It is so normal to not be aware of the 7 mistakes you might be making in your narcissistic abuse recovery, because these are the things that you have been taught to do!
Today, I want to explain to you why they don’t work, and what does, in order to revolutionise your healing AWAY from failed recovery, into a true and Thriving one.
To get started let me start off with saying this … I wish recovery from abuse was easy. If it was, you would just be able to “realise” that this person is no good for you, and “make up your mind” to let go, move on and rebuild.
Like most of us, I couldn’t JUST do this either!
Before I begin to share with you the 7 mistakes that you might be making in your narcissistic abuse recovery, I want to grant you my love and TOTAL validation with this … None of these mistakes were your fault!
You have been given misinformation. You were told that you could think your way out of the severe trauma of narcissistic abuse. Or, perhaps you heard that recovery will take years, and you may never be able to ever fully rebuild your life, finances, health, trust and joy.
Please know, none of this is true!
Let’s go through what isn’t recovery, and what REAL recovery is, together.
Mistake Number 1 – Researching all you can about narcissists and narcissistic abuse
This really is the most common of the 7 mistakes you might be making in your narcissistic abuse recovery. Absolutely, in the beginning learning about narcissists is essential, yet if you are focused on “them” then it is impossible to heal “you”.
Continually learning about narcissists means trying to get better with information on top of the inner trauma that you have never got healing and relief from. This is like (as the late Debbie Ford said), “Trying to put ice-cream on top of poop”.
Healing you requires turning inwards to release, replace and reprogram your inner trauma. That is how you can and will get better.
Mistake Number 2 – Believing that talking it out will grant you healing
This is a false premise. Trying to release the trauma by “talking it out” actually re-cements it. It is training your subconscious emotional programs and brain neurons to be hardwired into the neuro nets of “victimisation”.
Healing doesn’t happen by going over and over it again and again, without a shift into the healing and improvement of that which has been damaged within you.
Countless people are still talking about their trauma, as well as suffering its progressively degenerating effects, years if not decades down the track, as a result of never doing the healing work within.
Mistake Number 3 – Using distractions to try to get better
Inner trauma is like housework, if it is not attended to it simply piles up.
It doesn’t matter how many ways you try to self-avoid the inner terrible feelings of abuse with whatever your distraction of choice is.
Maybe it’s food, or working hard, or alcohol and spending time with friends. You may even try to do lovely things for yourself to get over your symptoms of abuse, but are shocked to find out that they aren’t going away.
This is because they simply don’t, until you turn inwards to heal.
Mistake Number 4 – Addressing only the symptoms
It is common to suffer from the horrible effects of PTSD, fibromyalgia, adrenal malfunction, anxiety, depression and so much more after being narcissistically abused.
Addressing only the symptoms doesn’t heal these issues, it simply tries to numb out the effects without addressing the true cause. Often this is not just unsuccessful, it creates a host of other challenging side-effects to battle.
Myself and so many who turned inwards with Thriver Healing for shocking physical, emotional and mental breakdowns that we were told could never healed, discovered these conditions completely melted away.
Mistake Number 5 – Trying to confront and change the narcissist to get relief
Many people go through intense battles with narcissists. Things like property and custody, and of course, the emotional non-closure and injustices which feel like an unhealable soul rape.
I promise you this if you try to get your closure, finalisations, recovery and new life by holding the narcissist to account, this is sure-fire way to NOT get these things.
In the thousands of cases where I have helped people leave and get total closure, and their power back, I have seen this happen POWERFULLY with those who do the inner healing to get emotional relief FIRST.
It is Quantum Law – so within, so without. When you deeply change your Inner Being with dedicated Thriver Recovery, then how you show up, the results you have and everything in your world will change in ways that will stun, gratify and astound you – regardless of what the narcissist tries to do.
Mistake Number 6 – Trying to get other people to get the truth
I know it is devastating when key people in your life don’t believe you.
How can they when it’s impossible to comprehend what narcissistic abuse is like unless you have been through it! Also, the narcissist has smeared you – horrifically.
If you try to convince people of your innocence and how bad the narcissist is, from a place of your own horror and trauma, you look like the bad one.
However, if you let go, come deeply inside to heal your own persecution programs of what people think about you, and firmly anchor in, “It’s always been important what I think about myself”, you will discover the following phenomenon …
The smear campaigns melt away and you graduate into an incredible new reality of “people getting you”.
Again, it’s Quantum Law – so within, so without.
Mistake Number 7 – Trying to just get on with your life
I’m going to get a little deep with you regarding the last of the 7 mistakes you might be making in your narcissistic abuse recovery.
Toxic relationships grant an incredible spiritual evolution opportunity. The narcissist came into our lives pretending to be (or should be in the case of a parent) our source of love, approval, security and survival.
We believed this person did have or should have our best interests at heart, yet who they really are is the messenger of the parts of ourselves where we are not as yet healed up to be a self-loving, whole self-generative source, as an adult, in our own bodies.
If you try to just “get on with it” and push through like you always have, the feelings of emptiness, despair and lifelessness continue and intensify.
It is exhausting. It is beyond difficult. This shocked me as it does everyone!
The Soul lesson and necessity is this …
“Dear One, it is time to turn inside to heal and love yourself back to wholeness. Your soul is calling you to meet and emancipate yourself, take back your power and rise from this near-death experience into a new and better version of self.
One where you are directly sourcing Life Force through True Source (whatever your version of a Higher Power is) granting you access to situations and people who are true and healthy for you.”
I really want you to say this with your eyes closed, addressing this to your Inner Being. And breathe that statement deeply in, and take note of how it feels in your body.
I am so pleased that you are in this community, which provides healing for real from the inside out.
Which is WHY it works!
My Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program (NARP) is the Gold Standard to do your healing deeply inside. It has liberated many people from over 120 different countries into True Thriver Recoveries, regardless of how bad their situation was, who the narcissist was, or what they have lost.
To find out more about NARP, I’m inviting you to join me in my Free 3 Keys to Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse Workshop where you will gain clarity, relief and your sanity back.
I can’t wait to help you to not just survive, but to truly THRIVE!
Thank you for this article. It is very important to note. I had a lot of difficulty with points 6 and 7 during the beginning of my NARP healing journey. Wanting others to get the truth about what happened and just forcing yourself to get on with it gets tiring and painful. Much better to spend that energy going within.
xoxo
You are very welcome Quinton,
that is awesome that you have taken your power back within
Much love to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
Dear Melanie –
I get it. I have been working your programs for about 18 months. The narcs are no longer my reality, and my life has completely changed. I have support, trust, and validation from a variety of amazing sources, and I am definitely on a shifted level. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to have found you and I am doing what I can to spread the word to get others to benefit from you, too. Thank you. You have an amazing purpose and I am so grateful that you helped me find myself.
Much love,
Sandra
Hi Sandra,
I am so happy for you – that is really beautiful!
Thank you for spreading the word Dear Lady.
Thank you for being you and sharing your Light.
Love and blessings to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
Dear Melanie, thank you so much for your amazing love & help x.
I have read every you have spoken about but I keep getting triggered & I find it so hard to go no contact.😢I see so much good in this person. However I get little in return.
I have recommended your site to several friends & they seem to be coping ok.
Sending love to you and a big thank you for your guidance 🤗🥰
Hi Lynette,
it’s my pleasure. It is so hard to get past this when trauma bonded and still in the oh so persuasive cognitive dissonance. Please know that what you are going through is very nromal. Nearly all of us felt like this too.
Lynette you can take the step of the inner healing work – it is where you will get your clarity, relief and power.
Have you thought about starting to heal with NARP http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/narp and enlisting the support of the phenomenal NARP Community http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/member ?
It will and can help you so much.
Much love to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
About #1 above: I, myself, have always felt I benefited in my self-healing from learning about others’ abuse, abusers and my abuse and abusiveness in relation, et al, no less than anybody else. This is because there are so many unconscious imprints and patterns – or have been – on so many levels that have or once radically influenced me. Anything that has put me in touch has been an assist. But I also made it a point to look at such thing from within and, interestingly, I couldn’t be judgemental about them from there. And it continues to help me get in touch with “inner representations” and issues, trial and erroring my way to “transmuting” them together with new levels of contact, deliberately. It’s been a long learning of how to freely physically feel how I have held onto them, how this has or had patterned my inner and outer reality “contact” itself. Whether this has had to be me, of course is moot. I sooth myself, thinking I might have learned to do differently by different, but less karmically generous parents. It is an inward view that the ‘within’, as phathomlessly primary as it is, is one side of a functional, creative polarity with the ‘outer’. Similarly, as much as membership offers the benefit of receiving and sharing in harmony, each is also an individual with their own particular infinity of potentials for receiving, growing, sharing, by their own “separate” nature and acumen for what limits should or can even be forced on either side of ‘within’ and ‘without’. You’ve been sharing of your experiential learning and your research and your trial and error, vastly and exquisitely – as well as magestically, with amazing love. Usually all teachings from within self and from outer others seem to work explicitly together into all actualizations. Whether implied or expressed, to limit or overextend either is to limit or overextend the other, whether functionally and dysfunctionally — focusing and choosing are forms of limitation, so not to say that there isn’t a place for it. Practically, this developing of self and life looks rooted in my innate potentials of health and ability to heal, always from within — but somehow also always in relation to something outer. And, beyond paradox, peace and evolvement themselves seem to sit somewhere right in between the two — without a singe lateral move! It remains that in relation to things ‘outer’, or even to that point sitting right in between, the inner approach is fundamental to healing. And, I am consistently grateful for your focus on this; on every occasion of hindsight I feel more deeply the need for this consistent instruction. At least to my outer eyes, most things and people look so incredibly distracted away from it.
I am certainly “guilty“ of all seven! However since taking the NARP courses etc.
the severity of my “guilt” has diminished! Recovery from narcissistic abuse is very hard work! I’m willing to do the hard work because my life depends on it!
Thank you so much Melanie!
Peter@44. ❤️🙏🕊❤️🦋❤️🦋❤️
Hi Peter,
that’s awesome you are doing the inner work.
Amazing times ahead for you!
Mel 🙏💕💚
I was amazed at how much healing & internal power came to me from NARP. After being discarded by my narcissist in the most horrific way & being smeared repeatedly, I turned to the program & it truly saved me within a short time, better than years of therapy & dredging up my past. Thanks from the bottom of my heart Melanie, I’m truly thriving today.
Hi Kat,
I am so thrilled that NARP http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/narp has helped so much!
The great thing about the trauma with NARP – is it up and out and gone.
It’s not the “old regurgitation”
So much love to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
Hi Melanie
Thanks for the reminder… I have been part of the NARP programme since February.. and I have passed through all those stages … and healed a lot.
I do sometimes revisit videos mainly as a reminder and reinforcement that what happened was real and that I didn’t imagine it all.
I know that one day I will not need to do so as I continue to do the work on loving and caring for me .
Hi Sunroses,
I love that you are on your way to true freedom and empowerment.
Keep up the great work and many blessings and breakthroughs to you!
Mel 🙏💕💚
I am SO grateful I joined NARP with a gold membership. I am a slow learner. Very slow. I guess it’s been about 5 or 6 mos. since I joined; which is even after I gravitated towards a number of narc abuse video sites & read a book or two on “these types of people” (narcs & sociopaths). Yes, I did this for a few years before ever I joined NARP. (I was even trying to get a friend of mine to SEE that SHE was being narcissistically abused by both her father & her sister.) Lately though, I’ve just been focusing on MYSELF. It’s O.K. to let other people be the way they are. I can ‘choose’ to NOT get involved with straightening out THEIR mess. It’s not MY problem. Now, I really can see that ‘for me’ there really isn’t much to be gained by reading Narc Abuse Forums; (that’s not MY problem anymore either). NARP has provided me with ALL of the tools to support me as I walk though this life. It’s truly like I have a brand new “healthy” family that will be able to support & love me through all my future life on this planet. It is immensely comforting. I DO feel like I’ve come home. Finally. (After struggling, trying & fighting so hard, I’m at last learning how to sit with myself, accept myself & above all; finally, finally VALUE myself (even though that’s not what I was taught). Thank you Mel & the whole NARP Team! Mere words do not & cannot express my deep gratitude to all of you…
Hi Laurel,
awwww I’m so thrilled for you that you have come home to you!
It’s an honour for me and the beautiful team to walk this incredible journey with you.
Love and blessings to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
Hi Mel
I have been in Narc relationships for the whole of my life from parent to partner. I am now no contact with ex partners, and know there is life after abuse. It is time to heal the inner me and thrive, thank you for your help in my journey, it’s been a long road.
This is a great reminder at a Christmas season this year which has already taken so much life out of so many of us! I do a great job with most of the narcissist behaviors and breaking free, and much of the validation for what I was doing was found here in Melanie’s articles. But, at Christmas, I do try to send one card and gift to each immediate family member, all of whom have ignored and gaslit me for the last few years because I wouldn’t bend to our narcissistic parents and especially my Mom who invalidates us all and tries to manipulate, lie, stir up trouble, and make painful experiences and drama abound. I never knew what was going on, why I wasn’t close to my parents, but I realized this manipulation was narcissism and once I did, it was a breakthrough! I had already stepped back a good bit, but when my Mom (and now Dad) realized I wasn’t going to fall for any more apologies, repentant letters, and I was going to live my fulfilling, happy life and not do what they want to try and win the elusive approval, they started a new and more aggressive campaign to get me to fold, to try to come back into the family circle of drama and abuse…and I never fell for it. I appreciate being able to read articles here for my strength. I am doing the right thing. And, at Christmastime, we all need assurance that although messages are everywhere about “family is everything”, we can all find our families in other friends, friends-as-family relationships, and count our blessings that way! I have an occasional temptation to go looking on the old email account I keep there which is only for family messages from the siblings who go along with this narcissistic behavior AND for my parents…and I go to it less and less now to see if there’s a message. I had already cut out these hateful people, thankfully, and I did that even before I found Melanie’s amazing website and articles. But, this is so helpful, being reminded that what we crave is something healthy, something “normal”, and that cannot be found in a narcissist’s view of love–they don’t know how to love, and finding joy in our lives won’t be found looking back at what we did not and cannot ever get from those sources of toxic people–even if those people are our parents! I am no victim, but it’s good to be reminded of all of this, at the holidays.
“Many people go through intense battles with narcissists. Things like property and custody, and of course, the emotional non-closure and injustices which feel like an unhealable soul rape.”
Thank you for putting that into words. That is exactly how it feels. It is so overwhelming to heal from all directions at the same time. To then be offered apple pie – as if nothing ever happened – during a custody exchange. It is a very dissociating experience.
I’m very much looking forward to the program you offer. Thank you for understanding the inexplicable, complex trauma this kind of situation creates. People often turn to me for help, I’ve been through a lot and have survived, and enjoy helping. But lately I feel I’m unable to even help myself out of this tar pit – and I just wiggle myself in deeper at every attempt. 💜
I’m still struggling even with NARP, I just can’t seem to get relief. I asked my narc of 24 years to leave 3 months ago. He did and we’ve had very little contact. I felt I was doing better at beginning and worse now mentally. I used food and alcohol to survive when he was here – and am still using it now. It doesn’t make me feel better, I can’t get the memories of the good person he was to stop – my mind keeps flashing them to me….I had Lyme disease years back and he was there for me always and I couldn’t work for 2 years – he supported me every step. Flash forward to the last 5 years- he stayed out at least one night a week no contact at all and then would come home and tell me he can’t come home to this and that I didn’t deserve to know where he was. As Covid was around I got petrified and made him go. Then he ended up with the virus. Anyway I feel lost confused and troubled and can’t seem to get straight as to WHY I can’t get the healing all speak of. I’m frustrated with myself as I know he’s fine – taking walks long drives while I can hardly do laundry or get dressed sometimes. I pray a A LOT for help and Melanie you’ve been so helpful your info page and NARP. But I’m struggling so much…help.
Dear Anne,
Please be gentle to yourself. 24 years is a very long time and 3 months no time at all. Lyme disease took 2 years of your life, even after the bacterial infection was gone, and maybe changed you forever with residual symptoms, vulnerabilities, memories, and lessons. You and your narc had a much longer, intertwined life together – one that is complicated and not simply wiped clean by antibiotics. Everything you so authentically describe, though very hard, also sounds very normal. Trust yourself. Many share your journey and resonate with your struggle. Thank you so much for sharing. I wish you blessings and sweet moments in the new year ❤
Kate
Hi Anne,
Dear Lady, please come into the NARP Member’s Forum http://www.melanietoniaevans.com/member
That is where we can support you and help you work through this the most
Sending love and healing
Mel 🙏💕💚
What do you do when you still live so close to the person? We were living together when I found out she was cheating on me. The wife of the guy she was cheating with reached out to me with recorded phone calls. But somehow after everything that she did to me I miss her so much, and I find myself passing by what used to be our apartment. I want to reach out so bad but I have not, and what hurts even more is that she hasn’t either. And what makes matters worse is that her ex-husband lives in the area as well and share custody with the kids, and now I’ve seen her car there multiple times. I just feel like I’m going insane and I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t even know if she was a narcissist or what, all I know is that I should be thankful that it’s over but all I do is paying for her every single day, and I hate every day more and more.
Pining not paying.