Are You Becoming Like Them?

Do toxic relationships make you mirror abusive behaviors?

In this episode, I explore a common question: am I just like them? I explore whether living with a narcissist or emotionally abusive partner can make us react in ways that feel out of character, just to survive.

Key Takeaways:
- Understanding reactive abuse and why it happens.
- Strategies for setting boundaries with yourself and others.
- The importance of recognizing your triggers and maintaining your individuality.

Tune in to learn how to navigate these challenging situations without losing yourself.

Transcript

Welcome to the You're not crazy podcast. Hosted by Jessica Knight, a certified life coach who specializes in healing from narcissistic and emotional abuse. This podcast is intended to help you identify manipulative and abusive behavior, set boundaries with yourself and others. And heal the relationship with yourself, so you can learn to love in a healthy way. You can connect with Jessica and find additional resources, content and coaching, add emotional abuse cook dot com.

Hello. And welcome back. Thank you again for being here. As always. I want to dive in today coach To a topic that, I think we think on our heads, but it's hard to put in towards times?

And it's... Do we start to show up like them? Meaning do we start to show up as an abusive person? Do we mirror their traits? Because in relationships with narcissist or other toxic individuals, abusive of people, it's natural to wonder if we start to become like them to get our needs met or to be heard.

We look back at the relationship and see ourselves yelling, screaming, getting angry. We don't necessarily show up as narcissist assess ourselves, but the dynamics of these relationships can cause us to adopt behaviors that we wouldn't otherwise consider. We might yell or lean into a trauma response that we have that normally isn't there in our everyday life when we're feeling healthy and regulated, narcissist, abusive of people often have large personalities even when they're cohort. Their intention is usually to always have power over us. And we don't want to be like that.

But sometimes it feels like there's no other way to get our needs met. For example, if we want space or need space, we might feel forced to lie to get it. If we have an idea or a perspective, we might find ourselves pushing back. Twice as hard just to be heard or getting super defensive because we're constantly being told we're wrong. And this is not because we're trying to be difficult.

It's because this is how we have figured out how her survive in this relationship. I actually have a blog post coming out that's about this topic, and which will be up on my website, emotional abuse coach dot com, and it will also be on subs, which I've really been enjoying recently. Sharing post, old journal entries, stories, things like that. But I wrote about how it's not about being defensive or difficult. It's about refusing to be gas.

When we set boundaries with these people. We are often labeled as defensive difficult or stonewall wall, but what we're trying to do is protect ourselves and often, they're setting boundaries with us such as stop talking, your perspective doesn't matter what they're just trying to maintain power and control over us. And so what choice do we have here. When we're in the relationship, the options often feel pretty limited. We either give up our individuality and our thoughts and let ourselves be gas lit or fight to have our perspective heard.

And when our perspective is not generally heard valued, then we can just choose just not have a perspective anymore. Which is likely impossible. If our perspective was generally heard and valued, we wouldn't have this problem, right? We wouldn't be needing to lean into trauma responses and fight responses. And when it's not, We find ourselves responding in ways that feel out of character.

And this is where we often want to begin to have boundaries with ourselves. Talk about that a lot in my boundaries deep dive. It's a 19 dollar course that's on my website. And it's about how we need to set boundaries with ourselves and with the other person and how to do it in an abusive relationship. And I'll share an example because I think that might be helpful.

In my own experience with a partner who I believe had severe borderline and narcissistic traits. I never felt like my boundaries were respected. I couldn't take space or step away from a conversation without being blamed. I found myself fighting so hard to be heard that I was mirroring his intensity, not because I wanted to be a narcissist not because I wanted to wind. But I was depths really trying to hold on to my own identity at my own perspective.

He'd get intense that I'd get intense more. That's not me. That's inherently not me. And when you're always met with defensive, superiority and stonewall you don't have many other ways to react. I add another x who would just shut down conversations with this look as if I was speaking of foreign language.

I felt so invalid data and end up getting louder and more frustrated just trying to be heard only to be accused of being abusive. And so do we show up with them, show up like them, not really because these are responses, this is reactive abuse, This is coming up because we're consistently being emotionally abused that we start reacting to it. We become stuck in trauma. This probably is bringing us back to an old childhood memory and inner child, something that where we needed a fight to be heard that we need to fight to be seen and valued and that someone is consistently stonewall us. We get louder and more defensive because they're not listening and they don't care But if this was reversed, there is no not listening and not caring.

That is not allowed and abusive relationship, This is a 1 way street and we're fighting against that 1 way street. And when we're consistently gas lit, and told our thoughts aren't real. It is a survival mechanism for this relationship to try and find different ways to be hurt. We you might double down, not because we want to abuse them or maintain power and control, but we're just trying to survive emotionally. I talk a lot about how their intent doesn't matter.

I've gone on my soap box a couple of times about that. The intent behind their actions is often about power and control even if they deny it. They might say, they're not trying to be controlling, but their actions tell a far different story. If all I want is to be heard and to feel like my partner cares about me, and all they want to do is be right. It becomes really clear who is seeking the power and control.

In these situations is so easy to feel desperate and to soft blame to feel like nothing, I said or did ever seem to matter because the truth is is that even if you're trying to get them to understand something simple, like needing space for whatever reason, they act as if you committed a crime. And so you find behaviors to help you survive this dynamic because you are trauma bonded. You are addicted to this relationship you likely love them or a version of them, and you haven't began to heal and un the gas lighting. Right? Like, most people are here is because they're starting to get...

Put something together that tells them that this is not okay. But it takes time to figure that out. And for instance, it's another example, I once at a partner tell me I didn't appreciate them or that I didn't care about their perspective. And in my life, my personal life outside of the relationship. I'm never told that.

I've actually had to do a lot of work in therapy around people pleasing and caring too much and taking on responsibility for things that are not mine. But it made me question myself. And in reality, all I did was care about their perspective. All I did was silence mine, all I did was talk about in therapy about how I need to care more and understand more and do more. But he equated every disagreement with a lack of appreciation, which was just another way to gas like me, and to make me confused because if I'm confused if things are hazy, then I'm not focused on what's actually happening.

I'm trying to un hazy myself. The same person also accused me, I'm not taking accountability and that accusation mortified me, making me question myself even more. But even when I looked back and I went through messages for months text that I've sent friends, things like that, and I realized I was apologizing and constantly for things that weren't even my fault. I was accountable to things I didn't even do. I went out of my way to apologize for whatever my role was in situations.

But when he said I wasn't taking accountability what he was saying was I was not taking full accountability of whatever it is that he did too and relieving him of any guilt, but I could not go in his head and un the thoughts. Above my pay grade, but I was accountable. And I'm not someone that goes and reads the transcript of a bunch of tax and things like that. It's just... I feel like that time was spent in my twenties and I'm not gonna do it anymore.

But when I did it in this situation, that's what I saw. How much accountability I actually took. All these accusations are just a way to gas us further, they can claim that they didn't do this or that, and then we got angry. Sometimes we feel like we're showing up just as they would so that we're just as bad as them. But 1 of us is trying to maintain our sanity.

While the other person is just trying to be right, and that's the difference. But what we can do is begin to have boundaries with ourselves over when we're getting activated, we're getting that trigger of how we want to respond and how we will respond. If we need to walk away, we're gonna start to walk away. And if this becomes a place where it's not safe for us to walk away and regulate ourselves, then it's no longer a safe relationship and chances are, it's not a safe relationship right now. But of course, all of this comes with context the context of your specific situation.

There so many emotional struggles and dynamics being in a relationship with an abuse or toxic individual, and you are not them. You are not them but you can take the responsibility of looking at your act change your triggers and what you want to change in writing down, what is it that is triggering me? What is the response that I have? How do I need this to be different? And then what is the boundary I'm going to have with myself?

Change always keeping in mind your personal safety, your children's safety. I hope that this was helpful. I hope that this helps you move forward in some way. As always, if you need support, you can find me an emotional abuse coach dot com on Instagram, at emotional abuse coach, and you can email me jessica jessica coaching dot com.