Now let’s continue to number four: Isolation at work due to trust issues. You might want to connect with your colleagues, but a little voice inside says, “Be careful; they might be fake too.” That’s not you being mean or antisocial; that’s your nervous system saying, “Do you remember what happened the last time you got betrayed?” As trauma therapist Pete Walker writes in his book Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, survivors often develop what he calls “healthy suspicion” that sometimes turns into full-on emotional armor. You’ve seen how manipulation hides behind charm, so now you keep everyone at a safe distance, even if that means feeling lonely in a room full of co-workers. You’re just protecting yourself the only way you know how. By avoiding the risk of betrayal disguised as friendliness, you shouldn’t miss number five: Assuming blame for group failures.
As a narcissistic abuse victim, you’ve spent so many years being the scapegoat. Now, whenever something goes wrong at work, your immediate thought is, “It’s my fault; I must have missed something or failed somewhere.” This isn’t just self-doubt; it’s trauma. According to psychologist Jennifer Sweden in her book The Trauma Toolkit, survivors of narcissistic abuse often internalize a sense of responsibility for everything because that’s how they were conditioned. They were taught that if something went wrong, they had to have been the problem. But here’s the thing: This habit of assuming blame is not a sign of weakness; it’s a survival mechanism that got stuck. And while it’s important to recognize mistakes, it’s just as important to realize that not everything is your responsibility.
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