Healing After Narcissistic Abuse: Rebuilding Self-Trust

The Emotional Aftermath of Narcissistic Abuse

After you’ve experienced narcissistic abuse, it can feel like you’re living with a constant undercurrent of self-doubt. You may replay conversations, second-guess your reactions, and wonder whether you’re the one who overreacted or misunderstood. Even in calm moments, there’s a low hum of anxiety, the sense that you might somehow say or do the wrong thing.

Many people describe feeling hollowed out, unsure of who they are anymore. You may notice a kind of emotional numbness alternating with waves of sadness or anger that seem too big to contain. Depression can take the form of exhaustion or a quiet sense of futility — like the light has gone out somewhere inside of you, and you’re not sure how to bring it back.

And then there’s the inner critic, that internal voice that sounds eerily familiar, echoing old accusations: You’re too much. You’re not enough. No one will believe you. It can feel tyrannical, keeping you in a loop of guilt and shame even long after the relationship has ended.

When you’ve been undermined or gaslighted for years, it’s not just your confidence that’s shaken — it’s your trust in your own perceptions. The very instincts meant to protect you start to feel suspect. You might find yourself trying to “get over it,” but a deeper part of you knows that the wounds left behind are not simply cognitive, they’re emotional and relational.

The Turning Point: Beginning to Listen Inward Again

At some point, often almost imperceptibly, something in you begins to resist the old narrative. You start to notice flashes of clarity, a sudden feeling of Wait, that wasn’t my fault, or a fleeting sense of relief when you stop trying to please or explain. These moments might be brief, but they matter. They’re signs that your own voice is still there, waiting to be heard.

Therapy can help you begin to listen to that voice again. In a safe, consistent space, you don’t have to defend your experience or minimize your pain. Instead, we start with what’s true for you, the exhaustion, the confusion, the longing to feel real again. As trust builds, the internal noise begins to quiet just enough for you to sense what’s underneath: grief, tenderness, and a desire for self-connection.

Part of the work is learning to recognize how the inner critic operates, how it echoes what you once had to believe in order to survive. It’s not that something is “wrong” with you; it’s that your system learned to stay small and vigilant to stay safe. Through therapy, that adaptive vigilance can begin to soften. You start to feel the difference between the voice that attacks you and the one that’s trying to protect you. This discernment is a vital component of your healing.

This is the slow return of self-trust. Not a sudden confidence, but a growing willingness to believe your feelings, to notice your needs without shame, and to allow your own truth to carry weight again.

Depth Therapy as a Path to Rebuilding Self-Trust

Narcissistic wounding doesn’t always come from a romantic partner. It can begin in childhood, with a parent who needed admiration instead of offering attunement, or who dismissed your feelings unless they served their own needs. It can happen with a sibling who competed for control, or in a workplace where your empathy and competence were exploited by someone in power. Over time, these experiences leave similar traces: walking on eggshells, chronic self-doubt, a sense that no matter how much you give, it’s never enough.

Depth therapy offers a way to heal from those layers of injury that live beneath the surface. Rather than focusing only on behavior or self-esteem, this work invites curiosity about what formed inside you in order to survive, the vigilance, the people-pleasing, the mistrust of your own intuition. Together, we bring compassionate attention to those parts, helping them feel seen rather than shamed.

In this kind of therapy, healing doesn’t mean erasing the past; it means discovering that you are more than the roles you had to play. As the therapeutic relationship deepens, new experiences of empathy and respect begin to register in your body. The nervous system starts to learn that safety and mutuality are possible.

Gradually, you may find that the inner critic loses its grip. The voice that once kept you small begins to soften, making space for something truer, your own voice, steady and self-respecting. Rebuilding self-trust is not a single act of will but an unfolding process: feeling into your boundaries, naming your needs, and allowing your own perceptions to matter again.

Reclaiming Yourself

As self-trust begins to return, the world can start to feel different, you may feel more peaceful inside, and somehow more spacious. You may notice that you apologize less, that you pause before saying yes, that you breathe a little deeper in your own company. These are small but radical acts of reclaiming yourself.

There will still be days when the old voices echo, when self-doubt creeps in, or the urge to self-blame resurfaces. But healing after narcissistic abuse isn’t about never feeling those things again. It’s about recognizing them for what they are: echoes from the past, not truths about who you are now. Over time, you learn to meet those echoes with understanding instead of fear.

Depth therapy offers a place to explore these shifts, to integrate what you’ve been through without having to carry it alone. The work isn’t quick, but it’s real. As you grow more able to stand in your own truth, relationships begin to feel more reciprocal, choices more aligned, and your inner world more peaceful.

If you’re seeking therapy to heal from narcissistic abuse, whether from a parent, sibling, partner, or other relationship, I offer depth-oriented psychotherapy in person in San Francisco and online throughout California to support you in rebuilding self-trust and reclaiming a grounded sense of who you are. If you’d like to know more about how I work, you can explore my About, Individual Psychotherapy, or Trauma therapy pages to get a sense of what this process might look like for you.