Midlife Women Worksheet: Power After Narcissistic Manipulation

Midlife Women Worksheet for Healing After Narcissistic Abuse

Worksheet Introduction: Healing for Midlife Women After Narcissistic Abuse

This midlife women worksheet is for those recovering from narcissistic abuse. It explores how praise and criticism were used to manipulate your choices, undermine your worth, and prevent emotional autonomy. Each section offers reflection prompts and tools to help dismantle internalized control mechanisms and rebuild your connection to your own voice.

Use this in quiet reflection, therapy sessions, or supportive group discussions. You are not alone. You are awakening.

🌘 Stage 1: Praise, Obedience, and Emotional Manipulation

Understanding Praise as Control in Midlife Women’s Lives

1. What were you most often praised for?

Were you praised for being self-sacrificing, silent, helpful, or invisible?
How did that shape your self-image?

2. What desires or dreams did you abandon because they were discouraged or ridiculed?

Educational? Creative? Personal?

3. Did you feel your worth depended on staying small or useful?

What was the cost of that belief?

🖋 Reframe Prompt:
Write one sentence praising a disowned or minimized part of yourself.

“I honor my boldness, even when it made others uncomfortable.”

⚡ Stage 2: Midlife Women Confront Narcissistic Threats

Recognizing Empty Threats and Reclaiming Truth

4. What threats were used to stop you from growing?

“No one will love you.”
“You’ll lose the kids.”
“You’ll be alone.”
“You’ll never make it.”

5. Which of those threats were never followed through on?

Write them out and evaluate their truth.

6. When did resentment toward the narcissist first appear?

What sparked it?
What did it teach you about your values?

🖋 Reframe Prompt:
Choose one false threat and rewrite it as an empowering truth.

“They said I’d be penniless. I’ve learned to manage my finances and invest in my future.”

🌞 Stage 3: Rebuilding Self-Worth for Midlife Women

When Disapproval Validates Growth and Confidence

7. What compliments now feel like manipulation?

Identify moments when praise was used to silence or redirect you.

8. What types of criticism used to wound you that now signal your liberation?

Boundaries, joy, confidence, ambition?

9. Where in your life are you still imagining the narcissist’s disapproval?

Are you performing for an internalized audience?

🖋 Affirmation Prompt:
Choose or create one grounding belief to carry with you.

“My worth isn’t dependent on anyone’s approval—not then, not now.”

🔄 Integration: Reclaiming the Midlife Woman’s Voice

Complete these sentences:

“I used to think disapproval meant ______. Now I believe it means ______.”
“I thought I had to be ______ to be loved. Now I know I’m lovable when I ______.”
“I once feared rejection. Now I fear living a life that isn’t my own.”

Self-Celebration List:
List 5 traits or choices that once brought disapproval but now bring you pride.

🌱 Practice: Keep Returning to Your Truth

Return to this midlife women worksheet each month to track your healing and notice shifts in voice, strength, and self-permission. Share it in supportive spaces or bring it to depth psychotherapy as part of your recovery journey.