When you get out of a relationship with a narcissist or sociopath, everything seems confusing and chaotic, besides feeling lost and drained. Well, those are just a few feelings that sociopaths and narcissists leave behind.

You will be left with an endless void that nothing can fill. These people leave your soul completely broken. But when everything makes sense again, you will likely be left with many mental, emotional, and psychological issues, which will take a lot of time to heal.

A lot of these feel uncomfortable and trick you into focusing on how you feel on the outside while ignoring the real pain on the inside. Mental health issues take longer to heal, but once you’ve gone through the recovery process, you’ll be able to return to a normal lifestyle.

Sometimes, simply removing such toxic and hateful people from your life is the first step toward having sound mental health.

Related: How Sharing Your Concerns Makes You Vulnerable To A Narcissist

6 Feelings that sociopaths and narcissists leave behind

1. Jealousy
   After comparing, triangulating, and substituting with other people, it’s normal to feel jealous. By default, your external focus is on criticizing the people you’re being compared to because that criticism makes you feel better. You will focus only on the negative qualities of these people and the circumstances in which they suffered defeat.

But this, you must remember, is a temporary solution to your burning inside. This constant comparison to make yourself feel bigger than the other person does not solve the inner problem, which is a deep sense of rejection and inadequacy.

When you allow yourself to be broken and soft, you can nurture the parts that need help and healing.

2. Resentment
   This is one of the most profound and painful feelings that sociopaths and narcissists leave behind. It is well known among psychologists and psychiatrists how bad resentment is for you, and how it ends up eating you up from the inside.

Sociopaths and narcissists are known to be deceitful and exasperating; It is not surprising that their victims end up with so much resentment in themselves.

But the biggest pitfall of resentment is that it keeps you from the beauty of attachment and love. prevents you from seeing the positive in anything; You are not allowed to be optimistic. Resentment protects you from inner hurt by covering it with false energy.

If you are tired of feeling resentful and bitter, mindfulness and spirituality are effective ways to deal with resentment.

Treat your resentment with unconditional love, soothing yourself with a gentle, non-judgmental voice: “That’s fine. That’s okay.” Learn to accept that it’s okay to have feelings of resentment and to hate someone when they break your confidence.

Allow the negative energy hiding within you to flow out. If necessary, you can take it out or vent it in front of your relatives. The more you do this, the easier it will be to release your resentment into that loving voice.

Related: Slippery And Scaly: Beware Of The Reptilian Shadiness Of The Seductive-Withholding Narcissist

3. Shame/humiliation
   Many survivors publicly break down during and after their relationships. They scream and rant about their toxic ex-partners, stalk them on social media, try to reconcile with them, and even get delusional at times, just to remove the facade of their toxic partner.

But after a while, when you start to feel a little better, you will probably berate yourself for your immature reaction like this.

Self-forgiveness is very important for letting go of the past and allowing you to move on. These types of behaviors are textbook examples of how you should act when you are mentally and emotionally hurt.

When you begin to understand this, you can put down your battle ax and turn your attention inward, where it is required.

4. Self-doubt
   Psychopaths and narcissists use techniques such as gaslighting to make you question your version of reality and your cognitive abilities. Many of them will make you blame yourself for the cheating and abuse. Long after they leave, their accusations of “you’re crazy” will eat you up from the inside.

You start to overthink even when it isn’t necessary. What if they are right? No, they are crazy! But maybe you are too? No, they are!

You start to analyze and question everything you say and do, and even when you know you didn’t do anything wrong, you don’t believe in yourself and believe what the sociopath or narcissist told you. All of this is focused on the outside, and your true inner wound remains unresolved.

Your self-doubt keeps you in an endless cycle of self-analysis, which constantly lies to you so you won’t make the same “mistake” again and, in the process, also prevents you from being your true self.

5. Worthlessness
   This is one of the worst effects of being in a relationship with a sociopath or narcissist.

Narcissists and sociopaths just know how to cajole and seduce you through the idealization phase, cleverly manipulating you into building your self-worth on their “nice” words.

Once you become hooked, they begin to magnify your deepest insecurities and diminish your greatest strengths. By the end of the relationship, you will think that he is the only person who can love you the way he does. And that’s the whole point.

When you feel worthless, you take any little bit of good that is given to you. Many victims or survivors end up going out of their way to prove their worth and self-worth, and become obsessed with perfection, focused only on transforming themselves into the way the sociopath wants them to be.

Never forget that hateful people like themselves find satisfaction by exploiting the weaknesses of their victims. The more worthless you feel, the more satisfied they are.

Related: What Is Future Faking: How Narcissists Use It To Control Their Victims

6. Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
   PTSD is perhaps one of the worst feelings that sociopaths and narcissists leave in their victims. PTSD occurs when your body refuses to let go of your traumatic past.

Most of the time, psychological damage and internal conflicts end up manifesting as other symptoms such as knots in the stomach, numbness, pain, tightness, and emptiness.

These physical sensations prevent you from experiencing unbearable feelings of rejection, inadequacy, and shame. It’s an inner belief in feeling stuck in the body that makes you feel disconnected from unconditional love.

The fact remains that you are loved by all the right people, just as you are, and in this moment. All of these emotional and physical feelings keep you from recognizing and accepting true love, and without the right love, you will always feel lost.

And this is the main issue when you love toxic people like narcissists and sociopaths – they bring out all the feelings that prevent love, and you fail to understand what’s going on inside of you.

Survivors of narcissistic abuse and sociopathy find it difficult to let go of the pain they have experienced, which is why they continue to focus on them. If you are one of them, know that you need to move on, and close the door to your past forever.

Getting out of a relationship with a sociopath or narcissist is as painful as it gets, don’t prolong your pain by giving them that satisfaction.

The more you surrender to these negative feelings, the more power you will continue to give them. These feelings may always be a part of you, but they don’t have to control you. Believe in yourself, and love yourself enough to know that what they did had nothing to do with you. There is still a lot of light within you.