Journey To Healing

The most important thing to learn as you start your road to recovery after an abuse is that it wasn’t your fault. Let that be your mantra. Maybe you kept trying to fix things, but it wasn’t just working and instead the narcissistic abuser blamed you for everything. Keep repeating that mantra anytime you start blaming or doubting yourself where you went wrong. They have a profound way of twisting your perception about things. They can turn anything positive to something negative. Up to this day, I still can’t comprehend how that’s possible and explaining yourself over and over will just exhaust you. Try talking to a wall.

Here are some chapter takeaways from the book I’m currently reading. It’s one hell of a journey unlearning things that the abuser inflicted in you and learning to recognise your true self after the abuse is a challenge I’m willing to take.

As you free yourself from abuse, you can live the life of purpose that you dream of. You can create a new sense of meaning in your life and make your soul’s contribution, creating ripple effects in the world around you. Imagine the world we would live in when instead of suffering in the powerlessness and struggling in the worthlessness of abuse, we are each living as empowered beings driven by purpose and making a difference. You matter. You can help create a new way of life for yourself and generations to come.

Self-awareness of the familial patterns of abuse often comes as a result of a wake-up call caused by one or many abusive adult relationships with intimate partners, friends, co-workers, bosses, neighbors, family members, etc. I often hear from clients (and I had the same revelation myself) that once they figured out what was happening and educated themselves on the patterns of narcissistic abuse, they realized that it had permeated their entire life. In other words, if you found yourself in abusive adult relationships, you were likely always surrounded by this toxic dynamic in one form or another.

The Stockholm Syndrome is a condition that causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors as a survival strategy during captivity. The same psychological survival strategy develops in the target of abuse as a result of the intermittent cruelty, harassment, intimidation or forms of covert abuse like little digs, gaslighting, the Silent Treatment or withholding affection, mixed in with acts of perceived kindness. The trauma bond explains why onlookers can sometimes recognize the abuse and feel disgust toward the abuser while the target could still love and defend the abuser. The loyalty of a trauma bond defies all logic. It is important to note that the target of abuse is not stupid.

The dissolution of the trauma bond happens during a turning point in Stage Two, at the Second Threshold. Until that point you may still feel irrational loyalty and love for the abuser or still be holding onto the hope that you can have a relationship with them without consequences to your wellbeing and/or that they’ll change after seeing the wrong of their ways. During Stage One and the earlier parts of Stage Two, you may notice that you come in and out of denial about the truth of the abuse. You may consciously know that you’ve been abused for some time before the subconscious denial finally shatters. The visceral acceptance of the truth is what inevitably dissolves the trauma bond. This will happen spontaneously during a moment of breakdown/breakthrough, however you can be working in that direction by relentlessly facing the truth as often as possible and avoiding the addiction to indulge in the fantasy/illusion of what you want to believe in i.e. that the abuser will change, the relationship will go back to the “good times,” etc.

You didn’t choose to be hurt or abused and it wasn’t your fault. However, you are continually choosing who you are now by how you show up in every moment and how you deal with the cards that are dealt to you in life. The abuse wasn’t your choice. However, your self-healing now is entirely your choice. It’s not fair what happened to you. It’s not fair you were hurt so much. Life is unfair. You can either sit around and complain about it or you can get back up and invest that energy in your recovery. The choice is yours. Be willing to set aside your ego and ask for help from caring people along the way, yet recognize that no one can do it for you. Ultimately it’s you doing the work to heal yourself. Other people, even professionals, can only nudge you, open the door and point the way.

People who are in denial and won’t hear your truth are not part of your support network and they are not safe to be around with during this critical time. It’s very important to understand this or you will continually feel invalidated and/or victim-shamed and this will keep you stuck in a holding pattern of seeking outside validation and feeling unable to move forward without it. I actually relapsed with my depression a couple of months back, because of that same reason and so it is definitely crucial to surround yourself with the right support system.

Sometimes, it’s necessary to isolate yourself from these kind of people and surround yourself with the right ones. People who haven’t experienced an abuse will never truly understand your situation or how you feel. You should not feel bad about this either as people can only comprehend by their own level of perception.

Now you’re aware of what happened to you, it’s now your responsibility to take the necessary steps for you to heal from the abuse. The road to recovery is like a roller coaster ride, but be patient with yourself. Take the time you need to regain yourself back and come out stronger.

Reference(s):

The Journey: A Roadmap for Self-healing After Narcissistic Abuse by: Meredith Miller