You feel it. You feel the hatred they have for you and you don’t understand. The person who once loved you so much is treating you as if you are worthless and unloveable. That pedestal they once put you on has come crashing down. You hang on, waiting to be seen, to be released of the pain they are causing you. But everyday, it gets worse. Everyday a little more of you dies. You look at yourself in the mirror and don’t even recognize the person staring back at you. You can’t eat, can't sleep. And their words, they cut you like a f*cking knife.
The devaluation stage is the moment in the cycle where everything changes. Something happened that made your relationship move from being totally loving to being totally confusing and painful. And you will want to blame yourself because you know exactly what you did to put this new stage in motion. You had a need.
Maybe you started seeing behind the mask. You started to ask questions because something felt wrong. You had this feeling in your gut which had been screaming at you for so long, and you couldn’t ignore it anymore. Maybe you set a boundary. Maybe you were sick and needed something from them. Maybe you questioned something they said, or you asked for honesty.
Whatever you did, it shook the Narcissist to their core. They felt exposed, they started to feel like they were actually being seen as something other than perfect. They became scared, because the image of the person they pretended to be this entire time, was falling apart and no one could know the truth. This was never something you did wrong. This stage was always inevitable because they can’t hide forever.
Once you start to feel the Narcissists slip away, you give away more of yourself than you actually have. You hope that if you love more, things will go back to that loving stage. You walk on eggshells, so afraid of pushing them further, blaming yourself for their mood and treatment towards you. You become submissive, and if they say the sky is checkered, then the sky is checkered.
But why can’t you just walk away? Because, there will be loving moments sprinkled here and there. You want more of those moments, so you do anything to get any ounce of what feels like love or affection. You become addicted, as if you are playing a slot machine. You can’t walk away, because what if the next pull will get you back into that loving relationship? So you keep trying your luck, you have little wins, but the losses are much too big. You are in a complete state of cognitive distances. Your brain is telling you that this person loves you so much, but also telling you that they hate every single bit of you. The very person who can make you feel safe, is the same person making you feel like there is no safe place in this world and it’s utterly destroying you.
But that wouldn’t be enough of a punishment for seeing who they really are or being a human with needs. No. They also have to come at you with words that kill you inside. Words that tear apart your soul. Sometimes the punishment turns physically violent. But physical violence also comes with the emotional and psychological abuse that all narcissistic abusive relations thrive on. Walking away feels scarier than staying, so you stay and pray that things go back to the way they were. But with each passing day, you lose a piece of yourself, and they watch you fall apart and they don’t seem to care.
But that still isn’t enough of a punishment. Now you are crazy for having your suspicions or needs. Now they are telling you what you are seeing with your own eyes isn’t actually happening. You are made to believe the you are the problem and completely insane. And if you react to the abuse, then you become the abusive one. It’s all your fault that you made them treat you like this. This is what they need you to believe, because the cycle can’t be completed unless they gaslighting you to a point where you will have no other choice but to blame yourself for the next stage.
