23/11/2025
That's one of the most brutal and telling ironies of it all. The aftermath of narcissistic behavior doesn't look like a single person reflecting on their mistakes. It looks like a trail of wounded people, each carrying their own piece of the wreckage, desperately trying to understand what happened and how to put themselves back together.
Narcissistic behavior is the kind of problem that sends everyone else to therapy except the person causing the damage.
Think about that. The person who is the common denominator in all this chaos, the one whose actions are the source of the pain, remains utterly convinced of their own blamelessness. They walk away from the emotional car crashes they cause without a scratch, bewildered by why everyone else is so banged up. They are the storm that hits the town, then wonders why all the residents are busy rebuilding.
Meanwhile, you're left in a therapist's office, or on a friend's couch, or lying awake at 3 a.m., dissecting your own reactions. You're asking:
*"Was I too sensitive?"*
*"Did I provoke them?"*
*"Why can't I just let it go?"*
You are doing the deep, painful, expensive work of healing from an injury someone else inflicted and refuses to even acknowledge.
**They create the wounds, and everyone around them ends up trying to heal from them.**
They are the architects of the chaos, but they present themselves as fellow victims of the fallout. They break the trust, shatter the peace, and drain the emotional reserves, and then they stand back and watch as you—the actual victim—exhaust yourself trying to suture the wounds, manage the chaos, and maintain some semblance of stability.
Your healing becomes a full-time job. Your life becomes about managing the symptoms of *their* disorder.
But here is the crucial turning point, the moment you take your power back: **You stop trying to heal in the environment that made you sick.**
You realize that your sanity does not depend on them finally understanding the damage. Your peace is not contingent on them admitting their role. You can heal *without their permission*. You can validate your own pain. You can look at the wounds and say, "I didn't do this to myself. Someone else did. And now I will heal for me."
Therapy, then, isn't a sign that you were the broken one. It's the brave, radical act of cleaning up a mess you didn't make. It's you finally choosing to care for yourself as much as you once cared for managing their dysfunction.
They may never get help. They may never see the damage. But you can. And in that seeing, and in that healing, you reclaim everything they tried to take.
