Healing From Narcissistic Abuse

Following up from the last article on Narcissistic traits, I would like to share some key ways to help you heal from this emotionally depleting abuse.

Perhaps you’ve been sitting around, asking yourself the following questions..

“Why does it take so long to heal from this heartache?”

“Why can’t I stop thinking about the person who treated me like crap?”

“Why do I still love them after what they did to me?”

“Will this pain ever go away?”

Obsessing over an emotionally abusive relationship is draining, and is extremely detrimental to your wellbeing.

There are many elements involved in healing from narcissistic abuse. Just as with any loss, there will be periods of grieving, denial, anger, and depression.

However, unlike a typical break-up, where you would eventually get to a point of acceptance, many victims of narcissistic abuse stay fixated on their abuser and obsess over them, causing their suffering to continue.

Why does this happen, and what can you do in your journey of emotional healing after narcissistic abuse?

Learn to regulate your nervous system

Allow yourself to grieve and be angry

Seek help if you feel you may have slipped into complicated grief

Implement ‘no contact’ in its true form

Improve your self-esteem

Don’t wait for time to heal your wounds, heal them yourself

Reconnect to your soul and allow your intuition to guide you

Narcissistic abuse creates emotional trauma. It targets your primal abandonment wound.

When you feel betrayed, rejected, and abandoned by a narcissist, your amygdala hijacks your rational thinking and sends you into fight-or-flight mode.

Your childlike self steps in, and we have the feeling of being rejected, abandoned, feeling worthless, and so much more. This is because we see ourselves as ‘not good enough’ and, from that thought, we’re left feeling sadness, depression, and an underlying feeling of defeat.

We need to allow space for our soul to communicate with us. We need to immerse ourselves in the culture that feeds our soul and brings meaning back into our life.

LEARN TO REGULATE YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM 

If we continue to numb out the cries from our soul for acknowledgment and compassion, she will quite literally take over and command us to listen.

Our soul has the ability to turn our lives upside down in an instant, and bring our bodies to a screaming halt, if she feels it’s the only way to make us listen.

This soul-awakening (though we see it as a life crisis at the time), albeit painful, provides a vital opportunity for us to begin our spiritual journey toward wholeness and wellness.

Learning to self-soothe is the crucial first step. Otherwise, any activities you engage in to heal and move forward can be drained away by the emotional hijacking caused by your amygdala.

The Key is Embodiment - Allowing all your feelings, visions, sensations, and tensions to be seen, felt, and, ultimately, released.

Reconnect With Your Soul - Your soul has a way of tugging at you, trying to get you to listen, but the more we ignore those signs and niggles, the quieter our soul becomes and the more lost we feel. To reignite this connection, we must still our mind and go within.

Devotion to Self - An unwavering knowing that each energetic piece you release brings space for transformation to occur.

Unconditional Love - Hold yourself close, give yourself the tender love and support you would give to your dearest loved one. You are the most important soul in your life. You’re not being selfish, you’re caring enough about yourself, and the world, that you’re only prepared to show up as your best so your vibrancy can overflow to everyone.

No Judgement, Simply Compassion - One of the hardest parts of going within is forgiving yourself for the things you’ve always felt were unforgivable. But we must. We are our own worst enemy, we judge ourselves more harshly than we would anyone else, and we are also less forgiving.

However, if you are committed to a resilient Nervous System, and a body that contains enough space to hold your wildest dreams and deepest possibilities, this is essential.

Once you have fully devoted yourself to these 5 practices, your body and energy field will be humming at such a unique vibration that your Nervous System will be in harmony with your soul, and it will reside in a state of homeostasis.

Your body will operate at its optimum and your hormones, organs, digestion, literally your entire body, will function at its highest level.

ALLOW YOURSELF TO GRIEVE AND BE ANGRY

You may think anger is a negative emotion, but it is an emotion that teaches us boundaries, giving us strength to fight for ourselves and what we believe in.

Many victims of narcissistic abuse have a false perception that, since the narcissist was a fraud and the relationship was one-sided, they shouldn’t allow themselves to grieve or vent their anger. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Not allowing yourself to process these feelings often leads to detrimental outcomes at a later point in time.

As much as we may want to bottle it up and lock it away, grief is part of the human experience, and sharing and owning our vulnerability is part of allowing our authentic self to be seen.

When we experience something that causes us sadness, we may feel the urge to shut down and withdraw from life.

However, this is when I urge you to sit with yourself and open your heart to discover an even deeper connection that you never knew existed.

You’ll realise connecting with your true self means you aren’t on your own, even when you are.

The Universe speaks to us through many channels and, when we open ourselves up to receive its messages, we receive so much more.

Opening up in this way allows us to connect with the very core of our being. We bypass all our defenses and prejudices, and become truly one with everything.

Signs that you are blocking your grief may be subtle or extremely obvious:

Staying stuck in a sad, angry, or depressive state, often feeling emotionless

Suppressed anger

Prolonged exhaustion, depression, or indifference

Forming addictions

Avoiding everything at all cost

Chronic pain or illness

Eating disorders

When life seems to crack the outer shell of our world, we are both raw and fresh at the same time.

It is then that we discover who we truly are.

Sharing grief allows us to ease our burden by letting someone else help carry it. This helps us process our own inner thoughts and feelings, through the filter of a trusted and beloved someone.

Overcome your feeling of guilt or being a burden and just know, we all have a well of compassion and empathy that allows us to draw from when those we love are in need.

SEEK HELP IF YOU FEEL YOU MAY HAVE SLIPPED INTO COMPLICATED GRIEF

Complicated grief is a severe and long-lasting form of grief that takes over one’s life. This is very common in the aftermath of abusive relationships because victims never get the validation they wished for, nor do they get a sense of closure.

Following the end of an abusive relationship, a lot is left unfinished, including unsettled disputes, the discrediting of your character, questions unanswered, and unrequited love.

You’re left hanging, unable to complete your relationship with your abuser, and feeling stuck in the pain of your grief.

What makes this type of grief so excruciating is that you must grieve twice – once for the person who love-bombed you, and for whom you fought to bring back amidst soul-shattering abuse, as well as grieving the end of the relationship.

Implementing No Contact in Its True Form

Many victims of narcissistic abuse prolong their suffering by leaving a window open, in the event the narcissist decides to reach out. Across the forums and chat rooms, countless victims describe how they’ve maintained “no contact” for such a long time, but then receive a call or email from their ex. If the narcissist has a way in, then no contact hasn’t been properly executed. This is the primary cause of not being able to heal because, as long as your abuser has a way in, true healing cannot take place.

Once the narcissist successfully reaches out and provokes a response, you’re back in the thick of the abuse. (If children are involved, a very strict plan for modified contact should be legally documented, entered, and enforced).

Remember, narcissists are smug in their belief that you will surrender to their manipulations. Their feelings of entitlement and perceived power reduces your chances of emotional healing after narcissistic abuse.

Stop Researching Narcissism

During the phase of discovery, educating yourself about narcissism is essential in understanding the traits of the disorder, and helps you recognise the dynamics of abusive relationships. However, when it’s time to truly heal, your focus should then turn to healing methods, to repair your self-care, self-worth, and self-love. 

Constant research on the traits of narcissism keeps your focus on them, not on you or your recovery.  Remember the old saying, “What fires together, wires together”? Each time you repeat a particular thought or action, you reinforce the connection between your neurons, turning those thoughts into a way of life, and thus influencing your day-to-day reality. Implementing self-care patterns that are positive and healthy may be difficult at first but, with practice, they too will become habitual and will help you recover faster.

Improve Your Self-Esteem

The number one, most important thing to realise is that the perceived rejection from your abuser is an illusion. Their primary goal is to make you feel invalidated - invisible. What that means is that, even if they secretly think you’re attractive, successful, fun to be around, or the best partner they’ve ever had, they will NEVER admit to it, unless they are trying to keep you in the queue.

Narcissists strive to take away every last shred of your self-esteem because that’s how they keep you hooked… To keep you thinking, “I am damaged goods. Better to have someone who treats me like crap than no one at all.”

Remember, most of what comes out of their mouth is a lie, including the negative things they say about you.

Habits to Avoid During Emotional Healing from Narcissistic Abuse

While healing is different for everyone, there are particular things we do that hinder healing, and can even reverse any progress we may have made.

Ironically, these are activities that every person coming out of a toxic relationship does.

True healing begins with looking inside to your own inner, wounded core. Nothing outside of you will help you heal because your emotional injuries are within. Instead of researching narcissism, turn your focus to healing the damage this caused on your self-esteem and healing the toxic shame that the narcissist cultivated inside you, in order to keep you dependent upon them.

What fires together, wires together. Meaning, whatever you feed your mind on a daily basis is what determines your baseline thought patterns.

So, don’t allow your mind to wander back to them, focus all your energy on healing yourself; mind, body, heart, and soul.

Don’t Wait For Time to Heal Your Wounds, Heal Them Yourself 

Time doesn’t heal, it simply passes. Emotional healing after narcissistic abuse has everything to do with what you do with that time.

The key to recovery is action, not time.

The subconscious mind is impersonal. It will work to achieve whatever goals you set before it, whether good or bad. Present it with goals of healing and recovery, and it will work to help you achieve those goals.

When you do begin your healing work, keep in mind that, in order for your subconscious mind to heal, it must experience healing events.

You must actively engage in healing activities in order for new neural patterns to form in your brain, not just learn about them, do them.

A good rule of thumb is to choose a healing habit and practice it every day for at least 21 days.

Stop Scrolling and Start Listening to Your Inner Voice 

It’s tempting to get into the habit of collecting information from social media and different websites, but you run the risk of becoming so overwhelmed with the mountain of data you have read or listened to that you simply freeze, unable to form an actionable plan.

Try to stick to a handful of authors whom you have grown to trust. Stop simply collecting information, instead, begin the programs that are suggested or created by the authors whom you admire the most.

It’s never too late to reclaim your life – to find yourself on the path towards your soul’s true healings and cravings.

You hold the power to survive tough times and come out stronger, better, wiser, and more connected to your soul than ever before.




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