Surviving Narcissistic Abuse and Then Finding Love. Is It Possible?

DISCLAIMER: This story is for all those who have experienced pain and abuse in your past relationships with narcissists. I want to give you hope. I hope the below story inspires, heals you, and helps you find the love and relationship you are looking for.

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I recently read a success story on Medium. Someone who had survived being in an abusive relationship with her narcissistic ex has been on her healing journey, which I’ve been closely following. A lot of what she shares about is from her direct experience. She writes about narcissistic personality disorders, how damaging it is to be in a relationship with a narcissist, yoga and it’s philosophies and how you can apply them to improve your own life.

I can relate to her experiences like anyone else who has survived being in an abusive relationship whether it’s a parent or a spouse. The damage is felt at the core of your being. I know that she’s coming from a place of having discovered the truth about herself.

In this story I share:

∘ How narcissist abusive affects you and your relationship to yourself
∘ It‘s a long healing journey
∘ How can you know you’re healing
∘ Why your healing is important
∘ Healing opens up your heart
∘ Here’s the best part
∘ Two success stories — finding love after narcissist abuse

Personally, I was desperate for love. I wanted nothing more than to be loved for being a human, to be spoken to kindly, to be touched in loving ways, to feel heard, protected and safe to be me. What narcissistic abuse does is cut your source of love — your love for yourself.

How narcissist abuse affects you and your relationship to yourself

It makes you question yourself and your worth.
It makes you lose confidence.
It makes you live in constant fear.
It makes you lose touch with who you are.
You don’t know what it means to be safe (to be yourself).

You truly believe that you’re not worthy of love, and that you deserve the punishment because that’s the message the narcissist wants to drive home to you.

If at all and only after you successfully manage to remove yourself from the that toxic relationship, take the time you need to feel yourself and heal yourself, you’re still afraid to open yourself to the possibility of a new relationship.

It‘s a long healing journey

When I say long, I mean years. Some people have both a narcissistic parent as well as a partner. The trauma is grave and leaves you feeling helpless and powerless.

Healing from such trauma takes an act of god. The healer needs to access spiritual energy. This is why people who have had traumatic experiences may be rather spiritual. They can’t help but feel drawn to it. They incorporate spiritual practices in their life, because the spirit gives them the strength their broken soul needs.

It’s like the glue that fixes them back together. They gravitate toward yoga, meditation, anything that they feel expands their spirit. My own personal healing journey involved yoga, being in nature, meditation, travelling alone, dancing. I also felt the need to share my story. It was a very healing experience to share my story before a live audience.

How can you know you’re healing

Think about your memories that revisit you during the day when you’re by yourself or at night in your dreams. May be you read something or saw something happen during the day that triggered a painful memory from a long time ago. How do you and your body respond? Does the memory trigger a strong emotion in you?

Here’s how you know that you’re healing or you’ve healed. Your responses have the answers you need. If you notice that you are reacting emotionally, it means that the memory of the trauma still resides in your body, and it holds an emotional charge.

When that memory revisits you at a later time along your healing journey and you don’t react as strongly, it means that the emotional charge in that memory has lost some of it’s power over you. That’s why you don’t react to it like you used to. Your body will clearly communicate slowly but surely that it’s safe to feel.

When you no longer feel threatened by that old memory, that means you have healed from that memory completely. You will learn to trust yourself.

Some memories are painful, so painful that you cannot remember them. Some part of life are so stressful that it’s like your brain erases them from its storage and therefore, your conscious mind can’t access them. For instance, I can’t recall much from my memory of being in 7th grade.

However, your consciously participating in whatever memory you can heal is what’s most important. In other words, focus on doing what you can with what you have.

Why your healing is important

Could you benefit from feeling better about yourself, for instance? Could you benefit from feeling a bit more confident and having the ability to trust yourself? Your healing is important because improves your relationship with yourself.

That long healing journey brings you closer to who you are, and that is completely worth it. Whether you want to be in a relationship or not is not is secondary to the strong and stable relationship you build with yourself.

From that space, you will choose growth and expansion — in work, life and your relationships. Because you’re now living a more conscious life and making more and more conscious choices.

Does that mean you won’t fuck up or make mistakes from time to time? Hell no! You will. But with all that inner healing work, you will find the courage to get back up when you fall down.

Healing opens up your heart

When you’ve suffered in close relationships, the hurt you experience in them closes off your heart. Many people who have been hurt too many times feel discouraged to put themselves out their. They are too afraid to love because they just do not want to get hurt again. They are too afraid to trust someone.

The sad thing about that is that love can neither flow into a closed heart nor out of it. This is why all that healing you do will help you put yourself out there. And that’s what matters the most. Doing that opens you up to possibilities — good and bad. It’s a part of life. It makes trust yourself and let spirit play a part in bringing you what you desire.

What also happens is that you stop hating and hurting. The commonality in the two success stories I share later in this story is that both of us are coming from a place of love. We don’t hate because we have healed our hearts enough to come from a place of love.

Here’s the best part

When you’ve been in bad or toxic relationships, you never felt safe. You could not be yourself around that narcissist. The only way you could survive that relationship was by becoming a twisted version of yourself to please the narcissist.

Your healing journey brings you closer and closer to that best version of you and your authentic self. You cannot image going back to that life of abuse.

The good part can be so good that it will make you forget all the remaining pain in your life. Penning these words makes my eyes moisten and warms up my heart.

The best part is a relationship that is right for both the people in that relationship will facilitate the growth and expansion. It’ll also be the safest relationship you will experience.

It will feel right. You will know it. Every cell in your body will communicate that to you. The healing experiences from your personal journey will be your guiding light to the next chapters of your life.

Two success stories — Finding love after narcissist abuse

I’m living proof of surviving childhood trauma from a narcissistic abusive parent. I wanted nothing more than to be in a relationship where I could be myself and loved for who I am.

The below two stories are proof that it’s possible to find that safe and loving relationship after surviving narcissistic abuse.

The bottom line is that this relationship will be and feel different. The message and success is in learning to trust and love yourself.

Thank you for reading.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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