Member-only story
The Wound of Moral Injury in Narcissistic Abuse
A look at the weight of betrayal and broken integrity
When I was 19, I reached an emotional precipice that changed me in ways I didn’t understand at the time, but in hindsight, it feels like the moment I began to truly see the world and my father for what they were. I was working my way through college, trying to piece together a future for myself. Therapy was part of that process, trying to unravel the layers of my past that I couldn’t quite grasp, but I had one moment, a single visit with my father, that shattered whatever illusions I had left about him and my relationship with him.
That day, I saw my father through an entirely different lens. Up until then, I had known him as flawed, distant, and often cruel, but on this day, I recognized the depth of his malice. It was like peeling back a veil, revealing the malignant narcissism at the core of who he was. I saw how he used people, manipulated them, toying with their lives as though they were just pieces in his personal game of control. It was almost surgical in its precision, the way he would distort, exploit, and harm without a second thought. The realization of this cruelty hit me harder than I could have ever anticipated.
I left that encounter feeling like I had just walked through the ashes of something I thought was…
