While gathering knowledge of narcissistic abuse can help you to understand what happened in your situation. It's not really going to heal you from narcissistic abuse. Although the knowledge could help you to identify narcissists who are currently in your life or narcissists who you might meet in the future. If you are doing nothing else other than watching videos on narcissistic abuse, you will not recover. But that doesn't mean that you cannot recover.
First I am going to tell you what you should avoid when you are beginning your recovery. Do not overly focus or obsess over the narcissist - This will keep you stuck in the state of being a victim. While you may be a victim of narcissistic abuse, you don't want to stay in that state for the rest of your life. You want to move on with your life. You can blame them in the beginning, hold them responsible and accountable for their actions but at some point you will have to forgive the narcissist. Not for them, but for you, for your recovery. If you do not forgive the narcissist, you will remain stuck in the past. Those negative emotions will remain inside you and you will never be able to move on. Just look at the narcissist, all of the negative emotions they have tied to people in their past. Do you want to be like that? Holding grudges and resentment for the rest of your life. This is why you must forgive the narcissist as it is essential to freeing yourself from them and beginning the journey of healing and recovery from narcissistic abuse.
Avoid any relationships during your recovery. Dr. Ross Rosenberg's Human Magnet Syndrome states that narcissists and codependents have an intense attraction towards each other. While you are a codependent, you are going to continue attracting narcissists into your life. Ask yourself, what kind of person would be attracted to someone who has just left a relationship? Only someone that wants to take advantage of you in that vulnerable moment. This is why you cannot rely on someone else to heal your pain or to love you back to health. It's not going to work that way and it will only prolong your recovery. Avoid narcissists and toxic people while you are recovering from narcissistic abuse. Narcissists are sadistic emotional predators. They seek out people just like you, people who are wounded and can be easily manipulated. Narcissists will specifically target people who have experienced childhood abuse. It's like they have this sixth sense ability to detect abuse victims. They will study your environment, your family and friends to see if they can isolate and then take advantage of you.
Do not deny the pain. Do not try to avoid the pain or the negative emotions you are bound to feel. This is what narcissists do, this is what they have always done. Their whole lives they have denied their childhood traumas, denied the pain and that's why they can never heal themselves. You must first acknowledge that the pain exists, before you can begin to heal it. You have to find your sense of self.
In some way, you are going to have to become selfish. Though you should still have empathy and consideration for other people, you need to take time to attend to your needs because clearly your needs have not been met for a very long time. This is why you are now suffering from this and requiring healing and recovery. You have been taught to neglect your physical and mental health, your emotional needs. Now you need to teach yourself to attend to that again. You might experience emotional flashbacks. You may have a post traumatic stress response. You may see or hear certain things that remind you of a certain situation you experienced with the narcissist. First you must accept that this is completely normal, considering what you have been through.
Do not try to fight the flashbacks or PTSR. Do not feed into them either. Simply acknowledge what your brain is trying to show or tell you. Don't hold on to these thoughts or emotions. Simply let them go. Watch them disappear, like a balloon floating higher and higher into the sky until that balloon is no longer visible. Avoid contact with the narcissist. Do not share your experiences or information with them. Narcissists will use your experiences and information against you. They will use it as ammunition to destroy you. Any information you share with them will be used to hurt you in the future, often during the devaluation or discard phase. You can never really know or understand what someone has been through, until you have been through it yourself. That's why in this community of narcissistic abuse, we all seem to be on the same frequency. But if you tell the same things to someone who hasn't experienced a relationship with a narcissist, they are not going to understand. That's why I now offer one on one coaching sessions for recovery from narcissistic abuse. Having someone who has first-hand experience with this can really make a difference in your healing and recovery. It can validate everything you have experienced and help you to further understand what you have been through. If you are interested in one on one coaching please contact me at narcsurvivorcoaching@gmail.com Healing is more than just how you think about the situation. Changing your thoughts will help you in short-term recovery, but what we should be aiming for long-term is changing our feelings. As you are on the road to true emotional health, you will begin to feel happier, independent of any external influences. *You will learn self-esteem, self-worth, self-belief and self-respect. *You will develop boundaries to protect yourself from narcissists in the future. *You will be able to forgive yourself for allowing a narcissist to become intimate with you. *You will overcome the anger and resentment you might currently feel towards the narcissist. The narcissist will never recover from their intense hate, anger and envy. It only gets worse for them. The reason for this is because they never learned to self-reflect or look within themselves. *They never accepted responsibility or accountability for everything they did wrong. *They chose to deny any responsibility for their actions. *They projected their flaws and insecurities on to you. *They shifted the blame on to you. This has made it impossible for them to learn from their mistakes, which has made it impossible for them to grow.So they remain as emotionally immature as a toddler paired with a reptilian brain.
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