It’s quite possible that you have heard the term cognitive dissonance, because it’s a term that is used a lot in narcissistic abuse circles.
It’s those times when your mind plays tricks on you; when it is in opposition to how you really feel about something. I’m going to explain this in more detail to you shortly.
So, what role does cognitive dissonance play in narcissistic abuse and how does it keep you trapped in narcissistic abuse?
This is a very important question and the answer even more so, because within that is the key for you to escape from the abuse, into the truth that does set you free.
Let’s investigate this deeply.
Maybe more deeply than you have ever understood cognitive dissonance before. I highly recommend that you take your time with this article. Give it your full attention – because you may need to in order to FULLY understand it.
Before we get started, I just want to reach out to all of you who are still struggling with your recovery from narcissistic abuse. Maybe you are finding it difficult to stay motivated with your healing? Maybe you are not seeing a way out of your PTSD, and all the other symptoms that go with narcissistic abuse?
And … importantly, maybe you are sick and tired of being sick and tired?
If so, I am so excited to announce that starting on May 1st I have a brand new global, highly interactive Healing Bootcamp starting up, which is called “Thrive”.
It’s the MOST hands-on supportive program I have ever offered.
Myself, together with the incredible MTE Thriver Team, and your Global Thriver Tribe, we will hold your hand and heart to help you get free of the trauma of narcissistic abuse, so that you can claim the life that you were born to live.
Find out more about this 10-week super-boost healing journey HERE.
All right, let’s start this deep dive into cognitive dissonance and the role it plays in narcissistic abuse.
How Narcissists Act As Parasites
Narcissists are not True Selves. They are entities that have manufactured the creation of a False Self, creating an egoic narrative regarding the person they would like to be, rather than how they truly feel about themselves.
How do they continue the charade? By grandstanding, manipulating, controlling and gas lighting other people to get them to hand over the attention, energy, resources and Life Force that a False Self cannot provide for themselves.
How do we stay hooked as prey to narcissists? Why do we continue to hand over our power, energy and resources even though our emotional, mental, physical, spiritual and usually financial bodies are self-destructing?
The answer is simple as well as deadly.
By lying to ourselves.
This is what cognitive dissonance is.
I know this may feel like a bucket of cold water being thrown in your face, but please let me explain. I SO know that this is not your fault – and that you are not even consciously aware of it.
I wasn’t either!
Those of us who were susceptible to a narcissist and also rolled around with them, even though we logically knew that we were being destroyed by them, were programmed into cognitive dissonance.
I was personally stuck in it for a few years – many people stay there for life.
Meaning remaining stuck in the logical reasons why we should stay with these people, keep trying, keep throwing good resources in after bad, and keep suffering horrific breakdowns without any real reprieve.
The Surface Level Of Cognitive Dissonance
Let’s look at the surface level of how cognitive dissonance plays out with narcissistic abuse.
Your emotional being is screaming at you (from the inside of you) this message …“I am being abused, terrorised, treated disgustingly, accused of all sorts of things that are not my fault, and my health and sanity is disintegrating by the minute.”
Yet, (and it’s a really big “yet”) your mind keeps granting you all of the reasons to STAY with this person.
Things like …
“It’s because of their horrific childhood that they behave like this. It’s not their fault.”
“No one is perfect. I know that I’m not perfect either and a lot of this is probably my stuff.”
“The connection between us is so powerful, I know that this is my one and only and I’m supposed to stay with this person.”
Or …
“If I don’t stay and help this person, who will? It’s my obligation to do this.”
“If I leave this person, what will other people say? They will think I’m a bad person.”
“They will blame me for all of this if I end it. I can’t stand the thought of that.”
Or …
“If I end this relationship, I’m going to lose all my resources and how will this affect the children? Maybe I will lose custody.”
“If I leave, I’m scared of what this person will do.”
“If I leave, I don’t know how I will survive on my own.”
“I can’t live without this person.”
Or …
“I may never meet anybody again, and I don’t want to be alone.”
“It’s too late for me to start all over again.”
And so on and so forth – there are countless “excuses” we can use.
The Truth About These “Excuses” (That You May Not Be Able To Embody Just Yet!)
Before I get to the deeper spiritual Quantum basis as to why having reasons and justifications in our head and ignoring our inner emotional truth doesn’t serve us – and is in fact diabolical for your life – just let me dispute a few of the “reasons” we grant ourselves.
I totally feel qualified to present you the truth about these – because I lived these truths in my own life. Also, I have had the humble joy of seeing thousands of people break through into these truths consistently within the last ten plus years that I have been working with this mission to help people heal for real from narcissistic abuse.
Let’s start working with some REAL truths regarding the following common cognitive dissonance “justifications” we can use.
“It’s because of their horrific childhood that they behave like this. It’s not their fault.”
Virtually everybody who has the capacity to be abusive suffered a terrible childhood. It doesn’t excuse the abuse; the abuse just is what it is – abuse.
Getting out of abuse is never about making excuses for an abusive person’s behaviour, it’s about examining the reasons WHY we stayed attached, allowing it to continue in our own life.
And it is more than likely because of our own childhood wounds, in regard to being able to grow up empowered, healthy and safe as a self-generative source of our own experience, that we have been choosing and staying with people who are abusive.
The focus and rectification need to be on our own inner wounds to break free from these cycles.
“No one is perfect. I know that I’m not perfect either and a lot of this is probably my stuff.”
Many of us realise that our relationships with other people bear no resemblance to the ones that we have with narcissistic people. Therefore, we are not the common denominator, rather we are justifying and continuing a relationship with somebody who is toxic and who does not have the capacity to be healthy. And of course, we have become sick by being connected to them!
“The connection between us is so powerful, I know that this is my ‘one and only’ and I’m supposed to stay with this person.”
I completely and utterly believe that the narcissistic love experience is intense, but is not a soul mate love experience (which is much kinder, healthier and grows and improves after time).
Intense narcissistic relationships don’t improve. They disintegrate further with no solution, and teach the ultimate Soul lesson, which is to let go and love ourselves, not to try to create an impossible deal.
“If I don’t stay and help this person, who will? It’s my obligation to do this.”
It was never your obligation to assist another adult who will not help themselves, and is abusing you while you’re trying to do so. Your only responsibility is to be true to your own Soul and responsible for your own growth and well-being.
You can’t help others who refuse to take responsibility. Rather, you simply enable them to stay stuck and continue being an abuser, while you continually suffer.
“If I leave this person, what will other people say? They will think I’m a bad person.”
And …
“They will blame me for all of this if I end it. I can’t stand the thought of that.”
Your life is never determined by what other people think of you unless you make it so. Your true free, expansive, healthy life has to do what you think of you. Period.
“If I end this relationship, I’m going to lose all my resources and how will this affect the children? Maybe I will lose custody.”
Yes, absolutely, people who leave narcissistic relationships usually pay a heavy price. It costs money and resources to have your garbage removed. However, by letting go, turning inwards and healing you, what you will receive is the sanctity and connection to the value, generation and truth of your Soul.
Then watch your life take off in incredible True Self ways – filled with rejuvenation, regeneration and compensation on every level you could imagine, including financial.
When you heal, the Thriver Way, not only will you retain and gain an incredible relationship with your children (regardless of what the narcissist does and doesn’t try to do) you will also teach them by example not to hand away their power and tolerate abuse.
Where we GO our children FOLLOW.
“If I leave, I’m scared of what this person will do.”
When you leave a narcissist, and do the deep inner healing to release the fear from inside of you and stand true in your light and power, narcissists in your life experience dissolve into oblivion.
As a False Self a narcissist needs to use your triggers and your traumas against you to be able to control you. When you arise from that, it’s all over for them.
“If I leave, I don’t know how I will survive on my own.”
And …
“I can’t live without this person.”
When you heal the trauma bonds within you that have been keeping you attached to somebody that is hurting you, not only will you be able to emotionally live without this person, you will barely be able imagine how you were attracted to and tolerated them in the first place.
Your entire mission as a functional, self-generative adult is to heal yourself up, to be able to be connected to True Source (meaning your Higher Power and All Of Life), so that you can create your own Love, Approval and Security. Then not only will you survive in life, you will be flourished and nourished in your capacity to generate your True Life beyond your wildest dreams.
Then absolutely you will receive incredible blessings, by living without this person, and you will never risk being abused again.
“I may never meet anybody again, and I don’t want to be alone.”
And …
“It’s too late for me to start all over again.”
I have met beautiful people in their eighties, in our wonderful Thriver Community, who even after multiple marriages to narcissists, and coming from families of narcissists, healed their inner abuse programs, freed themselves emotionally and energetically and spiritually, and have moved on into their dream lives.
Including developing new hobbies, missions and, once they felt fulfilled in their own bodies and life, also met the love of their lives!
Your soul is ageless – it just wants you to be free.
Easier Said Than Done
I know that the trauma bonds to a narcissist are beyond powerful. It doesn’t matter how much logic someone uses regarding the truth about cognitive dissonance “reasons to stay attached”, because when you are caught in the trauma bonds, it may feel like it is impossible to let go.
This is why the “remedies” and “truths” that I have given you above may fall on your deaf ears – initially. No matter how much you would like to try to get this through your head.
This is the entire problem with cognitive dissonance – you know you shouldn’t be thinking these things, and other people tell you that this is no reason to stay – but you can’t stop yourself from thinking them.
I understand this.
This also happened to me to – all the time.
Why?
Because of the inner programmed trauma bonds that our head is following. Meaning whatever is going on inside us is exactly the way that our mind is organising itself in order to validate and co-generate the experience that exactly matches the trauma bonds.
What Cognitive Dissonance REALLY Is
Now it’s time to understand the REAL role cognitive dissonance plays in narcissistic abuse.
Let me explain …
All of us have had emotional interpersonal experiences – good and bad. Many of these were formed pre-cognitive, long before we even had the ability to think, decipher and discern these messages.
Neuroscientists now know that we take on the emotional predispositions – belief systems about ourselves, life and others – of our ancestors as well.
What I want you to understand is that, our previous experiences set us up for beliefs and inner programs that are running our life. These are powerful forces, fuelled by emotional energy literally stuck in our bodies.
How we feel about certain topics in our life is what continues to play out for us – until we meet and reprogram these Inner Identity beliefs that are shaping our lives.
I want to go through our list of the usual cognitive dissonance “reasons” to stay attached to abusers, as they relate to the inner trauma bonds that are matching us up with the exact people who deliver these traumas.
“It’s because of the horrific childhood that they behave like this. It’s not their fault.”
“No one is perfect. I know that I’m not perfect either and a lot of this is probably me.”
And …
“The connection between us is so powerful, I know that this is my twin flame and I’m supposed to stay with this person.”
What has been happening here is an ATTACHMENT to someone that is hurting you.
The trauma bonds responsible for this are beliefs such as, “The people I love are unstable, if I don’t grant them what they want, and try to fix them I can’t be safe and loved. I may not survive.”
“If I don’t stay and help this person, who will? It’s my obligation to do this.”
“If I leave this person, what will other people say? They will think I’m a bad person.”
And …
“They will blame me for all of this if I end it. I can’t stand the thought of that.”
These “excuses” are because of traumas of over-responsibility and the fear of persecution. That’s the real issues here.
Your trauma bonding program, that was embedded in your Inner Being from long ago is …
“It’s all up to me. If I don’t do the fixing, I’ll be blamed, exiled or persecuted.”
“If I end this relationship, I’m going to lose all of my resources and how will this affect the children? Maybe I will lose custody.”
And …
“If I leave, I’m scared of what this person will do.”
The trauma bonding program that continues to keep you stuck in powerlessness and connected to people who represent this program is, “The people I love threaten me, create me as the enemy, and take what is mine away from me.”
“If I leave, I don’t know how I will survive on my own.”
And …
“I can’t live without this person.”
These relate to a huge survival trauma bonding program of, “If the people I love leave me, I will die.”
“I may never meet anybody again, and I don’t want to be alone.”
And …
“It’s too late for me to start all over again.”
This often relates to the trauma bonding programs of things such as,“No one is coming, and I have no support. I’m all alone.”
Getting To The Root Cause, Instead Of Just Looking At The Symptoms
I hope you understand from all of this that the real issue isn’t the cognitive dissonance, the cognitive dissonance is a symptom of something so much deeper. And, like all symptoms, the symptom is not going to go away until you actually heal it at the root, at the causation level.
The cause is the trauma bonding program.
I promise you with all my heart that I was, like every other single person abused by a toxic person, hooked and addicted to a narcissist who was ripping me apart piece by piece, whilst trapped in masses of cognitive dissonance.
My excuses and justifications were things like, “I know he is the love of my life”, “I can’t live without him”, “I feel like I’m dying without him and therefore this must be real love”, “I have to fix him and save him from himself; it’s my duty.”
These cognitive dissonance “reasons” nearly took me to my death – literally.
It wasn’t until I turned inwards and met my trauma programs, loaded up, released, and replaced them with Quanta Freedom Healing that I became completely and utterly free.
The healing happened very quickly, and for so long now, I have zero obsessions about what happened to me, zero trauma symptoms, zero regret, zero longing and absolutely no connections on any level – including psychic or spiritual – to him whatsoever.
And even better than all of this, the parts of myself that I healed within allowed me to start Thriving spectacularly in every area of my life. Facing these trauma bonds and releasing myself from them is the greatest gift I have ever given myself.
I hope that this long and intense article makes sense to you. And, rather than complicate matters, I don’t want you to now go into logical overload try to work out what your trauma bonds are. That also equals how to lose. A way to win, in your recovery, is to stop thinking and instead start doing the work inside your being, directly on your trauma bonds.
That’s what all my work is about. I show you how to DO this, and when you start healing yourself in this way you will realise exactly what I mean.
Again, I want to remind you of my brand-new Thrive 10-week healing boot camp that shows you exactly how to get to the bottom of these trauma bonds, be released from them and go free to be a generative source of your own power, joy, love and prosperity – to a level where you will never again need to roll around in toxic relationships!
Can you imagine what that would feel like?
I want you to not just imagine it, but also LIVE it, as I do, EVERY day.
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