Somewhere along the way in a relationship with a narcissist you will find you have been stripped of your ability to look after yourself. Your power has been usurped, you doubt your decisions and you are totally dependant on this person.
Further along the way you’ll realize they have started monopolizing your thinking to the point where you find yourself acquiescing at every turn so as to keep the peace in this increasingly toxic relationship.
And then one day you will notice how this person has managed to totally erode your sanity … you’ll be asking yourself … “Am I mad? Am I deranged? Am I wrong?”
In today’s Thriver TV episode I want to share with you how this downward spiral evolves and tell you how to rebuild and heal from this damaged state so you can take your soul, sanity and life back because YOU deserve better.
Video Transcript
In today’s episode, I want to share with you these details. How a narcissist initially takes away your power, the ways a narcissist makes you doubt your decisions, how the eroding of your sanity and your emotions take place, and, so importantly, how to rebuild and heal from this. All right, let’s get started.
Rendering You Dependent
It starts with a narcissist rendering you dependent, and it can be really insidious. Narcissists slip through the cracks. When they come into your life, they work out what is missing, what you need, or where you’re lacking power.
In my instance, I used to be a person who didn’t like to lay boundaries. I used to be a people pleaser. I was too scared of making people unhappy with me or not loving me. When the narcissist came into my life, and he seemed really confident and powerful, and he spoke up, this was just one of the many things that I wanted in my life.
The other thing that a narcissist will do is they’ll win you over very, very quickly. They’ll enmesh with you. They can get a stake in your life. It’s like they might join you in a business endeavour, or they may start cooking dinner for you every night. Or maybe they start giving you money and they start paying for everything.
What this is doing, even though it feels really nice and really good, and like you’re really being cared for and you’re really loved, it’s stripping you of your ability to look after yourself.
Maybe that’s something that, when you are on your own, you felt like, “I can’t really have a great life. I can’t really look after me.” Then this person comes along, and all of a sudden you’ve got all of these activities, or these friendships, or you’ve got all of these things in your life that make you feel alive. You may feel like, “If I don’t have this person, I’m not going to have these things. I don’t have a life.” You can see how it’s really important that we do need to feel whole and happy.
Monopolizes Your Thinking
Now, what happens is, a narcissist, from that point, after they can come into your life, and, either unconsciously or consciously, you feel really dependent on this person. You can’t imagine life without them, or you can’t imagine making it without them. Then this person is going to start monopolizing your thinking. How you think. They are going to start brokering deals for their benefit.
It’s going to feel off. They’re going to say things or want things, and it’s like, “That doesn’t quite feel right.” But then you feel that they’re getting angry or they’re pulling away if you don’t agree with them, or they’re getting anxious. Then you find yourself acquiescing. You find yourself keeping the peace.
At first it’s really subtle. This person is wanting power and control over you and your resources. Then, as time goes on, it gets awful for you. Shocking. I went through this, and I know that you went through this.
When you start speaking up or you try to pull back some power, rights, and ground your needs, you’re going to be told you’re wrong. Your ideas about what you want for you, or your independence, you may be told, “You’re selfish.” That you don’t love this person. That you’re not considerate. That they would only be in a relationship with somebody who was A, B, C, and D, and you’re not A, B, C, and D.
You’re going to start getting accused of being uncaring, unloving, and selfish, whatever it is, and facts are twisted and turned. You’re getting gaslighted. You could be being lied to, point blank.
They may say things to you like, “I spoke to So-and-So today, and they’ve told me things about you,” or, “When I talk to the guys or the girls at work, they say, ‘My partner isn’t like that. My partner … ‘” You’re going to start feeling like you’re off-centre, that you’re wrong. Something’s not right, but you can’t put your finger on it. It’s so confusing.
Your Self-Esteem Is Attacked
Then what happens? This is, you’re starting to question your thinking at this stage. Then your self- esteem is going to get attacked.
At the start, the narcissist was working out what you wanted to feel more whole. It could have been attention. It could have been sex. It could have been somebody listening to you. It could have been somebody who isn’t jealous, who gives you space.
All of those things at the start were so attractive. Now they’re going to be spun. What was offered is withdrawn. They’re going to start soul assaulting you. If you were connected to this person because you felt heard, and listened to, and held, you’re going to start getting the exact opposite. If you got with this person because they weren’t jealous, they weren’t accusatory, they gave you space, now they’re going to start questioning you and accusing you of things.
What was becomes undone really badly. You find, and the more you try to stand up for your rights, the more you’re going to be accused, belittled, and degraded.
Now you feel like you’re losing your mind, but what’s really happening is you’re losing your centre. You’re losing your compass. You’re losing your self esteem. You start to question yourself. “Am I mad? Am I deranged? Am I wrong?” The narcissist will tell you that you are.
You’d be isolated at this point, because it’s very hard to be around other people when you’re so stripped of self and you’re so disjointed, and nobody can understand what you’re going through. Maybe you’re trying to keep up the image that, “I’m in this great, wonderful relationship,” because maybe you’ve struggled in relationships before. You thought this was the one. Everybody was a little bit suspect. They didn’t quite know whether you had it right. You want to pretend things are right, but you know it’s not right. You’re going through so much shame, and pain, and confusion.
Then maybe you’re turning to things to try to numb out the pain, which could be things like alcohol or medication. Maybe the narcissist has said to you, “You need antidepressants.” Or maybe you’re excessively shopping, or you’re eating, or you’re doing whatever it is to try to hold it together, but that’s taking your self-esteem apart even more.
It’s horrible. I’ve been there. I remember, in those really critical end-game stages with a narcissist, I was so hooked and addicted that anything from him was like me sniffing up the crumbs of a drug off the floor. I was so addicted and hooked, and so thought that I was worthless and worth nothing.
I’d even got to the point I thought I deserved the way I was treated because I was just so hopeless, useless, and pathetic. I know from the bottom of my heart how shocking and terrible this can feel.
How To Take Your Soul, Sanity And Life Back
However, I want you to know that there is a way to take your soul, your sanity, and your life back. The illusion has been in all of this that you feel like you are not good enough for anyone or anything anymore, that you don’t deserve any better. But what has been necessary all along if you turn inwards to love and heal yourself back to wholeness, is you being good enough for you.
As adults, healing up from the wounded child within is not about getting our wholeness, love, and safety from the outside. The necessary inner work is to pull away from people hurting you, and learn how to get your wholeness, your love, and your safety between you and you and your creator, which is all of life. I know that this is so hard to fathom when you are this low, yet it is the only thing to do.
Initially I was so low, and I was trying everything. I was researching when I realized that he was a narcissist. I was going to therapists. I was getting healings. I was doing anything and everything that you could imagine, but the thing is, all of those things were about trying to manage this incredible breakdown trauma that I was in.
What I did discover was a way to actually be able to turn inward, self-partner, and for real heal myself back to wholeness so that I was never again dependent on a narcissist. I was connected to true source as a source to myself, empowered enough to say, “Enough. No more.”
I can now create my own amazing life and connect to healthy people, because that’s how we have to be. We have to be at that level to not fall into that first trap of having a dependency being created with somebody who does not have our best interests at heart.
After discovering how to do that, in the last 10 plus years I’ve been able to show hundreds of thousands of people all around the globe how to be able to do that – to partner with yourself, to get up and out of this and into your true life.
Conclusion
I really want you to know that if this is the first time that you’ve come across my information, that we have an incredible community and support network, and so many resources that can really, really help you get up and through this, and heal in ways that you couldn’t have known.
I hope that this has helped explain to you the stages as to how you can fall so low, where you feel like there is no way out of this, but I promise you that there is. I really want you to know that the best way to come back from being so low is to start doing powerful healing work directly in your body.
The best way I know how to achieve that is with Quanta Freedom Healing, which is the main healing system in NARP.
For you to be able to feel this and experience it, I’d love you to come into my Three Keys to Heal From Narcissistic Abuse free webinar, where you get to experience this level of healing for yourself. It’s going to grant you much needed clarity and relief, and give you some power back. You can join in by clicking the link at the top right of this video.
I really hope this has helped. Share this video with somebody if you know that they need to hear this information as well. I look forward to answering your comments and questions below.
Melanie
I am so grateful for you and your tireless work for targets of narcissists in helping them breathe again.
What you share here is no exaggeration. I’m grateful to have found you because I don’t know anyone else on the planet don’t this recovery work at the spiritual instantaneous level that you facilitate.
It is amazing that you are every passionate and articulate about this unspeakably horrible experience. You find words for us when all is failing us… Especially words to express the confusion.
I’m writing to thank you for the energy and love you put out for the world to find a path to safety and sanity.
I can not say enough to thank you.
May your life be blessed beyond measure.
Love,
Iris
Darling Iris,
so lovely to hear from you.
We must catch up for a chat about Source / God and this time we are living in.
Much love hun
Mel 🙏💕💚
Hi Melanie,
How true all of this is. I remember saying to my son I was far too damaged to have another relationship after 42 years of terror from his father and then a few months later the “nicest” man came into my life.
At this stage of course I was still in the grip of Narc Abuse although I had cleansed a lot out the hidden stuff was still dong cartwheels all the time, I looked great on the outside… in control but on the inside I was a total mess.
The only difference with this man was he was Covert as opposed to the Overt one before him, lucky me however he died 6 years after I had met him and was already on my toss him out list as I was a bit stronger by then.
I had spent many multiple thousands in trying to get myself healed and got most of the way but all this “stuff” kept coming back to haunt me but I wasn’t doing so bad apart from the fact I was almost bankrupt and had to go on a government pension making my life even more soul destroying.
However I found Melanie I have no idea except I know I clicked a link and there she was and that was the day the rubbish down at my toes started to pry loose and although for the last few months there’s been such a lot of interference with my doing my NARP Work, my Autistic grandie lives with me and hasn’t been coping with lockdown, I’m hoping in he next few weeks when things may return to some kind of normal life I can commit to it sincerely again.
I had done most of the work before I found this site but that childhood stuff I hadn’t addressed was really wreaking havoc at the slightest thing in my life and I thought that was the way t would be forever… no way, Melanie came along and since then what was keeping me feeling I was too ????? has slowly moved up and out from my toes but of course in my late 70’s there’s a ton of it to be released and slowly but surely it will be.
Unfortunately I don’t think I have enough time or at the moment energy to recoup the lost money from all the Self Help and trying to make a successful business online so I will have to stay on the government handout however I am happy within myself and my own self respect is soaring by the day and life is quite settled and I feel will get even better particularly if I think to buy a Lotto/Lottery ticket and it wins… lol!
I have so much to thank Melanie for like so many of us on here, but i feel the main one is to be able to get up each day and face what it brings without trepidation and that s so freeing.
Hi Maureen,
thank you beautiful lady for your inspirational post.
I LOVE that you are shedding trauma from within, and I just know that you will be blessed beyond measure as a result of doing this.
You are so right – the inner peace and happiness is the gold, and everything else (that does come) is a bonus from there.
So MUCH love and blessings to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
Dear Mel,
Once again, THANK YOU!! Thank you for who you are, for what you stand for, and for all that you do to bless and help and serve others! Thanks in large part to your work, I have been out of my narcissistic marriage for a few years and have been successful at no contact. Overall I am doing well. So well, in fact, that I don’t often feel the need study or research toxic relationship patterns, and I go for long periods of time just living my life.
However, recently some insecurities have popped up, and today I found myself cruising through your latest videos for comfort…and the feeling of security returned! I LOVE your FAITH and ASSURANCE of a brighter future when we do the inner work and reach out to our Higher Power. I feel like God led me back to you today, and because of Him, and the divine mission that you fulfill, PEACE has returned. THANK YOU!!!
Much love,
Shanni
Hi Shanni,
I’m so happy that today’s message was able to deliver you home to love and peace again.
Many continued blessings to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
The narcissist will figure out what the target needs in order for the target to become dependent on the narcissist and then provide it. The narcissist then withdraws what it provided in order to control the target. After withdrawal, the narcissist will then provide what they target needed to somebody else right in front of the target to test the target’s emotional reaction so the narcissist will know how badly the need is and this begins the triangulation game. Once the target’s energy has been drained, the other person who was used to test the target becomes the new target, because by then, the narcissist has figured out what that person’s need is and the game continues and the narcissist continues to use up people’s energy like fuel and then toss them away like an empty fuel can.
Your advice is excellent in any situation. Even if you’re not involved with a narcissist.
Hi Doris,
it really is true – Thriving is Thriving and Self-Partnering brings success in every area of life!
Much love to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
HI Mel! This is spot on as usual. Thank you for all that you do. A year ago, almost to the day, I finally accepted that the man I was in love with and living with was likely a narcissist and that I had to move out and get away from this toxic relationship. What you described above was exactly the relationship I had! The romantic beginning, then the confusing accusations, the frustrating arguments that went round and round and nowhere without any resolution. What seemed to be a loving, caring partner who could openly listen to my feelings and needs in the relationship became, practically overnight, my critic- judge, jury and executioner! Gas-lighting, name-calling, subtle insults, withholding sex, attention, and affection. The devaluation was so confusing and painful. My self-esteem hit the floor- the lowest I’d ever felt in a relationship. Sleeping alone while he ‘accidentally’ would pass out on the sofa every night, him telling me I’m boring and he didn’t want to listen to me anymore, him talking for HOURS on end about his past ‘glory days’, and me patiently waiting and waiting and waiting for the man I fell in love with to return… He never did and by the time he started hoovering me, I was well-aware of what he truly was and I didn’t fall for it! Yay me! I’ve done some NARP healings and they really do work. I think I need to do more and more often because lately, I’ve been missing him… I guess I needed the reality check today. But oh do I have great news!!! I went out on an informal spontaneous ‘date’ with a neighbor last week- and he was totally love-bombing me and idealizing me and I saw it clear as day!! He’s a narcissist!! So I started really paying attention to his words and behaviour with curiosity and I am absolutely sure of it! He kept telling me what a gentleman he was and yet when I told him I wasn’t comfortable with him talking about sex or touching me, he continued his conversation and subtle advances, crashing my boundaries right out of the gate! I ended it and told him I didn’t even want to be friends. I said it clearly and directly with no emotion- just that “I can see you want a physical or romantic relationship and I do not. It wouldn’t be fair to either of us to try to be friends as we want different things.” It felt SO good, but it also made me realize that I am energetically still attracting these types, so I need to do more healing. The next time I meet someone like this (and I have no plans to) but if I do, I hope that I will be less open/trusting and more discerning BEFORE I agree to go for an informal drink. I am learning boundaries and discernment and it feels FAN_TAST_IC!!! THANK YOU, Mel! With your program and the healing I have done with it so far, I can see that I am actually healing enough to love myself enough to say “no” when I want to or need to. HUGE hugs from Canada! 🙂
Hi Melissa,
how AWESOME that could see it, honour you and you were excited about this!
Such a beautiful graduation!
You are sooooo on your way to amazing love, because you are already BEING it!
Please know how welcome you are Melissa and big hugs to you too
Much love to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
Life became “meaningless” long ago, I see now – when I was designated (I’ll leave the words out) meaningless (meaning, in effect, inconsequential on all levels except in the direction of being a loss, and of creating loss whichever way I turned. Just misses the mark to feeling like I deserve better.). And my emotional logic concurred with this early on, I think even before childhood, because if I got this message from my main lifeline, meaning from my “parents” (from which even my meaningfulness “comes”), then there was no way I could succeed at anything, coming from such a personal deficit. In retrospect, I didn’t have much of a criminal imagination to apply to it – I was also deprived of the better part of those genes. In this respect it was fortunate for my per-adolescent active self-expression that I was parentally mentored with some criminal moves from about 10 years of age, acting as an accessory to some petty crimes. In fact I now see that a background belief of mine has been to both: continually fight meaninglessness in my life by straining to create what I could (only limitedly) know to be of actual value, as well as to learn to “live” meaninglessnessly (there are many models to draw from in both ways in our culture). I did so in a tragi-romantic fashion (having tragi-romantically interpreted my life up to pre-adolescence as being tragi-romantic), and I even learned to create parasitic losses in my nearby world, in certain ways by which I would not be able to see the effects of it. I was not very premeditative or intentional in these terms -, mostly impulsive, “acting out” what I learned in my earlier training (instincual levels still receptive). As a teenager I used this to inconsequently (I told myslef) discharge meaningless consequence into the world , in ways that also unintentionally involved me as both, host and parasite – sacrifice and sacrificer – which I also did not foresee. A meaningless exchange to create mock meaning. To know that: if not value, I could create imperceptible losses for perhaps dozens of faceless generic others, who I did however intuit and roughly calculate would never know or notice anything. (At least it didn’t occur to me to target other people individually, I’m saying to myself.) I feel like I’m sharing this for myself, as well as against myself, via my masochistically moral self. This even looks like a hidden way I’ve found to give meaninglessness some inner substance, in order to put something inside the punctured void that it is. I think I unconsciously deep-dive, looking for it somewhere in between those two actions. Doing this for-against-self so as to be sustainably meaningfully meaningless. (If this is making sense to you . . . I don’t know what to say!) Ridiculous, foolish, and yet it nods yes,real . . . Whichever, it is also obviously insane – but I can at least see it – so I’ve achieved conscious insanity? It helps to have explored, and even written it for others. My first intent was to display how “meaninglessness” can be a sustained background field of belief, subconsciously created by the devaluation of identity — to become conscious of and eventually gently release it, which is what it really wants, despite my suppressed fears have been to do so. When this “belief field” showed up, I felt it, located it, saw it, and now became more aware of it through this video. For me, it was rendered deep in youth, then much later recreated (as old trauma sometimes resurfaces, still trying to complete its resolution). It was recreated in (only?) two (but long) relationships, one of which is current (professional, not romantic) and I have been deliberately using it as the tailor-made catalyst for just this kind of healing. A good book title could be: How To Use A Narst Relationship To Heal and Grow Up – At the Same Time Unnoticeably Pulling The Plug On It. Melanie, continuing thanks for the tools you offer to go further.
Addendum: What may not have quite come across above is the felt epiphany that oneself is the meaning, and the perceiver/projector of meaning, and the source or giver of meaning. Meaning is not just a concept, although we can turn it into a concept or a definition that one can put on oneself, instead of becoming aware that one is that and emanates that simply by already being it – even if subconsciously. It is the loss of oneself-as-meaningful (thru subconscious/conscious narcissistic abuse and dependency) that one then projects out the loss or absence of meaning in life or reality. When that happens enough, only the narcissistic perpetrator seems to remain as anything meaningful in one’s life, even if it is a negative meaning that one is projecting as meaningful. Through self-healing, it is the opening up of and the claiming of space for the awareness of the reality that the regaining of one’s own physically rooted sense of oneself as being naturally and intrinsically meaningful, that restores the sense of natural, intrinsic meaningfulness in life and reality, and in others’ life and reality — and therefore the natural, intrinsic respect in and for oneself, others and reality.
Hi, there beautiful! How is it down under. I left my family for Lent in 2019 & the narcademon a day or so before Mother’s Day 2020. We aren’t talking since, but he’s spying & stalking me. He is also recruiting other nacissist. Also, he has caused financial abuse. So now, I write for two different sites & loving it. There was attempted arson & a maintainance man tried to blame me, but I was in a hospital, at that time & heads are going to roll. I’m almost done a case to the Comsumer’s Financial Protection Bureau, all 300 pages. Since I have been badly trashed, I’m redoing my apt. Organizing & redoing my office. I now contribute writing articles for two sites & I love it. I have a man that I’m friends with & slowing finding nice people. Stood up to four narcissist & I mean business. Thanks, too all you wondrful coaches, you really did help me face my reality!
Hi Carol,
it is very challenging hun, but the light will win!
I’m so glad that you have stood up and are claiming your power.
Much love to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
Yes, unfortunately I ran into such a person and really my life at that moment very quickly stopped. I stopped going my own way and it greatly affected my appearance, my mental and physical health. For a year I found the strength to leave such a person and really got very great pleasure from life.
I am so pleased for you Skarlett that you are out.
Much love to you
Mel 🙏💕💚
Hi Melanie,
This is exactly how my ex-husband hooked me in. I was so ripe for the picking at the time that I played right into his hand. Today, I see him doing the same thing to my 12 year old daughter and I’m powerless to do anything about it. He’s confusing and manipulating her so much that she is lost. How can I help her?
Hi FreeMyDaughter,
I want you to know with all of my heart that the best way that you can help her is to heal you.
If you google my name plus “help our children’ you will see my numerous resources that explain this in deep detail.
I hope that this can help you and her
Much love to you both
Mel 🙏💕💚
This was my experience the exact thing (sex) that he initially gave me was after about six months withdrawn. He knows want you want and how to manipulate you now and you have had the drug and the high. You become this toy that they pick up and play with at times then get tired of and discard. It is the opposite of love. The “off” part is there and I first I didn’t want to accept it. The healing is a process and even three years later these video messages keep me on my true path. Melanie is an angel in my book.
Hi Peace,
acceptance is such a powerful move towards true healing.
I’m glad that my messages can help.
Much love to you
Mel 🙏💕💚