I recently was let go by a narcissistic boss.
Early on I was fairly heavily 'love bombed' and told how great I was. I was told how the team was being built up around me, how my leadership and inspiration was driving the team forward. This boss did a few things, staying up late nights, to help me out on a few things. I thought "Wow this person really has my back!". So I let my guard down.
Over time, like the frog in boiling water, I gradually experienced a lot of gaslighting about my performance. One day I would be told X behavior is good and expected. The next day I was told that same behavior was problematic.
This boss increasingly became very top-down and domineering, and had a fairly fragile sense of their self worth. I helped to setup the team this boss took over as a Director. I was well liked and respected as a leader on the team (I was a Staff+ IC). I think this boss felt challenged by the esteem I had with my peers. They would work to undercut my own leadership, exclude me from decision making, and increasingly chide me for having idea. Providing technical leadership, and other activities that were core to my role, were seen as negatives. All of these were activities I used to receive praise for.
I started to feel like a scapegoat for anything going on in the team, being told I was "disruptive" and a "distraction" for doing my job. My expectations became whittled down to things like editing X document, or having Y conversation. Very micro-managed low level things.
Sadly, it took a long time for me to see this pattern. I thought I was the problem, and so I internalized a lot of the behaviors. It created a tremendous amount of stress and sleepless nights.
At my wits end, I tried to get some coaching and outside perspectives. I realized after a long career I hadn't had a negative relationship with a boss. I started to be more assertive after I decided after a year plus I wasn't the problem. As I started to speak up for myself more and more, the boss let me go, to the surprise of many of my fellow teammates.
I feel like I went through a classic idealization -> devaluation -> discard cycle of narcissism[1].
Long story short, please educate yourself about narcissism. Most empathic, 'normal' people assume they're the problem, they will internalize it, and so this kind of subtle abuse can creep up on you.
1 - https://pathwaysfamilycoaching.com/4-phases-of-a-narcissisti...