The painful reality of narcissistic abuse is emotionally, physically and mentally devastating. Often if it was our parent, we grow up with a lot of guilt for things we never did, a lot of resentment for something we never had, from little affection to not being allowed out. There are so many deeply hidden scars to heal from his. Most often, those who didn’t turn in the human survival fight mode and become narcissistic themselves tend to end up as people-pleasers, fearing judgment from others, not having much confidence, not feeling enough, not feeling like they belong and little self-esteem. Often leading to relationships with narcissistic people as we believe it to be normal.
While you run from the pain, you can not heal from the pain. Grief often gives us clarity over the situation as an entirety. It also allows us to process what’s genuinely happed and ways to move forward, developing ourselves for the better.
One thing you can do is think back to your very first childhood memory, if it was positively great, or if it was negative or had anything connected to your current situation, you need to go through the pain, feel the pain, remove the pain and let it go, screaming, crying, getting angry with it. However, you wish to let those emotions out.
Most often, we prefer to run from the pain, hide from the pain, deny ourselves the right to the pain to avoid the hurt. Unfortunately, this usually ends up with us hurting ourselves more.
Most often, when we don’t deal with our inner trauma and pain, we get trapped in negative coping mechanisms that may have served us well at the moment. Yet, it programs our subconscious and no longer serves us if we don’t release those painful memories. Instead, we keep them trapped within our subconscious, so our own insecurities, weaknesses and vulnerabilities don’t surface for others to take advantage of in the future. These coping mechanisms protect us from the reality of the pain.
There are many ways people focus on negative coping strategies. They are usually subconsciously created by ourselves to hide from the real pain, yet because the real pain isn’t dealt with, it can cause further problems for us.
Some negative ways.
- Passive coping strategies.
- Self-harm.
- Substance abuse.
- Addictions. Alcohol, drugs, gambling.
- Sexual misconduct.
- Overspending.
- Acting out verbally and aggressively.
The list goes on. In this method, we try to deal with it at that moment, distraction skills to numb, ignore or cover the emotional pain. As you can see, most of these are narcissistic behaviours as their subconscious hasn’t grieved from past trauma. Now we can all go through these during or after narcissistic abuse. This doesn’t make us a narcissist. While you have empathy, you can move past this. A narcissist can not release that deeply hidden trauma to overcome this. They’ve got into the pattern of destroying others to overcome this.
- Passive coping strategies can be.
- Isolating ourselves.
- Self-blaming.
- Avoidance.
- Oversleeping.
- Overeating.
- Undereating.
These are to cover or hide from the emotional pain and not acknowledge it for what it truly is. This is usually how the abused start their coping strategy off. However, those who are abused or not can go for any or all coping strategies.
It seems like a natural, common sense thing to do, run away from the pain mask the pain with something else. However, long term, this only creates us more pain.
The beginning of most personality disorders. The beginning of all mental illnesses is the avoidance of legitimate suffering, which is when we don’t allow ourselves to grieve or feel the true pain of a traumatic experience and try to mask this instead.
You can say no to reality, and your subconscious can find another problem to hide from the real pain. Your subconscious can be programmed by others to conceal the actual reality. Your subconscious can protect you in non-productive ways to hide from the pain. At some point, that pain is going to hit. The reality will still be around, and the more we let our subconscious run from it, the worse it becomes. Anxiety is there to protect us, why we have rational anxiety, yet the more we run from pain and trauma using our anxiety defence, the more this becomes irrational anxiety.
Don’t run from the pain. Allow that pain to surface, deal with the pain, talk it out with others. Write it all out, scream it all out. Think back to the traumas, write how you protected yourself, what effects that had on you, then write the reality. Stepping out of your comfort zone, bringing your subconscious out and putting it into your conscious mind will help you deal with the real past trauma, move through the pain and grief and onto a much happier life.
This might mean doing things you don’t want to, something you are worried about, things that scare you, tears, tantrums, anger, resentment. You’re allowed to be scared it’ll help you become brave and move past the pain. Face the fear, overcome the fear. There’s nothing wrong with having vulnerabilities, nothing wrong with feeling anxious, and you need to go through that anxiety and vulnerability and do it anyway.
You have to grow through what you find challenging to go through, and you have to face the pain head on a deal with the realities to allow yourself to develop, grow and change.
Going through a narcissistic relationship, be it your parents or your partner, has devastating effects, not only on your mental health on your physical health too. Most of us are left feeling worthless, confused, angry, hurt, and abused.
We have to move past the past. To do so, we have to open up and move past the pain.
You need to focus on reprogramming your inner critic also. Things like
- “I’m broken.” It needs to become “I’m healing.”
- “I’m not good enough.” It needs to become “I am good enough.”
- “I’m not loveable.” It needs to be “I am loveable.”
- “I can not do this.” Has to become. “I can do this.”
Whatever that limiting negative belief is that’s holding you back and keeping you stuck, that’s programmed in your subconscious needs to be brought up and out and reprogrammed by your conscience. It’s hard. It Is like learning to walk. We stumble, we fall, yet we keep getting up and doing it again until it becomes natural, we all have amazing abilities deep within us, and we can all achieve great things if we work through the pain, lose the fear of judgment and keep working on ourselves. Moving out of the victim mindset, lose the woe is me and creating the real survivor mindset, and this is the lovable me.
It’s ok to love ourselves for who we indeed are. So long as your intentions are good, there is no wrong way, only your way.
You’re allowed to tell your story to others, and you’re allowed to keep it hidden, you’re allowed to go through the pain, you’re allowed to work on yourself, you are allowed to be happy, you’re allowed to be exactly who you want to be.
Limiting beliefs.
Click the links below to join Elizabeth Shaw – Life Coach on social media, for more information on Overcoming Narcissistic Abuse.
The online courses available by Elizabeth Shaw.
For the full course.
For the free course.
Click here to sign up for the free online starter course.
To help with overcoming the trauma bond and anxiety course.
Click here for the online course to help you break the trauma bond and those anxiety triggers.
All about the narcissist Online course.
Click here to learn more about narcissist personality disorder.
The narcissists counter-parenting.
Elizabeth Shaw is not a Doctor or a therapist. She is a mother of five, a blogger, a survivor of narcissistic abuse, and a life coach, She always recommends you get the support you feel comfortable and happy with. Finding the right support for you. Elizabeth has partnered with BetterHelp (Sponsored.) where you will be matched with a licensed councillor, who specialises in recovery from this kind of abuse.
Advertisement.
Overcoming Guilt.
Overcoming Anger.
Overcoming trauma bond.
Overcoming Victim mindset.
