Tag: breaking up with a narcissist

We can’t leave a narcissist and go no contact until we go through five stages.  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...

There are ten things I’d like to put in a letter to the narcissist who destroyed me. These are things I never thought I would be able to say when our relationship first ended. Once upon a time, I thought the emotional hell of breaking up and going no-contact with a narcissist would scald me alive.  Then the intensity faded to a slow burn and now the entire relationship feels almost like a fever dream.   Was that actually me back there? Yes… and no. Oh, if he could see me now. Too bad for him — he never will. A...

By presenting to us what feels like two completely different people, we can become snared in the narcissist’s battle for control over our perception of reality. This is where cognitive dissonance begins. It is nothing less than mind control and it must be broken. Want to learn about the five stages of leaving a narcissist? See the end of this post for information about how to read a free preview of my book, which including the first chapter and the pathological love relationship checklist. What is Cognitive Dissonance? The idea behind cognitive dissonance is that people will feel so much anxiety...

Can I get real with you for a few minutes? Can we have a talk? 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...

To outsmart a narcissist, the first step is to become very aware of the trap they’ve put you in.    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...

One of the most difficult things about trying to explain relationships with narcissists is explaining even to ourselves why we don’t leave sooner. What we often have not recognized fully and do not give ourselves enough credit for is that leaving them isn’t just physical. Learning how to deal with a narcissist at the end of a relationship means we must leave them in our minds as well. In addition to all of the difficult steps we often have to take to prepare our physical environments for a different life without them, our mentalities must be prepared for the loss....