I am so happy, humbled and thrilled to be a part of this incredible global community where so many people heal for real from narcissistic abuse. Meaning they don’t just get out and survive – they reignite, become rebirthed, and they rebuild and truly Thrive.
Yes, it takes inner work, it takes inner dedication and discipline like your Soul depends on it (because it does), but it is incredibly possible, if not entirely probable.
Today, I want to grant you a road map regarding the 4 signs I believe are letting you know that you are healing from narcissistic abuse.
This will be confirmation for you, if you are on your way to GENUINE recovery, or if you may have some adjustments to do. In these 4 signs I am also going to grant you the faux signs – things you may believe are authentic recovery – so that you don’t fall for them.
Sign Number One – You Are Genuinely Letting Go
You may have heard people say, “I’m over that – I don’t think about it anymore.” The truth is they are not over it – they have pushed the trauma down and buried it. Covering something over is not the same as “letting it go”.
Internal trauma is like housework, it doesn’t go away – it just piles up and gets messier no matter how much you try to ignore it is there.
If you have just decided to “move on” and “not think about it”, you may be really shocked to find you still feel traumatised, are lacking in energy and will often keep coming up against the same types of people and situations no matter how positive you try to be.
This is especially true for an experience as severely emotionally impactful as narcissistic abuse.
Truly letting go, means that you have self-partnered (turned inwards), faced your damaged and devastated parts, and done the inner work to hold and let go of the traumas you were infected with as a result of narcissistic abuse.
Then you go free of them.
What does this genuinely feel like? It is an experience of being able to discuss what happened to you whilst literally no longer feeling the emotional charge of it in your body. The trauma no longer exists. It’s like you are talking about a different person in a different time.
This is true, because once that trauma has been released, and you have gone free from it – you are a different person. You have graduated beyond the trauma, and the bonding and addiction to people who delivered it – into a whole new trajectory of life far more empowered, wiser and more whole than you were on before this happened to you.
Sign Number Two – Your Abuse Symptoms Are Melting Away
The standard “survival” recovery (which in my humble opinion is not genuine recovery at all) means that you may get out and away, yet you will still indefinitely be battling the nasty symptoms of narcissistic abuse, such as PTSD, adrenal fatigue, anxiety, depression, fibromyalgia, agoraphobia … and much more. Then you may join an online or in-person PTSD group and share how PTSD is limiting your life and ideas regarding how to adjust and manage your life with PTSD. That is really sad, because it means trying to battle PTSD for life, whilst constantly confirming to yourself that you are a PTSD sufferer.
My own journey with Thriver recovery and that of thousands of people worldwide in this community, has taught me something very powerful. All ‘dis-ease’ is generated from emotional trauma that we hold in our body. Once you know how to target and release the trauma, it makes space in your cells to reset back to your own incredible ability to self-heal.
When I had my psychotic and adrenal breakdown as a result of narcissistic abuse, I weighed 80 pounds because I couldn’t eat, my hair was falling out in clumps and I had the additional diagnoses of C-PTSD, fibromyalgia, agoraphobia and manic depression. I was told I would need three anti-psychotics to be able to get back to any level of functioning and to stop the psychotic episodes I was suffering as a result of my breakdown.
I was told I would never fully recover and would probably need these medications for the rest of my life.
Thank goodness I found another way to heal myself naturally. It was with the Quantum Inner Work that is in my Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program(NARP), coupled with the life-saving decision to turn inwards to heal myself back to wholeness, that caused my symptoms to start healing and dissolving away very rapidly.
Today, I have zero symptoms and continually (with the NARP process which is a life tool) can release any emotional trigger and continue to get more solid, powerful, whole and safe in my body as my life progresses. This didn’t just save my life it GAVE me my entire life!
Thriver Recovery has allowed so many people in this community to also melt away not just emotional and mental limitations but physical and spiritual breakdowns and disease as well. Another positive side-effect of healing from narcissistic abuse is your financial wellbeing resetting as well.
This community’s Thriver stories are full of these examples!
As the trauma leaves, healing begins.
Sign Number Three – You Start Becoming Your Own Source
As victims, understandably we want someone else to come and fix our pain, provide us with love and approval and mop up the pieces for us to grant us some sort of compensation for what happened to us.
As many of us painfully discovered, when trying to get this, others, no matter how supportive they were, couldn’t take the pain away, couldn’t fix it for us and couldn’t “give us back to ourselves”.
Possibly, such as in a love relationship, we met someone genuine and wonderful, yet couldn’t trust them. We can’t accept their love, and find that we are questioning and sabotaging things and no matter how many times they try to wring their hands and heart out to help us – they just can’t.
Or maybe the people we did trust, just ended up hurting us all over again, and just as before we ended up feeling hooked, dependent, and addicted to them and we were unable to break away.
My Thriver Way to heal for real lets us know right from the beginning that no one is coming. We are our own saviours and my work is about empowering you to become that.
Why is that important? Because as an adult now, your inner broken, hurt, insecure parts are calling out for YOU to turn inwards and love and heal yourself back to wholeness. As children we were powerless to do this, as adults we are not.
It’s only by accepting this truth that you will start to grow up these young unhealed, undeveloped parts into a solid, healthy, whole adult within who is no longer the inner broken child dependent on someone else to grant you yourself.
I adore the story Don Miguel Ruiz shares in “Mastery of Love” regarding two women – one who cooks herself nutritious meals from her well-stocked kitchen who refuses an offer from a questionable man offering her pizza every day, whereas a woman who doesn’t cook for herself and is starving, accepts the greasy pizza every day and the abuse that the man delivering it also gives her.
The message is powerful – if we don’t become a healthy source to self, then we are dependent, and highly susceptible to only feeling lovable and worthy if others are loving and approving of us. When they are not, we are lost, empty and needy. If we can’t provide for ourselves healthily, emotionally and financially, then we may cling and accept treatment that is painful or even Soul-destroying.
I promise you with all of my heart, I used to be the former woman. I am so thrilled to say the freedom, joy and power that comes from being “whole” means that we can share our lives with other “whole” people, and easily say “no” to those people who are not healthy to share a life with.
Can you imagine how magnificent it feels to be in that place? How fulfilling and satisfying it is to feel like a grown up adult in your body, knowing that you can generate your own life now, without needing people.
True healthy love comes from wanting to share healthily, not from needing to stay connected.
Sign Number Four – You Have Healthy Boundaries
Survivors of narcissistic abuse may absolutely initially want to pull out of a great deal of human interaction, because they don’t know who and what they can trust.
I promise this is normal, yet to continue on disconnected, being fearful of human connection and not knowing how to interact in ways that keep you safe and support your true Thriver Life is not really living at all. It means hiding out, dimming down and playing small to try to avoid being hurt again.
As Thrivers we purposefully address and heal those parts within us that were terrified about speaking up and saying “No” in order to navigate life and others, and keep the bad out whilst defining and accepting the good into our lives. A powerful goal is to step up and honour ourselves, being the guardian of our own truth, values and well-being by laying boundaries regardless of what other people are or aren’t doing.
This means no longer trying to keep the peace and avoiding the fears of C.R.A.P. (criticism, rejection, abandoned and punishment) of having our own values, preferences and worth.
These were the unhealed fears of our childhoods, yet as adults we can heal and grow ourselves up inside, and move beyond the previous limitations where we were selling out our better inner judgement by agreeing with or going along with people because we didn’t want confrontation.
Within Thriver Recovery you will start moving into your empowered truth, knowing that your boundaries don’t need another person to agree with you, they only need YOU to “get it”.
Now, because you are learning to be authentic and have difficult conversations, move into alignment with your inner intuition and honour yourself healthily, you will start to easily see who can join your values and truth and who can’t. You will know every time you say “no” you then open the space to accept how and what will be a healthy addition to your life.
Your life is a series of choices, and it is our responsibility to make whole choices from a whole self. It’s no one else’s job!
Your True Self and Life will start generating beautifully when you engage in Thriver Healing and get greater clarity and power around this!
In Conclusion
I know that healing from narcissistic abuse can be painful, arduous and absolutely feel like you are spinning your wheels.
Sadly, many people never heal for real, and only keep trying to battle and manage their symptoms because they didn’t know how to heal in ways that truly work.
Let’s recap our 4 areas of recovery that we talked about today …
Can you now see the difference between trying to get over what happened and truly letting it go?
Do you understand how trying to join victim groups and battle your symptoms is so different from being able to genuinely heal and live free of them?
Are you able to feel how growing into being a solid adult in your own body is so much better than feeling powerless and wanting to be saved from what happened to you?
What would it be like to have healthy boundaries and be able to be in the world confidently, rather than having to dim down, insulate, isolate and live in fear?
These stark differences showcase the night and day difference between mere Survivor Recovery and True Thriver Recovery.
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