Narcissists lure.

They lure with promises, flattery, lies and sweet words.

[Read Narcissist Love Bombing is Like Poison]

The mask shifts with each new person in their sights, adjusting to our likes and dislikes, filling in crevices to become whatever seems to be missing and fulfilling our long-lost dreams.

What remains the same, however, is that the true nature of the narcissist remains hidden behind the mask.

With that mask, employed skillfully at the outset, the narcissist sets the stage to lure and trap by putting it back on again and again.

[Read Going No-Contact When a You’re a Victim of a Narcissist Discard]

Untouchable. That’s what they want to be.

Imagine the narcissist with a piece of chalk. With the love-bombing they pour on us at the beginning of the relationship, narcissists draw a fat, white circle of protection around themselves.

Their words and deeds during that time further cast a glittering, golden spotlight of goodness over them and we form a bond with the person standing in that spotlight that is difficult to break.

Later, each time they step out of that circle, that is, “cross the line,” and our brain and body scream at us that we have been violated, they only have to stand under the golden goodness inside that circle so we catch them in its glow to get us to override our own instincts.

“No, I’m not abusing you. I love you.”

This is why no one breaks up with a narcissist. They escape.

Breaking up with a narcissist means psychologically changing our view of it to become free.

These are the five necessary stages that give us back our lives.

The difficulty of the journey toward no contact depends on many factors, such as the level of attachment, the length of the relationship, our willingness to give others the benefit of the doubt, our own fears and weaknesses, how hard the narcissist keeps fighting to keep us from leaving, and how deeply the narcissist has obscured the idea that the relationship is abusive behind any of a dozen other smokescreens.  

In each of the five stages, our view of the narcissist changes, as well as our view of the relationship itself, until we are either force ourselves out or we are broken down.

[Read The Five Masks of Sanity: How We See the Narcissist]

It takes so long because part of what is so abusive about the relationship is that it hides what is abusive about it from us. When we progress through the stages we gain the enlightenment we need to see the relationship for what it is. 

Saving ourselves comes next.

The Five Stages of Going No Contact with a Narcissist

Because of the very nature of how we are abused, the stages through which we progress during a romantic relationship with a narcissist start with the discovery that the relationship is not what we thought it was. 

Narcissistic abuse hides the abuse from the partner through elaborate tactics that twist the wrongdoing of narcissists into their victimhood instead of ours.

The abuse leaves us feeling guilty, shameful, afraid, confused, and anxious all at the same time until we are a shadow of ourselves, lashing out when we feel like we’re losing our sanity, freezing when we feel like we’re under attack, and going numb when we should be walking away.

Only through the progression of these five stages can we move from passive participants in the relationship who do what the narcissist wants us to do to active performers in our own lives, who do things that may not be in the best interest of the narcissist– but are definitely in ours. ‘

Only then can we leave the relationship and go no contact.

Stage 1:  Awareness of the Narcissistic Abuse

This happens inevitably after the initial phase of the relationship when one has been idealized by a narcissist.

At the beginning of the relationship with the narcissist, things were perfect.  We were not yet aware of what was to come.  We believed in what the narcissist presented to us because we entered the relationship with good intentions.

At some point, something happens or a series of incidents occur that trigger awareness of the abuse.

We may not yet call it abuse, much less understand that our partner is a narcissist, but these are the moments that lead us to the epiphany that something is terribly wrong. Someone who loves us should not be able to do the horrifying things that were done to us.

Because these are the first glimpses behind the mask and we are bound to the narcissist at least partly if not mostly because of forces beyond our control, we likely enter a state of denial and tell ourselves that this is not what we think it is.

Stage 2: Understanding That the Behavior is Abusive 

Reaching the second stage requires coming to understand the nature of what’s happening, that abuse is taking place.

There have been too many incidents. The idealization stage has begun to fade away and we are now so miserable, we have begun to seek answers.

Perhaps we have been talking to others outside the relationship who provided us with an outsider’s perspective. We may have turned to the Internet and stumbled across details about narcissism.

The scope and magnitude of what we are up against, however, have now been planted by this external information. We now have two competing realities: one from the narcissist and one from outside the narcissist that provides us with a new and rational understanding of his or her behavior.

“Understanding,” is not usually the ticket out because it’s merely the bigger picture that is inevitably gained as we seek to make sense of the reality we live in as more of the mismatch between the narcissist’s words and deeds pile up.

At this time, it actually contributes to the cognitive dissonance we feel and now, denial is no longer sufficient as a primary method of managing our understanding of the narcissists’s behavior because the new information we have competes with the narcissist’s “version of events.”

[See The Ultimate Narcissistic Abuse Dictionary to review unfamiliar terms]

Confusion sets in, as the narcissist returns to the white circle dozens of times and we see him or her step out of it just as many, and we now have to choose what to believe about why he or she is doing such things.

Stage 3: Accepting That the Behavior is Destructive

We may remain in Stage #2 for some time, confused.

We try new methods to cope with what’s happening– accepting the blame to try to keep the relationship together, denying that our partner is a narcissist, trying to use what we learned to become more compliant or prove the literature wrong– our relationship will turn out differently, we’ll get through this, we think defiantly.

Eventually, however, progression into Stage #3 generally comes with time, after persistent cruel treatment by the narcissist and our inability to get anything to change and improve.

At this point, the idealization stage is usually so far in the past, we rarely see glimpses of it anymore. Or we have been subjected to so much betrayal and pain, we don’t feel as if we are the same person anymore as we were when the relationship started.

In addition, we have been slowly conditioned not to talk about it or express or process our feelings about what has been done to us.

[Read Word Salad: When Talking is a Narcissist’s Weapon]

We may have lost much of our support system or feel beaten down and our emotions may have slipped long past confusion to defeat. We come to accept that the relationship is bad for us and we need to leave the narcissist.

And yet, we do not because we cannot.

We find ourselves being drawn again and again back into it.

The awareness that we cannot leave causes us additional suffering, as now we know what is happening to us and still we cannot escape. Instead, now not only does the narcissist’s behaviors not match his or her words– ours no longer do either.

Sandra L. Brown, author of Women Who Love Psychopaths, writes that, “…The partners must split in order to stay. In reality, [the survivor] has held two different relationships with the good/bad dichotomous psychopath! Each one of these relationships has required a different belief system in order to remain in it. These belief systems begin to battle each other…”

These two belief systems were drawn out of us slowly over time, using our own strengths and weaknesses against us.

This is the most difficult of the stages to explain in isolation– for how can someone know and accept that a relationship is abusive and desire to leave it, and yet not do so? 

Yet the broader context of all the stages, both those that came before and those that come after, and how the relationship has always been about dominance and control by the narcissist can provide most of the answers. 

We become paralyzed when our two belief systems are competing with one another and are at the whims of the narcissist.

We begin to develop learned helplessness, in response to being unable to act effectively one way or another in the relationship– either to leave it or to be treated in the manner in which we wished to be treated.

Stage 4:  Re-Awakening Eroded Aspects of the Self

This helplessness we develop is created in us over time by the abusive tactics perpetrated by the narcissist.  It is an illusion. 

Overcoming the acute abusive tactics that keep us confused and helpless is the next stage we need to enter prior to being able to go no contact and leave the narcissistic relationship.

These tactics the narcissist has used to get us to this point include gaslighting, refusal to discuss any of the wrong-doing, blame-shifting, and others.

The tactics keep us under the control of the narcissist. They cause us to feel both incapable and unwilling to begin to tear down the bond that the narcissist developed with us at the beginning, by manufacturing emotions in us.

We feel fear because of the unknown future or what life will be like without the narcissist in our lives.

We feel guilt at doing anything to harm the narcissist, as if we are betraying him or her, and start to think of the good times and good things he or she has done for us. We feel as if we are giving up if we stop trying.

We feel sadness thinking about the loss of the massive presence of that person in our lives if we do anything to remove it.

We feel doubt that we are right about how bad things are, that we are not to blame for how things have turned out, or that we are capable of even doing such a thing.

We feel weak and unable to pull off leaving, knowing it will cause a torrent of emotion and a subsequent range of dramatic responses from the narcissist.

Yet– somehow– despite feeling all of these things, we must overcome them by realizing they are manufactured by what the narcissist has done to us.

They are illusions.

What is real is the anxiety we feel, perhaps in the back of our minds, knowing they will never change or knowing that they can’t ever be faithful.

What is real is the constant “fight or flight” mode we find ourselves in and the nightmares we wake up to due to their explosive tirades we can’t predict. The lies and the gaslighting and our unease and obsessive thoughts.

What is real is the constant questioning and accusations and that persistent feeling we can’t relax into our own lives, that we have lost ourselves a piece at a time and been forced inside a tiny cage until we now live trapped inside of it.

Stage #4 is about letting those emotions and that voice that is carrying them rise closer to the top and override the false emotions that sit in the eroded parts of ourselves where the narcissist has taken up residence and parked his or her own suggestions. Those suggestions serve his or her benefit– not ours.

Overcoming the tactics the narcissist has used to bring us to the point to where we felt we can’t escape means:

• recognizing what they’re doing when they use one of these tactics
• calling out the narcissist when he or she uses them
• not treating the bad behavior they have engaged in throughout the relationship as acceptable just to keep the peace
• not letting any of what they say when they use these tactics help resolve cognitive dissonance in their favor (e.g., believing they are correct when they gaslight and we should doubt our own perceptions, etc.)
• seeing oneself as in control, empowered, and undeserving of this treatment; sometimes this involves “faking it until making it”

This is a turning point in the “enlightenment,” for it is when we begin to gain our control back– and yet it is difficult because nothing will bring it about other than a conscious effort on our parts to stop merely accepting that this is abuse and thinking differently about it. 

Other things that happen in the external world may assist with moving us closer to Stage #4.

For example:

Without the narcissist’s influence during a silent treatment, we may begin to think more clearly about what has been going on because the narcissist’s tactics by default will not be of immediate influence.

For example, there will be no gaslighting during this time, so we may be able to start putting things together, or having more empowering thoughts that we don’t want to and shouldn’t let go of if the narcissist reaches out again later.

[Read Narcissist Gaslighting Examples in Romantic Relationships]

Or perhaps our health begins to decline or we suffer another loss in our lives.

Or we may have an epiphany due to an action of the narcissist and realize that, though leaving may result in an emotional crisis for us, a worse fate may result from staying in the relationship. 

We may begin to feel ourselves slowly disappearing. We may begin to feel that our lives are stuck. We may begin to feel that we will never get out of the relationship, or that if we do we will never recover from the abuse the narcissist has inflicted on us.

Stage 5: Going No Contact Through Setting an Intention and Psychological Barricade 

In Stage #4, the psychological shift is the attitude we have toward ourselves and our ability to do something about what we’ve gone through.

In Stage #5, our mindset changes and we no longer view the narcissist or the relationship the same way. We become ready to tear it all down.

We must actually take actions to remove oneself from the abusive situation physically and psychologically and begin the process of breaking up with the narcissist. 

This is where narcissistic abuse recovery truly begins because we have begun to have more control over our own actions despite the fear and guilt we feel at how it will impact the relationship or the narcissist.

The process involves two steps:

• Go completely no-contact with the narcissist forever; and
• Stop idealizing the narcissist and the relationship

[Read How to Get Over a Narcissist: 2 Must-Do Steps] 

It is not enough to go no contact.

Shahida Arabi, narcissistic abuse survivor and researcher, says that even though the relationship is toxic, we can get stuck: “If our grief is not addressed, it will get lodged in our brains, our hearts, and our spirits as nostalgia for a man or woman that never existed.”

As alluded to in Stage #4, stating that there is a psychological shift and that we then take action implies that the shift is very black-and-white and that the action is very purposeful.

It implies that there is some dramatic confrontation, as in the movies, where we tell off our partners and walk out the door with all of our belongings never looking back, leaving them speechless and regretful for the way they treated us.

It also implies that everything is suddenly crystal clear and every move we make from here on out is with determination and a sense of self-awareness and direction.

No.

The end is an angst-ridden earthquake, a freefall into a future in which we no longer even know who we are.
The end is a blind spot where they implanted themselves in our psyche, still dictating our actions and monitoring our thoughts for a time even as they are out of our lives.

It’s an emotional roller coaster.  It’s a death, fraught with loss and uncertainty.

[Read The Emotional Hell of Going No Contact with a Narcissist]

What Stage #5 does mean is that we pass the point of no return psychologically where we no longer just see the relationship as bad for us, we start to see the narcissist as a disordered person with whom we no longer wish to be in a relationship with.

We are more willing to accept the unknown than to accept the nightmare we have been living.

We choose ourselves.

Want to read more?

Why Can’t I Just Leave? takes you step-by-step through the five stages of leaving a narcissist and helps lead you straight to the exit.

Click here to read a free preview

This isn’t your typical survivor recovery book. When you read it, you’ll learn about:

• What over 600 survivors said about their experiences and how they left their relationships

• 75 signs that you’re in a pathological love relationship

• What makes narcissistic abuse unique

• The most damaging effect of narcissistic abuse

• Why we change while we’re in the relationship

• The five stages of breaking up with a pathological partner

• Pop culture and celebrity examples of narcissistic abuse

• My personal story

Years in the making, this book creates a bridge between the first-hand knowledge of narcissistic abuse by survivors with lived experience and the social psychological research on the interpersonal and group dynamics of high-control relationships.

The heart of the book is explaining why we do things in these relationships we don’t understand and how we can stop. 

Available in ebook, paperback, and hardback!

 

If you’d like to read a free preview, which includes the first chapter and the pathological love relationship checklist, click on this link.

Join the community to get more articles like this one delivered straight to your inbox. 

If you like this article, you’ll also enjoy these:

• The Unlucky 13 Different Types of Narcissism
• Idealization and Devaluation: Why Narcissists Flip
• 7 Things That Supercharge Narcissistic Abuse Recovery
• How to Know When a Narcissist is Finished with You
• What Do Narcissists Want?

Sources

Arabi, Shahida. “The Real Reason You Miss the Narcissist.” Thought Catalog. Retrieved May 4, 2019 from https://thoughtcatalog.com/shahida-arabi/2018/02/the-real-reason-you-miss-the-narcissist/

Tudor, H.G. “The Devastation of the Illusion.” Knowing the Narcissist. Retrieved May 4, 2019 from https://narcsite.com/httpnarcsite-com20161011the-devastation-of-the-illusion/

The post The 5 Stages of Going No Contact with a Narcissist appeared first on Fairy Tale Shadows.

Let’s get very real. A relationship with a narcissist does not end until you decide it’s over.

Focus on those words for a moment. There’s some power in them.

We usually hear experts talk about going no-contact when the relationship is still ongoing. We read resources about moving on after being discarded.

Yes, survivors in current narcissistic abuse relationships must get the information and support they need to go no-contact. Yes, survivors who are no longer in those relationships must get the information and support they need to move on.

Survivors who are no longer in the relationships can include both people who left on their own and people who went through a narcissist discard.

[Read “What a Narcissist Does at the End of a Relationship“]

It took me a long time to realize this, but a narcissist discard and going no-contact are not independent of one another.

Why is that?

The Power in No-Contact

When we typically think of the term “no-contact,” we think of a situation in which there is already ongoing contact between the narcissistic partner and the survivor.

However, I would expand the definition to include situations in which the potential for contact to occur between the narcissistic partner and the survivor. This includes a narcissist discard.

It doesn’t matter if the narcissist discarded you five minutes ago or five years ago. It doesn’t matter if it was this morning or last night. It doesn’t matter if it was a week ago, a month ago, or a year ago. In the research I conducted for my book, Why Can’t I Just Leave, one survey respondent described how his ex-partner persisted in contacting him even though the relationship had ended thirty years before.

When you are discarded by a narcissist, you must still go no-contact because narcissists never shut the door on anyone with whom they have ever been in a relationship.

On the one hand, there seems to be a looming threat behind that idea. It suggests that narcissists are like Arnold Schwarzenegger in one of his most famous film roles. As Kyle Reese says to Sarah Connor in the 1984 film named after the role, “That Terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”

Yet, narcissists are not machines. They are not superhuman and they are not superior in psychological or emotional strength to you or anyone else. 

Let’s look at the other side of this equation again: a relationship with a narcissist does not end until you decide it’s over.

[Read “Why it’s Hard to Break Up with a Narcissist: They Never Let You Go“]

Focus on those words for a moment because there’s some power in them.

You decide. You have control.

The narcissist in your life is a slave to the narcissistic abuse cycle, however, you can escape because your thoughts and emotions were manipulated in order to imprison you there.

You Are Where You Are

Whether you’re still in the relationship or you’ve been through a narcissist discard, the fact that you haven’t yet been able to decide that it’s over, take the steps to free yourself for good, and make it stick may cause you to feel ashamed.

Yet there is nothing shameful about being unable to keep that decision intact.

You are where you are because the narcissist wanted you in that spot. You’ll have to fight your way out one incremental step at a time until you finally break through to the other side.

There is no timetable for it— there is only your personal timeline.

Preparing extensively for the physical act of leaving is absolutely necessary. Survivors must, of course, make plans for how and when they will leave, where they will go, how they will support themselves, and they must ensure their safety.

[Read “The 5 Stages of No Contact with a Narcissist“]

However, a plan for leaving without psychological preparation is insufficient. Survivors should develop an awareness of the manufactured emotional states and mindset implanted by the narcissist and understand how to counter them.

All Survivors Must Go No-Contact

Survivors leaving their narcissistic partners and survivors who were discarded often both love and idealize their narcissistic partners, feel as if their love was not returned, and are confused about their narcissistic partner’s actions.

Survivors who have endured a discard will need to treat the discard as an extended silent treatment and come to terms with it in a similar way that survivors who go no-contact with a current narcissistic partner.

They will need to reframe the lack of closure they received from the narcissist the same way as someone who is currently interacting with their narcissistic partner.

They will need to manage their emotional response to the narcissist in much the same way.

Most importantly, survivors who have been discarded will need to do everything in their power to ensure that the narcissist cannot contact them.

They must go no-contact.

Narcissists do not like to lose control.

All survivors must go no-contact and take their own power back.

Thank you for reading! If you liked this article, you might like my book, which was drawn from surveys with over 600 survivors and includes my personal story with narcissistic abuse.  The first chapter is free and includes the pathological love relationship checklist. Go here to read:  Why Can’t I Just Leave free preview.

 Also, try these articles if you’re looking for more help: 

• Survivors of Narcissistic Abuse Must Stop with the Questions
• Divorcing a Narcissist: How They Use the “System”
• 11 Crazy Things You May Do Before Going No Contact
• How Narcissists Twist the Truth and Trap Their Partners
• Why You Can’t Leave the Narcissist in Your Life

The post Going No-Contact When a You’re a Victim of a Narcissist Discard appeared first on Fairy Tale Shadows.

For example, if we could just explain to them how their behavior is hurting us, then perhaps they would stop. 

Things never align. We never reach the elusive dream of a loving relationship characterized by honesty and respect.

Instead, we find ourselves becoming weaker and more exhausted trying to do things that are beyond the bounds of what we should be expected to give.

It’s a merry-go-round we either ride until we’re sick or that we finally stumble off when we realize it will never stop on its own.

Understanding why these are the only two options is the secret to saving ourselves. 

Why Going No Contact is So Hard

The idealize-devalue-discard model for explaining narcissistic abuse provides a basic structure for understanding the foundation of a pathological love relationship with a narcissist.

First, during the idealization stage, we are put on a pedestal and viewed as the love of the narcissist’s life.

Then, we are denigrated as worthless and subjected to some of the cruelest treatment we have ever endured.

Finally, we are thrown away, shunned, and ignored as if we never existed. The cycle repeats.

But why do these three stages occur? Why would anyone idealize then devalue that same person? What keeps the person who experiences this treatment from exiting the cycle immediately? 

The idealize-devalue-discard cycle is a trap that evokes responses from us that we otherwise would not have in ordinary circumstances.

A deeper understanding of the relationship dynamics should be based on the narcissist’s disordered view and how it draws the partner into their dysfunctional lens. It can help to show:

1. How the narcissist’s actions guide the relationship toward dysfunction, and
2. Why the partner’s reactions do not lead to an outcome outside the painful cycle.

While in the relationship, it can feel impossible to break away and go no contact. By expanding the traditional cycle of narcissistic abuse, we can learn more about why:

The Expanded Narcissistic Cycle of Abuse

Stage 1. The Narcissist Love-Bombs the Partner

This is the first stage in the cycle in a relationship with a narcissist, previously noted as the idealization stage.

As the narcissist idealizes the partner, both experience an emotional high in the brain that is so powerful, it can simulate cocaine use as certain neurotransmitters are released.

The narcissist puts the partner on a pedestal and begins to mirror both the physical actions and personal likes and dislikes of the partner. The narcissist creates an emotional “safe space” of utter acceptance that induces positive feelings of love, trust, and vulnerability.

This “safe space” is a reflection of all that the partner wants to hear and see because it’s based upon what the narcissist has learned of the partner’s identity and background. There is fast “familiarity” and “future-orientation” in the relationship, accompanied by grandiose statements about destiny or a once-in-a-lifetime connection.

For narcissists, this period of idealization is what they crave most, as it is when they receive the purest form of their own idealized view of themselves reflected back to them from their new partners.

By crafting an image of themselves that reflects what the partner needs to see to be comfortable in the relationship, the narcissist receives a high quality of narcissistic supply in the form of adoration, attention, and love.

Stage 2. The Partner Inevitably “Disappoints” the Narcissist

The idealization stage may last weeks, months or even a year or longer, but it cannot be maintained because it is built on illusions about who the narcissist truly is. The narcissist has manufactured a false persona that doesn’t truly exist.

In addition, the relationship is not supported by the principles that must comprise a healthy relationship, such as mutual trust, honesty, and commitment.

Many different things can trigger in the narcissist that their partner is a “disappointment,” such as: 

• The narcissist becomes bored with the relationship or partner as the problems of the real world start to penetrate the dream-like quality of the idealization stage.

When the real world pierces through the idealized one, the narcissist starts to feel life sliding into mediocrity.

For example, the partner may go to the narcissist with a problem he or she is having and the narcissist doesn’t want to deal with those. “Problems” interfere with the narcissist’s ability to receive the supply they need from their partner.

They can no longer keep the emptiness and the internalized sense of worthlessness at bay. Narcissists may become irritated that they have to focus on someone else or someone else’s problems.

• The narcissist has secret lives and it starts to cause a strain on the relationship.

Narcissists have a sense of entitlement about having two sets of rules about their extracurricular activities, such as lying and cheating, but this can result in two things.

First, the narcissist never truly trusts their partner because they projects all of their secret behavior onto the partner. As a result, the narcissist tries to control the partner.

Second, the partner’s intuition may tell them that something is off, and when the partner speaks up, the narcissist may begin to gaslight them. Either of these things may lead the narcissist to become irritated with the partner, despite the narcissist being the one to engage in the betrayals.

• The narcissist starts to see “flaws” in the partner. 

These things that narcissists view as flaws can range from saying no to the narcissist’s request or choosing a night out with friends, asking questions about suspicious behavior, or merely holding a different opinion.

When the partner does not make the narcissist the center of attention, the narcissist feels offended.

• The narcissist begins to feel threatened by the partner’s autonomy. 

Narcissists like to know what their partners are doing at all times. They can also be threatened by a partner’s independence or by a partner knowing more about a subject or having more of something than the narcissist does.

They don’t like to be “outshined,” even if they also look good by association, as it draws attention away from themselves. For a narcissist, too much independence may mean the partner will abandon or reject them. 

While narcissists see these issues as problematic, to them the problems exist because the partner will not do or stop doing something that they have a basic human right to do. They lack the self-awareness and ability to recognize that the problems exist because of their perception of their partner’s behavior.

The narcissist then feels disrespected and unappreciated.

Stage 3.  Narcissistic Injury Occurs

As the partner continues to assert autonomy and independence, the narcissist’s resentment grows.

When the partner does not do something the narcissist wants, no matter how outrageous a violation of human dignity it might be, it feels like a slap in the face to the narcissist:“Look at all this effort I put in to give her everything she wanted. This is the thanks I get. She doesn’t even know how lucky she is.”

The partner’s love and attention is no longer good enough. The narcissist demands that the real world stay suspended forever and the partner forever keep them at the center of their lives.

Without the partner’s undivided attention, the narcissist is reminded or his or her own fears and insecurities. They feel wounded by what they perceive as the partner not “playing along” and seek to take back what the things they gave when morphing into the “perfect partner.” 

Narcissists feels entitled to do whatever they want to do, even if it hurts the partner. Feeling wronged, to soothe their ego, the narcissist may engage in behavior that violates the sanctity of the relationship to avoid feeling as if they’re in the one-down position. 

Stage 4. The Narcissist Devalues the Partner

Narcissists suffer from something called “object constancy.” If you’re not with them, you’re against them. If you have caused them a narcissistic injury, they see your actions as intentional attempts to disrespect them. Once you are placed into the “bad” category, you are viewed as the enemy.

Partners who cannot be controlled or do not conform to expectations incite narcissistic rage and so the narcissist lash out at the partner in revenge.

The verbal abuse may be subtle at first. This is where we usually hear phrases such as:

“Nothing I do is ever good enough for you.”

“If you loved me, you’d do [x].”

“All you want to do is argue.”

“I don’t have to tell you anything.”

“You always have to bring up [x] and ruin everything.”

“You’d better call me back in five minutes or it’s over.”

The partner is shocked and baffled by the sudden change in the narcissist. 

Where is the person they fell in love with? Why is the narcissist so angry? 

Eventually, the abusive words take a darker turn and the narcissist might start to be cruel. They may denigrate and humiliate the partner more directly for the “disappointments.” Devaluating their partner feels justified because they lack the control they feel entitled to have.

Because they also have low empathy, there may be almost no limits to what narcissists are willing to do to hurt their partners. They will employ the “nuclear option” to destroy and discredit their partners. 

Stage 5. The Partner Confronts the Narcissist Over Being Devalued

The partner’s shock and sadness may feel crushing, yet it will unleash a barrage of questions and self-doubt.

The partner will be blindsided by the cruel about-face. It will seem illogical, and the partner will not be able to figure out what caused such an extreme reaction.

The extreme devaluation by the narcissist is at complete odds with the soulmate persona that was portrayed by them at the beginning of the relationship.

Even more confusing, once the narcissist cools off, they may pretend as if the incident of devaluation never happened or was no big deal. Once the narcissist has gone off and diffused the injury to their ego by exacting revenge in some way, the damage is under control. The balance feels restored and “normality” has returned.

To the partner, however, nothing feels normal. Hurt and confused, they confront the narcissist to get an explanation that will make this behavior make sense.

Stage 6. The Narcissist’s Defense Mechanisms Kick In

During this stage, the narcissist engages in a variety of verbal tactics to deflect, project, gaslight, blame-shift, and even stonewall.

You’re too sensitive.

That’s not what I said. You heard me wrong.

Well, what about that time you said [something unrelated]? 

I have been really stressed out. I’m sorry– it won’t happen again.

Can’t we leave this in the past? I told you I’d never do it again. If you can’t stop talking about it, I’m leaving.

This is all part of the word salad that narcissists use in circular conversations that minimize partner’s pain, avoid taking responsibility and keep their abuse and the real nature of the relationship hidden.

What narcissists cannot accept is that they are wrong or and even to hear that they have harmed their partners is to feel criticized by them.

It sparks feelings of weakness and shame to hear from them that they have done something that is less than perfect.

Stage 7. The Partner Tries to Hold the Relationship Together While Maintaining His or Her Self-Respect and Autonomy

The turn that the relationship has taken appears to defy logic to the partner.

The sweet and thoughtful person they fell in love with now attacks them for reasons the partner doesn’t understand. When asked about it, the narcissist denies the attacks were attacks or claims that allude to the idea that the attacks were deserved.

Partners may draw one of two possible conclusions: 

• The person we are with is disordered, because it doesn’t make sense that someone can seem to switch love on and off like a light switch,  OR
• There is a misunderstanding and the excuses that the narcissist provides are genuine. If we can just do the right things, all of the “bad times” will stop and things can be as they were in the beginning.

The two competing ideas cause a psychological conflict known as cognitive dissonance. It’s not possible to hold two contradictory thoughts in one’s head at the same time. 

Resolving the contradiction in favor of our initial impression of the narcissist at this point is the most reasonable psychological response.

In other words, the narcissist presented themselves as kind, thoughtful, and generous in the beginning of the relationship. It doesn’t make sense to believe that they actually don’t care about their partners or intend to hurt them.

When narcissists provide explanations for their behavior, even though the explanations may be outrageous, the fact that they had a “reason” aligns with this first impression of them as loving and kind.

It make sense psychologically for partners to believe that there has been a mistake and to reject the idea that the narcissist is actually cruel and callous.

This is the stage where partners are unknowingly drawn into the narcissist’s distorted reality. By accepting the narcissist’s view on the incidents, partners begin to lose touch with their own intuition and judgment.

Stages #2-7 form a mini-cycle within this larger cycle. The more times this mini-cycle repeats, the less partners in these relationships trust themselves as they become further entrenched in the narcissist’s version of their relationship.

Stage 8. The Narcissist Gives a Silent Treatment or Discards the Partner

After many iterations of the mini-cycle, the partner usually becomes very traumatized by the emotional and psychological abuse perpetrated by the narcissist.

Being drawn into the narcissist’s reality provides an extremely volatile and unhealthy world for the partner and their “fight or flight” instincts may now be triggered.

Some of the ways it may manifest itself include withdrawing emotionally out of fear of having to walk on eggshells; overwhelming anxiety over the consistent feeling that something is off and attempting to alleviate it by asking the narcissist what’s happening; feeling so hurt and broken-hearted over what has happened, that depression sets in; or reacting or trying to stand up for oneself when provoked by further devaluation (fight).

After the mini-cycle repeats over time, the narcissist also changes. They become completely disillusioned with the partner as the partner continues to “disappoint” the narcissist with normal human behavior.

The narcissist is disgusted with the partner’s behavior. To the narcissist, the partner is either combative, abusive and jealous, crazy and never satisfied, or is self-absorbed and inattentive.

Recognizing that the partner is no longer providing unquestioning worship and devotion, the narcissist rejects the partner.

To avoid the feelings of worthlessness that come from their partner’s trauma, the narcissist will give a silent treatment or even discard the partner and disappear at this stage for days or weeks at a time– or even longer.

Stage 9. The Partner Suffers Crippling Pain, Doubt, and Confusion

The entire relationship to this point has been held in place by the dominance and control of the narcissist through hundreds or thousands of instances of emotional and psychological (and sometimes physical or sexual) abuse.

The emotional and psychological abuse tactics are important because they were the invisible bullets that eroded the partner’s sense of self. The partner has at least partially adopted the narcissist’s points of view, which may include:

• “I’m too sensitive.”
• “I caused this to happen.”
• “I’m exaggerating or just plain wrong about what’s happening here.”
• “The narcissist love me and doesn’t want to hurt me but if I just try a little harder, they will stop.”

In contrast, the harmful reality that has been downplayed, ignored, and hidden through the narcissist’s emotional and psychological abuse are:

• the narcissist’s view of the partner fluctuates between extremes (which is not normal) and the fluctuation itself does not represent love but control
• the narcissist equivocates their abuse with the partner’s autonomy and their reasonable, human behavior
• the partner endures and reacts to the narcissist from a position of extreme volatility and abuse
• the narcissist tries to suppress and deny the partner’s lived experience of the relationship as painful and confusing

During silent treatments, the partner suffers tremendously because their reality has been warped through the manipulation of events– the narcissist putting on a show of being a loving person with surface-level actions and promises but without the commitment and support underlying such a relationship.

Further, the narcissist does not take responsibility for the harmful behaviors that undermine the soulmate facade that he or she has conveyed.

The partner will likely feel panicked that the narcissist is gone, after having taken on the view of the narcissist, which has instilled doubt in his or her own intuition and judgment.

He or she will likely miss the narcissist and wish for another chance to try to “get things right” so that everything will only go back to the way it once was, the way it was during Stage #1. 

The partner may be hurt by what the narcissist has done and may believe there is still some way to reconcile the narcissist’s hurtful actions with the dream that the narcissist has fed him or her if only he or she would stop talking about them– as if talking about them is the problem, and not the fact that the narcissist acted hurtfully.

Stage 10.  The Narcissist Hoovers

The partner is extremely vulnerable to being drawn back into the relationship. Even if the partner doesn’t reach out to the narcissist, the narcissist will likely reach out to the partner using hoovering attempts. [Read Signs the Narcissist You Know is Hoovering You]

The narcissist hoovers once he or she feels that the partner is conciliatory enough to accept that it is the narcissist who is the true victim. When this thought has settled in, the narcissist will not have to work very hard to gain back control over the partner.

The partner will “forgive” the narcissist and stop asking questions or look the other way.

The partner will apologize for being too “needy” or “jealous” or for lashing out in response to being repeatedly devalued or baited. The narcissist’s context of abusive control is conveniently ignored.

The narcissist may apologize too and promise change in an attempt to hoover if necessary, but the acknowledgment of the wrongs done will lack insight.

Any explanations and excuses will be shallow and unsatisfying. The narcissist will not be able to offer explanations for what they have done that make sense. 

On the surface, things may be good again for the moment, but underneath, the foundation is still rotten. All the partner wants is for the confusion and pain to stop, and so it does– for a price.

Stage 11. The Relationship is Restored But the Partner is Conditioned to Expect Abusive Treatment

The narcissist has promised not to behave in such a cruel manner, but nothing changes. Nothing has to change, as the narcissist controls the narrative at this point.

The purpose of silent treatments and discards is to teach the partner a lesson: if you don’t do as I want you to do, I will shut you out of my life. 

Furthermore, the narcissist will often try to crush the partner in the most devastating way possible as they do it.

The narcissist views the partner’s ordinary human behavior as problematic simply because that behavior inconveniences the narcissist or elicits negative feelings. Love is a zero-sum game to a narcissist–not a partnership.

And so the cycle continues and Stage #2 starts again. The longer a partner stays, the more emotional trauma is inflicted. The abuse is a self-reinforcing cycle, as the narcissist continues to scoop out the partner’s autonomy and identity and replace it with distortions that shape the partner in ways the narcissist desires. 

As the partner’s identity is eroded, it becomes even more difficult to find the thread inside of them that wants to get away because they no longer trust themselves. Learned helplessness sets in, and the partner forms a trauma bond with the narcissist or develops Stockholm Syndrome.

Stage 12. The Partner Goes No-Contact with the Narcissist

At some point, either the narcissist will discard the partner for good–or the partner must find the strength to go no-contact with the narcissist in order for the relationship to ever truly come to an end.

No-contact is something that must be initiated psychologically by the partner, regardless of the status of physical contact between the two. It can occur when the partner has a breakthrough that penetrates the narcissist’s distortions to recognize that there is no happy ending. 

It doesn’t have to be a breakthrough that completely flips the partner’s perspective overnight or for good. That’s probably not even realistic under extreme cognitive manipulation.

Yet a glimmer, or several glimmers over time, of another reality in which the partner feels a certainty deep inside that the narcissist will never change is all it takes. This glimmer comes from the inalienable self that the narcissist, as hard as they try, can never fully extinguish. 

It is you.

In the final stage of this expanded cycle, you take a leap of faith to save yourself and make the intentional choice to cut the narcissist out of your life forever.

Don’t forget to check out these resources:

• • • Why Can’t I Just Leave?
    • Comprehensive Narcissistic Abuse Dictionary
    • The Best Resources for Narcissistic Abuse Recovery

The post Why You Can’t Leave the Narcissist in Your Life appeared first on Fairy Tale Shadows.

It starts with a question about what is keeping us tied to the narcissist.

To get over a narcissist, we must ask ourselves, “How is it possible to miss someone who has damaged us and devastated our lives so carelessly?”

Why Getting Over a Narcissist is So Hard

It’s possible to miss someone who has abused us because love-bombing is abuse too. When our partners love-bombed us, it was done under false pretenses because we didn’t know what we were falling in love with. [Read Narcissist Love Bombing is Like Poison]

This is difficult, yet critical, to accept. 

Until we do, we are very vulnerable to being hoovered by our partners into the relationship again and again. 

Even if our partners do not hoover us and we have gone no-contact, we can feel lost, disempowered, and without hope. We may be unable to fully process what happened and let go of the aspects of the relationship that seemed positive. 

Getting over a relationship with a narcissist means that we must definitely go no-contact, but it’s not enough.  We also have to stop idealizing the narcissist and the relationship.  

How to Get Over a Narcissist

It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to go no-contact separately from releasing our idealistic view of our partners and the relationship. 

This is because our partners consistently influence our thoughts while they are in our presence.

In other words, if we are still in the relationship with them, the narcissist is still around to  manipulate the perception we have of them, which then makes it more difficult to ever leave. 

In order to re-frame the relationship as one that doesn’t serve us and motivate ourselves to go no-contact, we have to be able to see it from a view other than the romanticized one that they feed us long enough to pull away from them.

Nice trap they have us in, isn’t it?

The Relationship Between No-Contact and Stopping Idealization of the Narcissist

To be completely free, what is more likely is that you will have to go back and forth between the two required steps until you find that you have put the relationship in the past and you are whole once again.

In other words, the two things have to go hand-in-hand.  

During a short burst of no-contact, your view will get a little less rose-colored.  Then when you make contact once again, you will be that much closer to breaking away for good the next time.

And yet you cannot stop there. You cannot live in the past with the image of the narcissist intact as it is.

So what does it look like when you move between “going no contact” and “ending the romanticization of the relationship?”

Step 1. Going No-Contact

You absolutely must stop interacting with the narcissist in your life before you can even begin to recover, much less completely stop idealizing the relationship. Even though it is obvious, its importance cannot be understated.

You can’t leave the door open to be friends. You can’t leave the door open for them to get in touch with you with the idea that you “just won’t respond.”

You can’t look at their social media profiles or contact any mutual friends to find out how they are doing.

If you are still interacting with them, your life and your thoughts are not your own.

You will not recognize how much they have an influence on what you are thinking and how you feel until they have been gone for a few weeks. They have penetrated every layer of your being and know everything about you.

There is a pervasive fog that clouds your mind. Confusion may be your primary emotion. You may not even realize it until you have spent time away from them for a few weeks.

They split you into two people in their own mind with their actions, and thus you become two people in yours as well: the one that wants to believe in them and the one who knows they will never be good for you and will never change.

They have been slowly draining you out of the one who wants to believe in them by conditioning you not to speak up.

They have eroded your own will and slowly replaced it with their own and then tried to silence that other part of you that is trying to rebel against how you have been treated.

That part of you that wants to believe in them has been indoctrinated with their lies of love. It will try to keep you there, locked in a fantasy until you are drained of everything you ever were.

You must get away, and yet this is also why going no-contact is not enough.

Going no-contact is the fight for your right to control your own life and physical space. Gaining a realistic view of the relationship is the fight for your mind and thoughts.  If you cannot go no-contact completely, you can do something called going “gray rock” instead. 

Step 2. Stopping Your Idealization of the Narcissist and the Relationship

How much time do we spend going over and over the relationship in our minds, like a “choose your own adventure” story playing out endlessly, as if there’s that one path to the end that will give us our happily ever after if only we can find it?

We open door after door, but maybe somewhere in the middle of the story, we forgot what happily-ever-after would even look like. Maybe the story changed and we forgot how we wanted things to end.

So much damage done, so many new leaves now heaped on top of one another waiting for us to turn over, we wouldn’t even recognize what season we were in anymore even if things did ever start to change.

Drowning in the pages of the story, we lose sight of what we are fighting for.  All we remember is a dream of the past where we felt infinite love.  Because of that person they once showed to us, all we want is to feel it again, although that person now seems to have disappeared.

This is what keeps us tied to them.

A lot has been written about going no-contact, yet I have seen very little written about how to stop idealizing your ex.  There is little recognition about how painful this process is or what we must accept in order to make it here.

Yet this is one of the keys to both staying no-contact forever and to mending ourselves so that we can move forward and out of their shadow.

Being unable to do this is what can keep people stuck. 

We must see the relationship for what it actually was, not as the narcissist wanted us to see it. To do that, we must reframe how we see the narcissist, see the world through their eyes, and dismantle our view of what could have been.  

Complete no-contact will be difficult before idealization ends, and yet idealization is difficult while the narcissist’s influence lingers.  This is the paradox of a relationship with a narcissist. 

This is why the hoovers work so well, and why we live in this purgatory for months or years. The initial attempts to break up fail because:

1. We still miss what we had and have a hard time moving on.  We get abuse amnesia and wonder if it was as bad as we thought it was.
2. We may blame ourselves or wonder if things could have turned out differently.
3. We’ll still struggle with the cognitive dissonance and wonder if they can change and if we should try again.

In other words, “no-contact” is pretty useless without a complete mental shift.

We either still have the idea in our heads that it’s okay if they come back into our lives, thus undoing any progress we make when they are gone– or we keep them alive in our heads, negating some of the loss of their physical presence.

We have to banish them from our minds too.

The End Game:  Getting Over the Narcissist 

Partners of narcissists break up with them so many times before eventually leaving.  This is because it is nearly impossible to actually leave until the mental frame has been set on leaving.

Breakups can be “test runs.”

Sometimes you may think you have set your mental frame toward no-contact, but you realize you haven’t quite set it far enough out to drag yourself away from their death grip.

If it weren’t for our own minds, every time the narcissist came back, we could just ignore them. We have a construct that we must dismantle first.  This is the painful part–we don’t want to dismantle it.

We have to pull apart a life with them we don’t want to pull apart to rip into memories that were positive for us and open up a host of questions without answers.  

We will grieve and lose pieces of ourselves–pieces we never wanted to lose. 

Yet there is really no choice.  It’s us or them.

And though it’s painful, there is light too.  The light comes from the truth.  You learn that the pain they caused was not personal, and that is a turning point that puts you on the path to healing.

Assistance with Recovering from a Breakup with a Narcissist

I’m always on the lookout for new and high-quality resources for survivors. Are you struggling with how to leave your narcissist partner?  This course on the five steps you can take to exit can help. Are you having trouble recovering from the relationship even after it’s over? 

Try enrolling in this Webinar on getting started with your recovery so you can start to get off the emotional roller coaster or this one on using EFT Tapping to break the addiction to the narcissist.

Lovefraud webinars on relationship abuse are presented by experts but also from the perspective of experience. Almost every instructor learned about the behavior of sociopaths in relationships the hard way. They’re affordable and offer practical information you can start using immediately. If you decide to try one, send me an email and let me know how it went!

Want more? Get more articles like this one delivered straight to your inbox. 

Don’t forget to check out these free resources:

• Taking Your Life Back After a Relationship With a Narcissist – Recovery Toolkit
• Comprehensive Narcissistic Abuse Dictionary
• The Best Resources for Narcissistic Abuse Recovery

The post How to Get Over a Narcissist: 2 Must-Do Steps appeared first on Fairy Tale Shadows.

I didn’t understand what was happening to me at the time, nor would I have been able to explain it to anyone else.

There were times when I wanted desperately to leave, but I couldn’t envision any possible future without him, and there were times when I wanted nothing more than to stay and forced myself forget the things that had made me want to leave.

There were times when I also wanted him to leave, and times when I begged him not to.

There were times when I walked out unable to take any more–and then afterward I waited desperately for him to inevitably contact me and draw me back in.

Many times I behaved irrationally as if controlled by something outside of myself. Who is this person acting like this? I would sometimes think. Why are you doing this?

It was as if an alien force had taken over my body. I was in there somewhere, but where I didn’t know.

Emergency sirens only I could hear were blaring in my head at all times.

Different emotions took their turns cascading through me relentlessly: anxiety, fear, disgust, despair, elation, relief, recklessness, defeat, exhaustion.

What I did not know at the time but can see now is that my mind was preparing itself to leave the relationship during that time, and a part of me always knew it.

Very specific and distinct things happened during that two-year time period provided me with psychological self-preservation and gave me psychological strength.

They were things that led to thoughts that led to actions. Those actions led to reactions. Those reactions led to emotions, and on in the cycle.

All of these things, however confusing or painful at the time, moved me closer to eventually being able to go full no-contact with my ex-boyfriend.

Here are eleven things that happened to either protect or prepare me psychologically for getting there.

Sometimes I moved in between a couple of them for awhile, but all of these I recognize now marked very distinct stages of my mindset.

Stages of Going No Contact and Meaning It

1. Epiphany #1: I Realized Something Was Very Wrong

Things had been taking a darker turn for a while.

However, a series of major incidents suddenly occurred that were so out of character from the person with whom I was first presented and with whom I had fallen in love, that I could no longer accept that my ex was the person I thought he was (e.g., massive outbursts, cruelty, secret lives, etc.).

It was the mask falling off and my subsequent realization that this wasn’t normal.

2. Deny, Deny, Deny

He began making excuses for his behavior.

Because I had never encountered anything like this before, I was not ready to accept the implications of what he had shown me under the mask.

I accepted his excuses and I repressed how bad it really was, just wanting things to go back to the way they used to be.

All of that reading I’d done about narcissism?

I pretended suppressed all that knowledge as if I’d never even read it, believing he could never be a narcissist.

I was willing to overlook and forgive when he started to love-bomb me again.

3. Bargaining

Once he had me back where he wanted me, the love-bombing had almost stopped. He was often back to the behavior that had led me to believe something was wrong.

I could no longer deny the things he’d done, but now I was just confused. He had given me an explanation for the behavior, but he was up to it again.

Why couldn’t he just stop? If he could, things between us would be perfect.

I’d tell him he hurt me with the bad behavior. Just give me one more chance, he’d say.

4. Splitting

Chance after chance I gave him, but nothing actually changed.

Which one was he– the “good one” or the “bad one?” I couldn’t decide, and I’d “split in two,” knowing the truth but believing the lie.

I wasn’t ready to face consciously yet that he was not that person I fell in love with and never would be.

5. Fantasizing

I started having fantasies about the relationship that fell at extremes.

I wished he would either just somehow disappear and never talk to me again so I could be free, or I wished he would make a grand gesture, stop all the bad behavior once and for all and claim me so we could start over and be happy.

I’d wonder what would happen if I just blocked him without saying anything if I was the one who just disappeared without even saying goodbye.

6. Rebellion

Some part of me started to pull away from him.

During all the break-ups, he disappeared for long periods of time because I was no longer providing him with the strong sources of attention and adoration he needed.

Yet the longer periods of time away from him gave my head a chance to clear and the anxiety in my chest a chance to loosen.

I started doing all the things he used to harass me about not doing, like going out with my male friends or with any males at all.

When he did eventually contact me again, after long periods of silence, I didn’t worry about how long it took me to text or call him back.

The more I took charge of my own life again, the more empowered I felt.

7. Helplessness

My strength was growing, but his influence was still keeping me from rejecting his version of events (the relationship).

I was getting there but not yet quite ready to act and I was filled with a feeling of dread.

The thought entered my head that I would never get away from him until one of us was dead.

8. Rock bottom

My entire life felt as if it was on hold and was not moving forward because he was still in it.

He was dominating my thoughts and controlling my time.

I wanted something to change, but I felt powerless to do anything about it.

9. Epiphany #2: This is Never Going to Get Any Better and I Must Act

There were several mini-epiphanies that accompanied this one.

I cannot live with the feelings I am having.

He’s not going to change.

He’s not who you think he is.

This is not what you think it is.

You don’t want to be with him.

And he will never leave you alone or respect your boundaries.

I have to act or something bad is going to happen.

10. Exit Behavior

In this stage, I was ready to finally fully accept what had happened in the relationship. Yet I needed to get away from his influence to do it because I was still vulnerable. It was a trap.

I was desperate to push him far enough away so that he wouldn’t have a desire to contact me, at least for a long time.

I did things out of desperation that I would not normally do (nothing illegal or permanently harmful) in order to attempt to make him want to avoid me.

11. Barricading My Heart

Eradicating him from my life and giving him a good reason not to come back enabled me to gather the last of my strength and close the door, going no-contact with complete awareness and acceptance of what that means.

The fog cleared.

It took me months to gently accept the new reality. I had to go through a process of letting the bricks wall up a little higher each day.

As I was able to make new connections about the past that I wasn’t able to see at the time, the door continued to thicken, and likely always will.

It was important for me to recognize the stages in order to understand how I got here and why it took me so long.

Most importantly, I needed to forgive myself for being unable to get here sooner.

Going No Contact is a Process

When partners of narcissists try to implement “no contact,” the narcissists often try to entice them back into the relationship.

Going no contact with a narcissist is something we do only when we are fully aware of what we are dealing with and when we are ready to protect ourselves from further harm– an action taken with the best of intentions.

Going no contact and meaning it, however, is something else entirely.

Going no contact often fails at first if and when the narcissist uses an excuse for contacting us by hoovering us (or our defenses are weak and we don’t close all the methods to begin with).

Getting serious about going no-contact requires an awareness of the repercussions and a psychological readiness that often takes time.

It requires us to think through not only the logistics of no-contact, but the emotional implications as well: the relationship is over, and there can be no more romanticizing it or believing the narcissist’s lies.

Partners implementing no-contact must ask themselves, am I truly ready to accept this? If I am not, I may be vulnerable to something that the narcissist may do in the future to try to come back into my life that I can’t anticipate.

No one should be able to tell any of us how long it should take to be ready to accept that information and move forward.

Don’t forget to check out these resources:

• Comprehensive Narcissistic Abuse Dictionary
• The Best Resources for Narcissistic Abuse Recovery

The post 11 Crazy Things You May Do Before Going No Contact appeared first on Fairy Tale Shadows.

It feels like a madness that we can’t escape.

They depart suddenly for reasons that seem either minor or made up completely.

They may pretend as if you don’t exist.

When they do decide to speak to you again, they act as if they are lowering themselves to interact with you.

Or perhaps you are the one to leave because you can’t take their actions anymore, but they won’t stay away. This time, they treat you as if you are the love of their lives.

The Narcissist Breakup Cycle Explained

H.G. Tudor, is a narcissist author who writes about how narcissists view relationships and their partners in his books and online in his blog, Knowing the Narcissist.

His work tries to fill in the gaps left by unanswered questions:

Why would the narcissist do that? 

What was the narcissist thinking? 

What was the narcissist’s goal? 

That didn’t seem to make any sense– what was the narcissist trying to accomplish?

What did the narcissist want?

Did the narcissist know he was hurting me?

Did the narcissist care about me?  

To describe how breaking up with a narcissist happens, he wrote three posts about the three stages of breaking up.

What his articles do is tie together what the narcissist is thinking, feeling, and attempting to accomplish at each stage with what the partner is experiencing.

He calls the stages “Post-Discard Battles.” The reference to “post-discard” is a reference to when the cycle begins (after being discarded by the narcissist). 

He calls them “battles” because during each stage, the victim struggles. Those struggles can be either external with the narcissist, internal in the victim’s mind, or both. 

So as we are progressing through the five stages of leaving narcissists psychologically, here is what is happening externally in our interactions with them. 

Why Breaking Up with a Narcissist is So Hard

Stage One: The Emotional Battle

The first stage begins in the aftermath of the initial discard.

The victim is shell-shocked and overwhelmed. He or she and can only react according to the lovesickness, cognitive dissonance, mind games, and chemical bond that have been produced during the relationship.

There is no other basis for a victim to process the relationship.

There is no frame for understanding the relationship because this is the first glimpse that something is not right, and whatever that “something” is tells us that this relationship is somehow unlike a normal relationship.

There is no other way the victim can respond to the narcissist other than emotionally. When emotions are involved, the partner doesn’t stand a chance.

If the narcissist returns, and he or she probably will, the victim will always go back during stage one.

Hear H.G. Tudor describe “The Emotional Battle”

Stage Two: The Head vs. Heart (HvH) Battle

At this stage, the victim has realized that there is a problem with the narcissist. The relationship is untenable. The victim may have been through enough discards or discovered horrible secrets, as is what happened to me.

He or she may have stumbled upon information about narcissism and figured out that the partner’s interactions with them fit the pattern of narcissistic abuse.

The victim may have had friends or a therapist tell them that their partner has a problem and they need to leave.

They may have discovered new betrayals.

Whatever it is, something or some combination of things has taken place and the victim is no longer processing the relationship in a purely emotional manner.

It is at this point that the victim begins to have an internal battle with herself about the emotional tie to the narcissist. 

The thoughts he or she has now about the actions the narcissist begin to contradict the earlier perception.

Tudor also refers to this as the Logic versus Emotional Battle.

Because all of the same dynamics from the emotional battle are still at play, a victim may struggle with this battle for a long time. It is not a sudden overnight switch from one way of viewing the narcissist to the other. 

Nor is the process of change in perception linear, as the victim may swing back and forth and not know what to believe or how to reconcile the two views.

Is my partner really a narcissist, or am I wrong?  

Maybe he can change.  

He seems really sorry–maybe I should give him another chance. 

If only I hadn’t done [x], maybe [y] wouldn’t have happened so maybe we should try again.  

We have something so special if he would only stop doing [x] things would be perfect.

Maybe he realizes now how much I love him and he will treat it as if it’s valuable to him.

I just want him to explain why he did it.

I just want to see him one more time and have closure.

If the narcissist returns, and, again, he or she probably will, the victim will almost always be unable to resist going back during stage two.

This is where the narcissist breakup cycle can stall out for a long period of time while the pattern repeats itself.

The victim will likely go back many times because the head has not yet won out over the heart. The victim has only begun to become aware of what has happened and the details need time to sink in.

The narcissist knows this and will use it to their advantage. The victim’s emotions and thoughts, such as those above, as well as his or her inborn strengths and weaknesses, can be psychologically manipulated.

The narcissist will use them to cast doubts and confusion, weaken judgment, and isolate the victim from external support.

All of these factors can keep a victim stuck in this stage for a long time.

Hear H.G. Tudor describe “The HvH Battle”

Stage Three: The Final Battle

In this stage, the victim’s head finally wins out over the heart. Each time another discard in the narcissist breakup cycle occurs again during stage two, the victim gets a little closer to the third and final stage.

Once victims finally reach it, they start to gain control of their emotions. They no longer feel as if they under the influence of the narcissist.

During this stage, the victim develops some sort of protection to keep the narcissist out. He or she guards against anything the narcissist might say or do to try to return or to cause harm.

The risk that the narcissist will show up again, however, never goes away. The narcissist may catch the victim off-guard and that is what the victim wants to protect against.

If the narcissist returns during stage three, the victim has more control over whether they go back. 

Yet Tudor believes that the battle never ends because the victim can never really be certain if or when the narcissist will return.

He writes:

“This final battle takes place in a land where the battlefield, for the first time, is more of your choosing than ours. You have better equipped to fight this battle and whilst there remains a risk of defeat and you are being ensnared once again, it is far less than in the previous two battles… How long will this final battle last? It will continue until one of us no longer lives.”

Hear H.G. Tudor describe “The Final Battle”

Does the Narcissist Breakup Cycle Ever Really End?

When you get into a relationship with a narcissist, you permanently become part of their collection.

They can try to take you down and play with you whenever they get bored. They may break up with you temporarily or you may break up with them, but they never really break up with you. “That is why we did what we did; so we always had a way back in,” Tudor writes.

In theory, this appears to give the narcissist a measure of control.

This, however, is only because his three stages assume that being on-guard is our final stance against them.

The narcissist would always have control if we were forever the passive actors they manufactured us to be. If nothing ever changed.

It is the narcissists who stay frozen in time, locked forever in fantasies of the past.

Without self-reflection, they are destined to repeat the same patterns in every new relationship. If they try to return to you, they will try to loop you back into that same tired pattern.

Yet we can change.

We, as the partners or former partners of narcissists, can grow, learn, thrive and move on.

Thus, Tudor’s analysis of the stages of the narcissist break up cycle ends prematurely.

Perhaps there’s something poetic about the fact that a narcissist perceives that there is nothing beyond stage three, where we are always protecting ourselves against being invaded by the narcissist again, where he or she is always appealing to us.

The Fourth Stage of Breaking Up with a Narcissist

There is actually a fourth stage.

It is in this fourth stage that we finally beat the narcissist. In this stage, we are no longer affected by anything the narcissist does.

Yes, it is true that it will always be up to the survivor to ensure that the relationship with the narcissist is over.

Yet in time, as we become healthier, stronger people, we will integrate the experience into who we are and heal the wounds from it.

We no longer have to protect ourselves from anything the narcissist does, because the narcissist no longer holds a key to the new person we have become.

Assistance with Recovering from a Breakup with a Narcissist

I’m always on the lookout for new and high-quality resources for survivors. Are you struggling with how to leave your narcissist partner? 

This course on the five steps you can take to exit can help. Are you having trouble recovering from the relationship even after it’s over? Try enrolling in this Webinar on getting started with your recovery so you can start to get off the emotional roller coaster or this one on using EFT Tapping to break the addiction to the narcissist. Lovefraud webinars on relationship abuse are presented by experts but also from the perspective of experience.

Almost every instructor learned about the behavior of sociopaths in relationships the hard way. They’re affordable and offer practical information you can start using immediately. If you decide to try one, send me an email and let me know how it went!

More About H.G. Tudor

Learning to think like a narcissist has been instrumental in my own healing. It answered some of my outstanding questions. It also filled in many gaps in my understanding of why my ex-boyfriend behaved as he did.

You may be  intrigued, shocked, or frightened by this idea that there is no such thing as a “final discard.” If so and you want to arm yourself with information, I recommend reading more about what Tudor says about the cycle of breaking up with a narcissist. He has written several books on many related topics, such as preparing to go no-contact and understanding hoovering.

His books walk you through things you probably wouldn’t consider. He is very blunt about what narcissists think and feel. 

Go slowly and take a break if any of it becomes too overwhelming emotionally or difficult to read. Some of the ideas, though enlightening, are extremely painful to comprehend at first. They become easier to absorb with time and distance from the relationship and I believe the wisdom gained is invaluable. 

I recommend these books by Tudor for more information on the real point of view from a narcissist:

• Getting Out! How to Prepare to Leave the Narcissist  
• Black Hole: The Narcissist Hoover
• No Contact
• Escape: How to Beat the Narcissist 

Don’t forget to check out these resources on the website while you’re here:

• • Comprehensive Narcissistic Abuse Dictionary
  • Narcissistic Abuse Resources for Recovery

Want more? Please take a moment to sign up and get future articles delivered straight to your inbox. 

The post Why it’s Hard to Break Up with a Narcissist: They Never Let You Go appeared first on Fairy Tale Shadows.

It doesn’t matter if you went no contact or whether the narcissist suddenly cut off contact as if you never existed. You’re on the emotional roller coaster. You can’t stop thinking about what the narcissist is doing at the end of the relationship even though you tell yourself you shouldn’t care. 

Why We Obsess about What the Narcissist Does When the Relationship is Over

From an outsider’s point of view, from those who haven’t experienced it, the way we endlessly talk about the things they’ve done or how it ended may seem excessive and unhealthy. 

What others fail to understand is the relationship was unnatural and requires a lot of processing. Normal relationships don’t give people PTSD.

Relationships with narcissists often leave their partners with questions for which there are no answers. 

Who is the narcissist really?

Why did he or she treat me like a queen (or king) and then do things to me that no one would wish on their worst enemy?

Did he or she really love me?

Did he or she understand that their behavior was hurting me?  Why didn’t they stop?

These are not questions that people normally have at the end of a relationship. The things that happened while we were in it were what led us to have those questions, and those things were horrible. Those things are psychologically abusive.

And when the relationship ends, there’s no closure because these questions linger.  

One of the main questions we may have is what is the narcissist doing now that the relationship is over because we are still trying to make sense of why the narcissist did the things that he or she did while they were in it. 

Ten Things Narcissists Do at the End of a Relationship

If you’ve come to the end of the relationship, you’ve already seen some of these things.

The good news is that this is the breakup pattern of a narcissist and you are not alone. That may be small comfort after the hell you’ve been through but sometimes receiving the validation that “it wasn’t you, it was them” can help move us forward in recovery after months or years of being told that we were the problem or if we changed something, we could have a dream relationship.

So at the end of a relationship, a narcissist may:

1. Ignore you and cut you off

The narcissist may abruptly ignore you as if you never meant anything to him or her, especially if he or she discarded you. Any attempts you make to get in contact may be met with complete silence.

The narcissist enjoys punishing you for whatever perceived transgressions you made, and, at those moments, you don’t exist and he or she wants to make sure you know.

2. Devalue you and blame you for why the relationship ended

The narcissist won’t take blame or even acknowledge wrongdoing in the relationship. It was all you, according to the narcissist. If you had only done “x” or “y” then the relationship would still be going strong.

If the narcissist hasn’t started one already, he or she may begin a smear campaign against you to try to make you look like the disordered one.

3. Use what happened to gain sympathy

As a part of that smear campaign, the narcissist may try to make himself or herself look like a victim.

This gives the narcissist additional attention. It also gives the narcissist a chance to exonerate himself or herself for any actions they took that might have otherwise looked questionable, such as leaving suddenly or finding someone else so soon.

4. Find a new partner immediately

Like, immediately.  The same day. The same hour even.

In fact, the truth is that the other person was probably already in the background. It could be an ex-partner or someone the narcissist has been involved with in some way just like he or she has been with you–coming and going in and out of that relationship too.

But at the end with you, however, someone, however, will step in as the new “chosen one.”

Why? The narcissist needs to feed the constant urge for what’s known as “narcissistic supply.”

5. Parade the new supply in front of you  

This goes beyond just finding the partner. That’s not unheard of for someone to do even when the relationship was a normal one. 

Only someone vindictive who knows they are trying to hurt you will parade that person in front of you when they know you are hurting.

There is a difference between a narcissist’s use of a “new supply” at the end of a relationship and the way non-disordered people may act when they get a new partner so soon.

Let’s examine two situations:

Relationship #1: Someone is dumped by their partner in a painful breakup and that person who was dumped finds a new partner and decides to send a message that they are okay without the relationship and isn’t shy about letting the “dumper” know about it. 

Relationship #2: Someone is abused by their partner in a relationship and is finally able to muster up the strength and resources to leave. Or the abusive partner discards the other in the most painful way possible. In either circumstance, the partner who was abused is suffering greatly over what happened during the course of the relationship and how it ended. The abusive partner finds a new partner and does everything possible to let the abused partner know about it, causing additional pain.

See the difference? 

6. Keep the new supply a secret

Wait– how is it that the narcissist parades a new supply in front of you but also keeps the supply a secret?  It’s not always the case that a narcissist will do both.  Sometimes, the narcissist will only choose one of these, depending on how the narcissist intends to manipulate both you and the other person. 

At other times in a confusing sequence of events, the narcissist may play a game of “now you see them, now you don’t” with the new supply.

This situation arises when the narcissist sees that at some moments, letting you know that the person is there is the best way to manipulate you and gain supply from you. At other times, the narcissist may pretend that the new supply is no longer in the picture or was a “mistake” because it’s the better way at that moment to extract what he or she wants.

Cruel, isn’t it? 

7. Claim you were “the one” but for some reason, you can’t be together

Instead of a smear campaign (or even at different points in the breakup process), the narcissist may begin to idealize you again from afar. This may be one of the most confusing of all the things that can happen, because it looks like a healthy thing someone might say when a relationship ends.

The problem is when you read between the lines, however, and examine the breakup itself, it doesn’t mesh with reality.

You’ll notice that this type of statement will not be compatible with the end of the relationship because relationships with narcissists almost always end badly in some way. How he or she treated you when you left (if you were the one who did) won’t jive with the statement. How he or she left (if that’s what happened) doesn’t make sense when compared with calling someone “the one.”  

Elinor Greenberg (2017), a psychologist who treats narcissists, claims that there are romantic narcissists who get caught up in the trappings of love and become extreme in their views of romantic love, however, they grow bored or find flaws and drop partners without much explanation. They may continue to romanticize the relationship once you are gone and the rose-colored glasses return.

This is not love.

8. Get revenge

Narcissists don’t like to lose control. If you were the one to leave, well, they’ve lost control of you. Even though you were perfectly justified in leaving, even though it was incredibly painful, the narcissist doesn’t care because he or she doesn’t take responsibility for how he or she behaved in the relationship.

Sometimes the revenge is replacing you and letting you know.

Other times, it’s more destructive and this is why partners must take precautions when they leave to ensure that they are safe.

9. Hoover

Yep. They often come back. Again and again and again. They’ll do this if they believe there is something to gain by doing so, or just to sniff around to see if you can still be manipulated in some way.

10. Keep tabs on you

The inquiring narcissist mind wants to know: 

Are you over them? Are you happy? Is there anything to gain by coming back around?

The only way they can find that out is to find ways to keep up with you. Narcissists don’t really ever “break up” with anyone, as claimed from out of the mouth of a narcissist himself. They will always keep exes on the back burner and they may return months or years down the road.

The Irrationality of How Narcissists Behave on Display

Do you notice how many of these things contradict one another?

The narcissist juggles stories with different people in his or her life to ensure he or she can maintain the correct persona with all the right people. To the new person, you may be the devil. By telling him or her how awful you are, the narcissist can get double points.

The new supply will not only bestow sympathy but try extra hard to show the narcissist he or she is nothing like you until the behavior the narcissist is getting away with is, by anyone’s standards, inexcusable. 

With friends, the narcissist may also play the game of claiming how horrible you are. You’re crazy or jealous, for instance. They leave out all of their abusive behavior, of course, and the fact that they immediately jumped into someone else’s arms (or bed) isn’t strange at all in light of how awful you are. 

Or they may say that you are their true love, but something is keeping you apart. If they know they have played this card with their friends in the past or their friends know how awful they have been, they may use this line (which maintaining a different story with the new person) to avoid a mismatch in their words and actions.

These narcissists may especially be more prone to hide their new partners. But all narcissists, even romantic narcissists, will have new partners. And most will return to hoover at some point. 

Narcissists like to keep their partners in the queue for when supply runs low. They often don’t ever “break up” with their partners in the traditional sense because they don’t think of us as having our own desires and free will. To them, we are always someone they can return to when they feel bored or low in attention–if they believe there is something to be gained.

So if these are the things the narcissist is doing at the end of a relationship, how can we know that a relationship is finished?

When we choose to cut off contact once and for all and never engage.

This means we must cease caring what they are doing when the relationship has come to an end–something which can be difficult to do, however, we must begin taking the steps in order to heal once and for all.

Assistance with Recovering from a Breakup with a Narcissist

I’m always on the lookout for new and high-quality resources for survivors. Are you struggling with how to leave your narcissist partner?  This course on the five steps you can take to exit can help. Are you having trouble recovering from the relationship even after it’s over? Try enrolling in this Webinar on getting started with your recovery so you can start to get off the emotional roller coaster or this one on using EFT Tapping to break the addiction to the narcissist. Lovefraud webinars on relationship abuse are presented by experts but also from the perspective of experience. Almost every instructor learned about the behavior of sociopaths in relationships the hard way. They’re affordable and offer practical information you can start using immediately. If you decide to try one, send me an email and let me know how it went!

Want more? Please take a moment to sign up to get all future articles delivered straight to your inbox.

Sources

Greenberg, Elinor. 2017. Narcissistic Love Patterns: The Romantic. Psychology Today. Accessed August 11, 2018 at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/understanding-narcissism/201705/narcissistic-love-patterns-the-romantic

The post What a Narcissist Does at the End of a Relationship appeared first on Fairy Tale Shadows.

Is your relationship with the narcissist ending, but then not really?

Are you still breaking up and then getting back together with the narcissist?

Does he or she come back around every so often?

Do you stay in touch with him or her, or keep the lines of communication open in the hopes that he or she will reach out?

Forget about the past for a minute, and how he or she used to treat you at the beginning of the relationship.

Let’s ignore in this article the messy business of trying to figure out whether he or she is a good person who has bad days or an evil person wearing a mask to get you to fall in line.

None of that matters right now.

All I want to talk about right now is you.

If you are in that grey area where you are still interacting the narcissist, whether you would call it a relationship or not, then you have five options. The truth of the matter is, these have always been your options, but you did not know it.

You see, as soon as a relationship with a narcissist begins, it is already ending. The most painful and difficult part of being in a relationship with a narcissist is accepting this truth, however, you cannot remain in denial about this.

You must choose one of these options, or eventually, it will choose you. 

How to End a Relationship with a Narcissist — Who Will Benefit?

You Can Continue This Same Pattern Indefinitely.

It’s the ending that stretches on and where nothing ever changes. Your entire life is on hold waiting for the narcissist to stop hurting you, for things to go back to the way they used to be.

I know you don’t want to be locked in this pattern. It hurts! It feels like you are slowly being tortured.

Let’s look at why it keeps happening. Something you do causes a narcissistic injury to your partner, probably something you couldn’t even foresee or likely it is something you had every right to expect. Whatever it is, suddenly you’re on the outs again.

Yet a few days later, he or she can’t live without you again, or perhaps you are desperate to find out what it is you did. All you want is to be treated with dignity and respect.

Why persist in this pattern? Why try to talk to an adult about what honesty and respect mean? Why keep playing detective and trying to unravel mysteries? Why does nothing ever make sense? Why let them pretend to be the victim at the very same time they victimize?

You absorb their poison and accept their blame. Yet you try to show them that all we want to do is be in a loving relationship and wonder why that isn’t enough– but you aren’t crazy for expecting that it should be.

It’s a game that can never be won. They will keep eroding you until there is nothing left if you let them. You keep playing hoping that someday it will stop. You can play out this pattern for months or years.

Unless they discard you, they’ll let you keep going as long as you have it in you.

You Can Fight Back.

When they demand too much, when their abuse is too obvious or they hurt you too much, you might feel like rising up.

No, maybe this time you won’t accept the blame. No, maybe you won’t let them tell you that asking for basic respect is starting an argument or being disrespectful, or maybe you will demand that they stop violating your privacy.

Maybe you have a right to be angry at how they are treating you! Maybe they deserve to feel some of your anger for a change.

And this keeps you from becoming dead inside.

But it usually ultimately leads back to Option #1. On top of it, you’ve given them a special treat. One of a narcissist’s favorite games is a ploy for sympathy and now you have given them some ammo they can take to their fan club to show them how horrible it is to be in a relationship with you because you’re so “angry and argumentative.”

You Can Go Dead Inside.

This happens to many people who stay in abusive relationships. They lose themselves completely, and I promise you that at some point if you keep choosing Option #1 over a long enough period of time, you have a strong chance of ending up here.

Even if you don’t give up and succumb to it on your own early just to keep the peace, slowly over time you’ll lose more pieces of yourself through identity erosion every time the narcissist returns and you concede another millimeter of one of your boundaries or a basic human right. 

If the narcissist doesn’t discard you before you end up here, they usually do once their partners get to this point because there is no supply left. Their partners no longer react to anything they do, because all of the life has gone out of them.

You no longer react to anything the narcissist does, however, it’s not by choice. You are no longer able to feel anything at all.

You Can Play Their Game.

No, not really. You can’t.

Maybe you want to try to keep them in your life but you’re finding their rules too hard to play by.

But if you try to pretend like you’re buying every word they say and just tell them what they want to hear and go out and do your own thing anyway, you’ll never be able to get on their level. Do you know why? Because narcissists do not have a conscience or emotional empathy and you do.

Narcissists can dish it out, but they can’t take it.

They don’t want “open” relationships, and they sure don’t want to be with people who are doing the same type of double-dealing that they are. It would be humiliating for them to be lied to and “cheated” on.

They expect total loyalty and fidelity but feel entitled to do whatever they want to do in relationships because they find a way to rationalize it. 

Why do you think they monitor and control their partners so much? They don’t view you as an individual with your own separate needs and desires. They expect you to be obedient, and how would you feel if you did do those things?  Shame and remorse do not limit their behavior, but they do ours.

Besides, what exactly would be the point of this? This is not even a real relationship. It would be two people pretending to be in one… instead of just the narcissist.

You Can Walk Away and Take Your Life Back.

You can go no-contact or grey rock At any time, you can end your suffering and start your life again.

Some part of you already knows you will have to do this. Some part of you doesn’t want to. Some part of you can’t see a new future for yourself yet.

And yet some part of you can’t continue the present as it is. You’ll have to step forward blindly, not yet knowing what the future holds but trusting it will be better than any of the other four possible relationship endings with a narcissist because the other four lead only to your demise.

If the Narcissist Discarded You

What if the narcissist has left you? Is that the same thing as leaving, as Option #5?

No. 

You did not actually make a conscious choice to leave.

If you have not done the mental work of blocking that door in your mind, the narcissist can always come and go as he or she pleases.  Even if the narcissist has left, you can never really know that the relationship is over until you go no-contact for yourself emotionally and decide it is over for yourself.

Narcissists do not ever really break up with you because they perceive you as their possession that they can come around to interact with when they feel like doing so. 

Because of this, it must be you who breaks up. It must be you who institutes no-contact.

You must decide to break up and “consciously intend it with full implications and an awareness of all that that entails in the present and future. It is a deliberate act that contains a solemn vow that one can never go back.

“Intending it” means any unpredictable and unknown action the narcissist takes now or later is irrelevant.”

When I say that it must be you who breaks up, I don’t mean that you need to call the narcissist on the phone and make a declaration, I mean that you need to make a choice in your own mind about what you want and what you intend going forward. You need to empower yourself and take control back.

If you have not actually left the narcissist in your heart and mind, even if you are not currently interacting with him or her, if you are still waiting for him or her to come back, then you have actually chosen Option #1.

Relationships with Narcissists End When You Decide to End Them

Look at the options again. Really look at them.

Which one will you choose today?

Which one will you choose tomorrow?

And the day after?

Each new day is a choice. Please choose wisely.

If you’d like to get a copy of the free toolkit that I developed to help go no contact, it is available at this link:

• Taking Your Life Back After a Relationship with a Narcissist: Free Recovery Toolkit!

The post The 5 Possible Ways Relationships with Narcissists Can End appeared first on Fairy Tale Shadows.

And what does every resource tell us about that death grip and how to deal with a narcissist?

• The narcissist is not going to release it.
• There are many forces that keep us there that we probably aren’t going to be able to completely understand while we’re actually in it.
• We have to break it ourselves and go no contact.

But what if you can’t? 

I’ve written a lot about being unable to go no contact and preparing psychologically. We all have experienced this, regardless of what stage of the relationship or recovery we’re in.

But what if you can’t physically go no contact because of practical reasons that extend beyond your internal frame of mind?

When You Can’t Go No Contact

It can feel like the narcissist’s ultimate checkmate–or at least temporarily.

We’re always told that we must go no contact to truly get control of our lives back, and yet there are situations where that’s just not possible. Here are a handful of reasons why you might not be able to break things off with a narcissist even if you may want to. 

1. You Work Together.

If you work with the narcissist, you may fear that he or she will try to sabotage you when you break it off. The idea of starting smear campaigns with people you know socially is bad enough. But the knowledge that they might try to destroy your career could be paralyzing.

You might need time to figure out how to get another job and the logistics of doing it without the narcissist knowing. There may even be a lot of soul-searching to do over whether you even want to do that or not if you truly love your job.

Then if getting another job in your field in the current economy or in the area in which you currently live would be difficult, you may feel the walls closing in.

2. You Live Together.

If you’ve started building a life together with the narcissist, whether you’re married or not, you can’t just walk out overnight. It takes time to figure out what to do next. Finding somewhere new to live takes time, not to mention working out the legal details if you own property together or both of you signed a lease.

3. You Don’t Have the Resources.

Perhaps you are completely dependent on the narcissist for survival. He or she has isolated you from almost everyone, and you don’t have financial resources. You may be ill or lack job skills and may feel unable to live on your own and have no one else to assist you.

4. You Have Children Together.

The narcissist may decide he or she doesn’t want to be a part of the children’s lives, however, as long as the court system has left his or her parental rights intact, he or she can always reappear at any time and the other partner has no control over it.

5. There Are Other Legal Reasons You Have to Be in Contact.

If the narcissist assaulted you and there are criminal proceedings or there are civil court issues, such as property division, or other legal reasons why the two of you need to maintain regular contact, this could potentially drag out for months or years.

You may not need to have direct contact, but true no contact, by definition, requires not interacting at all with the narcissist, including seeing the narcissist.

No contact is not possible as long as a legal tie exists.

6. The Narcissist Just Won’t Leave You Alone.

Maybe you have broken it off–even more than once. But the narcissist just won’t stop contacting you and let you go in peace. When the narcissist tries to hoover you but you have already gone no contact, then are you no contact or not? What do you do?

Often it’s a combined set of circumstances that narcissists leverage to make it difficult or impossible for us to go no contact in the traditional sense. They are able to use the law or our access to resources or the things we need to survive to torment us.

This can allow them to walk in and out as they please while keeping us off balance and provoking us into reacting as we get more and more desperate.

How to Deal with a Narcissist if You Can’t Go No Contact

Having children with the narcissist is the one reason on this list that the inability to go no contact may always remain permanent. If you have children with a narcissist, you will likely maintain some type of contact with him or her which makes no contact impossible.

Therefore, I will use this situation as the most extreme example of a situation where no contact is not feasible or won’t work. What I will describe about how to handle a narcissist in lieu of traditional no contact in this situation should also work for dealing with a narcissist in every other situation described above.

If you cannot go no contact, there is an alternative that you can use instead of no contact, known as “gray rock.”

This can be thought of as emotional no contact.

What is Gray Rock?

Gray rock is a mindset and a physical act, just as traditional no contact is.

First and foremost, it requires cutting off the narcissist mentally just as no contact does. We must make the decision in our minds that the relationship is over and there is no going back. We must prepare our minds and then close off the narcissist from having access to us emotionally and psychologically.

This is means that even though we must keep interacting with the narcissist, his or her actions will have no effect.

Yet the second part of “gray rock” differs from no contact because instead of then cutting off the narcissist physically (or ensuring the narcissist cannot contact you), it involves a modification in how you act with the narcissist.

Gray rock generally involves the following:

• flat affect
• monotone voice
• responding only when they reach out and only when it is necessary to respond (don’t reach out first unless it is unavoidable)
• short responses that provide no extraneous information
• neutral delivery
• making yourself appear less interesting in their presence so that they feel bored 
• providing them with no more attention than necessary (no prolonged eye contact, etc.)
• seeming busy and uninterested in what they say or do

Why Use Gray Rock to Deal with a Narcissist

Gray rock serves multiple purposes:

1. It trains the narcissist not to expect any narcissistic supply from you.
2. It avoids giving the narcissist any new information that can allow him or her to take advantage of you.
3. It helps to protect you from hoovering.
4. It protects you emotionally from harm as much as is feasible in situations where no contact is not possible.

What Gray Rock is Not

Gray rock is a tactic that you utilize to protect yourself from the narcissist’s controlling behavior. What that means is that it is not a response to the narcissist’s actions, nor is it done to try to elicit any response from the narcissist.

1. Gray rock is not disconnecting from your emotions.

If you feel disconnected from your emotions, that is likely a response to trauma. Gray rock is not a complete disconnection from how you feel. In fact, the opposite is true.

You should be in touch with how you feel as much as you possibly can so that you will be able to actively maintain gray rock in the face of any surprise actions the narcissist might try to get you to break it and react.

Easier said than done, I know. This note is just to make clear that gray rock is a deliberate withholding of emotion in order to avoid

2. Gray rock is not isolating yourself or withdrawing.

If you’re still in love with the narcissist, it may feel easier to put a wall up completely and shut everyone out in order to keep the narcissist out.

We can’t always control how our brains respond to trauma, and if this has happened, I hope that you’ll be gentle with yourself and work on getting back out on the world again while learning how to keep that barrier constant with the narcissist in your life.

3. Gray rock is not punishing the narcissist.

Gray rock is not about the narcissist, just as no contact is not about the narcissist.

When you go gray rock, you are doing it for yourself and your own peace of mind and not in any way to control anything the narcissist does. There should be no expectations that your actions will cause the narcissist to change or do anything different–except hopefully to someday stop doing things to trigger, bait or hoover you.

4. Gray rock is not manipulative or narcissistic of you.

I have heard people mention that they feel as if they are being cruel when they use gray rock, or that they feel guilty deliberately showing no emotion or interest in what the narcissist says or does.

I’ve even seen people begin to wonder if it makes them like the narcissist, who sometimes refused to talk and acted cold.

Using gray rock is not equivalent behavior to what the narcissist has done, however.

It’s all about motive. Narcissists stonewall, walk out, ignore, dismiss your feelings because they are not empathetic and don’t care about your feelings or want to hear what they view as criticism about themselves. They engage in this behavior to punish and control.

In contrast, you are implementing gray rock only as a last resort, as part of the break-up. It’s a reaction to the way the narcissist behaves to stand up for yourself and set boundaries.

For you, it’s healthy because it protects you from an unhealthy person and situation.

This is an example of a narcissist mind game, where he or she twists your healthy behavior into something harmful or equivalent to their damaging behavior.

Gray rock is a metaphorical form of no contact. It can be used when you are unable to go no contact immediately or to prepare yourself for full no contact, or in situations where traditional no contact is unlikely to ever be possible.

If you find yourself unable to escape the death grip of the narcissist, gray rock may cause the narcissist to release that grip on you.

Don’t forget to check out these resources:

• Taking Your Life Back After a Relationship With a Narcissist – Free Recovery Toolkit
• Comprehensive Narcissistic Abuse Dictionary
• The Best Resources for Narcissistic Abuse Recovery

The post What is Gray Rock? How to Deal with a Narcissist appeared first on Fairy Tale Shadows.

When you’re with a narcissist, you’re typically in limbo where either you leave and then they draw you back in once again, or they give you a silent treatment or discard you, leaving you baffled over what has just taken place.

Often they then return after a period of days or weeks to tell you that they can’t live without you. We need to be able to outsmart the narcissist in order to ever break out of this pattern that keeps us locked in invisible chains that weaken our ability to ever leave at all.

There is a reason you feel inexplicably tied to them.

It is clearly a relationship, although it is like no other you have ever experienced. You are bound to them in ways you can’t explain to anyone else.

Things would be perfect… if only they would stop psychologically and/or physically harming you, if only they would stop triangulating you with others, accusing you of cheating or of not loving them, then threatening to leave you for someone who will love them better. When did things get so confusing, so backward?

It is hope, both lost and found.

And yet it is despair.

It is slow death by a poisoned will to act.

All this because you already know the truth but they won’t let you have it. 

How Narcissists Trap You In the Abuse Cycle

In the narcissistic abuse cycle, there is a clear cycle of idealization, devaluation, discard, and hoovering that describes what happens in our relationships with them. 

It can be difficult to understand why a narcissist repeatedly progresses through these four stages until we begin to examine the larger pattern of our interactions with them and what they are trying to accomplish. [Read Idealization and Devaluation: Why Narcissists Flip]

Because narcissists split people into “good” and “bad” they are constantly fluctuating between feeling victimized and feeling emboldened by what other people do. 

They do not take into account the effect of their own actions because they feel entitled to do whatever they want to do to get their own needs met. If there is a problem, because they cannot accept that what they do might be wrong, the problem must exist because of what the partner is doing.

If they love how you treat them, they will idealize you.  If they perceive you have slighted them, they feel victimized by what you have done and will tear you down– and lack the emotional empathy to see how they have hurt you.

Then if you give in to what they want and work harder to show them how much you love them, you provide them with the ego boost they need to make them feel like they are in control once again and they may start to shower you with praise and love because you’ve put them in that position of strength.

But it’s not an equal relationship.  They don’t provide a foundation of respect, honesty and their “love” is conditional, based on your one-down position of not challenging them or demanding these things.

What they will never do is see how they are the problem, how they are the cause of this harmful and abusive dynamic.  They do not believe there is anything wrong with them.  They cannot bear to be criticized for any of their wrongs and view you as the problem for pointing out what they did. 

Ultimately, it is a self-reinforcing model from hell where the relationship deteriorates to the point to where you will be so ill there is little value left for them to extract, and as that happens, their abuse gets worse, which in turn breaks you down further. 

There is no happy ending.  

How to Outsmart a Narcissist

Recognizing this pattern is the first step to extricating ourselves from it, because spiraling downward is going to make it harder to both leave and recover.

In each of the four stages– idealize, devalue, discard, and hoover– they have woven a tapestry in which they can dominate you into providing them with what they need while giving as little in return as possible to get it from you. You are reacting to what the narcissist does in the way you have been conditioned to do so at each stage.

That means, however, that you have four chances to react differently. 

With even a few minor tweaks in what you do in one or more of the stages, you can start to pull some threads in this entire cycle until it falls apart. Although doing it once or twice may not get you where you need to go at first, each act is a step in the direction of no-contact and this is how you build up your strength to leave.  

This is how you outsmart a narcissist.

Idealization Phase

In the idealization phase, when they’ve put you back on the pedestal again, you know you have to jump through all those hoops to stay there.  What if you do the opposite of walking on eggshells?  

Example:  My ex texted me nonstop when I was out with my friends.  Once the devaluation period of the relationship started, if I took longer than an hour or so to respond, I was subjected to accusations and name-calling. 

Yet, at some point, I stopped caring how long it took to respond.  Why?  

Some part of me had started to see the pattern. No matter what I did, he was always going to find a reason to be upset with me. What difference did it make if he got upset about how long it took me to text back?  What was the worst he was going to do?  He’d already subjected me to his rage over it multiple times. I’d become numb to it, so I called his bluff.

You:  What if you tried something like this instead of trying to avoid the devaluation phase altogether or one of the predictable issues you know is coming? 

Realize that the devaluation is an inevitability.  Your partner will always find something to become threatened about or offended by. Avoiding the walk on eggshells, even if you start with just one or two actions, helps you to accept this fact that there is no different outcome. 

Devaluation Phase

So they’ve started in on the verbal abuse, the accusations, the gaslighting and the lies, the cheating.  You’re back to the same old pattern. 

Don’t try to hold back. They want you to remain silent but avoid the urge to give into the conditioning.  Keep calling them out.  The difference now is that you should try to do it from a more empowered position, if possible.

Examples:  “I don’t put up with that type of behavior anymore” and leave the room.  “Your attempt to paint me in a negative light is noted.”  “I know what you’re trying to do and it won’t work.”  Stay calm.

If you respond from a position of power, they have nothing to smear about you to others.   

What are they going to say– claim that you have done something you didn’t actually do by twisting your lack of reaction or avoidance of a real response to their baiting questions or statements as an “admission of guilt?”  (My ex was a master of this). 

If they do, note it silently to yourself. You’re sticking up for yourself and they’re not letting you have boundaries and self-respect.

Discard Phase

If they discard you or give you a silent treatment because you’re not putting up with their abuse or giving them the reaction they need to feel validated, be mindful of what that tells you.  If he or she loves you so much, wouldn’t they want you to feel respected and wouldn’t they want to be with you?

Don’t placate their twisted victimization.  Remember:  you were just sticking up for yourself.  You remained calm and asked to be respected.  Now they’re rejecting or ignoring you for it?  Let that sink in.

When they aren’t around, this is a period of self-reflection and self-care.  Use it and avoid reaching out to them.

Hoover Phase

If they come back, don’t excuse what they did and don’t forget.  Note this pattern to yourself and how it repeats.

Ask them about what they are doing and why.  Listen carefully for their answers.  Note the inconsistency– because there will be some and it likely won’t sit well.  If they want to come back so badly, why start arguments over ridiculous topics?  Why treat you so badly?  Pay attention.

The Narcissistic Abuse Dynamic Is Not Your Destiny

Repeat all of this as many time as it takes. Yes, it may be mixed in with moments of weakness where you give in to what they want as well.  But there will be times when you won’t.

Sometimes the pattern will look something like this:

The difference between you and your narcissist partner is that the narcissist is doomed to repeat the pattern they started with you.

You are not.  You can change it.

You can use the knowledge of exactly what is happening to outsmart the narcissist and stop this painful nightmare.  You can make different choices!

I know, because I did it, and I’m not special.  It isn’t easy, but the good news is that any choice to make one small change in what you do, in how you react or process what is happening, or even challenge how you think about what is happening makes it easier to make other changes.

When you start to do these things, you are doing is the following:

1. Making yourself such a nuisance to the narcissist that they will stay gone for longer periods of time, giving yourself time to reduce or eliminate your chemical addiction to the relationship.
2. Making yourself so uncomfortable with this pattern consciously that it is more uncomfortable for you to be in the relationship that any comfort they can offer you by their presence when they are there cannot overcome the anxiety and discomfort you feel by the relationship overall.

If You Want to Outsmart a Narcissist, Taking Small Steps is the Key 

This is why even starting with small actions helps. 

The actions accumulate and increase your ability to perform more of them and think about the relationship with a clearer frame of mind, ultimately leading to the strength you need to outsmart the narcissist and overpower the dynamic of the relationship entirely and get out.

You don’t have to start at or wait for the idealization stage to do it.  Start anywhere.  Start where you are now.

If you are in the devaluation stage with them, start reacting calmly or walking away to what they do.  If you are in the discard phase, stop trying to contact them.  Ponder why they discarded you and take note of how they trap you in this pattern.

I promise you that it may not happen right away, but the day will come that you will start to see them in a different light as you begin to develop new neural pathways in your brain in how you are thinking about the relationship and change the pattern in how you are responding to it.

Your partner will become less and less appealing.

One day, you will find your way to saying, “No more” and it will be your the truth, the one that was waiting for you all along, and they won’t be able to keep it from you anymore.

If you’d like to download the free toolkit with more ideas about how to leave the relationship or get over the narcissist, go here:

• Taking Your Life Back After a Relationship with a Narcissist – Free Recovery Toolkit!

The post How to Outsmart a Narcissist and Break Their Spell appeared first on Fairy Tale Shadows.