Recovery from narcissistic abuse often seems impossible at first. There are many elements involved in recovering from this type of abuse, and I often joke with my coaching clients that it takes a village to help someone heal from it.
While this is true, and while healing is different for everyone, there are certain things we do that get in the way of healing, and can even reverse any progress we may have made. Ironically, these are the activities that everyone coming out of a toxic relationship does, on top of those activities that we are innate to do!
Having gone through these experiences myself, I don’t come from a place of judgment, but instead, I hope to save you time (and more heartbreak). In this article, I share the top three behaviors that hinder recovery and often prevent survivors from crossing the threshold of peace that awaits them on the other side.
- Reading an excessive amount of material related to narcissism.
As you began to research the reasons why your partner behaves the way they do, discovering that they might be a narcissist can be sure. It helped explain their behaviors, as well as your reactions to those behaviors.
However, there comes a point at which further reading on the topic of narcissism becomes moot and even destructive. Controversial because earning a PhD in narcissism will not change the outcome of a relationship. Destructive because it keeps you focused on the narcissist, the abuse, the trauma, and most importantly it prevents you from focusing on healing your underlying wounds.
I’ve worked with clients who’ve been out of a relationship for years and I still read about narcissism for hours a day. I can say with confidence that this is a substantial reason not to move forward.
THERAPY ALTERNATIVE: True healing begins with looking inside your wounded heart. Nothing outside of you will help you heal because your emotional injuries are on the inside. Instead of researching how your partner became a narcissist, what kind of narcissists they might be, and where they lie in the narcissistic chain, shift your focus to healing your damaged self-image and healing the toxic shame the narcissist has planted within you in order. to keep you dependent on them.
What fire together, wires together. Meaning, whatever you feed into your mind on a daily basis is what determines your basic thought patterns.
“The person who is in pain is being spoken to by that part of themselves that only knows how to communicate in this way.”
~ Melidoma Patrice Some
- Believing that time heals all wounds.
Aside from my own finding that time alone definitely doesn’t heal all wounds, there are thousands of examples all over the internet that disprove this myth. If the wounds of time healed, there wouldn’t be people still suffering five or ten years after their relationship ended (sometimes longer!)
Time does not heal, it simply passes. Whether or not you recover during the passage of time has everything to do with what you’re doing at the time.
The key to recovery is action, not time.
The subconscious mind is impersonal. She will work towards whatever goals you set before her, good or bad. Present him with healing and recovery goals, and he’ll work to help you achieve those goals. The same goes for presenting it with goals of knowing the narcissist. It may help you gain knowledge about your partner’s troubled condition, but it only leads you to the inevitable conclusion, which ultimately leaves you with nothing to show for all the hours invested in such an undertaking.
Therapeutic Alternative: If you have just discovered that your partner may be a narcissist, it is only natural that you will want to analyze their motives, actions, and behaviors. This is what our brains are designed to do. However, to expand on topic #1, when you get to the point where you are constantly reading information you already know, it is a good point to end your research on narcissism and turn your focus to your recovery.
As you begin your healing work, keep in mind that in order to heal your subconscious mind, it must go through healing events. Specifically, you may find some very good books or other materials written on the topic of healing, but getting information through reading is a passive thing. In other words, you must actively participate in the suggested healing activities in order to form new neural patterns in your brain… A good rule of thumb is to pick a healing habit and practice it every day for at least 21 days. It won’t do you much good if, for example, you practice guided meditation once a week for three weeks and then give up completely. Discipline and consistency are key.
“People are treated through different types of therapists and systems because the real healer is within.”
~ George Goodhart
- Gather information from hundreds of different websites and forums.
I learned the hard way that more information isn’t always better. There is an inherent danger involved in taking everything one reads online too seriously, especially when it comes to healing from narcissistic abuse.
It’s one thing to try different approaches as it relates to recovery, but it’s important to remember that not everyone who writes about narcissism has good intentions or comes from a good place. In fact, some people who branch out into narcissism do so only to feed their ego in the process of gaining followers and exchanging tips. One such person I know had his Facebook page shut down because they were constantly plagiarizing other people’s work.
Furthermore, I used to refer some of my clients to a licensed online therapist, who, as it turned out, used his site to make inappropriate gestures toward patients of the opposite sex. I stopped doing it immediately, of course, once I received this absolutely shocking information, but I can’t help but wonder how many of the people I pointed this out were targeted by someone who was supposed to help them!
Aside from the aforementioned scenarios, it is tempting to get into the habit of gathering information from many sites, and then get so wrapped up in the overwhelming amount of data that you simply stall out, unable to form an actionable plan.
