The Effects of Psychological and Energetic Abuse That Makes You Question Your Own Sanity

By The Awakened Jenn

I spent years doing this very thing, maybe even my whole life with the various toxic/abusive/narcissisticstic people in my life. And it’s been the hardest part of healing and recovery for even me to understand, much less anyone around me. It’s the part that made me feel the most broken and dare I say… “crazy”.

I begged my abuser to forgive ME… while they held zero accountability or remorse for what they had done to me.

WHY would I do this has been my own hard question to answer.

We’ve all heard the assumption:

only naive or weak people fall for narcissists.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth.

In reality, narcissists often target people who are strong, empathetic, intuitive, and full of light—because that’s what they want to absorb, control, and ultimately drain.

The Early Trap: It Feels Like a Fairytale

If you’ve never been through it, it’s easy to think you’d see the red flags. But that’s the thing—there aren’t any red flags at first. Only green ones.

Unmasking Covert Narcissism in Spiritually Charged Relationships

By The Awakened Jenn

I’ve seen it in my own story. And I’ve seen it in countless others too.

Covert narcissism hiding inside a connection that also felt spiritual… sacred… destined.

When it’s a twin flame—or any high level soul connection—it becomes so much harder to name the abuse. The pull is stronger. The excuses last longer. And the damage runs deeper.

But the truth is: abuse is abuse, no matter what label you give the connection.

Whether it’s karmic, twin flame, or soulmate, we have to start recognizing when we’re being harmed, and stop mistaking trauma bonds for destiny.

You know how in video games, there’s always a final level?

That moment when you face the biggest, baddest, most terrifying boss of them all—the one you can’t even access unless you’ve conquered every level before it?

That’s what it feels like when you finally break free from a narcissistic relationship.

That moment when they know you see them.

When the mask is fully off.

When the truth is so clear, so undeniable, that even they can feel it… and then they panic.

This is the final boss level. And make no mistake, with a narcissist, it is a game. One they intend to win at all costs.

I’ve spent a long time now trying to process what really happened.

When you’re coming out of a narcissistic relationship—especially one cloaked in spiritual language and soul contracts—there’s so much confusion. So many layers.

For a long time, I couldn’t even admit to myself what I was really seeing. I kept trying to explain it, trying to understand it, trying to make it make sense. Because nothing about it felt like how love should feel.

And yet… I loved.

Some people will tell on themselves.

They’ll admit in direct and subtle ways… that they chose to be toxic.

That they knew they were hurting others. That they saw the damage they caused and kept going anyway.

That they never intended to be good. Never wanted to be accountable. That they didn’t care who they destroyed as long as they didn’t have to look in the mirror.

Which is exactly what happened to me, multiple times.

For nearly six years, I lived inside something I couldn’t name.

I was trauma bonded. Gaslit. Blamed. Discredited. Controlled. And told it was “love.” But love doesn’t look like what I went through. It doesn’t silence, isolate, and shame you for your pain. It doesn’t manipulate your mind until you question your goodness, your sanity, and your soul. It doesn’t reward obedience and punish truth.

This wasn’t love.

This was narcissistic abuse.

Let’s talk about the REAL crazy-making of narcissistic abuse.

Everyone says “the confusion is the hallmark.”

And it is.

But confusion isn’t just not knowing what to do.

Confusion is not knowing what’s even real.

Confusion is not knowing if the person standing in front of you is the safe one or the dangerous one. Because they’ve shown you BOTH versions.

I have to share this… so much truth is pouring out of me lately, that I am writing a book.

It’s called “When Love is Lie” and it’s to help Survivors Reclaim Their Truth after Narcissistic Abuse. (There’s a Companion Journal to go with it to help others process too.)

But… this section about Gaslighting that came out of me this morning… I do want to share because I think this is something most people don’t really understand… “what does it REALLY look like” and “how does it feel.”

I still ask myself this question sometimes.

Even now, after everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve written, every truth I’ve spoken—I still find myself circling back, wondering if maybe I am the one who’s off. Maybe I’m too much. Maybe I’m the narcissist. Maybe I’m the one who just couldn’t let go.

That’s how deep this runs.

Yesterday, during one of the most validating counseling sessions I’ve had in a long time, my new therapist gently gave language to something I’ve been living in for years.

She said, “You’re experiencing Relationship PTSD.”

And just like that, everything inside me softened. Not because I didn’t already know something was deeply affected in me after what I went through… but because someone finally named it with clarity. With compassion. With truth.

Lately, I’ve been realizing that one of the hardest things to process in my healing hasn’t been a relationship or a person—it’s been my home.

This house holds stories. It holds memories. It holds energy.

And lately, it’s been holding too much that still triggers me.

I built this house as a fresh start—my fresh start—in 2019, after my divorce from a near 18 year marriage. It was meant to be a place of peace, of pride, of stability for me and my kids.

I got to choose everything about it: the siding, the cabinets, the paint. Every detail had my fingerprint on it, and every step of building it was full of hope and excitement.

This is an important question I’ve recently been reflecting on—

especially after loving someone I thought was simply wounded…

only to realize they were willfully harmful.

So let’s get honest.

When does someone stop being just “hurt”… and become a narcissist?

The truth is layered—

part psychology, part soul contract, and part personal choice.

This isn’t just personal—it’s planetary.

I’ve been hearing this phrase a lot recently, and you may have too—“mass narcissistic collapse.”

It’s circulating through spiritual TikTok, trauma recovery circles, and even mental health communities. At first, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Was it just another trending phrase? Or was there something deeper being reflected back to us as a collective?

After sitting with it—and really looking at what’s happening across the world, in relationships, and even within myself—I can say with certainty: it’s real.

And it’s not just psychological. It’s energetic. It’s karmic. It’s evolutionary.

This is a moment of global reckoning… and the masks are falling.

“This is me loving myself.”

“This is me standing up for myself.”

Those words still ring through my mind for the cruel hipocrisy they really were.

That’s what he said to me after the most explosive blow up he’d ever had at me, on what was already one of the most emotionally fragile nights of my life. But what actually happened that night wasn’t self-love. It wasn’t empowerment. It was abuse—plain and simple… to someone he had claimed to “love” hours prior.

Let’s talk about what really happened though.

I happened to notice something interesting today.

A memory popped up on Facebook that made me realize I had been blocked by someone. And after a quick bit of investigation, I realized it was his mother.

And let me tell you—good for her. Because if she thinks that by blocking me, she can erase what happened or silence what I know, she’s got another think coming. My voice only got louder through this process. The more they tried to silence me, the more clearly I saw.

And what I saw was the truth.

“In other relationships, you can still hold on to the good memories.

But with narcissistic abuse, the good was part of the trap.”

The Question That Shattered Me

In my counseling session today, my therapist asked a question that hit like a scalpel to the soul:

“What is the truth of this relationship?”

I sat there, breath caught in my chest, and the only words that came out—through tears—were:

“He hated me.”

He thought I was weak…. But he actually had no idea how much self-restraint I held—for six long years.

For six years, I silenced myself.

I walked on eggshells.

I tried to keep the peace in a war zone where I was constantly blamed for the chaos.

I contorted myself into impossible shapes trying to make him happy—trying to avoid the next explosion, trying to absorb the damage before it hit me too hard.

But eventually, it did. And the whole thing collapsed.

“I lost it, yes. But I wasn’t the one who built the pressure cooker.”

I want to talk about reactive abuse — not as a concept, but as something I lived through in real time, with real consequences to my name, my mental health, and my dignity.

Because this is what people don’t understand about psychological abuse:

Sometimes, it’s your reaction that gets remembered… not the abuse that caused it.

And when that reaction is witnessed — especially by someone eager to believe the worst — it becomes a weapon. A story. A label. A reputation.

In 2023, I was still trying to save something that was killing me.

I was knee-deep in counseling sessions, desperate for clarity. Desperate for something that would help me make sense of what I was living in—because none of it made sense. One of the first counselors I saw that year tried to introduce the idea of a trauma bond to me. I’d heard the term before, but I didn’t understand it in the way I really needed to. And honestly? The way he framed it only made things worse.