We need to have faith in our ability to allow ourselves to change for the positive by the experience of narcissist abuse. What other option do we have? To fold? To give up? To cave to the abuse? There is so much faith to be gained in facing down our fears. When we don’t know much about narcissists, or what happened to us, it’s really rather terrifying. Once we arm ourselves with knowledge, while they certainly remain to be very dangerous people, they lose their ability to have power over us and the knowledge helps us to understand the nature of the abuse and recovery. It’s gives us the power to face down the abuse. It is facing down that abuse that will give us the faith and hope we are striving for. It is this faith that will give us the hope to believe that we can transform and address anything within ourselves that left us so wide open to this type of abuse. Our hope will is the renewal of our minds.
Our hope comes the little things that we start to do slowly but surely; taking the dog for a walk, going grocery shopping, answering the phone, seeing the rainbow in the storm, a peaceful walk, hearing the words, smelling the coffee….. is a day of hope.
Once we run for our lives, there’s a prolonged grieving process that every narcissist victim goes through, whereby we are completely depressed, loss of faith and devoid of hope. The relationship is over so we now have the opportunity to experience peace and health, but the weight of our emotions erodes us, demanding they be felt. It’s not surprising how difficult it is to feel any hope, while it feels that we’re literally dying from the pain of emotional abuse. Our lives are upended, we’re being smeared and targeted by the narcissist and are often times waging some sort of financial, or judicial battle as a result of our having been involved with someone who thrives on power and destruction.
Just as we were running at our lowest emotional capacity, we had to come face to face with realities that are downright terrifying. It’s a struggle to endure the ugly realities like how unsafe the world feels with narcissism in it or realizing how very little the narcissist cared for us or how aggressively they meant to harm us. We are discovering that someone we trusted to keep us safe and have our best interests at heart, who claimed to be our soul mate, were actually putting us at risk and purposefully harming us. We realize that words were purposefully spoken or withheld to manipulate and control us. We find out about the lies, the games, their motives and just how deeply their lack of empathy challenged our frames of reference for what is “right” and “fair.” We witnessed the lowest form of humanity; we not only ‘witnessed’ it, we LIVED with it, we slept with it, we were close to it, we gave our soul to it.
The recovery process by all accounts takes anywhere between two and three years. And I am certainly finding that to be the case. During the recovery process I am finding that the learning journey about this type of abuse and why I was so vulnerable to it is an integral part of my rehabilitation. Sharing the information, turning a negative into a positive, bringing this abuse into the open, attempting to break the stigma with my writing is what endures me and is my hope. You will start see flickers of hope; hold onto it as best you can as it will empower your rehabilitation.
The narcissist may have been toxic and damaging to our lives for the time they were in it, and for a the tough period of grieving afterwards. However, there does come a time in every *victims mind, where we no longer allow the abuse to inform our life. We take the negative hand we were dealt and play it like a champion for our betterment. As our hope returns, the narcissist loses the power they once had over us. We are forever a *victim; but now we are, forever rehabilitated; forever free; forever hopeful.
*The dictionary definition of “victim” is: One who is harmed by, or made to suffer from an act, circumstance, agency or condition; a person who is tricked swindled or taken advantage of.
Blog inspired by,
On The Edge 