Recovering from an abusive relationship is a process that takes time to navigate because it involves breaking down beliefs, habits, thoughts, and emotions that are ingrained on a subconscious level.
This process is as unique as each individual’s life.
While it is important to navigate each stage and not get stuck, unfortunately, there are no shortcuts in the recovery process, just as there are no shortcuts in the grieving process. However, you will save a lot of very valuable time by not calling and starting the journey sooner rather than later.
Accept the fact that you are being abused
An important first step in the healing process is recognizing and accepting that the relationship was abusive and being aware of the risks of staying in the relationship.
For those who have not experienced the kind of manipulation involved in a relationship with someone with this type of personality disorder, it is really difficult to explain the psychological and emotional complexities involved in how a person relates to a narcissistic relationship.
Those who grew up in a strong, supportive, emotionally healthy environment—developing strong boundaries—could care less about lazy narcissists, and so are less likely to have experienced systematic breakdowns like Chinese water torture during a relationship. Those who have dealt with a covert narcissist will be particularly experienced in this area.
For the more subtle narcissists with some free time on their hands, they may choose to use their technique on people with strong boundaries to fine-tune their manipulation tactics while still, of course, having a series of other, more flexible subjects they can draw on.
For any normal, intelligent person, devising a way to manipulate someone would require a great deal of intellectual effort to do. This is not the case with narcissists. Narcissists do it naturally, it takes no effort on their part, they know no other way, they are experts at doing it and have a huge amount of personal experience to draw from.
I believe that anyone who stays close to a narcissist, no matter how strong their boundaries are, will experience some form of manipulation with negative consequences. Those with more experienced inner boundaries are simply more likely to give up on that person a lot sooner and not waste more time on the matter.
As strange as it may seem to some people on the outside, it is fairly common for people who experience narcissistic abuse to initially not realize they are being abused and to give their partner the benefit of the doubt – over and over again – regardless of other qualities or other areas in which they believe they are benefiting.
Our good nature has a blind spot, we are taught to be patient with people, to try to bring out the best in others and we believe that someone who acts in this manipulative and destructive way is doing so because they have their own traumas and need our help.
We might think that everyone deserves a chance, and certainly a second chance… after all, who doesn’t make mistakes?
Sometimes our pride does not allow us to admit that we are being abused, and we make excuses instead of facing the hard truth of the situation – that we also need to address our own problems. However, it is often those of us who have experienced trauma without help who are particularly vulnerable to narcissists as we can relate to the grievances they speak of. But, nothing can be further from our own experiences. While everyone makes mistakes, the basic difference between a non-narcissist and a narcissist is that we recognize mistakes, learn from them, and become a better person.
This is not a process that a narcissist can go through deeply or for an extended period of time…and they have no interest in self-improvement!
There are many reasons we are vulnerable to narcissistic abuse, and discovering the “why” is only one important part of the healing process.
If you are looking for reasons why your partner may act in certain ways that you find painful, then you are at risk of being in an abusive relationship. A person with healthy boundaries would recognize the unacceptable behavior sooner and would have cut it out of their life quickly before that point was reached and focused on their own life. This leads me to explain why leaving an abusive relationship is fundamentally important. It is about the loss, the loss of your important time and place in this world, the loss of allowing yourself to recognize your worth.
When you are in a relationship with a narcissist, you will learn that everything revolves around them, and whether or not it was your original plan, you will be hijacked to dedicate gradually more time, energy, money, ideas, etc. to that person and less and less to yourself until your valuable place in this world is in jeopardy.
The path to who you can become and what you should contribute to life seems to be fading away. The path to re-finding it becomes remote…with poisonous plants and thorny bushes along the way. Navigating your way through this lonely path is probably one of the most spiritually important and difficult things you can do. And every painful step brings you closer to yourself and your goal.
Each of us has our own story, we grow and develop, and sometimes regress, but the ideal outcome is what every parent hopes for their children, to recognize and value our uniqueness. This becomes an impossible task under a narcissistic influence. There is no place for anyone else’s fate in their world. We begin to value ourselves through their eyes, instead of our own, who value nothing! A good test of a relationship is to ask, Would you want this for your child or for a friend or family member that you love very much? If not, why is it good enough for you?
