The word itself, ‘trapped’ is a perfect way to sum up the whole experience of being in relationship with a narcissist.
It is like the mouse that is lured in by the sight and smell of cheese. Only to find that as soon as it takes a bite, it is caught in a death grip.
How pertinently this describes the way the narcissist lures their target with idealisation/love- bombing. The innocent recipient becomes mesmerised by what seems to be the answer to all their deepest yearnings and desires.
The attraction is irresistible and the thought of life with this person, simply blissful.
But there is a problem. It is a trap! It is a death-trap that the victim does not see it until it is too late. They are drawn in deeper and deeper taking bite after bite, and are then bonded, as one, psychologically to their abuser. This is when the personality takeover really has taken root.
The idealisation phase creates such a high that the person becomes deeply addicted to finding that feeling again and again and willing to settle for breadcrumbs in order to get it back even momentarily as time goes on.
So now we can see clearly why love-bombing IS the trap. It was never about maintaining the love phase, but rather a means of setting you up to be discarded! That is what the intention was, all along, and it happens slowly then quickly until the target finds themselves in a state of fight or flight, a constant walking on egg shells fuelled by a desperate hope that one day that first love will return.
But it never will because the point was to raise your self-esteem so high that you begin to really see yourself as lovable and desirable, only to suddenly cause you a massive and monumental downfall from grace so that you then try to escape from being the disappointment you always believed you were. The victim believes they are the cause of their trap, not the narcissist!
But despite knowing all this, many find they are simply unable to leave or they leave and then go back! Why?
They are trauma-bonded. They are addicted just like a drug addict to crack or the alcoholic to alcohol. The high is what draws you back but leaves you in the lowest of lows (often for dead).
We need to find a way out of this cycle of abuse. And the Mind Map offers just this. As Dr. Judy often says, the pathway out is to discover the pathway in! We need to understand when we first became accustomed to this type of relationship? When did we first confuse love with abuse and addiction?
In Panel 1 we go right back to the beginning, to the early attachment experiences in childhood and there uncover the roots of the love addiction.
Panel 1 sheds light on the wounds that our parents inflicted upon us either knowingly or unknowingly. As young infants we were wounded and our parents were not able to or didn’t care to see our pain. There was no empathy but rather an underlying apathy.
This is the real cause of your being trapped in a narcissistic relationship today. It is not your fault.
You inherited a psycho-virus that goes back generations and has set you up to be in relationship with narcissists/abusers. You were very much trapped in childhood, in a hostage situation but now you can be free.
Where children in these situations go wrong is that they come to believe that the apathy of their parent is their fault. If they were somehow better/more loveable/not so needy, then they would be pleasing and all would be well.
This is exactly the dynamic which is played out again in adult relationships. How often I hear clients say ‘..but if I hadn’t been so needy or, ‘if I had been more confident, or ‘if I wasn’t overweight…then it might have worked out’! And time again I have to remind them that the narcissist would not have been interested in them in the first place had they been those things!
So unless we take some action at some point in our lives, we will continue to repeat the WTF pattern in relationships. And where does that pattern take us? Into Panel 4 and 5, chaos, defences and breakdowns. Then we feel trapped not only because of the trauma bond but because of our symptoms of anxiety, depression, ailments, aches, low energy and low self-esteem too.
The truth is though, these are only symptoms, they are not who you are and they do pass once the healing begins.
Victims have spent their lives attempting to bond and connect to people who do not wish to bond or connect deeply with them. The love experienced is real for the victim but not for the narcissist. They only ever wanted what you could supply them with- no more- and when your usefulness expired, you were either left in the wings for a future time for them to return to or they caused you to end the relationship so that they are not seen as the bad guy!
They are so good at how they manipulate and control that victims do often return even after the most vile treatment. This is why choosing to escape the trap must be dealt with psychologically most of all.
Going no-contact is a start but it is not enough because the cause needs to be understood. We cannot allow the wounds to remain unhealed any longer, for suppressing them is what will lead to the WTF happening again.
Ultimately, the Mind Map sets us up for success in part 2 of our lives by giving us the means to see clearly how toxic relationships found a pathway in and then signposting the route out to real freedom and life-giving love!
Bowlby, J. (1988) A Secure Base: Parent-Child Attachment and Healthy Human Development, New York, Basic Books. Bretherton, I.
Kernberg, O.F. (2004) Borderline conditions and pathological narcissism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Rosenberg, J. (2015) Be the cause: Healing human disconnect. United States: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.
Christiana is a qualified psychotherapist in London, England. She has a particular interest in the effects of Narcissistic Parenting, Attachment and Co-dependency.