Do these 5 things AFTER a narcissistic relationship

forgiving yourself for not seeing it for not understanding how potent these trauma bonds are for confusing empathy with enabling for making excuses you didn't know you didn't know in this video we're talking about a strategy for healing from narcissistic relationships that a lot of people don't want to hear but I'm just going to say it you obviously you have to do what works for you today I'm going to talk about why you may want to spend 12 months single after a narcissistic relationship ends I do want to put in a disclaimer that you want this 12 months on your own if the relationship lasted two years or longer this isn't something if your relationship for a month that's not what I'm talking about but one year one year 365 days 52 weeks okay you heard that right I get push back on this suggestion all the time many people will say I was lonely for years in this relationship and now you are suggesting I need to be single for 12 months do you want me to die alone I don't and there is a method to what I'm suggesting here narcissistic relationships are where people get lost you lose your sense of self what you stand for what matters to you your values your friends you slowly get infected with their version of events and even lose your perspective on reality it's very unsettling so when people end relationships with narcissistic people or the relationships end for whatever reason they do there's a real temptation to be the sort of kid in the candy store right I'm out of this relationship I'm going to go out there I'm going to meet people I'm I'm going to do it all and you want to feel loved or maybe want a rebound relationship to make all the bad feelings go away I get it because the only thing that can sometimes make that terrible feeling of the discard go away is the new Love bomb so like I said I do have a disclaimer to this rule if your narcissistic relationship lasted well let's say two years or less I don't know that this full 12 month sort of detox is necessary but if your relation ship lasted more than two years I got to tell you I strongly recommend a year so the question then becomes why first to have that 12 months on your own there's no running away from the grief narcissistic relationships are one big study in grief you're experiencing grief while you're in it you experience grief as you experience the thousands of little losses you experience within the relationship ship the loss of Hope the loss of reality the loss of friends the loss of identity it's a lot you lose yourself and that's a lot to grieve but you may not even be clear that you're losing yourself you just know that the whole relationship feels heavy and sad and lonely and that fills you with grief and when it ends you grieve the time spent the time lost the hopes lost the you lost all of this takes time to process and it's not like the grief when someone dies the narcissistic person is still alive living their life talking to your friends posting on social media perhaps even saying terrible things about you so it's a long dragged out process of grief that grief needs some time to work its way through you and it doesn't feel good so you may find yourself trying to distract from this terrible feeling anything rather than feeling like this a second reason for these 12 months is that it allows you to become acquainted with yourself again you likely gave up a lot of yourself your preferences your wants your hopes to be in this relationship could be silly you may love pizza with some onions on it but had to give that up years ago to relent to the narcissistic person's preferences you may have simply given in into thermostat settings that were never right having your experience and perceptions regularly doubted of having to or having to just give in just to keep the peace it's time for you to go back to figuring out what temperature do you like to keep the house at what is your favorite pizza topping to have the experience of saying oh the keys are right where I put them or to taste something and say this is spicy without the other person saying no it's not coming back to yourself again isn't just superficial stuff like pizza toppings it's deeper stuff like your values how you want to spend your time the way you want to treat people that takes time too I often suggest that clients make a list of the things that they gave up to be in this relationship from The Superficial pizza toppings to the sublime to the deep and in those months after the relationship start doing all that stuff you had to give up on whatever they are so a third reason for this is it allows you to create a healthy social World narcissistic relationships mean isolation shame which may isolate you from friends or family because you don't want them to see your relationship or you have been told so many bad things about these people that you don't want to see them or your friends may have disconnected because they don't want to witness what you're going through anymore or hear about it anymore or you don't trust yourself socially because you have been criticized for so long or self-monitored yourself so carefully now because you're often told you look or sound foolish for people coming out of narcissistic relationships it can be a time of Building Bridges again getting support for friends who are probably happy to see you out of the relationship connecting with healthy family members or slowly reaching into new spaces to make new friends building these healthy social connections is good for your health and creates that sort of Social Capital that can foster your healing and be a buffer against future toxic relationship situations a fourth reason for this year alone is it forces you to do some things alone nothing builds efficacy like having to figure stuff out for yourself this may be finances fixing things planning a trip solving problems narcissistic people are notoriously controlling and will either insist on doing things themselves and not sharing what they're doing or criticizing what you are doing which may inhibit you from wanting to try doing them over time you may feel unskilled or incapable or internalizing the sense of incompetence which isn't true doing things begets a sense of competence and makes us want to do more things narcissistic people can be so dominating so contemptuous that they often treat you as though you are literally incompetent you aren't so take this time take this year to learn to do things practice or learn new skills and dispel this idea idea that the narcissistic person may have filled you with that you can't do anything you can give it a try a fifth reason is having a year off helps you build New Traditions and get past all those anniversary dates that happen in a year one year means one year of holidays summer vacations their birthday your birthday your anniversary and those days can be taken back red letter days whatever you call theay special days are a mess with narcissistic people they always manage to ruin them for everyone or they are disappointed by them or they let you down so take them back and don't fall for any hoovering on those days celebrate these whatever these these days are with friends or alone make a new tradition go on a trip you wanted to take but getting through the first year of these dates these anniversary dates as they were strengthens your fortitude a year is a really long and a really short period of time if during that year you were to meet someone intriguing or compelling you don't need to tell them you're on a 12mon detox but you can say that you're just taking life love and relationships slow that you would love to build a friendship with this person listen I've worked with people who have done both who didn't take the 12 months and went into something new knew and those who waited the 12 over time the data kind of accumulated it was very clear the folks who took the 12 months were much further along in their process of healing growth individuation Health just grounding a sense of grounding the folks who got into a new relationship within the year often ended up right back in toxic relationships nobody can tell you what to do I'm not going to tell you this is a rule but hold and sit with this idea for a minute and recognize that healing from any form of relational or narcissistic abuse often happens best when you're not in that kind of relationship but instead have other supports around you it allows you to take back the thing that was stolen which is you grief is a response to loss we traditionally think of it in terms of death but it can also be the loss of a relationship for example a divorce we might see grief in the face of the loss of a job the loss of a home and we even can observe grief reactions during major transitions for example a person moving to a new city or a new country and leaving their home behind grief is a part of the human experience and psychologists have been writing about it since there was psychology and humans have been experiencing guilt since there were humans we build rituals around grief and every culture has some sort of system every religion as some sort of system it uses to manage this experience of grief we go through an experience called bereavement that's a part of grief which can feel like depression it's a part of a natural part of the process of Letting Go and during the bereavement period people are generally quite sad but the grief of narcissistic abuse or associated with narcissistic abuse is very difficult because usually no one's dead and the belief is that you should be relieved for example that the relationship is done but still you're sad what are you grieving when you're experiencing narcissistic abuse you're grieving lots of stuff you're grieving what you believed would have been or could have been in this relationship you're grieving your childhood you're grieving your loss of trust you're grieving your loss of faith in other human beings you're grieving your lost opportunities you are grieving the idea you had about what life could be about and what love could be about you're grieving your belief that the world is fair and just and that is a lot to grieve if you experienced any form of narcissistic abuse as a child you didn't understand that it was grief that was a part of what you were experiencing even as a child a childhood with a narcissistic parent can be chronically disappointing largely because the narcissistic individual puts his or her needs ahead of everyone else so there can be missed activities Miss deadlines missed school events missed everything that's the stuff of childhood but there's also grief of that significant developmental window this can result in a sense of melancholy that wafts through a childhood a Melancholy that is all too familiar to survivors of narcissistic abuse it's a heaviness that we all carry in US you'll see that lifelong survivors of narcissistic AB you smile but there's a sadness that lurks right behind it however other survivors often typically see it and get it in adulthood decisions around maintaining relationships with your narcissistic parent or parents can get quite complicated their presence can sometimes trigger a sense of grief the childhood loss the relationship you had wanted to have with a parent and since they probably didn't get it when you're a kid and probably aren't going to get it now the same gaslighting and passive aggressive barbs continue to characterize your relationship it's as though you play the grief over and over again every time you see them in adult relationships with a with a partner spouse it can be quite similar the relationship is or was quite miserable and yet you grieve it when it's done this is a classical part of narcissistic abuse and a confusing one when a relationship ends many people will mistake this sense of grief and think oh no maybe I made a mistake I'm grieving this and I can have it back and then you fall back in remember that a lot of narcissistic relationship happens in your head you try to you try to convince yourself that things were better better than they actually were and you can start believing that pseudo reality and grieve the story that you made up in your head the grief elements of narcissistic abuse are often experienced similarly to the depression piece as well as other elements of narcissistic abuse sadness regret confusion anger lots of negative mood States but the confusion is the yearning that can still be there for you around that relationship odds are that the yearning you're experiencing is for things that either didn't exist in the relationship the fantasy that you had to construct about the relationship or are related to the trauma Bond and The Addictive compulsion to get back into it and neither of those patterns are healthy healthy grief is a natural process that resolves over time especially when there is support there's a recent video I did on what happens when a narcissist in your life dies and I talk about the complicated grief and the confusion that happens when someone with whom you've had such a complicated relationship with actually passes on but the grief of narcissistic abuse happens whether the narcissist is alive or not it's less about grieving the actual person and in some ways becomes even more about grieving the hope you had had for that particular relationship the time you may have lost to it and the pieces of yourself you gave up to it so what do you do in the face of grief first always remember remember that grief is a natural process of Letting Go support it support it through therapy through support groups ideally for support groups designed for survivors of narcissistic abuse other techniques such as mindfulness meditation and meaningful activities in your life second don't let the grief confuse you it isn't a sign that you did the wrong thing but rather it's a natural process of Letting Go and in a case in the case of narcissistic abuse a complicated process of Letting Go third if the grief starts to carene into more substantial symptoms of depression or anxiety then you must pay attention and do must consider therapy because the key to addressing negative emotional symptoms such as depression and anxiety are to catch it early or at a minimum please consult your primary health care provider fourth please consult consider journaling it's a good process to see how you're slowly letting this relationship go over time there will definitely be good days and bad days triggered days and easier days but over time if you can witness the Improvement it can substantiate your commitment to growth and letting Go fifth there are really no true doovers in life there's no reset button so acceptance becomes key it can be painful to reflect on a childhood that might have been lost to narcissistic abuse or 20 or 30 or 40 years spent in a toxic marriage no you can't bring that time back by rumination but a big part of the resolution of grief is acceptance this is your life story and it's rich and it's beautiful and you learned a lot if you've survived narcissistic abuse you are actually stronger than most people take that strength and use that time that you have in front of you see it as a gift and please use it well grief is very complicated like I said I do promise a series on the specific grief associated with when you actually leave a narcissistically abusive relationship but for now please understand that grief is very much part and parcel of the experience of surviving enduring and experiencing narcissistic abuse as always so there is a funny par Paradox that people hearing from narcissistic relationships may experience there's a I mean I think many of you know this there's a loneliness which makes sense these relationships even when you were still in them and especially if you are still in them these relationships and these experiences are very lonely places and people aren't often able to get support or talk with people who understand what's happening to them which makes you feel even more lonely and the sense of isolation if you do actually manage to leave a narcissistic relationship you may find that it is also difficult because you have a new sort of awareness in the world you become more aware of patterns around you that are a little bit more narcissistic that are invalidating and have gaslighting Vibes and all of that if you really heal then the themes you might not have even noticed before start becoming really clear to you you and so your own Social Circle may not only shrink it may be less likely that you let a lot of new people in and that's not necessarily a bad thing now this relates to the concept of discernment which I've talked about and it's essential to Healing from narcissistic abuse because it's so likely will repeat these narcissistic relationship Cycles it's so important to learn to steer clear of these Dynamics by identifying them and allowing yourself to step back a little before you throw yourself in and try try to make it all right right now what I have observed in survivors is that especially if one of these relationships end they do spend a lot of time alone when they leave these relationships and in that time alone paradoxically actually do feel much better and stronger and then the day will come when they do start spending time with more people maybe at a larger social Gathering maybe they meet some new people and a lot of folks will say you know what I I'm actually finding it a little bit unsettling to be with other people the insensitive comments the gasl stuff and the fact that you've been through something that most people don't get can mean that you feel like you're doing better healing getting stronger growing past this damned relationship and then boom after time alone where you're healing and not being gaslighted every day now you find yourself in a mixed group of people and it can feel like a setback it's not a setback but it highlights how tenuous this process of healing is and how important discerning can be now what gets interesting is a phenomenon where many survivors even if they're extroverted may actually find that they feel most at peace when they're alone it's when they feel like they can finally relax be themselves not be as Vigilant feel that they're not being judged and obviously that's going to make sense especially if all that was happening in a relationship now for survivors of narcissistic relationships relationships in certain people were a source of stress and frustration disappoint appointment manipulation criticism judgment none of that's good and when you heal that same vigilance May persist so first of all we do know that Solitude is great for healing those times where your nervous system can kind of take a rest of not having to be on edge of just exhaling and being you it's essential think of it as just sort of putting a sprained ankle up so it'll heal it can be complicated because some survivors will say but I also feel lonely after all this time in invalidating relationships I would like to spend time with other people which is also healthy now so then you do and again what happens for many survivors is that time with other people can actually feel more demanding and unsettling you may be more on edge more self-monitoring watching what you say or being worried about saying or doing the wrong thing or right thing or or feeling hurt by off-handed comments that others who do not understand what you've been through may make and it may not even be because of you it's just because they're jerks right let me give you a couple of examples this may be for if your or your a person who's divorced or you've left a long-term committed relationship and you're in the midst of people who are being a little bit sneery and contemptuous or even making jokes about oh we never invite the divorce people to our dinner parties or talk about like oh I certainly wouldn't want to be dating at my age doesn't feel good or a person let's say you're some you're someone who hasn't seen some old friends in a while not since you've gotten out of this relationships and finds that their lives are quite different than yours they're very sort of steady and healthy marriages might even be a reminder of what you don't have in your life they may not get what you've been through or it might be a situation in which a person may have distance once and for all from a particularly noxious family system and is in the mid middle of a group who is talking negatively about someone who who's not close to their family saying oh did you hear she's not really talking to her mother and they may not know that you're a person who's having that experience of having to distance from a family these experiences can be exhausting and there's lots more I'm sure all of you could think of a few that you've been through to have gone through narcissistic abuse and then come through the other side is a a very isolating experience something that most people do not get they think it's just a usual family stuff families are tough families are complicated or relationships are hard but you know after what you've been through and I certainly know it it's a lot more than that and this is why those times alone are not only so important to survivors it's probably why you find them easier or might even crave them the most important work of healing is individuation coming into your own finally sort of giving yourself permission to fully be yourself it's that idea of authenticity that's it no longer feeling that you have to clip your wings or your soul in order for your relationship to work as you lean and heal into that more authentic State you're then better able to discern and stop living your life in that imbalanced state of chronic self-blame and self-doubt but to do this you're going to need long stret stretches of time where you just get to be you and that is often best achieved by spending some time alone for a long while as you heal other people are going to be a little bit tricky especially new people because a lot of folks don't get it the dismissive comments the not accounting for the idea that people could be this manipulative and this invalidating or just the BS things people say just because I don't know they're jerks it can mean that you need to pace yourself those times alone yes get that they could feel lonely but if you could perhaps reframe them as times that you're fortifying building out your identity in yourself times when you aren't devoting all of your Psychological Resources to ensuring that you are monitoring yourself in the room and making sure you're again just not walking on eggshells instead you can put the you can put the effort and the time into just coming into yourself listen it's well established I'm an introvert so I think Solitude is the best state ever so for those of you who are more naturally extroverted the Solitude can sometimes feel like one more challenging process in healing but if you're blessed to have the kinds of friends or social connections that do not always put you on your back foot that you feel like you can truly fully be yourself with then great maybe not truly solo solitude but limiting yourself quite a bit at least initially to interactions within this safe small group in the early phases of healing being particular about The Company You Keep is crucial and the Solitude becomes a reminder that you are actually great company and all of that got lost in those years of invalidation you stopped knowing who you were and on top of that having that kind of psychological nervous system rest for a minute can fortify you for those times when you are in groups and having to listen to innan people say innan and insensitive things however all also remember that after being through a narcissistic relationship you have some new strategies in your back pocket including just disengaging and stepping away you no longer need ideally hopefully never again to be an audience to other people's invalidating BS whenever you can get out of it do so when we're talking about narcissistic relationships I'm a big believer that forgiveness in general is a very personal decision and that there should never be a mandate to forgive and ultimately though especially in narcissistic relationships The Narcissist will view your forgiveness pretty much as permission to just do whatever they're doing as always because they believe now there's no consequences for their behavior and basically your forgiveness gets experienced or interpreted as a free pass but forgiveness does have a place in understanding and surviving narcissism narcissistic abuse where you might wonder and that's in the realm of self forgiveness one of the greatest wounds I observe in people who have endured narcissistic relationships is the self-blame people saying to themselves how could I have been so stupid why didn't I see it sooner I am such an idiot and this narcissistic person played me like a violin or maybe I didn't try hard enough or it was my fault I think I became cold at the end of the relationship so maybe I was just as responsible or I was needy so maybe I'm the one who pushed them away if I recorded every self-blaming statement I have heard over the years from people in narcissistic relationships let's just say it would be a very big file now it's interesting to witness once people understand narcissism and sort of the landscape of the narcissistic relationships and that narcissists are so egocentric that they really are all about them so even when they seem to care in a narcissistic relationship it's because it all aligns what they need is what you need at the same time and when people start to get it they're like ah now I see it I get it now now that I understand narcissism this whole relationship makes sense in fact with that knowledge and even when you understand the origins of narcissism Etc people even say now that I'm out of it I actually can forgive myself a little bit because I see how broken they are and I didn't get it but that's not the most important piece of healing or forgiveness the most important part is the self forgiveness so why is self forgiveness so challenging for survivors well there's a few reasons for this first of all for many survivors these patterns of narcissistic abuse started started in childhood or the adult narcissistic relationship they are grappling with is still a family one for example they're still struggling with a narcissistic parent so the cycle of self-blame started then in childhood when they started justifying their parents' behavior and blame themselves they'll say things like well I wasn't an easy kid or I don't know in my family maybe if I was prettier or better behaved or smarter or faster or stronger or more helpful those are the things kids say to themselves because children don't have options self-blame is their only path forward because to blame the parent is too destabilizing and unsafe for a child so if you grow up in a family like this self-blame becomes your first language and you do it reflexively if this started in childhood for you then you know what where you start forgive the child you once were and release that child that child that was you they just needed someone to tell them hey you're a great kid you did the best you could you know what and you did the best you could under the messed up circumstances of how you grew up in fact you are a damn rock star enduring everything you did in childhood and still out in the world doing it making friends and salvaging some elements of a normal childhood out of your own actual childhood and into adulthood a child also feels guilty for thinking bad things about a parent they'll kids will think things like I hate my father my mother's a horrible person sometimes I wish they would die I wish I had different parents but then the child gets scared those are the kinds of thoughts children have when they feel helpless or powerless but those thoughts are typically then accompanied with terrible guilt I must be such a terrible person if I thought such terrible things about my family the child often doesn't have anyone to talk to and no it's normal and some of that self forgiveness is to let that childhood you off the off the hook your narcissistic parent sucked it's okay that in your child way you thought they sucked that ideation though of guilt of justification of feeling like maybe you just deserved it or you were the problem all of that thinking Trails you into adulthood and it is that trauma bond that fortifies most adult narcissistic relationships so it can take years or even decades to get out of these adult narcissistic relationships and even after you get out of these relationships you will blame yourself for staying too long forgiving yourself for not seeing it for not understanding how potent these trauma bonds are for confusing empathy with enabling for making excuses you didn't didn't know you didn't know it's unfortunate that narcissism is not a required class in high school it's not it never will be nobody is taught this so why would you have seen this self forgiveness is a key pillar of self-compassion and it's more than that self forgiveness is releasing ourselves when we don't forgive ourselves we remain stuck and we keep punishing our elves in our heads when we forgive ourselves we're often turning back to a younger earlier more scared less informed version of ourselves and we can turn around and say hey I understand why you did what you did I understand what happened and it's okay I'm not mad at you anymore I learned something and it's okay and you're saying this to yourself not to anyone else yourself when you think about all all the stories of forgiveness out there they tend to focus too often on forgiving someone else healing from narcissistic abuse isn't about forgiving The Narcissist it's about forgiving yourself the self-blame from being in these narcissist narcissistic relationship gets so baked in you start to believe it and it shapes your identity release yourself as long as you keep playing that narcissistic relationship out in your head you are still in it cutting those invisible ropes that keep you attach mean forgiving yourself first you did nothing wrong and maybe that's what forgiveness is you look at back at yourself and tell yourself you did nothing wrong and perhaps that is the core of your own forgiveness to understand self forgiveness is to understand the nature of these narcissist istic relationships and the refrain I hear from my clients over and over again is I didn't know I was even in therapy three times before you and nobody told me about this and it's so clear now and now that I even had this word I could go online I could watch the videos I could read the books and for many people it becomes clear fast I'm not saying it happens quickly for everyone that they get it but in some ways you kind of get the brass tax and then knowing all of that no more than you would be angry at your three-year-old self for not being able to drive a car why would you you're too small no one taught you in that same way forgive that child version of you who didn't get what was happening and who was having all of those lessons of conditional love or being not enough planted in them forgive that person you were early in your relationship who didn't get what narcissism was who kept making the justification you didn't get it forgive yourself stop focusing on forgiving them Release Yourself from this thinking and that is a huge step forward in your process of healing and this matters even if you're still in the relationship because a lot of people can't get out and if you can't get out it's even more important to forgive yourself understand why you're staying in recognize that the world is often set up in a way that it's hard to set these boundaries but the fact of the matter is by forgiving yourself you start to break out of this cycle that you're somehow to blame and that's sometimes enough of a push over the wall that you can start making even more significant changes talking about meaning and purpose is a major driver in the conversations about healing processing grief and just generally coming out of narcissistic abuse and living a more authentic life this conversation has been around for a long time and let's face it the meaning purpose existential conversation is you know driven by great thinkers like Victor Frankle and Rolo may people who want to frame us to take suffering and consider it through a lens of finding the meaning and the purpose and contextualizing what has happened to us Herman Hessa wrote I have always believed and I still believe that whatever ever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it to something of value and that feels like a really big statement so that's where I get concerned I get concerned that some survivors of narcissistic abuse are elevating this concept to one more place in their lives that they feel like they're not doing enough or surviving or healing good enough so let's break this down what is it really really mean to seek out meaning and purpose and Hint it doesn't mean you have to go off and Hike the world for a year the challenge is that many people internalize these messages around meaning and purpose as sort of I now I need to save the world or I have to write a book or I have to start a nonprofit or volunteer many many hours a week I have to start meditating every day and go on these deep philosophical walkabouts and go on these really deep intensive Dives listen some people have got the time the money and the energy for that but that's not necessary if your health care providers told you a you're a bit sedentary and you need to start engaging an exercise would be the equivalent of going and starting to train for an ultramarathon that day meaning and purpose are not about what you do these concepts are about how you live narcissistic relationships can often squeeze the meaning and purpose out of our Lives because we do not understand what we are up against in these relationships most people are just trying to survive and Outlast the gaslighting and manipulation without it completely destroying them people in narcissistic relationships walk around wondering how come I'm not enough people blame themselves that's not exactly ripe ground for finding meaning and purpose or doing any kind of existential inner Journey but it actually can be part of finding meaning and purpose is about finding the power in our minds to think about situations as we choose and that takes us to the not personalizing these situations or recognizing that we are not defined by these situations or that we can still develop ourselves out in different spheres with different people in our lives and not drive our identity solely from our current or past narcissistic relationships it's not easy the narcissistic relationship often doubles down and reinforces the messages that we got from childhood so thinking differently in the light of that can feel like an impossible task and when the rest of the world appears to also be colluding and again reinforcing the sense of not enoughness we can feel that the idea that we're not enough is reality and just give into it you know the problem is is that we put so much damned hope in into these narcissistic relationships and in that process we stop putting hopes into ourselves now because narcissistic relationships are so superficial and narcissistic personalities are also so superficial having deep and meaningful conversations in those relationships isn't always normative ah you may have had some during the love bombing charismatic charm winning stage but by and large over time they will often minimize you or mock you for having to have this kind of deeper conversation they'll say things like oh so we're going to go deep now who's been reading their philosophy books that kind of dismissive contempt can cheapen any attempts you make to infuse your life with meaning and purpose while you are still in the narcissistic relationship and you may keep hearing this kind of censoring mocking voice in your head even after you are out of the relationship or at least when you are mentally done with it but let's talk about this idea that perhaps now you are getting out of your narcissistic relationships or setting boundaries or gray rocking or just simply seeing the relationship clearly now you feel like yeah everyone is telling me I'm healing I'm a Survivor I need to go out there and do this whole meaning and purpose thing but then you're thinking damn I'm tired I need a minute but I don't want to fail at this whole healing thing there is no failing at healing and in terms of the next steps don't get lost in the feeling please don't get lost in it that you have to be good enough at healing or do some big massive World transformational thing meaning and purpose simply mean that you are creating time and space in your life to allow your authentic self out and to shine through to be present with your own life to reflect on what you have learned from these difficult relationships in your life and consider how you might pay that forward in a million simple ways maybe just by being kind to a coffee shop Clerk or smiling at people or actually not censoring yourself when you think about something you want to do like maybe you want to paint your kitchen wall green or plant some Tomatoes this year it's to do the things that were often minimized or trivialized in your narcissistic relationship and now to do these things you weren't allowed to do with a new appreciation so many people so many times I should say so many times narcissistic people will just crap all over the Simple Pleasures in your life going to a little local event or a funny Zoom set up by a friend or watching a low brow reality show or eating a childhood tree little things and because of the narcissistic person's self-righteousness and their relative incapacity for Joy they will shame those things and you will often stop doing them I have watched people in narcissistic relationships give up hobbies and special recipes and listening to certain kinds of music a million things because they were so shamed meaning and purpose involves reint reintroducing yourself back to your life and letting yourself be present with the those simple Joys laughing too loud just being silly but above all being present in your own life when we emerge from narcissistic relationships we need a minute or a month or a year or maybe even many years to introduce ourselves to ourselves again to not be vigilant and on edge and waiting for the criticisms or even to care about the damn criticisms and when people think meaning and purpose mean that you have to do something big and grandiose maybe that's the voice that stuck in your head an extension of that dialogue from the narcissistic relationship that in order for anything you do to matter then it has to be public and profitable or it doesn't matter you can let that voice go you being you you connecting back to your life without self-criticism you being friends with people who uplift you you not letting toxic people into your life you honoring your rhythms and having appreciation for that that is meaning and purpose people living in connection with themselves are living meaningful lives people recognizing that their life experiences shaped them but don't Define them are living meaningful lives people reflecting on what they've learned are living meaningful lives narcissistic relationships are prisons simply feeling the sun on your skin in a new way once you set boundaries or get out that's meaning healing is about self-compassion self forgiveness and ending the cycles of self-blame no you don't have to write a blog or volunteer with survivors or write a book or start a podcast or go back to school you don't need to do those things just be be present be aware be alive be kind to yourself you have spent enough of your life believing that your self-worth came from what you do for other people meaning and purpose are living in EN alignment with your authentic self not living your life at the whims and folies and demands and unreasonable needs of other people Lau wrote care what other people people think and you will forever be their prisoner at one point in that relationship or many you lost yourself to what other people thought meaning and purpose mean letting that go and coming back to you and let me tell you this if you can do that you are an existential rock star and just by living that way you have written the book on meaning and purpose don't set these lofty goals just get back to you and live authentically and that's enough meaning and purpose for for a lifetime thanks again

Channel: DoctorRamani

Views: 234,491

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Id: e0s0WBZYNGw

Length: 47min 58sec (2878 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2023