8 Stages Of Healing After Narcissistic Abuse

There is a break-free point in your life when you decide to leave the toxic narcissist and get past the stage when you have had enough of the abuse. You decide to heal your soul and get on a better path. This is the time when you will require 8 Stages Of Healing After Narcissistic Abuse. So if you are here, that means you have already started or decided on moving toward the path of recovery and healing from the narcissistic abuse.

First of all, Kudos to you, for making such a brave decision as leaving a narcissist is not easy. Take a moment, breathe, and enjoy yourself for the person you are becoming.

Narcissistic abuse is not something normal that can be healed through some medications or by opting for some negative traits like alcoholism or shutting down your emotions completely. Healing comes through spending time with yourself, enjoying your own company, surrounding yourself with good and positive people, not being afraid to acknowledge the hurt and working for it, seeking therapies, being one with nature, and most importantly not rushing the healing process.

What is Narcissistic Abuse?

A narcissistic person craves attention all the time, lacks care and empathy, can be rude and blunt, ignores other people’s feelings, and has troubled relationships. Narcissists can play mind tricks and manipulate you. They can easily manipulate you by deceiving you. They do not think twice before hurting you, have selfish desires, can even cheat, or can do anything to make their ways work.

The most important step is to understand their abuse and also understand how it is not normal. Then comes the task of recognizing their pattern of abuse, their ways of creating drama and a toxic atmosphere, their harmful approaches, and responses to your simple questions, their change of behavior as soon as a third party enters the scene, or never accepting their mistakes.

Narcissistic abuse is when a narcissist drains positivity out of you which can make you lifeless and sad.

Signs of Narcissistic Abuse

A few signs of narcissistic abuse are,

• You feel the constant need to walk on eggshells around the narcissist.
• You feel your reality is distorted and you live just the way the narcissist wants you to live.
• You get used to domestic violence, rage outbursts, and mental and physical pain.
• You get used to the lies that a narcissist tells you all the time.
• You start doubting your sanity around narcissists as they manipulate and disregard you.
• You fear their presence, you are threatened when you do something unpleasing to the narcissist, you fear your safety, and are constantly disrespected in the relationship.
• They hurt you physically, mentally, emotionally, and thoughtfully.
• You feel isolated, your habits change drastically when you are around them, you leave your good old selves just to match their expectations and you become their pawn to fulfill their demands.
• You feel confused and clueless around them.
• You lose your self-worth, self-pride, and self-love around them.

What is Healing? – Why is Emotional or Mental Healing important?

Healing is the process of becoming healthy both mentally and physically. Healing alleviates and eradicates mental illness, and physical illness and increases energy flow.

Why is Emotional and Mental Healing important?

• Emotional and Mental healing is important for stabilizing the beneficial behavior for the emotional and mental well-being of society.
• It can enhance mental stability, productivity, and confidence and improve relationships.
• Helps to cope with stress.
• It increases work productivity.
• It helps in maintaining healthy relationships.
• It helps in maintaining balance in life.
• It enhances self-esteem, self-worth, and positivity in life.
• It helps eradicate stress, depression, and negativity from life.

Emotional, Mental, and physical Healing becomes very important when you depart ways with a narcissist. A narcissistic relationship tends to deteriorate your mental, physical, and emotional health along with decreasing your confidence, willpower to live, and the simple joys of life.

8 Stages Of Healing After Narcissistic Abuse

Stage 1: Separation from the Narcissist

Detaching yourself from the narcissist is the first and most important step for moving towards healing. Healing only starts once you leave the abusive relationship and detach yourself from the toxic person. So whether you leave the narcissist or they leave you, you are going to be held responsible for terminating the relationship.

The narcissists would never accept that they are leaving you, they would prove that it is because of them, that the relationship is being terminated and thus they would be furious about that. Narcissistic rage is expected here.

When the relationship does not work out, the narcissist feels the shame that comes along with the failed relationship. This also brings in fear of abandonment and loss of control. These emotions add up to the rage making it even more visible.

But do not try to confront, comfort, or put any defense here. These might be mistaken as signs of surrender, weakness, and shortcomings. Just walk out of the relationship without taking the sole responsibility and without feeling entirely guilty.

Stage 2: Safeguard Yourself

Leaving the narcissist is not as simple as you may think. It requires proper planning. If you are leaving a long and rusty relationship then you might as well seek legal help. Narcissists may try to intimidate you physically, emotionally, and psychologically. They might also try to establish control through your kids. They may try to sabotage the situation by using money or assets. They may do everything in their power to stop you from leaving them.

So here you need to prepare yourself thoroughly which includes handling your finances, establishing a no-contact, managing your safe escort to a newer place along with your children if you win their custody and completely cutting off any contact with the narcissists unless you have joint custody for kids.

If there is no serious commitment like marriage, then you just need to take care of a few things and just vanish from their lives like you never existed in their world. That is the safest way to protect yourself.

While leaving a narcissist, there are a few points that you need to take care of,

• You have to remember the end result is your freedom and not the struggle you have to face during the divorce or leaving process
• Take care of your finances and other important assets
• Gaining professional help and all sorts of support from friends and family
• Preparing your arguments and your side of the story with some solid groundwork
• Learning to push their buttons to make them worked up
• Start focusing on self-care and self-love
• Opt out of joint accounts and credit cards if payment is your responsibility.
• Being ready for the worst-case scenarios

The no-contact rule ensures maximum safety and security from the narcissist. The “No contact” is your way of saying “Just Not anymore” to the narcissistic abuse, the violence in case, the manipulative tactics, and being used as a pawn. The “No Contact phase” means going off-reach with them be it by deleting or blocking them on social media, or blocking their phone number.

Going No Contact with a narcissist includes no physical contact,

• No contacting or staying in touch
• No calls, texts, and no connections through social media
• No casual meetups or encounters
• No more being friends with them
• No more exchanging gifts
• Not even meeting them through the mutual social group or gatherings or even family

Stage 3: Take good care of yourself

With the narcissist by your side, you might have neglected your physical, mental, and psychological health due to their constant manipulation and interference. Thus your mental, physical, and emotional health needs to be protected at all costs. This is one more step towards healing from the narcissistic abuse.

To protect your emotional health you must develop self-worth, self-respect, and self-esteem that may allow you to feel all the emotions that you might be struggling with like guilt, temper, and much more. When a narcissist is involved in your life, they can totally invade your self-respect, self-esteem, and your self-pride.

You start feeling worthless as they make you believe so. They shatter your self-image and make you completely dependent on them to seek validation before making any decisions. They always prove that they are superior to you and thus sabotage your self-esteem.

Self-esteem can be developed by working on yourself. Self-care makes you strong-willed and thus helps you in developing your self-esteem and self-pride. Working on your self-confidence, your goals, and mental peace can be your initial steps toward self-care.

This is how you protect your mental health. But mental health only can be protected when your physical health is protected.

Protect your physical health by opting for exercising, gymming, doing yoga, and all such options. To protect your mental health focus and prioritize your own needs love others, seek help, and involve yourself with other people to save your self-worth.

For protecting and working on mental or psychological health, one must consult a mental health expert or read self-help books. Seeking help from family may also help here. Thus self-care is a crucial stage of healing.

Stage 4: Find Closure

To move past from any traumatic event one must find ways to get closure and deal with it with an open heart and mind. Do not allow your emotions or thoughts to completely take over the situation. Be rational and make decisions. Thinking with a different perspective will help you to get closure, even though the narcissist is unable to provide the same.

Accept the situation as it is as the narcissist is never going to change. They might try to divert you from leaving by making false promises to change and being a different person. But remember that they are never going to change, and all these fake promises would wither away within n time.

But do not get swayed by any of their efforts as they are trying to pull you back into the toxic relationship. So be firm on your decision to leave them and focus completely on rebuilding your life without them.

Stage 5: Grieve the end of the relationship

You might have become an emotionless robot when you had a relationship with a narcissist because you prefer hiding or depressing your emotions in order to keep up the relationship with the narcissist. You might be avoiding all the sad emotions with the help of excuses just to keep yourself from feeling the pain.

But it is only when you start feeling all the emotions like grief, happiness, sorrow, sadness, empathy, sympathy, and every other emotion in depth, that your healing starts. These are the signs you are healing from the narcissistic abuse. Try experiencing and living with all stages of sadness or grief as they come,

• Denial

You would be constantly denying the toxicity of the relationship, in the beginning.

• Guilt

You go into the self-guilt mode to recognize the red flags as soon as possible.

• Bargaining

Here you try to persuade yourself and bargain time for yourself in hopes that your partner might change.

• Depression

Once you realize and decide to move out of the relationship, depression will also follow along.

• Grief

Grief strikes as soon as you decide to leave the toxic relationship.

• The turning point

There comes a pause point to the point where you actually realize life’s worth and start living life to the fullest without the toxicity.

Accept the reality of situations and also the fact that there is no other option left with you. Just accept and live life without the involvement of the narcissist.

Stage 6: Heal the Wounds

After coming to terms with your life without the narcissist and understanding how you are better off without them and the toxicity they bring, the next stage is healing your physical, emotional, and psychological wounds.

Healing the wounds starts with looking at your inner self and realizing who you are or who you were before meeting the narcissist. Reminiscing all beliefs, dreams, and motives of life. What all did you lose personally in terms of mental health and compromising your dreams just to please the narcissist just think about that.

Whatever negative thoughts, pursuits, and conduct did you start following just by being with the narcissist, learn about them, and try to unlearn them immediately?

Learning about your truths and conducts, while keeping aside all the falses that you have created, and acknowledging them can be the initial step. Consult a mental health expert, a therapist, or anyone who can guide you for that matter.

Give appropriate time to yourself to heal internally; do not force healing upon yourself.

Stage 7: Rebuild your life

When you are getting out of the hard phase in life, even though you are well aware of the changes that need to be incorporated. Yet you decide to ignore the gains that come through changes as hardships try to mind bend your thoughts towards taking the easy route and keep going back to the toxic life situations that we are trying to leave.

This happens when you are trying to leave the narcissist. You might constantly struggle between your thoughts and insecurities of finding someone better than them, or them changing at some point, or your dependency on them, and much more.

But try to keep an open mind here and be ready to experience the freedom that is coming along as you leave the narcissist. Initiate the chance of being away from the narcissist by making new friends and meeting new people. This is the time to grab the opportunity to grow and blossom. Thus start rebuilding your life as the way you had always planned and expected.

Stage 8: Let go

Letting go of every negative emotion, bad habit, and toxicity is crucial to initiating the healing process. The healing begins genuinely when you truly forget and forgive the narcissistic abuser. Forgetting this may allow you to release all the pent-up negative emotions, memories, and experiences.

The narcissist does not need to know that you have forgiven them because it is for your sake. This may help you to relieve all the trauma and bad experiences that you might have faced with the narcissist.

Forgiveness includes letting go of negative emotions like anger, resentment, and dear. Letting go would start healing your emotional wounds.

Meditation, Yoga, Reiki, Therapy sessions, and much more may pave the way for your healing and ease up the let-go of all emotional turmoil. If you are not yet ready to forgive the narcissist, just be kind to yourself and practice self-care at all costs. Sooner or later forgiveness may seep in and make the healing process fulfilled.

Why is healing from Narcissistic Abuse so difficult?

The narcissistic cycle of Abuse leaves the person experiencing emptiness, deep scars, and a long-lost connection with the world. Narcissists have a very negative impact on their partners and thus their partners find it hard to recognize genuine feelings once they are out of the toxic narcissistic cycle of abuse.

Yes! Breaking up the toxic cycle of abuse by a narcissist can be a cynical and delusional process, but once you gather the strength it is not impossible.

Narcissistic relationships are unique and gripping which makes the freeing process even more difficult. There are a few prominent features that make the leaving process most difficult,

Narcisists have a strong hold over their partners making it a trauma bond. Trauma bonds are quite difficult to leave due to the dependency that they have created for you.

The Guilty feeling brings in all the shame and guilt of leaving the narcissist. Narcissists may not allow you to forget the guilt and thus this guilt drives you back to the toxic relationship.

The absence of help and support may make the leaving process even more strenuous. Thus seek help from family, friends, or therapists.

Final Thoughts

Breaking up the toxic cycle of abuse by a narcissist can be a cynical and delusional process, but once you gather the strength it is not impossible.

Emotional, Mental, and physical Healing becomes very important when you depart ways with a narcissist. A narcissistic relationship tends to deteriorate your mental, physical, and emotional health along with decreasing your confidence, willpower to live, and the simple joys of life.

The most important step is to understand their abuse and also understand how it is not normal. Then comes the task of recognizing their pattern of abuse, their ways of creating drama and a toxic atmosphere, their harmful approaches, and responses to your simple questions, their change of behavior as soon as a third party enters the scene, or never accepting their mistakes.

Notice all the red flags, when they are so clear to you. Do not get brainwashed or do not get caught up in the fog of a narcissist’s atmosphere of lies and excuses. Take into consideration all the above-mentioned stages of healing and free yourself from such toxicity.