isn’t entirely accidental. People with strong narcissistic traits can drain the people around them, often operating from a deep sense of entitlement to someone else’s time, energy, attention, or even money. Rather than relating to others as equals and and being genuinely willing to help others, they may begin to see people as mere objects through the lens of what they can provide or do for them.

In these dynamics, what can also get pulled on again and again is your sacred energy, your validation and attention, your emotional reactions, your reassurance, your empathy, your resources (and sometimes anything shiny that comes with them), and even the hope that you’ll return. Over time, that push and pull can leave someone feeling depleted emotionally, mentally, and sometimes physically.

And if left unchecked, these patterns can leave destruction in their wake, damaging relationships, trust, peace, and sometimes nearly everything they touch like a very well-dressed parasite moving from host to host. Rejection can be particularly difficult for someone with strong narcissistic traits, especially when it threatens their sense of control, superiority, or the image they hold of themselves. Rather than simply accepting that someone has chosen to walk away, they may try to regain the upper hand through manipulation, retaliation, smear campaigns, sudden charm, or attempts to pull the person back into the dynamic. So much of that destruction comes from an inability or unwillingness to truly see and take responsibility for how deeply their actions affect other people. Because they often struggle with being alone, they may move quickly from one person to the next in search of the attention, admiration, or validation that helps keep a fragile sense of self propped up.

The old vampire lore holds up here too. Garlic works, if your garlic is a boundary you actually enforce, not just talk about. Sunlight works even better. 😎  These dynamics tend to lose their grip when someone is no longer willing to abandon or betray themselves for approval. Keep your bright light on long enough, and it becomes much easier to see what you’re dealing with. 

Raising your frequency isn’t about performing positivity or bypassing what happened to you. It’s slower and quieter than that: a boundary you no longer feel compelled to explain or defend, choosing no contact when necessary, learning to feel discomfort without abandoning yourself to fix it, or developing a sense of worth that doesn’t wait for anyone’s approval to switch on. It can also look like spending more time with whatever reconnects you to your own steadiness: breathwork, movement, nature, stillness, prayer, and people who leave you feeling grounded, supported, and more like yourself.

When that shift happens, something remarkable follows. It isn’t necessarily that difficult or manipulative people stop crossing your path. It’s that they stop gaining the same access to you. You recognize the dynamic sooner. You trust what you’re feeling faster. After enough exposure to these patterns, you can practically sniff them from a mile away.  You stop mistaking familiarity for safety, and you become far less willing to abandon yourself just to keep someone else comfortable. The energy may still knock at your door, but you no longer have to let it in. You become someone these patterns have a much harder time sticking to.

When They Try to Rewrite Your Story

Some people encounter another pattern along the way: the smear campaign. The whispered version of events where the roles seem to reverse.  The story rewritten, sometimes with the help of what online narcissism circles rather colorfully call “flying monkeys,” until you’re suddenly the difficult one, the unstable one, the dramatic one, or the problem to people who were never in the room and may never have asked you a single question. Protecting an image or reputation can become more important than protecting the truth.

But healing isn’t about correcting every rumor. It’s about deciding, in real time, whether you’ll allow someone else’s narrative to change who you actually are. Don’t let it compromise your character or pull you into reacting from the same place they’re operating from. Rising above isn’t passive. Sometimes it’s the hardest, most powerful thing you can do.

In narcissistic family systems, and sometimes in romantic relationships, workplaces, friend groups, or other close-knit communities, one person can gradually become the scapegoat, often labeled the black sheep. Rather than acknowledging unhealthy dynamics, blame gets repeatedly redirected toward them. Over time, they may find themselves carrying responsibility for problems they didn’t create while the behaviors contributing to the conflict are minimized, excused, or ignored. It becomes less about what actually happened and more about protecting the roles and power dynamics already in place.

You don’t owe an explanation to people who never bothered to ask. Focus on yourself. Reclaim your peace, clarity, and stability. Stand up for yourself clearly when it’s necessary, and save your energy for the people who are genuinely willing to listen rather than those committed to misunderstanding you.

And watch what can happen when you stop participating. Choosing yourself, setting boundaries, or simply refusing to provide the emotional reaction someone has grown accustomed to may sometimes intensify their attempts to pull you back into the dynamic. You don’t have to meet that escalation with escalation of your own. You can remain calm, matter-of-fact, and at a distance. You’re allowed to decline the conversation altogether.

Without your participation, some of these stories eventually begin to lose their oxygen. And once the noise settles, there’s a quieter truth worth holding onto: someone else’s version of you doesn’t get to become your identity. You know who you are, and the people who truly know and love you will have the opportunity to know that too.

The Gatekeeper

The next question becomes: who actually gets to be close to you at all?

Closeness and trust aren’t automatically earned through blood, marriage, history, or convenience. They’re shaped by how someone actually treats you.

I first learned this during an insightful mentor session several years ago from Evy Poumpouras — a former Secret Service agent, journalist, and author. Of the many nuggets of wisdom she shared with me, this one stuck. She put it simply: you are the gatekeeper of your life. Think of yourself as the bouncer standing at the door — you decide who gets access and who doesn’t.

It’s such a simple concept. And still, one of the hardest things for many people to actually live by, especially when that person standing at the door shares your blood, kids, maybe your last name, or thirty years of history with you.

A Soft Heart and a Strong Spine

If there’s one thing you should take from all of this, more than any technique or reframe, it’s this: please don’t let this close your heart. It would be so easy, so understandable, to armor over, to decide that being this open, this trusting, is what got you hurt, and that the safest path is to simply feel less and become numb to life. 

Your compassion was never the problem, and your empathy was never a flaw to sand down. The goal isn’t to make you smaller or more guarded. It’s to keep that same open heart, now paired with discernment and firm boundaries. A soft heart and a strong spine aren’t a contradiction. Held together, they’re the whole point, and what will keep that beautiful, deeply feeling nature of yours intact for the people who deserve it. 😁

Healing Without Becoming What Hurt You

There’s one more piece worth naming honestly : the danger isn’t only that these patterns were done to you. It’s the quiet risk of carrying them forward : into how you parent, how you love, how you show up for the people who trust you most, especially in the raw, reactive months after you first see the pattern clearly.

One of the things I find most disheartening is seeing these same patterns continue between parents and their children, sometimes beginning when those children are very young.

I’ll admit I’m particularly tender around this part of the conversation. I don’t have children of my own (by choice), but I care deeply about children and what they absorb in the environments they grow up in. Perhaps part of that comes from knowing, in my own way, what it feels like to be one of those children — to grow up absorbing things about yourself and relationships that you later have to untangle as an adult. It’s one of the reasons I feel so strongly that children deserve the freedom to simply be children.

Children are still learning who they are, what love feels like, and whether it is safe to trust their own emotions and experiences. When manipulation, shame, control, emotional invalidation, or other unhealthy patterns become part of those formative years, the effects can reach far beyond childhood.

And sometimes, those early experiences quietly teach us another lesson: that love has to be earned. If affection, attention, approval, or emotional safety felt conditional growing up, we may carry that same equation into adulthood without realizing it. We may overgive, overexplain, overperform, or keep trying to prove our worth to someone, hoping that if we can just do enough, love enough, or become enough, we’ll finally receive the love we’ve been working for.

But healthy love isn’t something we should have to earn through self-abandonment. And perhaps just as importantly, it’s something we have to be mindful not to pass on to our own children. They shouldn’t have to perform, please, achieve, stay quiet, or become who we want them to be in order to feel worthy of our love. Breaking the cycle also means teaching them, through the way we love them, that their worth is not something they have to earn.

The good news is that these patterns don’t have to define the people who experienced them. Awareness gives us the opportunity to notice what we’ve inherited, learned, or adapted to and choose what we want to carry forward.

This is why the inner work has to come before, or at least alongside, anything else. Not because what happened to you doesn’t matter. But because the deepest form of freedom isn’t just leaving the dynamic behind. It’s making sure it ends with you. 

The Truth You Get to Keep

Take your power back, not to convince anyone else of who you are, but to remember it for yourself. A flame that’s survived this much doesn’t dim from sharing itself; a diya can light a thousand other diyas without losing its own light. But remember, not everyone deserves access to that light. Discernment is part of protecting what you’ve worked so hard to reclaim. That’s what your light is for now.

One flame at a time. 🪔

REFLECTION

Wherever you are right now, let’s take a moment to reflect:

• Where in your life are you still performing for approval that was never freely given?
• What would it feel like to become unavailable to people who require your smallness?
• Where might you notice defensiveness, the need to be right, or the pull toward validation in yourself and can you meet that awareness with curiosity and compassion instead of shame?

If this encouraged you to see yourself with a little more compassion, or someone you love somewhere in these words, let it sit for as long as it needs to. Take only what serves you right now, and leave the rest for another day. There’s no timeline for this kind of healing, and nothing here asks anything of you but your own honesty.  💛