9 things we grieve as we heal from narcissistic relationships.

hey everyone it's Dr Ramy welcome back to this YouTube channel on narcissism and narcissistic relationships and above all else healing from these relationships so let's talk today about nine things that we grieve as we heal from narcissistic relationships I'm telling you we grieve a hell of a lot more than that but let's just stick to nine so the question though is the bigger question is what are we grieving when we experience all of this grief whenever we're healing from a narcissistic relationship because it's a universal now throughout this month you know I'm connecting to the content all the V videos on this channel are connecting to the content of my new book it's not you please order it please and in these videos we give a glimpse into the content of the book and allow us to explore which allow us to explore some of the topics I go deeply into the book in a different way so complimentarily the video and the book together gives you something great to work with so now we're in chapter six and this chapter focuses on grief grief is a standard part of the healing from any narcissistic relationship because once you strip off the top and take a look into what the relationship is really about it can be utterly devastating and the sense of loss hits you like a tidal wave radical acceptance can be challenging for this reason to radically accept means to see that it cannot change and that means a very different reality than you occupied before the grief can be so overwhelming that returning to the status quo frankly can feel easier so let's take a look at the nine things that you may grieve when you radically accept in a narcissistic relationship frankly number one is hope hope leads leads the way because for years in this relationship regardless of the type of relationship it is Hope is what keeps these relationships going hope that they will change hope that they will apologize and take responsibility and be accountable to go back to that initial love bombing fool that you fell in love with hope that they'll become the parent you wanted hope that they'd have empathy get you see you the hope it could get better that the flashes of those good things that you sometimes see that those good days could someday be here to stay and to give that up is so painful because it means you often feel that you are grieving what you had convinced yourself you were looking forward to and now you have to accept that thing you were hoping for is never going to come the grief over this may be the most pronounced grief of all the great most pronounced loss of all I should say especially when it's a very Primal relationship your child self hoping that someday your parent will see you and get you it's a lot to give up and finally lose number two thing you grieve is a healthy childhood and the soft place to land it's not that anyone in narcissistic relationships with parents literally believes that the clock can go backwards and you get a doover but radical acceptance can fill you with a sense of grief for your child self that wouldn't couldn't and didn't get love and instead was in the unfair position of having to silence yourself as a child silence your own needs or of facing a parent's wrath for just being a child of being devalued if you weren't what they wanted you to be or simply of not being seen the ongoing engagement with the narcissistic parent can mean that you still are maintaining a hope for the relationship as though if we can finally get it right it will make up for all the water under the bridge so giving so giving up hope can feel like you are giving up on addressing those wounds it can also mean the grief of recognizing what really happened in your childhood and all of the mental justifications and accommodations and self-blame that you engaged in and when you have to radically accept the narcissism of parents or of family members you also have to grieve the illusion that you may have held on to for a long time that you have a soft place to land in the world a place of belonging or people who will have your back you may have kind of acknowledged that your family was difficult for a long time but really accepting it can feel overwhelming and really punctuated by loss number three thing we grieve is time lots and lots of lost time many folks spend years decades lifetimes in these relationships and especially for folks who have been in long-term committed relationships or marriages or who have spent years trying to please an invalidating narcissistic family system or even workplace the sense of regret and lost time in particular can bring up a lot of grief and alongside that maybe opportunities lost and potential that you didn't get to access within yourself or at least actualize or actually actualize number four is The Grieving of future it may not be just about looking back but also looking forward that brings up grief you may have had a future in your mind good bad or indifferent but of a future of about where you're going to be living or who you're spending your time with or your life with and when you experience radical acceptance or when you leave a narcissistic relationship this will rewrite the book on what your future will be you may have envisioned a future of having children and your partner and all of you being in the same house together and your kids growing up like that you may have envisioned living in the house that you're in for a long time you may have have envisioned growing old with someone you may have envisioned staying in a workplace where you believed in the mission and vision but where you were narcissistically abused by colleagues or supervisors the future may look empty in front of you and grieving what felt like something predictable even if it wasn't good for you and potentially having to change what your life looks like is a tremendous source of grief number five is you grieve a sense of family and a sense of belonging family can be lost or reshaped in the wake of radical acceptance some people may actually disengage from their family of origin some people may get a divorce or end another kind of committed relationship which may mean things like shared custody of children what you believed would be family what you believed family would look like may be upended by narcissism and the losses that you may incur once you see it clearly now even if you keep engaging with the systems there may still be grief because you recognize that it's not going to change the barbs the selfishness the passive aggression the overt aggression the invalidation it's all here to stay and because of this whether you step away from these various systems entirely or just engage differently and see it clearly it can mean that you feel that your conception of family is lost you may grieve what you wanted your own family that you created what you wanted that to look like you may grieve what you wished your family of origin to be and that grief may be magnified when you spend time with or see families that are close-knit and do draw together and support each other you may grieve feeling that there was something you did believe you belonged to at one time and narcissism and radical acceptance have shown you otherwise number six thing you grieve stability even if the narcissistic relationship was invalidating cruel hurtful destabilizing you may have perceived it or experienced it as consistent and as a result that means that radical acceptance and really getting it seeing what the narcissism is here means that you lose what you believed was going to be stable whether that was where you lived the way schedules were going to unfold holidays where you were going to work you may be grieving consistency learning about narcissism can feel like the chair was pulled out from under us now keep in mind that over time you will learn that this conception of stability was really an illusion and that it was never stable the only thing that may have made it stable was your willingness to accommodate them do things the way that they wanted you may be grieving this illusion of stability or the signifiers of stability like the home you were living in the Sun Sunday dinners and this so-called stability may have been eating you up inside but initially as you adjust to the new landscape created by created by clearing it out by seeing narcissism clearly by radical acceptance that sort of loss of even what we could call pseudo stability can be overwhelming number seven is the grief of narrative narratives are tricky they are the stories that we write around and about our lives that we can get really stuck in they are also a way in which we organize how we go through the world and what has happened to us well needless to say radical acceptance upends our narratives whether they are happily ever after or I forgive the people I love and everything will be fine or family stick together through thick and thin or that you are a part of Love Story radical acceptance snatches that away and we grieve the loss of our narratives the narratives around our happy endings of our someday better of the idea that someday Justice will be served we have to give up on schemas that may have guided us our entire lives that parents do the right thing parents love us unconditionally love means that someone cares for us or for me when we clear out these narratives painful as it is it does clear out space and room for new things to grow but it's very painful to let go of our maps and stories for our lives the number eight thing that we grieve is a sort of loss of Innocence you can't unsee this narcissism thing folks who have not been through narcissistic relationships or who won't or can't see it they get to maintain a rather warm and almost innocent view of the world good people win in the end justice prevails people change forgiveness Works love triumphs This Is The Stuff of our childhood fairy tales of what we had hoped was true and for some fortunate folks it is their life but the earlier the narcissistic abuse began for you the earlier you started to experience this loss of Innocence and while some people feel that once they understood narcissism they felt that they became somewhat cynical I don't not a world word cynical is a bad brand right I prefer to think of it as wisdom and that wisdom can be felt as a loss of Innocence it's not always simple when that that innocence goes for us right and many folks who initially see it they grieve the loss of a simpler world view a world where trying harder can always fix a relationship or being a good person is rewarded or that hard work pays off it's a lot to let go of and grieve but as I said the loss of innocence is often backfilled with a sense of wisdom and from that can come other really important and good stuff like discernment that you need to protect you in a world full of narcissistic people and number Nine's a big one and that's that that you we grieve that loss of any sense of justice narcissist n istic relationships and narcissism in general are where Justice goes to die narcissistic people know how to fly just under the radar so they can make other people's lives miserable but in doing so they don't really Break The Rules or laws in a way that means they're going to get caught and because they don't weigh themselves down with silly things like empathy they're able to G Gallop off into their new future sort of seemingly unscathed while it feels like you're stuck and can take you years to figure it out they will quit jobs to avoid paying support to an ex partner they will engage in smear campaigns and get away with it they will lose one job because of harassment but find a new one right away the enablers still enable them and when you throw in there that you may have been played by the rules been a good person triy to be a great partner child friend employee and it still didn't work out all of that together means that you may grieve a sense of justice of fairness of rightness in the world and healing in the absence of that is not easy ironically while losing the narcissistic relationship may sting for a minute especially if you have not gone through radical acceptance this other stuff may be more difficult once you see how much more smoothly your life is running even if you a trauma Bond that part gets easier but this other stuff your beliefs hope belonging it can feel too much to process that much loss but grief is a natural process one of those things that unites all human beings and the grief is a painful tunnel that you go through because as you emerge having gone through the grief and acceptance some really good stuff awaits now again there's a whole chapter about grief I go much deeper into grief and ways to address it in it's not you so get it please because grief is a universal part of the process of healing from these relationships it will get better but that is a really painful sort of detour on this process not going to say it's a detour it is the process thanks again

Channel: DoctorRamani

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Length: 15min 54sec (954 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 24 2024