“The best revenge is to never be like them” — Marcus Aurelius
Narcissists are well known for their ability to play mind games, gaslighting you by expertly managing to get you to blame yourself for what they did wrong and pouring on you, word salad that ends up successfully confusing you. You being a person who expects the other person to talk fair, can easily get roped into the endless arguments and end up feeling exhausted and helpless afterward.
If you have been struggling with a narcissist ex who gets you roped into this type of mental game and you have been losing(everybody does), then read on.
We’ve all done it. We have all had arguments with unreasonable people who cannot and will not argue fairly. Narcissists are not just trying to win an argument. Their goal is to put you off balance where you will emotionally fall on your face. They enjoy the game of making you feel at your worst. They feel empowered when they are able to do that to you. That is their end goal. There is only one way to win such a game. It is to not play. You not only lose the game every time, but you also lose something far more precious: your time and your energy.
The following are the ways that you win at the game that your narcissist ex plays. By doing the following, you will also win your best life.
Do not argue with the narcissist ex (You have no control over what they think or say or do. You will waste your time and energy)
Don’t try to prove them wrong or set them straight.
Don’t try to get them to understand you.
Don’t try to understand them.
Don’t try to figure out why or what they are saying or why or what they are doing.
Don’t put weight on anything and everything that they say or do.
Put your focus and energy on your life (things that are worthy of your time, effort and energy)
Who you are being
Your life’s work
Your self-care
Your growth
Your happiness
Your goals in life
Getting to know yourself
By refusing to play their games, you are choosing you and by choosing you, you win every time!
If you have been in a narcissistic abusive relationship or any other kind of abusive relationship, and you have been on a difficult healing journey this blog is for you.
Maybe you wonder why the full healing takes so long, or you wonder if you can ever fully heal because you still experience pain from that past and many in support groups that you belong to also seem to be eluded by real and permanent healing themselves.
The reason for the difficulty is that many do not know how a real change and healing really must take place. Many do not think true healing is possible for them. Many focus on things that they do not have power to change which takes focus off of the areas that they actually have the power to change thereby halting their real and true change. When you are focusing on what is outside of your control it is waiting for the condition outside of you to change.
When you are looking for change to take place on the outside of you, what you do not have control over, you are not going to focus on the areas of your life that you actually have the power to affect real change. By moving your focus beyond what might be happening to you to what you could do to change your life is the only powerful way to change your life and heal yourself.
The way to heal best possible way is to expand the focus beyond injuries, the pain and the self while taking actions to build new empowered emotional habits along the path that is about being a part of something that is greater than the self.
You can get over the pain from the Narcissistic relationship or any other pains from your past.
If there is a magic pill that you could take to powerfully feel better after having been abused by a narcissist or any other abuse, would you take it? Would you take it to not only feel better but to change the trajectory that you are on having experienced the things that you have?
I’m here to tell you that there is this magic pill. The magic pill is you.
It sucks to be mistreated. It is horrible. It is a horrific experience to be abused in any way shape or form. But after you grieve for a time, if you hold onto that feeling for too long, you will then begin to damage yourself without knowing that you are.
Here is what you have to do to become happy even if you had painful things that had happened to you in your past.
Epictetus, a Stoic philosopher has said, “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to what happens to you.”
The following are things for you to begin thinking about so that you can powerfully and genuinely heal and get free of the pains once and for all.
Difficult and painful things happen to everyone. Carol Dweck, a Social Psychologist and the author of the book, “Mindset” & Martin Seligman of “Flourish” both agree that how a person reacts to pain and trauma determines how the healing takes place.
The people who heal and thrive go into a mode of growth, look for what they can learn and how they can heal and get happy
The people who get stuck in pain, end up with PTSD do not know that they have a choice so they get stuck.
This means that healing is in your hands.
Carol Dweck talks about the clients who set their goal to heal and find happiness are the ones who immediately go into the mode of learning about themselves to see what it is about themselves that they can grow and change so that they do not enter a bad situation again. You can do the same and finally heal.
What you can do now, is to begin actively looking into what it is that you must learn about the pain that you are going through, and learn about yourself. Keep asking questions like, “what do I need to learn so that I can move on from this? Then do whatever you have to do and learn whatever you have to learn about yourself to break loose from the pain that you are stuck in right now.
Your narcissist ex has left you for someone new. Even though you were miserable with your ex, you are feeling hurt beyond measure. You gave all you had. You did everything that they asked of you. You gave up so much for them while they gave up nothing. You are humiliated and feel discarded as if you meant nothing to them. You feel like nothing. You feel completely and utterly worthless. You simply feel as if you have nothing to hold onto. You don’t even know how to or where to start to feel ok. You are in incredible pain. You desperately want to feel free of this pain.
I am here to tell you that not only can you get free of that pain and move on, but you can do far better. You can come out a winner of your own life. You can find the happiness that you had always wanted. You will look back at this very moment and thank the Universe for landing you here, in this very situation because you will see that this was a very pivotal moment where you truly begin to find the amazing person that is you, the very you that you never really knew. You will find that person, that you, because of what is happening to you right now.
Let’s first annihilate the mistaken notion that you are holding onto in your mind, the very reason why you are feeling so badly, and see if you still want to allow yourself to be fooled into misery. I think you will say a big NO!
The reason why you are feeling bad about the new person, why you are feeling jealous, is because of the meaning that you are putting on the whole situation.
You are imagining that this person is the most perfect-in-every way. Ask yourself, is there such a thing as a perfect human being? The answer is “NO”. There is no such a person as the perfect in every way person that you are imagining your ex’s new person to be.
Since you are thinking that he or she is a perfect-in-every way person, you are also thinking that somehow you are less than that person and that must be why your narcissist ex left you for that person. The FACT is that you have no idea who this person is or the quality of that person so you can not judge them to be better than you. The FACT is that no one, I mean, no one, is ever better than anyone else. Your imagination that you are less than that person in some way is just your imagination based on NO FACT. How much longer would you like to hold onto a false belief that only makes you miserable?
You might be thinking that somehow, it was your fault. Let’s think about this imagination. Did your narcissist ex do things that hurt you? Was your narcissist ex abusive and controlling? Did your narcissist ex throw temper tantrums for no reason whatsoever? Was your narcissist in general unreasonable? Did your narcissist ex love you like a grown person loves another? The answer to those questions are, resounding, “No” and you and I both know that soon enough that nature of your narcissist ex will emerge with the new person. And that new person will become confused and unhappy just like you were.
Another reason why you feel bad is that you are thinking that somehow, there was something that was lacking in you, why your narcissist ex left you for someone else. Let’s tackle this one. Your narcissist ex never saw you. That person never got to know who you really are. That person does not know how to see anyone in any worthwhile depth because that person, your narcissist ex, has no empathetic curiosity to get to know anyone, ever. They have interest only in themselves so they never could have rejected who you are. They never accepted who you are by never really knowing you are and they never really know anyone other than at a surface level of their own judgment. So really they did not reject you. They cannot reject what they do not know.
In short of it all, their moving on to someone else has absolutely no meaning. Their mirage of loving acts had no meaning as they have no meaning for the new person. Their words, all of them, had no meaning. Who they are, have no meaning. In essence, you were in love with a mirage, a fake, a person who pretends to be someone because really they are no one of any value. They are of no value because they value no one. That means, you lost nothing.
But you have gained. Them letting you go free is the biggest gain you could have had at this juncture of your life. You now can create whatever it is that you want to create with your life without someone draining the life out of you. Your narcissist ex would not have ever allowed you to fully bloom. Now, you are free to bloom. Your narcissist ex, if they had stayed with you for the rest of your life, would have drained everything that is you, would destroy anything that you could have or would want to create with your life. Now you are free to do any and all things. Now you are free to think and believe any and all things. Now you are free to speak or gesture, or smile, or talk, or dance, or do whatever it is that you deem that you want to do without someone, your narcissist ex, critiquing your every single movement through life.
You are free. Now go be the amazing person that you were born to be!
Even if the relationship was bad and it did not give you what you needed, all breakups are often very difficult. It is the end of a dream you shared. It is the end of how your life has been with that person. It is the end of what you’ve grown used to and felt comfort in. It feels like the end of your world and feels like it because it truly is an end of one world, the world that you had been a part of with that person. With all of that there also is the biological instinct that we all still have from our cavemen days when belonging to a group meant survival, so separating from your partner brings up those old feelings of fear that feels like fear of death.
Here is the thing.
Even though you might feel like there is no end to this pain and if you do feel that way, you just joined the whole of the population of the human race who has gone through it. Many are going through it somewhere out there on this earth. But if you might be forgetting something. Unless this is your very first heartbreak, you know that you will get over it and you will have a chance at a new life again. In the meanwhile, let me share with you a few things that you could do to make your journey maybe just a little smoother and make it worthy of your time If you can learn something from this journey, you will certainly be better off for it.
First and foremost, do not indulge in any criticism of whatever pains that you might feel and whatever thoughts you are having. This is a time of self compassion, self empathy and self understanding and an unconditional self love. Realize that everything that you are feeling is a normal human reaction. It is also a very normal stage of grieving that you are going through so just allow yourself the room to feel and don’t let yourself judge it in any shape or form. Just simply give yourself compassion and love.
You must keep up the constant focus on self compassion during this time. You cannot do too much of that.
Second, focusing on self care is very beneficial. It is a must. It is something I strongly encourage my broken heart healing coaching clients as a foundation of our healing work together. It is that important and that beneficial.
Self care practice to remember are:
Exercise first thing in the morning every day to get your day started empowered.
Drink plenty of water
Eat plenty of proteins and fresh vegetables and fruit (Eat nutrient-rich, unprocessed foods)
Do something that makes your heart smile, for me that is singing & drawing
Avoid Alcohol during this pivotal time because it will make you feel chemically depressed the next day
Next is Self-reflection work. It is best to refrain from thinking about why your ex did anything or why your ex is anything. There is nothing you can do about your ex or why they are the way they are or why they did what they did. Those thoughts are a waste of your time and energy.
What you must focus on is why you stayed with an abusive person and what you must work on in yourself to grow and heal so that you do not enter a relationship like that one again.
