Surviving the Holidays with a Narcissist: Essential Tips to Keep Your Sanity
Dealing with the narcissist in your life is absolutely draining, especially over the holidays!
Here are some things to remember:
You do NOT owe them access to yourself, your time, or your children.
You do NOT have to prioritize managing their feelings over what is best for you and your partner/ children.
Expect that they WILL make attempts to guilt you. Especially if they can be seen as vulnerable in some way such as; older in age, have a health issue, are a grandparent. They will use all of these things to spin the story that you are a neglectful, selfish, bad person who is just trying to hurt them. Instead of the truth which is you are just having a healthy boundary.
You HAVE to be able to separate yourself from their delusional narratives about you. When someone has a lifelong history of being abusive, they have made no attempts to create repair, have not taken ownership of the pain they caused, see you as the perpetrator- you have ZERO obligation to honor their demands. It is absolutely infuriating not to be able to defend yourself or fear others will see you in a poor light due to their story about you.
But here's the thing;
You will not be able to defend yourself to every single person in your life. And we know that is not fair. Many people have not done the work they need to do on themselves to see through someone like this.
Some people will have more insight than you think and might surprise you in seeing the truth.
You absolutely have the right to start telling the truth and we know that will feel completely impossible because you have been working so hard to avoid additional backlash by minimizing or excusing the narcissists behavior in your life.
Surround yourself with people who respect your boundaries and know your story. Even if that group is small it is incredibly empowering to have people who have your back.
Ultimately- do whatever you want! This is your holiday season and you deserve to be at ease, enjoy the time, and be with those who have earned the right to these special moments.
It is incredibly hard to start standing up for yourself especially with a narcissist. Take the time to reflect on your values, what you want the holiday to look like for yourself, your partner or children and make your decisions based on those values not on being bullied by someone who has caused you harm.
We see you and we are standing with you.
