Stage 2 of Recovery

Image by: Petr Slováček

Boundaries and Restoration :

Living purposefully to restore what was lost during the abuse. (Shannon Thomas)

DISCLAIMER: Narcissists are not all male. Using male pronouns to reference the narcissist and female pronouns to reference the victim-survivor is not an indication of the clinical data on gender in narcissism, but rather an editorial choice. This blog is written for female survivors of male perpetrators.

Learn how to set healthier, more protective boundaries. 

Protecting ourselves from further damage. We need our own protection, strength and self-compassion more than ever before in our lives. We need extraordinary courage to overcome our natural conscientiousness and cooperativeness, and just ghost him, his enablers, and former friends who have taken his side.

Learn to say ‘no’. Learn to soothe, comfort and protect our inner selves and stop giving away our power. Going NO CONTACT as soon as possible if we’re satisfied he is a narcissist or psychopath. He’s already gone. He’s already got a new host. 

Take as your working hypothesis the fact that malicious vengefulness and hoovering (reeling you back in) are as likely as all the other traits you already know are present in your narcopath. Refrain from responding. Refrain from pressing send. Resist social media if you can. (This is extraordinarily hard for someone in shock to do, especially if a craving for connectedness is present). We can make matters a lot worse by reaching out to the wrong people. I know I did……

Rediscover your core values. 

How important is honesty, integrity, kindness, doing no harm, friendship etc? Consider living with new vows. It's something to hang onto as the fallout of psychopathic abuse gathers momentum. It gets worse before it gets better. Living purposefully implies restoring our lives in a way that is closely aligned with our values. 

Our values might have changed considerably as a result of abuse. We now realise how letting people off the hook for the odd lie, or infidelity or drunkenness or gaslighting and continuing to trust (and be influenced by) them can be hugely damaging. If we have PTSD, we now recognise violations instantaneously in the form of over-the-top PTSD triggering.

We use this new indisputable information to turn inwards, commit to change where we see ourselves harming ourselves and others out of habit, and change the people and environments we spend time with. People are most influenced by the five people they spend most time with. Now we get to be really discerning about who and what those influences are.

Going non-toxic. 

Already stretched to our absolute maximum for tolerating pain, we need to protect ourselves from things that further hurt and trigger us into despair. Avoiding people, media and places is OK for a season. Avoidance is a healthy self-protection mechanism at this stage of abuse-recovery. (Some clinicians will tell you avoidance is a problem and try to give you exposure therapy too early in the recovery process). 

Find a way to remove anyone already poisoned by the psychopath’s mind games from your life - at least for the time being. If it's old friends or family, be brave. Ask them to leave you alone if they are blaming you, shaming you and defending the psychopath. If they won't leave you alone, be even braver.

If you manage it badly and cause hurt or offence, let yourself off the hook. You’re doing your best. Forgive yourself. Cultivate courage. You’re going to need it. You risk becoming stuck at this stage of healing if you are surrounded by family or friends who blame you, criticise you, point out how you are not coping or judge you and stigmatise you.

Experimenting with what a new life looks like. 

Start experimenting and finding people and environments that are healthy, sane and normal – exactly the opposite of the path the narcopath led you down. 

Look up old friends from before the abuse (who haven’t been tainted by his poisonous duplicity and perfect public persona), go to Church or other spiritual places. Find places that feel like refuge and safety; places that are free from aggression and blame (beware abuse-victim or mental health online forums).

Google ‘healing’, ‘spirituality’, whatever you can think of that might lead you to a room full of decent people with a healthy energy instead of people assessing you for your usefulness to them (business networking events). Group meditations, group worship or group yoga, tai chi or qui gong classes can be extraordinarily healing, even as a beginner. It’s the energy thing again…..

Develop courage and self sufficiency. 

All our resources have been exhausted. Narcissistic abuse often inflicts severe damage across the entire spectrum of a victim’s life: financial, social, family, professional, emotional and psychological, and physical health. Often from a place of helplessness and hopelessness, victims muster strength and courage they never knew they had.

Additionally, the smear campaign, victim blaming and cascading betrayals that occur in the aftermath can render a victim without support or validation. Or unable to accept support and validation because of the massive damage to their ability to trust. 

BELIEVE that you can recover from this. FIND FAITH that the void from losing everything will be filled with more loving, kind, nourishing people and experiences before long. TRUST your ability to overcome hopelessness and helplessness and learn new skills for standing on your own two feet. By re-parenting, re-partnering, re-affirming your Self. You can do it!

More Skilful Mindfulness.  

If we adopted mindfulness and self-compassion training as our working hypothesis for healing early on, by now, we have more skill in recognising the story as a story and detaching from it. We are training in not feeding our pain body.

We become more skilful at recognising painful rumination and feeding the reward and affiliative brain systems instead of the threat brain system. Recognise the frequency with which you now catch yourself sliding into the trauma vortex, and give yourself some credit for this.

Recognise how well you have coped with an overwhelmed nervous system and suicidal ideation. Even if you stuffed up or made a fool of yourself publicly with your new trauma symptoms, re-frame this as totally understandable under the circumstances. Almost nobody gets it, and frenemies are possibly trying to peck you to death.

Focus and re-focus inwards to the good heart and basic decency that remains. Acknowledge that your mind-training is starting to pay off, even if there is a long way to go yet. You can do this!

©Margot MacCallum