Now, you may have initially shared your joy because you thought you were in a normal relationship. You listened to their negativity and contempt. Narcissistic people have no interest in what makes you happy, and they often take offense that something other than them is grabbing your attention.
And between the confusing misery of the relationship, the isolation, the trauma-bonded time wasted to make the relationship work, the guilt, and not understanding what’s happening, you may slowly stop doing joyful things.
You may stop sharing joyful things. Going to joyful things. Participating in joyful things. Spending time with joyful people. Or even allowing yourself that momentary joy about that shooting star.
By holding back on the joy, then you don’t have to face the wrath and the petulance—the spoiled-child, sullen, malcontent behavior of the narcissist. And then you get to stop hearing how selfish you are.
It’s a little bit of relief, but it isn’t joy.
But you also, if you do that, abandon such an important and essential part of yourself.
You might be wondering, at this point: do narcissistic people experience joy?
The shame, the insecurity, the anger, the selfishness—they all cut into the narcissistic person’s capacity to experience joy. Narcissistic people experience reward. That’s all that dopamine stuff is. They get attention, money, a new car. They get enjoyment out of watching someone else fail.
That gives them a sort of rush—a high.
A high and joy are not the same thing. Joy is more experiential. It’s much more in the moment. You tend to be fully present, right? It’s a wonder instead of just plain pleasure.
Joy is quite often collective. A hundred people on a beach who don’t know each other, but in the collective experience of happiness over an orange sunset. Or an auditorium full of people who don’t know each other, listening to live music.
Reward—this idea of reward as narcissistic people experience it—is something like: for a narcissist, it’s when something goes the way they wanted it to. It makes them feel more powerful. That’s not really joy.
Joy isn’t about power. It really is about awe and wonder.
And for narcissistic people, the innocence of wonder is something that—sadly—is buried under lots of shame and anger, and this constant set of suspiciousness—of threat—that narcissistic people struggle with.
Frankly, I really do believe that if we could teach narcissistic people to genuinely experience joy, and co-experience it with others, that could actually be a very powerful intervention to address narcissism. Good luck with that.
But what this means for you—as a survivor of narcissistic relationships—is this: this experience of joy is an essential part of healing. So how do you find the joy that got lost? This is a multi-step process of healing.
First: go backwards. Figure out what you stopped joying out on or doing. Figure out who the joy-bringing people are you might have disconnected from. Dig into the why. What happened?
Why did you give up the hobby? You can either talk about it with someone and journal about it, but figure out where the joy went.
You may learn that it felt invalidating or unsafe to express joy even since an early age. That the gaslighting about your joy confused you, but go back and figure out what happened to it. It’s like you misplaced it.
Second: figure out how to re-engage joy.
Continue reading on the next page
Sharing is caring!
Leave a Comment