8 Ways Narcissists Steal Your Identity – Not only do narcissists isolate you from the people in your life, but they isolate you from yourself! In this video, we’re talking about the psychology of narcissists and why they isolate you and steal your identity – plus, we’re digging into the minds of the narcissistic supply and why we allow the isolation to happen in the first place.
Related articles
Angela Atkinson is a Certified Life Coach and the author of more than 20 books on narcissism, narcissistic abuse recovery and related topics. A recognized expert on narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder who has studied and written extensively on narcissistic relationships since 2006, Atkinson was inspired to begin her work as a result of having survived toxic relationships of her own.
Atkinson offers trauma-informed coaching and has certifications in life coaching, level 2 therapeutic model, CBT coaching, integrative wellness coaching, and NLP. She is a certified trauma support coach and certified family trauma professional. She also has a professional PTSD counseling certification. Her mission is to help those who have experienced the emotional and mental devastation that comes with narcissistic abuse in these incredibly toxic relationships to (re)discover their true selves, stop the gaslighting and manipulation and move forward into their genuine desires – into a life that is exactly what they choose for themselves.
Along with her solution-focused life coaching experience, Atkinson’s previous career in journalism and research helps her to offer both accurate and understandable information for survivors of abuse in a simple-to-understand way that helps to increase awareness in the narcissistic abuse recovery community. Atkinson founded QueenBeeing.com Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Support, the SPANily Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Support Groups and the Life Makeover Academy. In her life coaching practice, Atkinson’s clients enjoy her personalized approach that allows and encourages them to become the best possible versions of themselves and to succeed in doing what they love most. She offers individual and group coaching for victims and survivors of narcissistic abuse at NarcissisticAbuseRecovery.Online and NarcissismSupportCoach.com.
Thank-you for your ongoing videos. I have been going through healing for the last 3 years and it still helps to go through and hear another video. Instead of getting steaming mad anymore, now, I just laugh because it is soooooo true and it is soooooo ridiculous and pathetic. I have learned to forgive and it has set me free. I am moving on to the next relationship. Thanks again.
They can also take away new friends. That happened to me.
My narc boyfriend gets uneasy about my friendships because many of them go back decades there is deep emotional intimacy. So he pressures me to let him be present when I see my friends and cousins, and then sucks the air out out of the room with a flood of banal chatter and platitudes to prevent us from really connecting, so I feel lonelier than ever. When he and I are alone together, I am also starved for connection–he does the same constant stream of chatter then. He pressures me to spend all of my spare time with him and do all of my socializing with him, guilt-tripping me by saying he will be all alone if I don’t supply him with his entire social life. If he goes with me to a big party of my friends, he pretends he is trying to give me space, but what he does is go from person to person blathering on about me and telling them that we are life partners (I have been clear with him that I am not happy in our relationship and that I do NOT see us in this light); I believe that he is doing this to basically warn off potential rivals as well as to get my friends “on his side” so that they will pressure me to stay with him. He is able to charm my extended family by doing them lots of practical favors; it isolates me, because they can’t understand how suffocating and controlling he really is, and they keep inviting him along to events that I would much rather attend without him. I try not to bring him with me anywhere except to places where I don’t care about the people involved. He also turns up unexpectedly at my place of work,where he hangs around and demands a lot of attention and has temper tantrums if he doesn’t get it, all the while saying that he is no trouble! He initiates big angry scenes the night before I have important work committments, so that I arrive tired and stressed out at my meeting or presentation the next day. He creates so much grinding stress in my private life, that I am usually too exhausted to go out much, and have been too exhausted to take on any new clients for the last two years and have gradually chosen less demanding and lower paying work instead (result: starting to go into debt, and really missing my profession!) He has initiated big scenes before important family events, which wore me out so badly that I could not attend the event. He undermines me with workmen that come to work on my house, countermanding my instructions to them. He tells me I am abnormal and petty to see any of all this as boundary violations. When I try to tell him how unhappy I really feel in the relationship, he says I am abnormal and petty. He makes me feel like I don’t deserve to be happy, like there is something wrong with me for not feeling happy with him, and like his happiness is more important than my life. I have been trying to break up with him for a while but he has been doing a systematic campaign to be “indispensable” in practical ways, and gets very very angry if I activate my old support system. I am afraid if he is this bad about boundaries now, that he will ruin my life if I break up with him. I feel afraid of him in general, I have seen his temper.