Narcissistic abuse recovery and healing from emotional abuse can seem like an ordeal of the most grievous kind.
You may have endured months of struggle and suffering without knowing if you’re making any progress because the pull to go back remains strong. You miss the moments under your abuser’s sway because, in your traumatized mind, cognitive dissonance and memories of so-called “good times” cloud your objectivity.
How do you know where you stand on your road to recovery? Victory isn’t always in-your-face. Narcissistic abuse recovery comes in waves, even ripples, but if you experience the following seven signs, you can feel gratified knowing that healing is within your reach.
(Read the transcript below or watch the video)
Seven Signs of Narcissistic Abuse Recovery
1. You’ve begun to appreciate that self-care is something you need to participate in consistently.
Not only because you are healing from emotional abuse, but because healthy people, in general, understand the importance of putting on their oxygen mask before they can help others.
Life can be stressful enough without the added obstacle of toxic abuse. It only stands to reason that if your goal is narcissistic abuse recovery, your body and mind require extreme self-care. This might include reducing social engagements, staying off of the internet, saying “no” to friends and family, taking a nap when you feel exhausted, and making time to do meditations.
You resist the urge to make excuses as to why you can’t take care of yourself, realizing that even single mothers can work self-care into their schedules. If you are a single mother, you deliberately get a babysitter on occasion to take yourself out.
You do guided meditations at night. You journal and do mirror work. If a friend asks you to visit and you don’t have the energy, you respectfully decline. You take the initiative to be a little “selfish”, because you understand the need to do so after putting out other people’s fires for too long.
Just as important, you understand that hopping on the forums where no one is progressing or moving forward in any meaningful way is keeping you STUCK. You vow to unjoin all the unhelpful groups and Facebook forums so you can feed your mind what it needs in order to heal.
2. You do what it takes to protect your mental and physical space.
You no longer acquiesce to things that intrude on your privacy and peace of mind.
Most narcissists and other Cluster-B disordered individuals pull out all the stops when trying to hook a previous source of supply back into their realm of crazy. They pretend to have changed, to want to be friends (especially for the “sake of the kids”), to be just another normal person going through a typical breakup or divorce. They may go so far as to tell you their relationship problems with their new partner.
Arriving as a survivor means you no longer want, nor tolerate, any of those things. You want peace and autonomy so badly that you are willing to go complete No Contact and resolve not to let them into your home anymore. You don’t leave yourself open to any of their tomfoolery and, instead, put up all necessary boundaries to protect your new sense of peace.
At some glorious point, you become protective of your healing space. Instead of feeling glad when the narcissist tries to hoover you, you feel nervous about protecting yourself…because you no longer want the narcissist to play their hoovering games.
You have come to realize just how powerful you are. You were powerful enough to get out of the relationship. You were powerful enough to get help to work through your feelings of self-doubt and tattered self-confidence.
And you have the power now to stand behind your boundary lines and keep the narcissist as far away from you as possible.
3. You no longer care about how the narcissist will react to your decisions.
You don’t worry whether your life choices will make the narcissist angry or make life “inconvenient” for them. You understand that true fulfillment means honoring your own dreams, desires, and ambitions regardless of how your ex may respond. As long as you abide by any court orders in place, you know that your future is in your own hands.
According to Bronnie Ware, a hospice nurse who’s listened to thousands of patients reckon with the inevitable end of life, there’s one regret that is more frequent than all the others and it isn’t what you expect – living your life according to others’ expectations rather than your own true desires.
“This was the most common regret of all,” she says. “When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled.”
True narcissistic abuse recovery means that you have put your own mental and physical well-being above the narcissist’s because you’ve already sacrificed enough for them, all to no avail.
4. You may start to notice that some of your other relationships have been a big energy and time drain, and you resolve to do something about them.
You’ve gotten into the habit of honoring yourself and releasing that which doesn’t serve your highest good. Consequently, you’ve become more sensitive to other relationships in which you feel taken advantage of. This doesn’t mean that you would dump a friend in need, but rather that you’ve started noticing your relationship ‘climates’.
There is an African, humanist philosophy called Ubuntu. At its most basic, it states that: ‘A person is a person through other people’. Who you choose to associate with will have an influence on who you are. This means that surrounding yourself with narcissists, manipulators, and abusers will lead to deep unhappiness.
If you’re a fundamentally decent and good person, you will most likely hope and believe that people can change, but long-term change is not possible with narcissists. You have accepted this after reaching a point where you recognized the need to cut your losses and admit that your relationship was permanently toxic.
Knowing when to do this requires well-developed intuitive powers. In the same way that a long-term weather pattern creates a climate in a particular region, if the climate of any of your relationships has proven – over time – that you typically feel put upon and used, then those are the ones that you now consider releasing.
5. You’re more concerned about what you’re doing with your life than what the narcissist is doing with theirs.
You no longer obsess about the narcissist with their new supply or the fact that they seem so happy because you’ve come to understand that the narcissist is destined to repeat the same cycle of abuse with anyone they are with at any given time.
The narcissist is a skilled and convincing actor. After all, they fooled you into believing that you were the love of their life, perhaps even their past lives. How long were they able to keep up the charade? Months? Possibly years?
Then, after their mask started slipping, they likely expected you to keep up appearances in front of everyone. Still yet, when you discovered their lies, online dating profiles, and infidelities, they convinced you that they had reasonable justifications for it all. That somehow, in spite of their love crimes, they still wanted you and were in love with you.
And so it will be with the new person. You understand and accept this and spend very little time thinking about it.
6. You no longer focus on problems, but on solutions.
You realize that you have the power to conquer and change your circumstances, rather than remain defenseless against whatever stunts your Ex might be playing.
You understand that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If you need to delete an email you’ve had for years because your Ex emails you from different accounts, you delete it. If you need to file a restraining order because your Ex is stalking and harassing you, you drive to the courthouse and file it. If you see the need to change your cell phone number and insist that they call you on your landline, you do so. If your Ex sends you unwanted gifts and flowers, you mark them “return to sender” or refuse the delivery.
You know the rules regarding ‘How to Deal With a Narcissist‘ and you follow them without looking for loopholes as to why you can’t. You fight the good fight to protect your newfound freedom.
7. You no longer consider what happened to you a punishment, but rather an eye-opener because you understand that it happened so you could heal the wounds you’ve carried since childhood.
You’ve arrived as a survivor from narcissistic abuse because you no longer look to your Ex for approval or appreciation, knowing that even the appearance of those things comes with a high price. You accept that there are people whose behavior is disturbingly damaging, but you no longer open yourself up to it. Instead, you respond appropriately, with full awareness of why it’s necessary to do so.
You’ve arrived as a survivor because you no longer tolerate anything that discounts your value – from anyone – for you’ve become your own best friend and advocate.
If you feel miserable and trapped in your relationship, that’s a problem that likely won’t improve on its own. Join the many wonderful folks in The Essential Break Free Bootcamp who have finally found freedom, are healing their own lives, and are joyfully experiencing the seven signs of narcissistic abuse recovery.
If you’ve just found this site and are ready to begin your first steps to freedom, download your beginner’s healing roadmap below! You get everything you need to start your healing journey. It’s free!
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