Raise your hand if you had depression after narcissistic abuse 🙋♀️
I’d be more surprised if you didn’t. Because being with a narcissist will do that to you.
It’s unlikely you’ll emerge unscathed from the relationship.
And depression is bound to be high up on the list of emotional repercussions they’ve left you with.
If you weren’t depressed before the relationship, you certainly are now.
What’s depression?
You know the feelings: worthlessness, persistent low mood, sadness, no lust for life. Maybe you’re exhausted, lack an appetite or just have no interest to do anything anymore.
And when things are really bad, you’ll be thinking of dark thoughts, like harming yourself.
If it lingers for a long period – more than 2 weeks – you’re considered to be clinically depressed.
*(Disclaimer: please don’t use my blog as your official diagnosis, head to a professional if you think you might have it)!
Depression versus depression after narcissistic abuse
There’s a difference between the two. Ones within you already, and the other is brought on by experiencing narcissistic abuse.
Let’s look at depression first:
Depression
You can go into a relationship with a narcissist with pre-existing depression. Which means you’ve been suffering with it on and off for a while.
So it’s something you’ve learnt to coexist with because it never really leaves you. It just lays dormant and comes back in episodes. And all its uncomfortable feelings reappear with it.
It’s somewhat unpredictable coming and going, with nothing really triggering it. And it’s not just one bad day, it’s several bad days with constant feelings of sadness.
Not only does it affect your thoughts and feelings. But your behaviour, your energy levels, your physical health. And even the things you used to enjoy doing, like your hobbies, or socialising with friends.
It clouds everything you do, and makes even the simplest of tasks feel impossible. Like getting out of bed every day, or taking proper care of yourself. So it saps your motivation and makes everyday life seem like an uphill battle.
And you know what?
Abuse is one of the main causes for depression. Because relationships with abusers are highly stressful.
You’re in a constant state of worry, fearful of what’s coming next. And dodging all the emotional landmines to avoid further conflict.
And this keeps you away from all the things you love. Because you’re drained from the daily fighting that you cannot fathom doing anything else.
Your energy and motivation slowly seep out of you like a leaking bucket of water.
So when it comes to the discard, you’re already at an all time low. And that’s the final nail in the coffin that causes your depression after narcissistic abuse.
Depression after narcissistic abuse
This kind of depression is brought on by the abuse you’ve suffered.
So you’re feeling all of the above symptoms. But the difference between the two, is the depressive feelings are triggered by what you’ve been through. Which as you know, has been mentally draining.
And the way you’ll know which one you have, is how you start to feel without the narcissist in your life. So you might find that when they’re not around you, your mood starts to shift and you feel a bit better.
Obviously you’re going to feel pretty shit when your relationship ends regardless. But you’ll know if your depression was caused by the narcissist, the longer you remain away from them.
So that means you’ll have a period of feeling very low while you’re processing and getting over the relationship. But in time you’ll start to feel happier again.
Whereas if you’ve clinical depression, it’ll keep coming back even long after your relationship is over with the narcissist.
Go no contact 🚫 to test the cause of your depression
This kind of leads me on to going no contact. It’s why I keep telling you, it’s the best way to move forward. Because if you block the narcissist you’re cutting off the source of your misery.
So in theory, if they’re the reason you’re feeling depressed, your depression should lift the longer you stay away from them. Because when you break no contact and they come back into your life, you’ll notice your depressive mood returns too.
If things don’t improve without their influence, then you’ll know it’s depression from narcissistic abuse.
Why narcissistic abuse causes depression
It’s quite the shock to find out your lover is also your abuser. And that’s why you’ll find a break up with a narcissist hits different to anything else you’ve ever experienced.
Up until the discard, you’ve believed them to be your one true love. And I don’t blame you, I felt that too.
After all, they’ve been showing you all their best, lovable sides. But it’s also been sandwiched between their damn right confusing behaviour.
And that confusing behaviour has been grinding you down. It’s been chipping away at your self esteem and causing you to doubt yourself, every step of the way.
So it’s no wonder when they break up with you, that you feel a shell of who you used to be.
And the depression you feel not only follows because of their abusive actions. But because their real identity is revealed.
So the end of your relationship also marks a significant loss to your life – the loss of the person you thought the narcissist was.
The realisation that all their actions were just a decoy for you to let your guard down. And that you only fell for someone they wanted you to think they were.
Which means you’re dealing with grief as well. And that’s a double whammy when you couple it with the depressive symptoms you’re also feeling.
Grief
When relationships end with narcissists, it’s really hard to not obsess about whether any of it was real. And then that makes you doubt your perception of things and the validity of your experience.
But what you need to remember is:
You can always trust your part of the story.
Because when you love someone, you believe the best in them – even when they’re being dishonest. And so, their deceit doesn’t invalidate what you felt. Your part in it was still genuine.
However it can feel like the entire relationship was never real. And so it feels like you’re struggling with grief. The grief of something not being real.
Loss
So you’re essentially dealing with a loss – the loss of someone who’s still alive as well.
And you need to process that.
So when you leave a narcissistic relationship, you’re grieving what you believed was true. As well as what you hoped for, like the life you envisioned together.
Which brings me on to another contributing factor to your depressive symptoms:
Cognitive dissonance
This is the mental strain you feel when your mind holds two opposing beliefs. So in the context of narcissistic abuse, it’s loving your abuser, despite knowing they’ve hurt you.
For example, your relationship could’ve gone from them showering you in love one day, to ignoring your existence the next. And the extreme difference in behaviour makes you question their love for you.
Like how does someone love you so hard, and then treat you so cruelly?
It’s confusing, right?
And you never know where you stand, or what you’re going to get from them. Which inevitably leads to a lot of self doubt and confusion.
And feeling that coggi dis just enhances all those negative feelings of depression. So if you’re already feeling low, add in some further mental conflict, and you’ve got yourself a potent mix.
Trauma bonding
I won’t go in to too much detail as I’ve already got 2 blogs about this topic (trauma bonding with a narcissist and healing from trauma bonding). But I do want to mention how trauma bonding makes depression harder after narcissistic abuse.
It’s more emotional labour you have to deal with. Because you have to detach yourself from their control – and that ain’t no walk in the park!
Narcissistic abuse forges bonds that are anything but healthy. It’s a twisted dance between moments of cruelty and displays of kindness. Which leaves you feeling off-balance due to their unpredictable nature.
You might find yourself yearning for the narcissist’s validation. But deep down, they give you this icky feeling that something’s off in your relationship – you just can’t pinpoint what that exactly is. And because they don’t treat you badly all the time, it’s hard to spot the abuse at play.
This cycle of craving affection from someone who’s actually hurting you, messes with your sense of reality. Because you’ve got this partner who says they love you. But their actions harm and confuse you (theres the coggi dis again).
And you can’t just shake a trauma bond off when your relationship ends. They take a lot of work to break, and because of that it makes you feel helpless. It makes the break up feel heavier than normal because of all the work that needs to be done to repair their damage.
Their manipulation is so engrained in you that you’ve forgotten how to function without them. So you can understand why this makes you feel depressed.
How to manage your depression after narcissistic abuse
I feel like all I’ve done is talk about the negative effects of narcissistic abuse! So you’re probably thinking it’s all doom and gloom, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Wrong!
That’s where behavioural activation theory comes in – a type of cognitive behavioural therapy. And if you’re like me, it might be something you’re already doing. But you didn’t know there was a name for it.
So let’s get straight into it!
Behavioural activation theory
Like I was saying above, when you’re depressed it has a knock-on-effect. And it starts messing up your usual routine because it leads you to withdraw from everything you used to like doing.
A single depressive episode – like one that follows narcissistic abuse – causes you to lose enjoyment over the things you once loved. And that’s because all your negative thoughts and emotions make you not want to do anything anymore.
So it makes you retreat from social situations, avoid your daily responsibilities, and neglect your hobbies and interests. And when you’re less involved in those activities – that once made you happy, or even brought you a sense of achievement – you get stuck in a cycle that keeps repeating and breeding more depression.
So the more your depression progresses, the more you pull away from the things you like doing. And it just goes on and on, trapping you into a lull of depression.
But what research has found, is that if you make yourself do the things you should be doing, it can positively affect your mood. Which means if you start implementing the things you neglected, like exercise for example. You should start to see results if you keep it up.
So even if you can’t be arsed, what this theory says, is to do it anyway! You’re basically working to replace your negative thoughts with positive actions instead. So that over time, you’ll gradually begin to feel better as you start reaping the benefits of doing the things you once enjoyed.
So by changing your behaviour, you’ll eventually change your thoughts too.
Why does behaviour activation theory help depression after narcissistic abuse?
So the way this theory helps depression, is it encourages you to notice your patterns of behaviour. It gets you looking at your day to day to see if you’re disengaging from your normal activities. And if you are, then you know what you need to do about it!
Start by monitoring your current daily routine and recognise how it’s making you feel. Have you stopped going outside? Are you watching too much TV? Are you on social media for hours a day?
And once you’ve identified your “bad habits”, start thinking about what you could do to counteract them. What did you do before that you haven’t done in a while? Could you go for a walk first thing in the morning? Have you seen your best friend lately?
Once you’ve decided what you’re going to do about it, you then need to schedule it in.
Because it helps increase the likelihood of the activity being carried out.
And by doing all of this, you’re helping to break your avoidance and withdrawal cycle. But you’re also replacing it with a healthier, more positive cycle. Because once you restart those activities you once enjoyed, you’ll start feeling good again. So you’ll want to keep repeating the action that made you feel better.
You see where this is going now?
It’s why just doing it, is so important. Because you’re reinforcing the positive behaviour that pulls you out of your depression cycle.
And it’s this positive feedback loop that reinforces the benefits of staying active and doing the things you love. As it leads to more involvement in meaningful activities, that therefore improve your mood.
Change your actions
A couple of blogs back, I wrote about the power of changing your thoughts for healing trauma bonding.
And one of the lessons in there was this:
Your thoughts, bring about feelings, that cause your actions.
So it’s another loop. Which means if you change your actions, it can change your thoughts and feelings, based on that new action. And that’s what behavioural activation’s about.
It basically says that your inaction is reinforcing the bad feeling. So it’s all linked in this system and by changing one part, it can affect the other parts too.
So try changing your actions and see if your misery starts to fade. And I know it sounds really basic. And I’m not trying to simplify curing depression. Because I know how tough it is to pull yourself out of an episode.
But I also know, that this is what I eventually end up doing to help ease the symptoms.
Ease yourself into it
After a couple of weeks of wallowing with no exercise, no socialising and eating badly. To turn it around, I gently push myself back into activity.
So maybe I do a bit of yoga and it makes me feel good. And then tomorrow I’ll make myself lift weights and that also makes me feel better. And bit by bit, I start reaping the rewards of doing those things again.
That’s motivation enough for me to keep it up because I don’t want my mood to dip again.
So start off small. Don’t jump into scheduling 5 days of activity, because that’s already setting you up to fail. It’ll overwhelm you and put you off because you’ll feel like you’ve got too much to do, too quickly.
So ease into it, pick something simple like going for a 10 minute walk. And maybe you build that up to half hour eventually.
Notice how you felt before and after. But also don’t expect things to change over night. You need to keep doing the activity and stick with it for some time before you see the results.
A few things to note
I touched on it above and I’m going to say it again:
📆 Schedule your activity
Make it easier for yourself so you stick with it. So pop it into your iPhone calendar and set reminders for your weekly activities.
If you’re wanting to do exercise, like a Joe Wicks HIIT (great for when you don’t know what to do), then why not pop the link into your schedule as well? So then when it comes down to it, you already know what you’re doing.
🕰️ Allow time to recover
It’s important you give yourself rest days too. So if you’re pumping iron in the gym and you’re hit with DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) the next day, then you need time for your muscles to recover.
You also need to make sure you’re refuelling your body and having sufficient sleep. Because all that will impact how well you recover. You shouldn’t feel exhausted every time you’re jumping about in your living room!
💪🏽 Motivation
Don’t wait for motivation to kick in – because you’ll be waiting a long time! Motivation follows action. So you just need to DO IT! And the momentum will follow.
You need to look ahead of the workout and remember the benefits you’ll feel afterwards. Like, a sense of accomplishment; sweaty but relieved you’ve done it! Truth be told, 9 times out of 10, I don’t want to do exercise! But I always make myself do it as I know it adds value to my life in the long run.
It’s a myth that everyone loves to exercise. I think most people do it because they have to, they’re just not honest about it!
Education is the best motivation to help you change
The goal of depression is to find things that help you manage it. Because if it’s in you then going through narcissistic abuse will trigger an episode. So you have to find ways to suppress it again.
And rather than me just telling you what to do, I want to educate you on why you should do it. Because then you’re learning how it all works.
And once you understand depression after narcissistic abuse and why it’s affected you. Then you can tackle how to ease its symptoms. And then hopefully you’ll get the results you need!
If you’re still in contact with your narcissist and you know it’s making you depressed, then you need to try this next step.