The Lost Letters: The Dark World of Narcissistic Abuse

Breach The Barrier To Trust

Don't attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by anything else. 

- Hanlon's razor

Let's begin with trust. The one thing you lost and need to regain to heal. Without it, everything is going to be much harder. Perhaps too hard. But to generate trust, you must be able to give trust—to let go to another and believe you will not be violated for doing so. You must have faith in what you cannot control, must believe it won't bring you harm. Easier read than done.

When you have spent any length of time with (or are still with a narcissist), your trust has been epically fucked. You have been disciplined not to trust what you see, hear, or feel and have relinquished your right to these things to another who has had a free hand in defining your reality, which is a lie. Their lie.

You have been taught to trust lies, and the layers go deep. Trained to deny the reality your senses feed you, you have forced yourself to exist in the narcissist's reality, a flimsy, shifting world that has crippled you. You trusted what they said, because it was 'safer' to do so. And now, they are gone and your survival instinct is to trust nothing. You exist in a place of fear and avoidance. Your friends and family say things to you, things you cannot believe, because you think they are lying. Because you were lied to, all the time. The gaslighting, the denials, the outright reconstruction of a past you were a part of into something completely different. Nothing feels real, and nothing can be trusted. This is what you know, and what you cling to. What was taken from you—and how it was taken.

Trust no one. Trusting someone got you here, so the safest thing is to never trust anyone, or anything anyone says again. Assume the worst. Assume they lie. Assume they are deceiving you. Assume you will be hurt.

Good plan. Right?

For a time, when you are at your most vulnerable—when you are reeling in your discard and not thinking straight.

Then . . . not so much. Then you run into difficulties. You don't trust your doctor, your counsellor, your friends, your family, or the nice guy who comments on your Instagram posts. You wonder if the customer service representative at your bank is being honest with you, and begin to doubt your lawyer who is fighting hard to defend you. You pull back from everyone, convinced they are lying to you, misleading you, setting you up so they can hurt you and take away what little of yourself you have left.

It's lonely, frightening, and alienating. Paranoia stalks you. It keeps you awake at night. Sometimes it will even wake you up. Fully formed conspiracies which makes total sense at 3am that keep you tossing and turning for two hours in gut-wrenching torment. You are hunted by your fears, by all the variables that can lead to pain. You can't make it stop. It's a nightmare. But still, better this than the alternative. To not know what is real. To be shredded to within a breath of your existence by another. Better to be defensive.

And so you don't trust anyone, or, you if you are backed into a corner, you pretend to, but beneath your waxen smile, you fear the worst, prepare for the worst, think of ways to put up barriers, to claw back your autonomy, to never let yourself end up in such a scenario again. You don't want favours. Kindnesses are greeted with suspicion, because wasn't it kindness that trapped you in the first place? Everything is dangerous. Particularly kindness, and especially anyone who wants you to talk to them about what has happened to you.

Talking to someone is what gave them the power to manipulate and control you. No. Talking is definitely off the menu.

So you don't trust. You don't talk. You don't let people in. You keep yourself isolated, locked in your solitary prison because to come out is too dangerous. How long does this last?