Healing from Narcissistic Abuse
Healing from Narcissistic abuse is not an overnight process. Simply because the narcissist is gone, does not mean you heal. You have to do the hard work, and it is HARD! (*but totally worth every moment, so don’t give up) It’s not like the ending of a healthy or even somewhat healthy relationship or marriage. Narcissistic abuse runs much deeper…in the soul.
The hardest part for me was accepting that our entire 17 years were nothing to him. It couldn’t have been because we know that a narcissist is incapable of love or care or real true emotions. They are great at acting and pretending to have them but they were just that, acting! Sure there were times that seemed real, but they were just part of his manipulation to make me think he was good or we were good…so that he could turn around and abuse, lie and cheat and I would keep forgiving and holding on. Its the hot and cold of a narcissist.
I remember the times when he was charming and so sweet and caring. Especially at the beginning the way he love bombed me and made me feel like I was the most important and special person in his life. He always seemed to know what to say and how to compliment me or make me feel good when it was something that would work in his benefit or he needed me to do something for him or he simply just needed to get attention from me. But once his mask started falling off and he was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder then he didn’t try so hard to be nice or make me feel good. I started calling him out of his lies and abuse and a narcissist can’t hand that so he wanted me to hurt and he wanted me to suffer and the nice compliments and the sweet things stopped or at least didn’t happen unless he was trying to trick me into staying longer.
Some people think that when the narcissist leaves us, we are sad because we miss them or want them back. That’s not true…even if we think it is. The truth is we were addicted to them in a toxic way and we think we need or miss them. That’s part of how their manipulation of being hot and cold works. They treat us so good some of the time so that we begin to believe in them again and then they quickly go back to treating us bad so that we remember they are in control. But once we can accept we are better off, then we can see what we are truly feeling and why.
That is when we can begin to heal. If we still live in their manipulations in our head…we cannot heal. It is so important to process how much better we are with them gone.
My ex-narc left us many times and threatened it a thousand times more. In the last few years, he threatened it almost daily. I finally started keeping notes, making my own personal videos crying and saying what he did and how broken I felt. Then, when he left again…I’d read the notes and watched the videos and that helped me realize and accept how much happier I was with him gone.
When you are in it, it’s hard to really grasp just how bad it is, but once you are free everything starts hitting reality. The blows of reality would come to me in the middle of the night and leave me lying awake for hours. They hit as I was struggling to pay bills or provide basic needs for our kids and he was spoiling himself and those he was trying to convince that he was great. It killed me that someone I gave my all to for 17 years could just leave, not look back and not even try to make sure that the kids and I were ok. He was proving yet again what I always saw during the marriage, all he cared about was himself and how others saw him. Once I processed these blows as eye-openers for who he really was, then I was not emotionally hurt by them. Rather, they gave me strength and reassurance to move forward and do the best I could for my children.
In his first time leaving us I was devastated by how fast he moved on to other women. One time it was only days and girls even called me. The last time he left we were in the middle of the covid pandemic and strip clubs and dance clubs were closed, but he already had other women lined up. He had been talking to women and even took an ex-girlfriend to his mother’s funeral while we were still married. This is what narcs do, they line up new supply before leaving the current. They cant go long without that new supply so they plan ahead, and they use it. This final time he left, about a month after, he jumped on a plane back home to Mexico where he could hook up with ex that he had waiting there for him as well as hookers. Sadly, they say most narcs are already wooing their new supply before they leave you and this was so true.
My ex was meeting women from sex dating sites, one even sent me all their terrible chats and I was shocked by the things he said to her. To make things worse, I was wooing him during that time and yet he was trying to get at nasty women. He also took his ex to his mom’s funeral with all his family and claimed it was nothing, but they spent intimate time together and even talked about having sex and her waiting for him to leave me and go back. I will wait I was broken when I first found all this out, but then I chose to look at it as light on who he really was..and that was not a man who deserved me anymore.
Healing from narcissistic abuse in a relationship is not like a normal breakup or divorce. It is a whole process of detaching from something that hurt you but that you gave your all to in exchange. It is healing your heart but also your mind and your spirit because narcissistic abuse goes deep.
Healing from narcissistic abuse takes lots of time and lots of hard work but I promise you that every second of it is worth it and the stronger you get the better you begin to feel about yourself and your new life. A big part of the healing is learning that it is OKAY to talk about it. The narcissist had us shamed into thinking we couldn’t talk about it because there was something wrong with us or we were complaining too much or we just wanted to make them look bad. Well, now it is in no way about them and they can’t try to manipulate you like that anymore. Now, you tell your stories because they are YOUR stories and sharing them helps you to process just how real they are and that you were not the problem. This is one reason I have learned how to share my journey with others in ways that will hopefully help others who are in it and also release my painful link to those memories.
