I heard a quote today, that resonated with me quite strongly:
If you’re too much for someone, then they can go find less.
Finding peaceful healing and growth after narcissistic abuse
I heard a quote today, that resonated with me quite strongly:
If you’re too much for someone, then they can go find less.
When you hear and know what you are supposed to do, but you don’t act on what you need to do, then you are sitting in indecision. Until you start moving in a direction, you will not see what direction you need to go.
Stuck in a toxic relationship? Unless you make a decision you are going to stay stuck. You say…
The fact is this: Indecision will leave you stuck another 6 months in a relationship.
The longer you stay without clarity, the more you feel obligated to stay in the relationship.
You’ll then justify your indecision with any of the following:
Let me ask: how long can you pretend that everything is ok before something happens yet again?
Narcissists are notorious for leading you into FOG – that’s Fear, Obligation and Guilt. The only thing that permeates through that fog is the truth. Ask yourself: what is your partner demonstration through actions?
The only thing will set you free are the facts of the situation.
Until you acknowledge the truth, nothing will change.
How much longer will you continue to accept it? How much is it going to cost you in your health – where you start to lose more hair, get more anxious, or find yourself with another auto-immune disease?
Sometimes we tell ourselves a story that prevents us from leaving. We are so confused and have been sitting in indecision so long, that we tell ourselves a story when we should be making a decision.
Instead, we sit in indecision, and then six months later, we ask ourselves why things are not working out, and why we find ourselves dealing with he same issues months later.
Why are we so indecisive, then?
We are indecisive because we fear the unknown…
We are indecisive because we are scared that we will fail…
We are indecisive because up until then, we have been doubted so much that we don’t believe we know how to make a proper decision.
We are indecisive because we feel an obligation to the person we are with.
Until you start moving in a direction, you will not see what direction you need to go. So ask yourself this:
Given the toxic nature of the relationship – dismissal, cheating, emasculating, control – if you met someone, today, with those qualities, would you stick around?
So why “stick around”, or continue to, for someone who currently does those things with you? Probably not!
Exactly. So why, then, are you so indecisive?
When you hear and know what you are supposed to do, but you don’t act on what you need to do, then you are sitting in indecision.
There’s a piece of you that can’t see the next step, but you know that there is a possibility of you being happy, healthy and whole. But you have to make a move. You have to make a decision.
If nothing changes, then nothing changes – you will be in the exact same spot in 6 months. One year. Several years.
I sat in indecision for years.
Eventually, I came to the realization that he wanted me to leave. He wanted me to leave because:
1. It played into his victim mentality. He could then tell people that I left him, that I left our kids, that I was sleeping around – when in fact he was the one who was unfaithful.
2. He didn’t have the guts to leave. Narcissists deal with feelings of deep shame within – and leaving me would have played into that shame.
3. Chaos is normal for him – he wanted the chaos versus face a divorce, work through custody, and pay attorneys
4. He didn’t want his image hurt – leaving would have made him look like he messed up the marriage, he failed his family.
5. He wanted to keep his ego in check. From the outside, people could say that we were doing amazing. But inside, he was giving the abuse.
6. He didn’t want to have to pay child support and divide his finances – they don’t want to lose their “stuff”. Paying child support would highly affect his image. And for narcissistic people, material items are everything to them because they feed their broken ego and insecurities. They have no self worth, or confidence, so “stuff” makes him feel like someone.
7. If I left, and not him, that would allow him to gain control over the situation.
Instead of leaving himself, he tried his best to make a life living hell for me. This is when the reactive abuse started; that reactive abuse was designed to get a reaction from me and that reaction was for me to leave him. That way, he could then blame me for destroying the family, while keeping his shiny image intact to the outside world.
While his affairs lasted for years, it wasn’t until the very end that he suggested counseling – which caught me off guard. He had, until then, never suggested counseling. However, at that time I had already filed – and so then he used that suggestion for counseling to make his victim case even more realistic:
“I suggested counseling and she refused. See? She really is crazy. She left me, she left her kids. I’ve done everything I can to make this work.”
More than likely, he already had a plan. He already had several forms of supply lined up well before I filed for divorce. Quite honestly, I had visited my church for counseling at that time, and my ex husband did walk in. As a non-Christian, he sat in front of the pastor and instead of trying to work through our issues, he immediately resorted to projecting his insecurities on me, and shifting the blame of our failed marriage onto everything but himself.
That blame shifting and projecting continued for upwards of one half hour, until my pastor put a stop to his victim mentality and asked him to leave. And the single session of counseling came to an end; it was never discussed again.
And just as I suspected, he took the victim mentality and proceeded to tell family and friends that I was crazy, and that I left him and deserted the family. This was all in effort to paint me as the villain and take focus off of his infidelity and emotional abuse, financial manipulation, control, power, psychological abuse, and even sexual abuse.
As a result, I moved forward and made a decision. I decided to focus on my personal growth. my personal healing and the development of my children.
While I won’t get those years of indecision back, the most important thing was that I made a decision when I did. And that has made all the difference.
Two years ago, I was standing in the bathroom of this little resort town in Northern New Mexico, finishing up in the shower after a lo ng day of doing things with the kids.We were on our annual summer vacation. And we chose to spend it away from devices and televisions, in a small, remote part of New Mexico in this quaint, gorgeous mountain town.
I was drying my face with the towel when I noticed something. Not only was my face super red from being in the sun all day, I had these little tiny dots on my nose.
Freckles, to be exact.
Now, freckles are not new to my face. When I was a kid, I had tons of freckles all over my face and arms. But as I grew older, they disappeared and my pale skin took over.
At this tiny little resort town, we spent the day outside. The kids and I went hiking, then we took the ski lift to the top of the mountain. We walked a million trails, collected pine needles & yarrow, then laid in the tall grass, took pictures, enjoyed the scenery and breathed the fresh air before we actually realized that we [eventually] had to come back down.
These freckles aren’t a life changing thing. But they are noticeable.
To me, they were an indicator that I was on the right path. Doing something that made me happy.
I was more than excited to see those freckles, because I hadn’t seen freckles on my face for years – over 20 years to be exact. In fact, it could very well be even close to 30. (Yikes – I’m telling on my age here!)
When I was 10, I had a ridiculous amount of freckles. I ran outside, catching lizards, frogs, riding bike, and swimming in town. I was never stagnant, instead always doing. But when I graduated, I found myself serving in the military – and while my training was outside in the hot, humid temps of Georgia, my job itself was spent indoors. In a truck, in a shelter, or in a really big military tent. Out of the sun.
When I exited the service, I worked again – indoors. For years, I was in an office, pushing papers, attending meetings and doing things that helped accomplish the bigger mission: putting people in military boots to serve. For years, I tried my best to run – half marathons, marathons, 5K’s and 10K’s… and running at night in between.
But I strayed from that as my [then] husband complained that I was spending too much time on myself.
So I quit running, and stopped doing the things that I enjoyed, that made me happy. Up until 3 years ago, I looked at myself in the mirror and I just looked drained. For years, my [then] husband made fun of my pale skin, my washed out skin, my inability to be “fit and trim” (despite him complaining that I was spending time on myself when I did work out).
Then, out of the blue and for a multitude of reasons, I filed for divorce in 2019 and knew, at that point, that I needed to change something. Where I was, and what I had been doing for the last 20 years was definitely NOT making me happy.
From that point forward, I started spending more time outdoors. I hiked at 4:30 a.m., again at 2 p.m. and again in the evening to see the sun as it set. I started running again, late in the evenings. I quit eating carbs, and started eating nutrient dense foods like avocados, eggs, red meat, lean chicken, tuna, salmon and butter. And I was shocked at how my body was responding. My body started dropping weight, I was getting tan, and I was not constantly drained.
Physically, I felt amazing.
Mentally, I was still a work in progress. Every day, I feel a little bit stronger. But I’m not quite all ‘there’ yet. I don’t think I’ll be able to say I’m 100% there.
The biggest takeaway from this experience is that I thought that my freckles were long gone when I hit my early teens. I thought that they were gone for good, never coming back, and that somehow, I had grown out of them.
To see them come back was a sign that I was headed in the right direction in my life. In the last 3 years, I have spent more time outdoors in the sun than I ever have in my entire life. My happiness and well-being have blossomed, as a result of that solitude and time in nature. I love being outside.
I am not using my college degree. I am not making six figures – in fact, I’m self employed and sometimes I struggle to make it month to month. But, I feel like I am on the right path. Sitting in an office or sitting at home and working for someone other than myself all day would never work for me.
I need something where I can stretch my creative brain, move my body, be outside in the sun, fresh air and wind and feel nature hit me in the face. Every day. Even in the heat.
That is exactly where I find happiness.
And my freckles seem to agree.
When I go quiet, its usually because I have been hurt.
So I do what I know how to do best: I make myself disappear for a while.
It’s a form self protection.
No matter what, people will do what they do.
I will retreat.
Whether you ignore or use the silent treatment, both are emotionally manipulative. When I was a small child and even through my teenage years, my mother used to resort to the silent treatment and often times ignored us as kids. So for me, being ignored is a trigger. A major trigger.
Being ignored tells me you don’t value me, and thus, don’t value what relationship we had, either.
I am a highly empathetic individual who struggles with being overlooked and ignored by others. When I am ignored, I will retreat into myself, become introspective and seek solitude to process my emotions.
Eventually, I will realize that your behavior has more to do with your own issues than anything I had done wrong.
I understand, that people are busy; but a little heads up or acknowledgement goes a long way.
If it is someone I don’t like, then it won’t bother me quite as much, if at all. But… when it is someone that means a great deal to me, it hurts, massively. It’s like a painful stab of the heart. I have a hard time getting past it.
I don’t want to compete with anyone. I’m not going to compete with anyone.
I understand, I’m not everyone’s cup of tea. I’m not rich. I’m not a bombshell by any means. But what I lack in those areas I have in love, patience, compassion.
But only to a certain point.
I’ll back off, retreat, disappear. Because it’s clear, to me… that what I thought was there may only have been something I felt.
And that, is what hurts the most.
Never assume that the person you are with, no matter how much they love and care about you, cares about your time as much as you do.
Even people that care about you will inadvertently waste a decade of your life if you let them.
and they will still care about you…
and they will still love you,
They will continue to feel guilty about it afterwards but it won’t stop them from doing it.
Because people do what’s comfortable for them, not what’s right for you.