Feel like you need to be always attentive, responsive, nurturing, supportive and comforting to other people, otherwise your existence has no point and you’re worthless
Don’t feel important enough for other people to care about, feel guilty and ashamed for having problems and struggling
Feel empty inside and lowkey don’t want to live but it makes you feel ungrateful and selfish to ever mention it
Try to make people as good as possible about themselves, always find good things to say about them, regardless of how they’re acting
Feel terror at the thought of saying no, ignoring someone when you’re busy, or acting unenthusiastic about giving someone attention
Can’t feel like you’re a person, feel like everyone around you is people but you are only pretending, and you’re scared of being caught
Don’t rely on anyone and feel like you have to sort out all of your problems on your own
Feel like you owe people to be honest and vulnerable and to give them every possible way to criticize you and judge you, or else you’re hiding something and being a hypocrite
Or alternatively, terrified of telling anyone anything and feeling as if anyone knew the real you, they would despise you
Have to act tough but you often feel broken and overwhelmed inside, and you’re ashamed of secretly being weak and breakable
Feel like you have to constantly please, entertain, be helpful, useful, convenient, in a positive mood and ready to admire others, or it’s reasonable for people to hate you
Feel like if you accidentally displease or offend somebody, it’s reasonable for them to retaliate 100 times worse and hurt you, and it’s your fault and they’re right to punish you
Don’t feel like you’re worth anything more than to be used by others
Then it’s possible you’ve been raised as a food for narcissists. These are the signs of severe childhood neglect, abuse, and trauma conditioning to force you to act as a source of endless attention, support, comfort and admiration, while receiving zero nurturing, attention or caretaking yourself. It’s likely you’ve been severely and unfairly overpunished for showing any human needs, signs of pain or struggle, or for wanting any attention, until it was very deeply established in your mind that it’s shameful and wrong for you to have human needs. It was wrong and despicable to do this to you. Narcissistic parents do this to children because they view them merely as a resource of narcissistic supply and not people whose feelings exist, or lives are as important as theirs. You did not deserve to grow up this way. Nobody should ever have punished you for being a normal child. You are human, too.
