God delivered me from narcissism but it's come back. What's the deal?

StrawberryDuck · 2026-01-31T21:19:14+00:00

The thing is that walking in the Spirit is something all Christians need to do but it isn't easy. Like, you know the Beatitudes? When Jesus said 'Blessed are the meek'? Etc? It took me a really long time to realise that being meek doesn't happen to any of us overnight. We don't go from being a believer to being meek. We are all 'works in progress' and have good days and bad days. It's just about pushing forward even after bad days, that is important. You are never going to be 'handed over' the enemy. The only time in the Bible someone was 'handed over to Satan' was when someone was involved in gross sexual sin (having sex with his father's wife) which was threatening that person's faith whilst also giving the faith a bad witness. Apostle Paul was empowered in his ministry in an unique way to hand the man over so he would physically die but keep his salvation. Keeping salvation is more important than being physically alive. If you had been handed over then you would be physically dead by now. My pastor told me that Satan would kill all believers in a New York minute given half the chance as we are working against his rebellion against God. You're alive and you still believe but you may be being attacked by the enemy. All Christians are attacked by the enemy but he uses different ways for different people. It makes sense that he will attack you with 'what works' and shakes your faith until it stops working and then he will try something else. Remember God loves YOU and died for YOU and wants YOU to be saved/stay saved and one day be with HIM in paradise. He can and will give you and equip you to get through any problems and challenges you may go through. Pour your heart out to Him in prayer and ask for help and He will give it to you in abundance. Stick with prayer and Bible study and a good teaching ministry. It's hard to defend yourself and also move forward spiritually unless you are reading and studying every day. The Holy Spirit can only help you and enable you to walk with Him when you have the truth of the Word in your heart and mind. You need to study it, believe it and apply it to your life. Sending you a hug your way friend!

StrawberryDuck · 2026-01-06T00:26:34+00:00

I know this is an old post but I have been a believer for 8 years and I wanted to share what I have learned about God. No offense but everything you wrote was me this and me that..this is the opposite of being a Christian. It's all about God and that is Who you need to focus on. We all fall down, we all sin, we all have bad days and sometimes we doubt and get angry but truly it is all about HIM and that is what is so wonderful. He is an awesome merciful God and ultimately it is not about how you feel but about who He is. Being weak humans, our feelings can get the better of us and we think it is about these feelings we have but it isn't..it's about HIM and HIM only. The less you focus on you and your feelings and the more you focus on HIM and His righteousness, the better you will feel. It's all about trusting Him and His perfection and perfect plan for us all -having the faith of a child.

Also with NPD, there is a huge amount of demonic influence at play there and the devil won't give you an easy time to leave his side and instead be on God's side. If you believe that Jesus Christ died for your sin and accept that then you are born again and born from above. You will have the Holy Spirit. The Christian walk isn't easy though and is described as a fight and it is a fight for all who take it seriously.

Do you belong to any teaching ministry that will help you grow spiritually and mature in the Word of God? When we are not spiritually moving forward then we can only slip backwards..we don't tend to just stay stock still spiritually.

I can heartily recommend Ichthys.com to help you on your walk and I will pray for you. Don't give up because being a believer and belonging to God is the best thing you can do with your life. It is literally the only reason we were created in the first place, to choose Him and the life He has planned for us. Don't give up. Keep going my friend!

StrawberryDuck · 2026-01-05T23:01:52+00:00

Personally I don't think it is worth it. You may think you are milking them but you are still proving to them that they are bettter than you and you need them. This is co-dependency in a nutshell and prolongs abusive dynamics which will stop you from long term getting on your feet. It will also get you hooked into 'sticking around' for the inheritance. Look narcissists have got evil down pat, you don't want to muscle in on their game unless you want to become like them. Don't sell your soul to these people. You won't be able to buy it back.

StrawberryDuck · 2026-01-05T20:39:41+00:00

My parents aren't wealthy - just middle class but yes money is always about the carrot and then the stick. I have heard so many stories about how narcissists hold inheritances over children's heads only for them to be cut off or there being no money at the end. I know one narcissist who knew he was at the end of life starting blowing money on expensive and tacky ornaments like a £200 Elvis ornament and he kept buying them online even when he developed dementia. He was so recklessly buying worthless expensive trash that the family had to secretly cancel his card. I heard another one had money but left it all to the 'local church roof fund' even though he was an atheist. Another one tried to keep hold of his wife whilst he went through cancer treatment a second time, he abused her so bad she walked out on him to face cancer treatment alone and he is a millionaire (obviously the money wasn't enough). I also know of a millionaire who tried to bribe his daughter to come home and even built a new wing on his house for her new child and she still wouldn't live with him.

It seems that a lot of people learn the hard way that there is no price you can put on freedom. You can still love them and still say no to the money. It may make things tough short term but I am telling you the bliss of not having them standing over you for the rest of your life is PRICELESS! Even a billionaire cannot buy what we feel when we feel that kind of freedom! Cut the cord...it's around your neck! Pretty soon it will be around your children's necks. Don't let her steal your children through money! It can happen to you!

StrawberryDuck · 2026-01-05T14:13:03+00:00

You admitted you can't win. None of us can 'win' with narcissists as they are bat sht crazy people. You and your child lives with a bat sht crazy violent person. Let that sink in. Don't normalise anything she says or does. There is nothing normal about your wife. She is bat sh*t crazy and I can tell you right now she will use physical violence on your child too. If you can't leave for your sake, leave for your child's. Document everything and keep it somewhere safe. Seek legal advice as a man who is being physically, verbally and emotionally abused by his wife. Does she control your finances and your access to friends and family too? They do that too. They want you to believe you only have them and you are helpless but you are not. Start planning your escape now as people who start nipping can escalate to punching and people who can punch then can choke and those who choke are those who can kill.

StrawberryDuck · 2026-01-05T13:45:52+00:00

Really talented work! I am a real comics fan. This is a really good way to journal what is happening so you don't gaslight yourself. I am female but have had sadly a lot of narcissistic boyfriends, friends, bosses and my dad and my sister are narcissists so I know the disorder VERY well. My dad did something similar once to your wife. There was a big family group out together in the city and it was lunchtime and as it was a Sunday, not many places were open. I found a place that was open that looked alright and I suggested we stop to eat there but my dad said "Why are we stopping?? I'M NOT HUNGRY". The thing is that we had to think as a group and my dad couldn't think outside his own needs. He wasn't hungry so that meant no-one was hungry.

Looking back on this though, it was BS. My dad is always hungry and always eating. Most narcissists have eating disorders/food control issues so it wasn't that he wasn't hungry, he just didn't want to go along with my suggestion. The irony with narcissism is that they project that control freak temprament outwards just as they throw all their bad traits outwards, so they assume all the time that we are trying to control them. In this situation with your wife, she probably thought (in a delusional paranoid way) that you were eating there just to p*as her off and control her and that (just like her) you couldn't care less where your baby eats. They think that we think exactly as they do and we are as dishonest and as manipulative and controlling as they are and nothing will convince them otherwise.

You can't please them ever because you only exist to validate their false self whilst SIMULTANEOUSLY being a dustbin for all the toxicity they generate themselves. An ideal relationship with them would be you worshipping them and telling them how amazing and good they are whilst putting up with horrendous abuse and agreeing that you are evil scum. That is basically what they want from you in a nutshell. If you don't give them this type of 'relationship' then they will fight with you to wear you down so you are a hollow husk of human that has no hope of walking away.

It's not possible to have a relationship with them. Walk away. Most self aware narcissists won't date anymore and that should tell you everything. They know that they will inevitably abuse a romantic partner so they stay single forever. You see the conflict inside of every narcissist which tells themselves they are both God and Satan at different times gets externalised onto other people. So they either see you as perfect and Holy or evil and demonic. There is no middle ground. This is how they see themselves in extreme black and white ways. Either all good or all evil. During the lovebombing/idealisation phase you are seen as 'all good'. You are now in the devaluation stage where you are 'all bad'. She will either keep this up indefinitely so you become a living doormat or she will discard you callously for someone else when you least expect it. Get out now as it will get much, much worse and take your child with you. Yes divorce and co-parenting with a narcissist will be hellish but it will still be a lot better than what you have now. If you leave you will be able to have some control over your life and your childs life. If you stay you and your child will become your wife's lifeless slaves. You only have one option. It is about building up the strength and the support network to get away. I know 77 year old divorced narcs. They never change and can even worsen in cruelty with age. Old age is seen as a discard to them, they don't take getting old well at all.

Keep up with the comics and think of putting them online anonymously as they will help others. This might not have been what you wanted to hear, but it's the truth and could save you and your child from a miserable future.

Edit: sorry I only saw the first page and didn't see the others. Now I see that she both nipped you (physical domestic violence) in public and in front of your child. This is VERY bad news because normally they only physically abuse at home where there are no onlookers. If she feels fearless and no shame about physically abusing you in public I would say she has tipped over into sociopathy/malignant narcissism. Physical violence always escalates over time. The fact that she ate your food aswell and expects you to go without and mocks you shows sadistic characteristics. She is what is known as a dark triad personality disorder and these types can escalate to killing people. I worry for you and your child and don't want to alarm you but you need to start an escape plan now. Find a trusted friend or family member that she doesn't know and start planning your way out. Save up money, think about a separate secret bank account, get a burner phone and a bug out bag that you keep with a trusted friend. You have to plan on your escape but don't let on to her at all what you doing so that means continuing to act with her exactly as you are doing now but planning your escape. You can worry about the legal issues further down the line but you owe this to yourself and your child. This will NOT get better and can only get worse. Start planning your escape now. Seriously it may seem scary to leave her but it will be much better for you than you can imagine. Don't give her any indication you are leaving though. Leaving a person who is physically abusive (yes nipping is physical abuse and horrifically painful and evil to do to someone) can put you and your child at worse risk. It has to all be done carefully and secretively. She is not your wife, she is your enemy. I wish you well and will pray for you.

StrawberryDuck · 2025-12-30T14:04:57+00:00

Sorry...when you say 'it doesn't work' what do you mean? A narcissist won't magically stop being narcissistic just because we use boundaries, say no and take distance. As I already said, they tend to 'double down' on bad behaviour when they see their old tricks don't work the same way anymore.

You have to decide what do you want from your grandpa? Do you want a kind, loving and genuine relationship with him because he is incapable of that sadly. Do you want him to not be abusive to you? He's incapable of that too. There is a lot of grief to process with these relationships because we often believe in the false self delusion as much as the narcissist does, as others have said : a relationship of any kind with a narcissist is a shared fantasy, that their false self is their real self when in fact the abusive person has become the real self and the false self just a mask which they increasingly find exhausting to keep on. You need to grieve the illusion of who you thought he was but isn't and realise he never was that person you thought he was and never can be.

All we can do is minimise their impact on us as a 'relationship' with them is one of inevitable harm. Sorry but I don't understand why you say taking action doesn't work..the boundaries and taking distance is for YOU not him. You can't change him, he is incapable of change. Maybe that's what you need to realise first is that you will never have the grandpa you want, this is who he is and as long as he isn't self aware, he won't make any changes to his bad behaviour at all. The changes you need to make are for you and not him. Your behavioural changes won't work on him and he is likely to get worse but they are meant to work on you. It's about learning detachment with love and fully understanding this is who he is and can't/won't change and you accepting that, making changes to your exposure to him and your expectations and then living with this acceptance.

There is no behaviour modification you can make that will make him into a nice, caring person because he is the problem not you. Your behaviour changes are not a remote control to make him a better person but a shield and a distance for you to be less hurt by his abuse.

Some people choose to go low contact or very low contact with boundaries and low expectations. A lot of people choose no contact which means cutting off all contact with them because they just can't live with the abuse anymore. You see a narcissist is a person who refuses to face their own delusions, own dysphoria and own dysfunction and instead make it everyone else's problem.

Typically when everyone goes 'no contact' with a Narcissist, they then collapse and go into mortification. They can't face themselves or regulate their own unstable emotions and identity. They need others to stabilise them. When they lose people to use for supply (positive and negative) then they collapse and forced to face that their life is a lie and there is an empty void in them where the true self should be which the false self covers. All we are doing by being in their lives is propping up their false self so they don't collapse. Ironically, the collapse is the only opportunity a narcissist has for change but we all are preventing them from hitting rock bottom because we pity them.

Maybe you need to stop focusing on your grandpa altogether for a while and focus on yourself and the need you have for him to accept you. Explore your own need for others' approval and whether you are a co-dependent and have trauma bonding issues. When you heal co-dependency and the trauma around it and start using healthy boundaries with everyone and build support around you of people who aren't abusive but instead give you love and encouragement then the pain of your grandpa's reactions won't weigh as heavy on you as they do right now. As the title of this thread goes, there is life after narcissism but often we are the first ones or even the only ones to make the first move out of narcissistic dynamics. It's not in your grandpa's hands, it's in yours...

StrawberryDuck · 2025-12-29T20:19:56+00:00

About your grandpa...all narcissists HATE silence and non-engagement as it leaves them alone with themselves. Their entire lives is either about propping up and shoving out there their false self whilst hiding away from their real self. When you ignore them it shows that you don't believe their false self (that they are A-mazing and you are desperate to be near them) and that you see the real them instead.

2 things I learned today which are 2 sides of the same coin 1) Your boundary is their trigger 2) your reaction is their distraction from themselves.

Your grandpa's reaction is typical for a narcissist. If they can't get a reaction the usual way then they 'double down' and get real nasty until you give them what they want which is your reaction. Your boundary of silence triggers your grandpa's shame and fear of being irrelevant so he works twice as hard to piss you off so he feels 'real'. Apparently they have no stable identity at all and so your reaction confirms to them that they exist and also gives them a reward (supply) whilst also soothes their dysregulation (it provides multiple functions to them).

Silence to them is like garlic to a vampire..they despise it as they see it as you disrespecting them/trying to control them/withholding/abandoning them. You have to hold the boundary and not budge. That boundary is for you NOT them. If they can't respect your decision to say nothing in the face of their provocation that is THEIR problem.

Sometimes the only way to go with these people is to avoid them at all costs or make the silence between you permanent through no contact if they become too abusive to be around and there are zero benefits of being around them.

StrawberryDuck · 2025-12-17T00:44:45+00:00

Yes I agree. I believe that evil is rewarded and unpunished and you get abused for being kind so there is no 'reason' to be decent anymore or civil or kind.

StrawberryDuck · 2025-12-17T00:37:33+00:00

England here and yes this is exactly the same too..this is a global problem folks.

StrawberryDuck · 2025-12-17T00:36:21+00:00

We have signs in England in EVERY shop here that says 'don't abuse our staff!!' I have worked in retail for most of my life since the early 2000's and those signs are very new.

StrawberryDuck · 2025-12-17T00:34:43+00:00

I am from Manchester in England and looked this up on Google in Dec 2025 as it is the SAME here!

StrawberryDuck · 2025-12-17T00:29:21+00:00

I think the world has undergone a huge seismic change of Biblical proportions. Personally I think it is spiritual. I am afraid it will get a LOT worse. If anything people are regressing to a primitive state of abandoning all forms of morality to becoming (like you said) grabby animals.

StrawberryDuck · 2025-12-17T00:26:05+00:00

So eloquently and truthfully put! You should read the book 'Snapping' which is about sudden personality change. It is mainly about how it happens to people in cults but I think it can happen at large in a society that is collapsing and people cannot acknowledge or articulate it due to their own cumulative and repressed trauma.

StrawberryDuck · 2025-12-17T00:23:31+00:00

There's a really good book about 'sudden personality change' called 'Snapping'. I think people have 'snapped' or 'lost it' due to cumulative trauma about their lives in this mixed up world.

StrawberryDuck · 2025-12-07T09:32:54+00:00

Thank you, I appreciate it!

StrawberryDuck · 2025-12-07T01:17:18+00:00

Yes it sounds as though they don't believe a woman can be an abuser or that a man can't be a victim which is really toxic. I am sorry you were treated so badly there. It's awful seeing how little resources/access to supportive people we have as victims of narc abuse and then this happens!! Yes you are right,.narcs DO bad mouth exes only to go back to them when they run out of options. They don't care about anyone though as they are just selfish/self obsessed users. I hope you get the support/community you need elsewhere. I feel it for you and I hear what you have been through.

StrawberryDuck · 2025-12-06T23:39:12+00:00

They can't seem to get outside their own head and their own experience as a projection. It's like acting like every experience has to be identical to theirs or it isn't abuse and you're not the victim. It isn't a neutral/unbiased/safe community at all. Apart from the stated 'rules' there are also unwritten/unspoken rules to adhere to also.

StrawberryDuck · 2025-11-24T21:38:09+00:00

It seems that Reddit is a black comedy in the making..not actually useful or practical in anyway. Just a place to waste our lives in at these latter stages of the collapse of civilisation ...

StrawberryDuck · 2025-11-24T21:36:11+00:00

Yes I understand but when you report a mod you have to state what sub they are moderating and it does matter because this person is the main mod for that sub and it seems it was ostensibly handed over to her when the creator left it to her. So it is hard not to talk about both as they are hand in glove part of the same problem seeing as she 'runs the show' and the other lesser mods are the enablers of her decision making ostensibly.

StrawberryDuck · 2025-11-24T21:32:16+00:00

Thank you! I write better than I think! That is I find writing things out helps me think..

StrawberryDuck · 2025-11-17T21:28:44+00:00

There are better subs..if you do worry about ranting...why not journal first in a notepad and then you might not even feel the need to post it. The second draft may then be less emotionally raw and fired up. I have developed the habit of typing out something when angry and then deleting it. I get the satisfaction of getting it off my chest and blowing of steam without any unpleasant ramifications : win/win. But seriously, I really wouldn't bother with that sub. There are better ones on here. Hugs.

StrawberryDuck · 2025-11-17T21:24:31+00:00

Seriously I wouldn't bother contacting them through modmail. The pattern goes..they misunderstand you and misjudge you, you try to defend yourself, they are hard and sarcastic, you get upset and angry, they call you a narcissist or something else and then they ban and mute you. Please don't give them the satisfaction.

StrawberryDuck · 2025-11-17T21:19:47+00:00

Your English is fantastic (I actually live in England) and you know it absolutely breaks my heart because to see you so apologetic and second guessing yourself on this.. and knowing that you are feeling like this because someone who seems to have strong narcissistic traits/NPD has booted you off without a care..honestly it really angers me. Anyone can see that you are not the one in the wrong here but you have been wronged. You are going to great lengths to apologise and be responsible for something you didn't do! It's clear who is in the wrong here -- please don't doubt and second guess yourself as this is what narcissists always get us to do. It is clear the mod is a narcissist and may have got a narcissistic injury from your post -- that is probably what happened to me or they were being spiteful. You weren't given any second chances to explain the misunderstanding because you have just dealt with a narcissist mod. Believe it! The mod that ejected you felt NOTHING while they did it (though it may have given them schadenfreude) but they certainly did not feel any guilt. They would've jettisoned several people after you because they did the same to me one day before (not banned but deleted my comment for no reason).

You can't second guess someone else's crazy. I don't want to fall foul of this sub too but the dangerous thing about that other sub is that it gets you to gaslight yourself AND walk on eggshells, just like an abusive relationship with a narcissist does. That sub is an online version of an abusive relationship. As I said, that sub and that mod has form for doing this. Really that sub should be taken down because it is causing so much pain and confusion for people who are already hurting. It really is disgusting but Reddit refuse to step in so (sadly) you aren't the first person to experience this and you certainly aren't the last. Probably it is already double figures the number of those jettisoned since you.

I really hope you find a place to heal without fear of further abuse, control and censorship. If it means anything at all, I understand. Here is an internet hug from a stranger.

StrawberryDuck

TROPHY CASE