Due to the possible trauma, bonding through all the highs and lows with the narcissist. Alienated from friends and family, left with CPTSD, you may also have anxiety and health problems, your energy levels may have been drained, you’ve lost who you are, your self-worth, self-love, trust, money, homes, and so much more, making the narcissist’s discard incredibly painful and cruel, and most often done when you felt like you needed them the most.
You’ve most often being isolated from support, so the narcissist in your life is the one you turn to for help, not that they genuinely ever give it. Trying to understand who they even were, trying to know what’s actually happened, isn’t an easy process. It gets easier, and life gets much happier once you break that trauma bond, build yourself back up and find your happiness again.
Narcissist’s love bomb you, which many of us naturally mistake for the honeymoon stage, as they want to spend time with us, as we do them, they flatter us as we mistook these for genuine compliments, once we believe we’re understood by them as no one has ever understood us before, they begin to devalue us, not only do they devalue us, through their gaslighting and blame-shifting they have us believing anything wrong within the relationship is our fault, so we work harder to please them, they sell us an illusion of those false promises of the future to offer us those crumbs of hope, they offer us those intermittent reinforcements of when they play nice, so we believe it’s us that needs to change, they destroy our self-worth. They discard us like you meant nothing to them.
Why do they do this?
The word discard means to get rid of someone or something that is no longer of use to you. They throw you away in the cruellest and calculated way often as they have a new supply that they can use. They do this as they are constantly seeking excessive admiration, they are preoccupied with their ideal, and when something isn’t going their way, this questions their ultimate fantasies, and they are fantasies. However, they blame those around them when their fantasies don’t turn into reality, they are very envious of others and seek to take what they want via the quickest route possible, they lack the empathy to be aware of how their behaviour hurts others, only how others have hurt them, often they then feel anger and resentment to those around them often holding grudges against people for what the narcissist themselves did to those people. However, they twist the story for the narcissist to play the victim and remain in control.
This is often why their discard is done in hideous ways. Most often, they move straight on and flaunt the new partner any way they can, giving you no closure. Any relationship breakup is painful. People who are not narcissistic can act out in hurtful ways. Narcissistic people take it to a whole new level, especially with their smear campaigns as they try to rewrite history and escape accountability for the very things in which they do to others. With narcissists, there is often a pattern of behaviour from love bombing, idealisation, devalue, discard, smear and most hoover. There often is vindictiveness throughout the relationship with a narcissist, and this most often, although not always, continues after the relationship has ended. Some will cut you off completely, and some will continue to contact you and give you the belief you could get back together. Some play hideous games. They most often want to humiliate and destroy you after the discard, with more lies and smear campaigns as they protect themselves to release the shame and play the victim or the hero to others yet never the villain.
The true victim is usually left deep in depression with anxiety and fears running deep, most often blaming themselves, while the narcissistic person swans into the sunset with your self-esteem, self-love, self-trust, life, home and belongings in tatters. They might threaten you, stalk you, intimated you any way they can, provoke you any way they can. They will use all your weaknesses and fears against you.
Narcissist’s discard for many reasons. The main one is they’ve usually found an easier source of supply.
1. You became aware that something wasn’t right with their treatment of you or others, so they feared exposure.
2. You called them out on their behaviour and started creating your boundaries, and stopped pleasing them, so they felt a loss of control.
3. You stop giving them emotional responses, so they felt neglected.
4. Their games are no longer working on you, you’ve learned to respond and not react, or when they go into silent treatment, you don’t chase them. You simply leave them be.
5. They drained you, they took everything from you, and you hit rock bottom, so you no longer have anything to offer them, as they don’t want to help you. They’ve taken your mental health, and you’re physical health, drained you financially, you’re stressed and depressed with anxiety. They drain you, so there’s nothing left of you.
6. They’ve seen another route to get more. They feel envious of another and entitled to exploit them to get their own needs met.
7. They got bored. They feel like they need more attention and are happy to take a risk as they believe it’s your fault for not supplying them with the attention they believe they deserve.
They don’t miss us, not in the way we miss them, which isn’t only due to the trauma bonding, also our empathy and object consistency to care for them. Object consistency is a skill set developed by the age of two-three, meaning even if there is conflict or distance, we still care, a narcissist is often lacking in empathy and lacking in object consistency, meaning as soon as things don’t go their way, or there is the distance they no longer care, they do however miss what we provided for them, or if they see us doing well without them, their envy surfaces and they want us back to repeat the cycle again.
The discard is often an illusion as it’s often temporary, many a narcissist will go back to old supply if they feel there are a chance and something to gain by doing so, only to cycle back around the same pattern.
When a narcissist gets to a point when they see you doing better, so they feel jealous or envious towards you, they come back with the hoover to use you again. It takes an average of 7 attempts to leave an abusive relationship finally. Once you know all about NPD, most often you go. Some have doubts, is it me? And I might try one more time. Most often, that will be the last.
With the hoover, they can triangulate the ex’s and new supply, to get them both to please the narcissist and beg for the narcissist’s attention. There is no winner in this other than the narcissist. The best thing you can do for yourself and the new partner or ex-partner of theirs is taking yourself out of the equation and leave the partner to work it out for themselves, as they too are being love-bombed so will not listen to reason from you.
When you take a narcissist back, it’s always temporarily, and their behaviour often gets worse the more they get away with it, the more they don’t see themselves as the problem. They never come back because they love you. It’s never about you, and it’s always to use you in any way they can.
Remember, the final discard often comes from you.
How do you recover?
- Grieve the loss, cry, set a time limit for you.
- Write out the false reality and write in the true reality. To give yourself the closure, they’ll never give closure, and they will only ever blame shift onto you, making you feel worse.
- Remember the bad they put you through.
- Focus on the positives of why life will be better without them.
- Work on your anxiety triggers.
- Create new routines.
- Any doubt, tell the story as if it happened to someone you really care about. What advice would you tell that person?
- Work on your mindset. It was not your fault, and you are lovable. You are worthy.
- Work on filling your human needs up in other more positive constructive ways, things like joining support groups help you by helping others learn about the experience helps you, this fills contribution, growth, connection, if once you’ve learned it, you’re no longer interested learn something new keep growing who you want to be.
- Create new routines to fill certainty.
- Try new activities and hobbies.
- Learn your standards, your belief system and your boundaries.
- Make sure you rest and take care of your needs.
- Exercise, yoga, meditation, mindfulness.
- Laughter.
Keep going. People have got past this before you, and you can move forward onto a happier life for yourself.
The narcissist’s discard.
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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.
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