Individual Counseling: Why Does A Narcissist Bring Up Your Childhood Trauma?

Individual counseling can help you learn how to deal with a narcissistic partner in marriage and can help you learn why they continue to bring up your own childhood trauma. Trauma means an unhealed wound and the person needs to protect themselves constricting their ability to feel, be present and respond flexibly.  Trauma isn’t defined by the event but what happens to you internally.  Young children can be traumatized when their parents don’t provide enough attention and responsiveness. 

Individual Counseling Can Help You Deal With Narcissistic Relationships In Your Life

These symptoms include re-experiencing the trauma through childhood flashbacks or being unable to recall parts of childhood, intrusive and self-destructive thoughts and difficulties with sleep. Symptoms that can occur as a result of childhood trauma are depression, anger, anxiety, shame, a sense of being on guard or easily startled, trouble concentrating, and trouble with sleeping.

Unresolved childhood trauma and wounds plays a major factor in who you choose as a partner in your adulthood. If you are living with these wounds, it is possible you are likely to attract a narcissist for a partner. You may not understand why you are attracted to this type of individual, but it becomes the easier choice because your body and conscious understands what to expect. It has normalized this type of behavior instead of telling you to find someone else. 

Narcissists often choose to bring up their partners’ childhood trauma in order to transfer any sort of shame feelings from themselves, onto their partners. Unfortunately, in a marriage, narcissists tend to lack the ability to care about the emotional needs and emotional experiences of their partner. This creates an easy target when childhood emotional abuse has gone unresolved in their partner’s life.

Individual counseling can help you work through unresolved childhood trauma, and how to handle a narcissist’s behavior. Seeking out individual counseling might help both you and your narcissistic partner, however, a narcissist is unlikely to accept any responsibility. By seeking counseling, you’ll be able to identify narcissistic abuse and how to create healthy boundaries for yourself.

If you are Johnson County, KS including Overland Park, Leawood, and Olathe, and are in a relationship with a narcissist, individual counseling can help you choose the best course of action to correct for your relationship even if that means ending it and moving on. For more information on individual counseling, contact a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor, Terri Dichiser, with Take Charge, Inc. at (913) 239-8255 to schedule an appointment.