After exploring the Power and Control Wheel, let's take a closer look at narcissistic abuse and the patterns that can leave people questioning themselves.
Narcissistic abuse can be difficult to recognize, especially when the relationship does not look abusive from the outside. You may find yourself constantly questioning what happened, wondering whether you are being too sensitive, or feeling responsible for circular problems.
While narcissistic abuse is not a formal mental health diagnosis, the behaviors involved can have a very real impact on a person's emotional wellness.
If you have found yourself asking, "Is it me?", understanding these patterns can be an important first step toward rebuilding trust in yourself.
What Is Narcissistic Abuse?
Narcissistic abuse is a term commonly used to describe patterns of emotional and psychological abuse. These patterns can include manipulation, gaslighting, intimidation, control, blame shifting, and repeated violations of boundaries. In some relationships, abuse may also involve physical or sexual violence.
The behaviors are used to gain or maintain power, control, attention, or validation within a relationship.
The person engaging in these behaviors may have narcissistic traits, but narcissistic abuse does not necessarily mean that the person has Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
We often hear social media chatter that “Everyone’s ex is a narcissist”, so I think it’s important to distinguish that a diagnosis can only be made by a qualified mental health professional following an appropriate clinical evaluation. However, you also do not need a diagnosis to recognize that someone's behavior is harmful or abusive.
The more important question is often not:
"Are they a narcissist?"
but:
"What is happening in this relationship, and how is it affecting me?"
Narcissistic abuse can occur in romantic relationships, families, friendships, workplaces, and other interpersonal relationships.
What Does Narcissistic Abuse Look Like?
Narcissistic abuse can take many forms. Some behaviors may be obvious, while others are subtle enough that you may not recognize them as abusive until you begin looking at the larger pattern.
Many components of the Power and Control Wheel can be present, along with some of the following:
Love Bombing
This is usually the beginning of the relationship. The hook. Periods of intense affection, attention, praise, or promises that can be followed by criticism, withdrawal, or rejection. As you start to withdraw, the love bombing can reappear as apology, the vow to change, or flowers, gifts, and vacations.
This can create an unpredictable emotional cycle. You may find yourself working harder and harder to get back to the version of the relationship that existed during the affectionate periods.
You may think some of the following:
“I know they’re capable of loving me, maybe if I work harder, they will.”
“I must have done something to make them stop loving me.”
“I wish we could stay in these perfect moments forever.”
“They swept me off my feet, I’ve never fallen in love so fast.”
“Things were so perfect in the beginning, what changed?”
This can make leaving or creating distance particularly difficult, especially when boundary violations occur.
Gaslighting
Gaslighting involves behaviors that cause someone to question their own memories, perceptions, or understanding of events.
Hearing phrases such as:
"That never happened."
"You're imagining things."
"You're too sensitive."
"You're crazy."
"You always remember things wrong."
Over time, repeated gaslighting can make you increasingly dependent on the other person's version of reality. This is not 2 people remembering an event through their own individual filters; gaslighting involves a pattern of behavior that undermines your confidence in your own perceptions.
Blame Shifting
Instead of taking responsibility for harmful behaviors, the person may consistently make someone else responsible for the conflict. This can be viewed as a way to avoid tough feelings like guilt and shame, or it can be viewed as another form of gaslighting.
You might hear:
"I only did that because you made me."
"If you hadn't said that, I wouldn't have reacted."
"This is your fault."
"You made me angry."
“Your reaction is really the problem here.”
Healthy relationships allow people to take accountability for their own actions. Continued blame shifting can make you feel responsible for managing another person's emotions and behavior at the expense of your own.
Boundary Violations
A boundary communicates what you are comfortable with, what you are not comfortable with, and what actions you will take to protect your well being. Boundaries do not control another person's choices; they clarify what you will accept and how you will respond when a limit is crossed. In an unhealthy relationship, your boundaries may be repeatedly ignored, challenged, mocked, or punished.
Examples can include:
Yelling or name calling despite you stating that it is an emotional boundary for you.
Unlocking doors or making the physical environment unsafe during “time out” periods in arguments as a violation of a physical boundary.
Sexual boundaries being ignored or “forgotten” in the moment. This can also tie into coercion from the Power and Control Wheel
Time boundary violations in the form of continuing to interrupt important work meetings.
These examples are shown with the understanding that the boundary was placed and understood by both parties beforehand. Over time, you may stop setting boundaries altogether because enforcing them seems to create more conflict.
Devaluation
Devaluation can involve repeated criticism, insults, comparisons, humiliation, or comments that undermine your confidence. It is usually the direct counterpart to love bombing.
You may begin hearing things like:
"No one else would put up with you."
"You're lucky I'm here."
"You aren't as attractive as you think you are."
“You have no one else, nobody loves you.”
"You're not capable of doing that on your own."
Repeated devaluation can gradually change the way you view yourself.
The Smear Campaign
This usually happens after the relationship has reached its end, either through you leaving or them reaching the “discard” phase. This is an attempt for the individual to manipulate the views of those closest to them and to control the narrative of what happened in the relationship.
Their behaviors may include:
Reframing the conflict so that your reactions become the focus while their behavior is minimized.
Calling you “crazy” and stating that you need ”serious help”.
Telling stories about you and lying or minimizing the truth.
Stating they “Did everything they could, you were just never going to be happy” with them.
Telling friends or family that you spoke negatively about them or “hated them”, which will be believable if they were previously isolating you from them.
Because outside observers may see only part of what happened, it can be difficult to understand the full context of a relationship. Focus on patterns of behavior, relevant context, and your own well being rather than feeling pressured to convince everyone of your perspective.
The Narcissistic Abuse Cycle
One reason narcissistic abuse can be so confusing is that the relationship may not be consistently negative; you may experience a repeating cycle of closeness, conflict, and reconciliation.
While every relationship is different, people often describe a pattern that looks something like this:
Idealization → Devaluation → Conflict → Withdrawal or Discard → Reconciliation
During an idealization phase, the love bombing may feel exceptionally intense. You may receive significant attention, affection, compliments, or promises about the future. Then something changes. The relationship may move into a period of criticism, emotional distance, manipulation, or conflict. Eventually, one person may withdraw, threaten to leave, end the relationship, or otherwise create emotional distance. Then reconciliation may occur. There may be apologies, promises to change, renewed affection, or a return to the closeness you experienced earlier.
This cycle can be emotionally exhausting. It can also create a powerful sense of uncertainty because you may continually hope that the loving version of the relationship will return.
This framework can help explain why an unhealthy relationship may alternate between intense closeness and painful conflict. However, not every abusive relationship follows the same sequence, and these patterns alone cannot establish that someone has narcissistic personality disorder.
Why Is Narcissistic Abuse So Confusing?
One of the most painful aspects of emotional abuse is that the person experiencing it may not immediately recognize what is happening.
You may still love the person. You may remember wonderful moments. You may know that they have experienced their own trauma. You may believe they are capable of changing. And you may also recognize that something about the relationship is hurting you.
All of those things can be true at the same time.
Abuse does not have to happen every day to be harmful. Someone can be loving sometimes and emotionally abusive at other times. They can have good qualities and still engage in harmful behavior. This is one reason focusing on the pattern of behavior and its impact on you can be more useful than trying to determine whether someone is "good" or "bad."
You might start asking yourself:
"Am I overreacting?"
"Was it really that bad?"
"Maybe I misunderstood."
"Did I cause this?"
"What if I'm the toxic one?"
"Why can't I just let it go?"
"Maybe I'm too sensitive."
This self-doubt can become one of the lasting effects of emotional abuse.
When your reality has repeatedly been questioned by someone you trust, learning to trust yourself again can take time.
You Deserve to Trust Yourself Again
Narcissistic abuse can leave you questioning your memories, your judgment, your boundaries, and even your sense of identity. If you've started recognizing these patterns in your relationship, you may feel confused about what to do next. You don't have to make every decision at once.
You can start by paying attention to the patterns. Notice how you feel before, during, and after interactions with the person.
Notice whether you feel respected when you express a boundary. Notice whether conflicts lead to accountability and repair or whether they repeatedly end with you apologizing for things you don't believe you did. And notice what happens to your sense of self over time. A healthy relationship should not require you to continually abandon your own reality in order to maintain it.
Recovery begins with recognizing that your experiences matter. You don't have to have all the answers today. You don't have to determine exactly what label applies to another person. And you don't have to minimize what happened simply because there were also good moments. If you are struggling to understand a difficult relationship or recover from emotional abuse, therapy can provide a supportive place to work through what happened and begin rebuilding self trust.
Learning to trust yourself again takes time, and you deserve the space to do that at your own pace.
