Narcissistic Abuse and Complicated Grief

Grief is heart-breaking.

Grief is about loss. What you had is now gone, and will never return.

I remember saying to my mother years ago, “It would have been better to believe he had been a good man and hold beautiful memories, rather than knowing what he was and having to end it with him.” I surmised if my relationship with him had been the former and I lost him, I could have grieved him, hopefully to completion.

I was shocked that my grief of loss, entangled with narcissistic abuse, was not subsiding. Time was not erasing or easing my feelings of loss. Like so many of us, along with the grief I had Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD) and many other breakdowns, in every area of my life imaginable.

Complicated grief is a big part of narcissistic abuse recovery. It’s massive. The grief feels irreconcilable and doesn’t diminish over time, like traditional grief is supposed to.

Let’s look at the stages of grief and why it becomes complicated with narcissistic abuse.

 

Grief Resolution – Step One: Allowing Yourself To Experience The Pain Of Your Loss

Healing requires feeling the pain and grief in order to move through it. It’s true – we don’t heal what we are not prepared to feel.

Here we have a massive issue.

The emotional grief of narcissistic abuse is complicated and extreme. Along with the loss of the person we loved and the life we thought we were living, are extreme traumas of betrayal, violation, invalidation and being emotionally abandoned and discarded. The losses are of our mental, emotional, physical, spiritual and usually financial wellbeing.

Additionally, whilst trying to grieve all of this, we experience truths erupting which are so brutal that we can barely breathe. Perhaps also cruel, senseless malicious attacks, such as abuse by proxy, threats, smearing or having a new supply pushed in our face.

Our feelings are so traumatised and in tatters that we may be barely able to eat, sleep and remain vertical. How can you hold such feelings to heal from them?

You may have spent months or years feeling heartbroken and devastated, yet the grief – no matter how many times it has engulfed you – is not clearing out. The bottom line is, as so many people report to me all the time, “I’m just not getting over it!” This is regardless of whether or not there are still any connections or ongoing business with the narcissist.

It is perplexing and heartbreaking.

What is happening here?

The trauma of the complicated grief is still there, wedged within your inner somatic self. Trying to reconcile the grief logically, and even with physical releases like crying (which may bring temporary relief) is not your true healing answer.

Like many of us, I was so crippled with grief, I tried doing therapy to talk it out. I worked with specific journalling, breathing into these parts of me and crying, screaming and beating pillows to try to release this internal dense energy.

It was just too big.

It wasn’t until I turned to the inner somatic tools – where I could feel, as well as RELEASE my internal grief – that I started shifting it up and out of my being.

Tools like EMDR, EFT, theta healing and kinesiology were giving me real relief. Yet something was missing because relief didn’t durably last. Quanta Freedom Healing was the only inner somatic tool that finally set me free from grief and burst me into Thriving.

If you are a Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program (NARP) Member, my suggestions to feel and heal complicated grief are:

Work with Module 1, setting the intention that you are targeting and shifting out your Complicated Grief, until you simply cannot feel any of the associated dense energy left in your body. You will note that your overwhelming thoughts start to melt away as a result.

Then use The Source Healing and Resolution Module, setting your intention that you are targeting your Complicated Grief.

Simply surrender into the healing and keep clearing and repeating, until you receive a 10/10 rating.

And/or use the Goal Setting Module, “All complicated grief has left me. I am embodying my birthright of grace, power, wellbeing, and joy in its place.”

Repeat the healing as often as required until you reach a 10/10 rating.

 

 

 

Grief Resolution – Step Two: Accepting The Reality Of Your Loss

By Quantumly addressing Step One, Step Two will start to naturally come on-line. Otherwise, what a tangled web we have here.

This is not just about “losing someone you loved” or “accepting I will never see them again”.

Narcissistic abuse creates many confusing, enmeshed and complicated aspects of grief – beyond the loss of the person you wanted them to be, and the life that you thought you would be having with them.

It involves the loss of ‘love’, meaning humanity itself, and the losing of your own innocence, heart and intentions for true love. It is the destruction of what love and relationships are meant to be, as well as the losses that you have suffered in relationship with this person, such as sanity, youth, health, optimism, resources, people you loved, working capacity, reputation and the ability to be even remotely ‘okay’ let alone ‘well’ in your life.

To cap it all off you feel like your very soul has been snatched away from you, leaving you like a tortured, empty husk.

Then there is the devastatingly confusing aspect of narcissists – they can be SO nice. When a narcissist is delightful you could not ask for a grander, funnier, more loving companion, who you shared incredible times, sights, and adventures with.

How do you reconcile losing a supposed ‘twin-flame’ or some significant other such as family member or friend who you loved to pieces, even though at times they tore you to pieces?

At first you can’t. This person was your world and your destroyer wrapped up in one.

It is too complex, too painful.

Yes, acceptance is KEY. But how do you accept all of this?

Certainly not with logical assessment, learning, researching or going over and over all the convoluted, insane, painful aspects in your own mind or with someone else.

It just doesn’t work – there is no acceptance point there. You can’t think and speak your way out of the unthinkable and unspeakable.

Most people don’t accept it for ages, and then there is the confusion “I must feel this way because it is real love” and “If I find away to fix this then the terrible pain may end.” But going back just intensifies the abuse.

Which leaves only one HEALTHY choice: accepting what happened in a deep embodied way to move through grief and regret to freedom and renewal.

There is only ONE way. You have to LET GO.

But you can’t just think, “I’m letting go.” Rather, this is about purging this person and everything they represented out of your Inner Being. If the trauma from them is still emotionally wedged within you, then you have to purge, detoxify and exorcise this person out of your very Being. Let go of them – everything that you are holding onto emotionally about them – the good, the bad, the ugly. Every. Single. Thing.

This is the Quantum way to let go – from deep within your Being. It is not a logical thing; it is a deeply emotional thing. It is also not a time thing; it is a process thing. A Quantum Healing thing. NARP does that.

One of the greatest advantages of doing the NARP shifts that I granted you in Step One is that grief is a core trauma. If you release deep grief, many of the other traumas such as anger, resentment, fear and injustice leave your Inner Being as well.

For NARPers the powerful work on ‘acceptance’ comes through Module 2 work – ‘Becoming Your Own Source’ – enabling you to break those toxic ties to a narcissist where you feel like you can’t let go and live on without this person. It breaks away all dependencies you were feeling, connecting you to this person.

Then Module 3 work brings home acceptance of what happened with Radical Forgiveness of Yourself and Life for what you went through. Work through the Module 3 Quanta Freedom Healing with the accompanying eBook.

Then you will be no longer trying to survive your wounds of grief, but you will move forward into acceptance, opening the space of feeling creative about your new life.

Let’s look at the next level of grief resolution.

 

Grief Resolution – Step Three: Creating A New Life Without This Person

It’s completely understandable that this is not a simple task after the destruction of narcissistic abuse. Traditionally it can take people a long time to even begin, and many never really do, despite attempting to.

Creating a new life without this person is very difficult when there is so much internal trauma poisoning your ability to move forward in life. Additionally narcissistic abuse feels like some sort of insane psychic virus, like the narcissist still lives on, under your skin, and is still in your head.

I was shocked by this. I’d always been strong and resourceful, and prided myself on being the type of person who could always get up again and go on. This time I was defeated. I wasn’t getting traction in anything I tried. I was battling with many health conditions such as C-PTSD, agoraphobia and fibromyalgia, which made it near impossible to even do basic self-care, let alone build a new life.

Step Three is step three for a reason – we simply are not well enough to engage in this step unless we have moved through Step One and Two first.

Most people try to put Step Three at Step One. I did too. I had been programmed to believe my value as a human lay within my outer accomplishments. Thankfully, via narcissistic abuse, I discovered the truth. My inside world had to become the most valuable.

As a result of Quantumly working through Step One and Two, and especially after the self-forgiveness work with Module 3, I found that I had space inside me to start creating my life. I became inspired to write and share articles about narcissistic abuse recovery with the world – long before this was my career. I also wanted to create my own beautiful small space for myself, plant a garden, eat healthily, start simple exercises and socialise in safe spaces.

Life was beginning again. It bore no resemblance to the life I had once lived, but it was beginning. I was healing. The obsession about him was gone. The pain of all the financial and other losses was melting away. I was starting to love and treasure simple things.

I accepted my reduced life and the value of my soul and stopped pushing myself to mega-achieve as I always had. This was new, as was accepting myself as being single. I had always previously thought being single meant I was a ‘failure’. Now I was a long way off a new relationship – I first wanted to deeply heal my relationship with myself.

I knew this ‘creating my life alone’ was the opportunity – for the first time in my life – to create a life that was soul gratifying and authentic to me. Even though I was just discovering what that meant. It was exciting, yet many fears came upon me in this stage.

“Who am I now?”

“What is life like with partnering myself in this way?”

“Who will I be without my old traumas, wounds, and co-dependent ways of trying to be in a relationship to define me?”

Every time a fear arose, I used the NARP Modules. The grief was gone, I had accepted my healing and Soul path and now I was working on other topics. If you follow my suggestions, you too will discover that your grief will release quickly.

With Quanta Freedom Healing, I went free from grief within weeks.

I find it interesting that within mainstream grief resolution, Step Three is considered a part of the resolution. Quantumly, I believe it is an expansion that happens as a result of the resolution which is done in Step One and Two. That was certainly my experience, as well as what I have seen with many other beautiful Thrivers in our wonderful Community.

 

Grief Resolution – Step Four: Having Other Relationships

Sadly, after narcissistic abuse and before healing, our picker of people can be very broken. It is easy to fall into relationships with other toxic people.

We may try to replace the emptiness and grief with others, and find ourselves in very degrading, painful and abusive situations again with very low vibrational people. They match our own levels of unhealed trauma, and are certainly NOT saviours for it.

Initially I tried this with catastrophic consequences. I see this often – people feeling like they just miss their ex even more, or falling for someone else who is an even bigger narcissist than the last.

What is for sure is that no one can take away our pain for us. If we are seeking that, then we are akin to a wounded child seeking a metaphoric adult, rather than a healthy partner to share power and a life with.

Even if we found ourselves with someone healthy, our own unhealed fears would cause us to act codependently, suspiciously, and unhealthily – which pushes healthy people away.

Or, we know that someone could be really good for us, yet we just can’t get attracted to good people. This is because we are still attracted to the type of people who are the deliverer of more of our unhealed internal traumas.

It’s no-one else’s job to heal us, and they can’t. It’s ours.

I am happy to say as a Thriver, my grief was long gone by the time I started having other real relationships. I found it really important to turn inwards to deeply heal myself, rather than try to have other people heal me. Yet there was the balance to be found, between healing and having very select safe people with which I spent time with as friends and confidants. They were like-minded, spiritual and deeply involved in self-development and inner healing. We had much in common.

This time in my life was beautiful, so special.

I didn’t want another intimate relationship to take the pain away, I wanted to mate my own soul, love being in my body, and love being in life, before I wanted to share a life with a special someone.

Plus there was a lot to learn and embody for real.

What DID a healthy intimate relationship look like?

How could I ascertain if someone was healthy?

Would I be able to speak up and honour myself this time?

Could I be strong enough to say, “No More!” and end things if needed?

Were there really higher-vibrational people out there who would be attracted to me?

I accepted this was all necessary development and required more inner healing, whilst creating, expanding and enjoying my life in the meantime.

This took me a few years to get right. There were a few relationships of ‘not the one’, but no more narcissists. Each relationship was a success and an improvement, with me getting much clearer about what I deserved, what I could receive, and who I could be in relationships.

Step Four, the traditional Step of having other relationships, wasn’t to help me overcome grief. It was about generating healthy relationships. Not from a place of emptiness and fear, as I had often tried to do in the past, but this time from a place of fullness, personal power and integrity.

I find with other Thrivers in our wonderful community, that this is preferable after being devastated by a narcissist . It means you can open your heart safely to love again, whilst looking after you, making wise, intuitive, powerful choices that serve you, and being full enough on this inside to have well placed “No”s opening you up to the “Yes”es of true, healthy love.

 

In Conclusion

Speaking of which I have another 6-week Quantum Dating Bootcamp, all about LOVE, coming up! If you want healthy, safe love manifestation after abuse, I’d love to help you get there by teaching you everything I know about this.

I hope today’s article makes sense.

Can you see why grief after narcissistic abuse is so complicated?

Do you believe there may be a more direct, powerful way to heal this Quantumly, just as I have?

If so, I recommend NARP.

How are you going with your grief after abuse?

If you are a NARPer have you targeted and released this yet, and if not are my suggestions helpful?

As always, I look forward to answering your comments and questions.