Written by Melanie Tonia Evans
1
It pleases me immensely to be writing about this topic ….
Because for most people who have suffered narcissistic abuse, breaking up becomes inevitable … and sadly most people do not know the TRUTH regarding how to effectively not just survive but Thrive after a breakup with a narcissist.
Traditionally, breaking up with a narcissist is a terrible experience – emotionally and practically.
This week in Part One, I want to address the emotional side of it.
As a healer who works in Quantum Ways with myself and others, this I know – we have no power to change the outside in order to create a different emotional feeling in our body.
That orientation equals “how to lose”.
What does work is this: Emotion First.
Working deeply inside our own emotional self and then seeing how things start falling into place to match that.
If you are still angry, victimised and in the throes of the agony – you may not be ready to understand and hear this yet – and I totally understand.
I know how for such a long time I was not ready for that either.
However, if you have had enough of the pain of when you were with the narcissist, and you have had enough of feeling traumatised, lost, powerless, anxious and depressed after breaking up with one … and DEEP within yourself you know you are meant to have a great Life, and that it MUST be possible without the narcissist, then it is my greatest mission to help you get there.
As a Thriver I will validate you absolutely (I know the agony you are in) but in no way am I going to not try to help wake you up and move you out of it.
Because if I hadn’t done that for myself, I would not be here writing this to you now.
When breaking up with a narcissist, and when we are in the throes of the intense aftershock, we are SO called to work this out and heal.
Let’s take a deep dive into this, in regard to WHY we are and HOW it is possible to.
A Note Regarding Our Children
Before we do take this deep dive, I want to acknowledge the people on Facebook who wrote in about this topic regarding the concern for their children after breaking up with a narcissist.
This is a topic very dear to my heart, as it was a huge journey for me personally with my son Zac, and as a Mother I have been deeply heart-connected to the thousands of people abused by narcissists over the last ten plus years that I have helped in regard to their children.
Fundamentally, I am deeply passionate about healing ourselves so that our children can heal, and also so we can all assist in breaking the cycles of abuse / abused one person at a time for our future generations as well as collectively for our world.
I have written about healing our children, and a wide range of its facets many, many times … as well as done You Tubes videos and radio shows about it.
What I deeply discovered is this: we have NO power to assist and help heal our children until we do the healing work on ourselves.
Because we must lead the way and then where we go is where they follow.
For those of you who are deeply interested in how to change Life profoundly for your children, please access these resources on this topic here:
(For additional resources on this topic, all you need to do is google my name + children, and many more will come up for you.)
It Gets Worse Before it Gets Better
At some point in the relationship whether it be months, years, or decades down the track there is likely to come a time when the narcissist decides to devalue and discard – for good – even if this has been going on in cycles over and over again …
Or … we decide that FINALLY the pain of staying outweighs the pain of ending it – so we do.
But does it?
The truth is there is a terrible “aftershock” that happens for most people when they break up with a narcissist, and this can be mystifying and terrifying.
And it is something that most onlookers just can’t understand.
They surmise … “Because you are away from this person, aren’t you supposed to be getting better now?”
And, the person who is now separated from the narcissist, feels like their soul, mind and heart is being devastated in ways they did not know were possible.
It literally feels like you are having a cataclysmic breakdown.
When I asked members of the Community to write in about what they wanted to know about “surviving a breakup with a narcissist”, I wasn’t at all surprised when one member wrote in this:
“I’ve separated from my N this year, after a 10-year marriage. I’ve found the process to be more torturous than being with him. Not because of him, but because of my own mind and conscious. My guilt had me hospitalised, and my family members exhausted. Good memories of him bring me sadness. I worry about being unfair in court and custody rights. I believed he was a good father. Thank you in advance, for always being able to explain MY thoughts and feelings with words I didn’t have or understand Xx.”
I concur totally …. and my heart goes out to this lovely lady, and the countless people in this Community who are in a much worse state after leaving than when they stayed.
“‘Aftershock’ is a very real phenomenon after leaving a narcissist. When you are stuck in the fight with the narcissist you are in survival mode, and somehow that keeps you alive.When you leave the narcissist you will experience grave Post and / or Complicated Stress Disorder Symptoms. Not unlike a holocaust survivor, the entire trauma has a chance to hit when you have got away.The abuse from yesterday, last week, last month and last year now activates. You are also caught up in the intense mind-bending withdrawal of the addiction to the trauma.This is the most serious of time for narcissistic abuse victims, whereby the agony may be so great that the ability to function may seem near impossible, and many people even feel like they have lost the will to live.All of your survival fears and intense emotional inner agonies and programming hits very hard, leaving you feeling shattered, powerless and helpless.”
I remember sitting with my Personality Disorder Psychologist, when I told her I was leaving narcissist number 1, and the reasons why I had decided to leave.
Even though she was a purported “best of her kind” specialist in this matter she said to me, “You’ve worked it out, now you will be okay. You are ready to leave, stay away from him and get better.”
Nothing could be further from the truth.
My “recovery” had not been Quantum (a real shift within my subconscious programming) it was based on cognitive information only. Which meant I hadn’t begun to meet, unravel or heal the young unhealed wounds within me that had unknowingly taken me into N-abuse and were keeping me hooked to him.
And because my healing had not been for real, I did this … another year of grueling life and death off and on contact, and then a further 18 months of white-knuckling, traumatising cold turkey recovery, which ultimately led to a complete psychotic and adrenal breakdown.
She never explained to me the aftershock that was coming, or the fallout from separating from a narcissist.
These were things that I later not only discovered for myself but also observed as a consistent theme among people leaving narcissists, who were trying to survive and heal with only logical tools, and / or attempts to manage their trauma symptoms.
Rather than truly healing them.
Apart from what I just copied from the article – regarding how the traumas now have a chance to all catch up with us … there is also a deeper truth going on that causes the agony of being separated from the narcissist to be fully activated.
It is this …
The reason why we were “glued” to the narcissist in unhealthy ways is now left without a job.
Meaning it can’t be “busy” trying to get its needs fulfilled by focusing on the interaction with the narcissist.
Meaning that this raw gaping wound is now screaming out in agony … because it no longer has the “distraction”.
Let me explain …
The lady who wrote about how her “guilt” landed her in hospital is a PERFECT example of what I am talking about.
We may perceive her guilt as “illogical”.
Why on earth should she feel guilty? He’s an abuser; he’s’ a narcissist. Of COURSE she shouldn’t feel guilty about breaking up with him!
And don’t worry – there would be times in her confusion that she would desperately be trying to convince herself the exact same thing!
Yet … the gnawing guilt is unlikely to go away.
It’s likely to haunt her.
And consume her.
It landed her in hospital for goodness sake – despite other people more than likely telling her it was ridiculous to feel this guilt and despite telling herself not to.
Her guilt is NOT logical.
And here is the Number One thing I could ever tell you to help wake you up and realize how to heal from narcissistic abuse.
Stop thinking logic is going to help you.
Stop trying to heal logically.
Don’t try to tend to your aftermath with a narcissist logically.
Because if you do, you will stay exactly where this lady presently is …. battling almighty subconscious wounded programs that are screwing you down in ongoing pain, torment, anxiety and depression.
As well as causing you to hand power over.
And from your “logic” you will not be able to work with these subconscious programs at the level of consciousness that is required to resolve them.
This is the rub – the things about narcissistic abuse, and the traumatised emotions that happen, are not logical or even “adult” within us.
Please know this awareness is not disrespectful … I am not insulting our intelligence or our character.
Rather, what I am saying is that our trauma is coming from a much deeper, unconscious place within us that is operating below the level of the logical mind, and is in fact in control of our Life … until we go to it, release and heal it.
In this woman’s case, the “guilt” is not new.
It is incredibly likely that she had “guilt” inflicted as a child – the feeling responsible for others, being scapegoated by role models, and feeling that to earn love she had to look after others who were not taking responsibility for themselves.
We play out as adults what we have not healed from our childhood and ancestral DNA wounds – and there are no creatures on the planet more capable of triggering and hooking us through these wounds than narcissists.
Did her narcissistic husband locate and use this wound against this lady?
Of course he did!
(That’s what narcissists do.)
Even in his absence it’s still going on!
But REALLY he is the replay and the messenger of what it is within her that she needs to heal, in order to evolve and become a Higher Version of herself.
(Guilt will have played out and limited her in many areas of her life – NOT just with him.)
Until she goes to this inner subconscious trauma and shows up as the only adult who her Inner Being can be healed by – herself – the trauma will remain there.
The true healing of this – once the wound is met within herself – involves releasing the inner traumas of her childhood on this topic and up-levelling them to a new reality.
Which we now have the Quantum Tools to achieve for real, powerfully and in record time.
This is what another person said about this topic of the “aftermath” …
“I would like to know how to recover and forget all of those memories of relationship with an NPD person when she remains right in front of me at my working place. Unfortunately, she is one of the colleagues of my school and I have to face her everyday. Please help me.”
Here we have the same issue – EXACTLY.
Narcissists (AIDs) trigger our wounds; a previous DNA childhood / ancestral wound that hasn’t been healed yet, and continue to trigger it … ALL as the signal to stop being logical (looking outwards) and instead enter one’s own being, and do the work inside our body to find and heal the triggered wound.
THEN … I promise you the triggerer will NOT trigger you.
They become completely benign to you.
In regard to the trigger we have these options.
1) We have no power to change other people or the circumstances – unless of course (as an example) we crossed the line into pathological behavior, made something up (such as a narcissist would do) and had this woman sacked so that she was no longer in our environment.
(No healing evolution or graduation taken.)
2) We could leave (or stay) and not do the work inside our own being on what these triggers were calling us to heal.
(No healing evolution or graduation taken) … or
3) We can go inside, make this all about our own evolution (whether we decided to leave or stay is really inconsequential) and heal whatever this person is bringing up as “pain and trauma” for us.
(Then the healing evolution and graduation is taken.)
If we don’t go inside to heal this … there is only one possibility – the triggers MUST continue.
Our soul is calling us to heal something via our emotions (truly our “head” has NO say in this!) and until we “get” that – it doesn’t let up.
Hence the obsession and the emotional agony that so many people report even twenty plus years on from narcissists.
This is what this particular lady said …
“This has been the worst breakup of my entire life, the first time I was only 14 years old. Fast forward and 33 years later and he did it again. About the time I feel good and done he haunts me, even without contact. I awoke this morning from a horrible set of nightmares. I wonder if it will ever end someday.”
One of the key things we need to understand is this:
When our soul evolution has hit the level of a narcissist (a profound spiritual wake-up call) TIME does not heal wounds.
The Scream to Turn Inwards
The only “time” that factors, regarding narcissistic abuse, is the urgency of your soul saying … “It’s time to heal” and if you are not prepared to meet yourself and do that, then the triggers will continue from this person, or another who comes to fill their shoes.
And even if you have no person in you experience representing the wound, the obsession that goes on within your own brain that you just can’t seem to escape, will continue.
And it all gets worse and worse and worse … screaming for your attention to go to it.
Hence why it is HORRIFIC that our codependent, contemporary health systems (which keep people sick, alive and reliant) are hell-bent on giving you “methods” and “ways” to distract yourself (supposedly “manage”) the trauma screaming out for love and healing from YOURSELF, and even numb it out completely – rather than HELP you go to it and heal it.
Soooo it is my greatest urge to you … if you want to turn around the agony of breaking up with a narcissist … to understand that you need to do this:
Turn your focus inwards.
That is exactly what changed and saved my life from the very precipice of seemingly no return.
Because when you do, I promise you in every case there are wounds being triggered that originally had nothing to do with the narcissist, that the narcissist is hitting – and once you find them and heal them – the narcissist will be as irrelevant to you as a raincoat is on a warm sunny day.
And … he or she will be unable to hurt you or affect you anymore in your life.
Because your evolution and graduation was accepted and actualised by you.
Therefore, what the narcissist represents has NO purpose anymore in your experience.
This may seem fanciful and even whimsical until you start living a Life orientation from your Soul instead of from your mind.
And once you do you will never dismiss your True Power to create your Life again.
Soooo …. in the case of the person with a female narcissist still in their presence at work, the following are the relevant questions in order to turn your focus inwards.
“What are my emotions that are being triggered?”
And this is where we need to get REAL and VULNERABLE and acknowledge there is a scared, hurt, needy, broken or insecure part within us showing up.
We need to feel this in our body, within our emotions.
And then we need to ask ourselves
“How old is this part of me?”
“What is this really about?”
Maybe the narcissist is triggering feelings of I am insignificant. I am unlovable, unacceptable and discarded because I’m not important.
Maybe it is I am replaced and I feel worthless.
Whatever it is this was NEVER about the narcissist originally … it was about something and someone before this.
It was very likely to be the feelings experienced as a child within a family of role models who were dealing with their own wounds and who did not parent in healthy ways.
Because sadly our “civilized” world has had no training in place to help parents get unwounded and healthy within themselves, let alone not inflict emotional wounding on their children.
To not just merely (often barely) survive a breakup with a narcissist entails taking on your evolution and graduation, and then you will THRIVE after a break up with a narcissist.
Do you understand why now?
Now let’s investigate one of the deepest traumas we experience after breaking up with narcissist.
One, that initially impacted me horribly as well as SO many others.
Being Reliant On the Narcissist’s “Love”
When we are in the idealisation phase with a narcissist we feel loved beyond measure.
We feel like a woman or a man in a desert who came across an oasis.
Because the narcissist appeared to us as “the person” who finally sees us, validates us and loves us.
He or she is “the salve” for all our unhealed wounds.
Soooo … if we felt insignificant and unloved in our childhoods … all of a sudden we feel incredible valued and worthy.
If we were pushed aside by our parents, whilst in the presence of the narcissist we feel like the number one priority.
If we felt controlled and distrusted by our parents, we experience finally feeling respected and trusted.
But … not forever.
Within an amount of time the cracks appear, and the narcissist starts to treat us and hurt us in identical ways that we experienced when we were young.
And often in even worse ways.
Then the more we try to make the narcissist stop and see what he or she is doing, and the harder we get hooked in and try to twist ourselves into all sorts of shapes to get the narcissist to return to “loving us”, the more the narcissist hurts us as well as discards us and pulls away.
Literally leaving us traumatised, unmet with our traumas and empty – and we are reeling.
This is how the formula goes with narcissists.
1) The soothing of our wounds by appearing to be the solution to them (idealisation).
2) The triggering of these very wounds (devaluation).
3) The total abandonment of us with these unmet wounds, emotionally and / or literally (discard).
Through these cycles we come face to face with the greatest spiritual lesson of all:
“The narcissist is NOT the healer of our wounds – we are.”
And this is where radical personal responsibility is the only solution.
Our wounded Inner Being needs us to show up as the only adult who can heal this.
As children we required an adult to help us establish a healthy emotional Inner Being … yet sadly, for many of us, this didn’t happen. Our parents didn’t have the resources to – they didn’t have their own heathy emotional Inner Beings, just as their parents didn’t have.
As adults it is up to ourselves … it’s no-one else’s job.
The only power we ever have is to change ourselves.
And if we continue to ignore our inner wounds and didn’t go to them and heal them, we will always come up empty and we will experience exactly the lesson the narcissist is bringing to us … this:
Others and Life abandoning us too – reflecting the very abandonment within ourselves that we have all been trained into doing – in this topsy turvy “outside / in” Life whch hasn’t been working for us.
When we haven’t as yet become that super-present, loving, showing up parent / healer / lover to ourselves then we WILL hold other people responsible.
Then we create ourselves as the Victim when they don’t supply us with what we are not supplying ourselves.
This is the trap of falling in with narcissists, the people who hooked us by appearing to be “the answer to our prayers” in whatever capacity we think we need from outside of ourselves.
This will always fall into one (or all) of these categories:
- Love
- Approval
- Security, and
- Survival.
When we have assigned the narcissist as the Source of these things we have forgotten our organic coding regarding connection to all of Life.
We are not aligned with ourselves, meaning we are separated from others and separated from Life.
We are not in wellbeing, flow or abundance.
You see … at the Quantum Level of Life we are always generating more of ourselves. The areas of our Life that we are whole with, are the areas we show up as, attract and generate love, healthiness, and abundance with.
And the areas of our Life that we are not whole with, are the areas where more brokenness and disappointment continually shows up for us.
When we are still wounded within, we are snapped off from the organic Who We Are and our interconnectedness with Creation / Life / God which honors, adores us and supports us when we are connected to ourselves in healthy ways.
One person wrote this:
“About making the narcissist our “god”. Or, could you give me the link to your video which explains that? (Thank you).”
I will one day do a video or an article about this, specifically. But for now I want to bring this back to the profound soul lesson of narcissistic abuse – that when we assign a False Self (or in fact anyone) as a False Source (anyone other than our adult self) we will not be in direct relationship with ourselves, life or others.
Then … we are limited, fearful, precarious poised and constantly suffering the anxiety of possible criticism, rejection, abandonment and punishment.
We hand power away.
We will tolerate and stay with abusive people rather than risk being alone with our not as yet functioning “Source Self”.
We have no idea yet that we have the power and ability to generate a life that works with all the unlimited resources of life, rather than holding certain person responsible for it.
And as a result we are trapped, and in agony.
There are two profound reasons why people have IMMENSE agony after leaving a narcissist.
1) They have not as yet realized the painful triggers are the call to go inside and heal previously unhealed wounds, and
2) They hold the narcissist responsible for their own Life.
All of this gets dismantled (and healed profoundly) when we let go of these terrible illusions and wake up to the truth.
That … this is NOT to do with the narcissist … he or she is ONLY a messenger.
Rather, this is about healing something we need to heal in order to be free and start generating our Life in the ONLY ways that was ever going to genuinely satisfy us …
Ways that are a soul truth.
These truths are: being a Creator in harmony with Self, Life and others. That is the beauty and birthright of “heaven on earth” … meaning being human and “going for” this experience of life as a True Self.
Being dependent, reliant and susceptible to abuse is NOT our True Life experience.
And for many of us who were terrified to be our True Selves, and had no idea how to actualize it, and had never previously stepped into it … it took Narcissistic Abuse to find it.
Before that time, we were trying to survive a constricted, anxious, depressed life – not in our power – as our “normal”.
But it was insanely “unnatural”.
Trying to survive a breakup with a narcissist brings all of this up – to a BIG critical head.
The Panic After Breaking Up
Until we become a Source to Ourselves, and heal those parts that we assigned the narcissist to provide us with … a terrible panic can ensue.
My BIG trauma (like many others in the Community) was abandonment.
I felt like I was going to literally die without the narcissist.
The truth was I was dying as a result of not turning up for myself.
This is what some Members of the Community wrote about feeling panic …
“For me it’s the promises and feeling like you’re the most important person to him; then when you are broken up with, it’s like you/they never existed. Also having to see him and his friends daily causes panic attacks.” … and
“I am struggling with panic attacks from the same issues.”
What are the panic attacks REALLY?
They are our Inner Being screaming out to US (not the narcissist) …
This …
“Stop assigning someone else to heal this … come inside and meet and love and accept me, and BE my security and emotional survival. I need YOU – not anyone else.”
And the real question we need to face (which I was clearly shown in my breakdown divine intervention moment years ago on my bathroom floor) … “How BAD does the pain need to be before we stop fruitlessly trying to force other people to be our Source, and instead turn inwards to love and heal ourselves?”
And this is what another lady wrote … (and BOY I relate because this was MASSIVE for me as it is for so many of us … believing that we can only have happiness, joy, life successes, or whatever it is that we think can make us happy and whole VIA this person.)
“How they robbed your life and chance opportunities that would’ve been in alignment with your heart’s desires and soul’s mission.”
(PLEASE know I had to heal heaps of beliefs on that before I started generating an amazing, abundant, full, exciting Life on my own accord … And thank goodness I did clean this up… now having NO feelings of lack within myself or dependencies or emptiness anymore! Completely different to my previous life even before narcissists).
Many of us think our Life is over … but it is NOT … I promise you when you start releasing the trauma and replace it with wellbeing then your REAL life will take off. In bigger and better ways than it ever could have even before you were abused.
Ones that do generate your heart’s desires and soul’s mission, because All of Creation is positioned to support and flourish that when you honour and support yourself.
When you were reliant on a narcissist you were never anchored into your True Generative Power – you were always handing power away … and the narcissist showed up to confirm exactly where that leads to.
NONE of that is Who You Really Are.
And … when you stop holding the narcissist responsible, and instead chose and commit to your own evolution, you will start graduating.
Then you will see how you start moving onto Life trajectories that you just did not have access to before your evolution.
Sadly … some people live their entire Life without doing this … and wonder why love, success and happiness never comes – and continue to believe it can only come via others, and cling to those they think it needs to be with.
That’s a huge part of what we need to heal after breaking up with a narcissist.
In Conclusion
This week was about laying the foundation of dealing with the only place we have power – NO matter what is happening inside us or outside us with the narcissist.
And this is why Part One was based on … Emotion First.
In Part Two next week – I want to look at these topics, which people wrote in about, regarding the trauma of breaking up with a narcissist … including how our emotional shifting impacts practically the usual fallout with a narcissist.
- Thinking this relationship at a soul level was meant to be for life.
- The agony of being replaced.
- The fallout created by smear campaigns.
- People not realizing the severity of or supporting your symptoms, such as PTSD.
- People not realizing that this person is NPD and staying connected to him or her …
And, I will touch on again (grant you some resources to) information regarding overcoming hoovering, and how to trust again after your trust has been completely shattered.
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