Today’s article is essential for many in this community because, after abuse, you may feel your self-worth has been seriously compromised.

Self-worth is the deservedness and capacity to generate and receive a life that grants you value. For example, having relationships that add to your soul’s truth, life, and goals rather than subtract from them. Also, having the confidence to expand, grow, succeed, and break out of old comfort zones into new territories while being solid enough to exhibit kindness, honesty, transparency, humility, morality, courage, and strength.

Before, during, and after toxic relationships, the topic of self-worth requires addressing if we don’t wish to stay limited, traumatized, and stuck in patterns of living without our true potential gifts.

I’d love you to hold my hand as we take this self-worth journey together today.

Self-Value and Being Valued

The first ‘self-worth’ topic I want to discuss is anchoring into the necessary self-value to be valued by others.

Even when dealing with good people, they are not mind readers. They don’t know your likes, dislikes, and preferences unless you speak up and express them. This may be difficult for you if you feel sensitive to other people’s energies and unsure of your own.

If your childhood caregivers were uninterested in your needs, wants, and preferences, you may have struggled to identify those things for yourself and, much less, asked for them. Or when you tried to, you may have experienced feelings of rejection, humiliation, or being dismissed. You could have decided early on not to share your needs and look after them yourself. Possibly, when you did accept support from others, the consequences suffered were being manipulated for another person’s agenda.

The sad truth is many empaths, even before suffering narcissistic abuse, have a suppressed ‘self’ unable to express needs healthily because of the fears of CRAP (Criticism, Rejection, Abandonment, or Punishment.)

If this is you (and understandably so) in a relationship with anyone, they can’t see ‘you’ to serve and love ‘you.’

Who are you? Who is there to love?

No-body. Because you don’t share who you are.

It seems you are not valued, but there is no ‘you’ to be seen as valued. Bonding hormones are released within those who serve others. It creates oxytocin, fondness, connection and love. You deny people this ability to connect with you if you don’t allow them to ‘see’ you, ‘know’ you, meet your needs, and serve you.

Now, let’s take this up a notch with toxic people. They absolutely don’t value you. They have no interest in ‘you’. They don’t care about your feelings or who you are as a blood, flesh, soulful human being.

Their only interest in you is what they can get from you. Ego gratification, money, sex, and stuff. Not only are you not valued, but you are objectified – the ‘thing’ that delivers what the narcissist seeks. You are devalued and dehumanized.

After this level of relationship abuse, you absolutely feel more worthless than ever.

But please take heart because this is an incredible opportunity to heal these old core wounds that have been on repeat in your life. Then, you can rise above feeling like your self-worth depends on others.

To be recognized, you must first ‘see’ yourself. To be met, you have to show and share yourself. Prioritizing the healing and development of your self-worth is vital to do this.

For many of us who have experienced narcissistic relationships, valuing ourselves was always something we needed to look at and heal. I hope what I have shared with you above helps bring some awareness to you about this. There is more to come below.

This is a powerful mantra to help you anchor self-value into your Being:

“I can live aligned with my values. By sharing my values and preferences, I invite collaboration, love and trust with others.”

If you are a NARP Member, I suggest using the Goal Setting Module with this statement:

“I can take up space and express my needs, wants and preferences to create partnership, collaboration, success and expansion. It is now safe to be myself.”

Boundaries – Self-Worth in Action

Ultimately, self-worth and feeling worthy of all the good stuff in life cannot be achieved by yourself.

At first, after suffering from toxic abuse, it’s vital to self-partner, go within, and heal. This alone time is powerful and essential. Even after this hiatus, you may like your own company, yet you will notice your soul is calling for ‘more’—more connection, expansion, and experiences with life and others. Of course, this can be terrifying, but it is vital for self-worth. Self-worth won’t stand the test of time in solitude.

Connection with life and others is essential for creating greater love, expansion, and success than can be achieved alone. Suppressing this truth diminishes one’s self-worth. Communion and connection are synonymous with self-worth and can be navigated safely.

This is where healthy boundaries come into play.

The key to understanding is that self-worth is never defined by what other people do or do not do in response to you. Self-worth comes from your ability to interact with people, no matter who they are.

Let me explain …

If you try to interact with people in a way that will hopefully make them ‘pleasant’ to be around, that means telling people what they want to hear and shying away from necessary honest conversations. Trying to avoid uncomfortable feelings in this way eventually destroys your self-worth. People say, “I don’t want to hurt their feelings.” But if they are honest with themselves, they don’t want to hurt their own.

There is a good reason the expression “the truth sets you free” exists. Authentic friends, partners, colleagues, and family members speak up if they love themselves and, therefore, can love others. They offer opportunities for greater understanding, collaboration, growth, and improved connection – rather than saying nothing and causing disconnection just to save their potentially uncomfortable feelings.

These are the people who have real and solid relationships. They magnetize other people who wish to be honest with each other. Transparency is not a weakness that leaves people susceptible to others. It offers protection. It is a great strength. Most of all, it creates a genuine connection—with self, others, and life—the juice of self-worth.

The tendency to not speak up and have difficult conversations with people is programmed into us from a very early age. When enmeshed in toxic relationships, despite our initial intuitive fears, we kept the peace, hoped for the best, and told ourselves stories to justify and explain away the personal violations we started to receive.

When you spoke up and thought you were laying boundaries, you may not have realized the power of a true boundary. We believed it was about calling out bad behavior, making someone else see what they were doing wrong, holding them accountable, and changing them.

Which usually went very badly. We became more out of control on this incorrect boundary crusade of trying to control another’s character and choices.

You never had the power to change another—only yourself. The real boundary is anchoring into your self-worth, stating your values and chosen life truths, and then observing whether or not people meet you there and letting them go if they don’t.

An actual boundary is not reliant on someone else—who certainly may never accept your boundary—getting it. It only requires you to get it, which you potentially always can if it is embodied in your self-worth.

A great mantra for this is:

“By knowing and stating my truth, I conjoin with those who share these values and detach from those who don’t. You either are or are not my reality.”

If you are a member of the Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program (NARP), this goal set is powerful:

“I express my values calmly and clearly. Those who agree are those I journey through life with. Those who don’t simply are not my people.”

In Conclusion

If you lack self-worth, you are in a painful and precarious position because another person can easily take away your love and affection, leaving you feeling like you have nothing left to go on with or maybe even live for.

Before healing these unconscious underlying programs and beliefs, we can live in constant fear of love being taken away in any relationship because we do not yet know how to grant it back to ourselves. This leaves us believing we are unworthy of everything we desire, especially being seen, heard, held, and loved.

The great news is this can be directly addressed, healed, and reversed, and I am thrilled to host the Thrive Membership Program every year. This is an exclusive 10-week online Live boot camp to help get you on track with your Self, life, and others after abuse.

What I covered today—creating self-worth and self-value and learning healthy boundary setting—is addressed in the Thrive Membership Program, which offers powerful workshopping and life-changing specific Quanta Freedom Healings™.

As well as … going free from toxic ties to abusers, dissolving away your abuse symptoms, releasing self-sabotage, learning how to attract and generate healthy relationships, and so much more.

Here is what some of our Community Members said about their 10-week Thrive experience.

Thrive Testimonies

“Thrive was the lifeline I needed. I was in pure shock and couldn’t find a logical next step. Thrive popped up, and I knew I had to sign up. It was so much more than I ever expected and took my healing to a cosmic level. Melanie and the MTE team have provided such a priceless gift to the world – the kind of freedom you could never put into words. Melanie is a remarkable teacher, wise, funny, and honest – guiding us to practice the most profound self-love on our own terms. If you do this program, you will be surprised and ecstatic at the results.”- Ramona.

“Working through the Thrive program has been a transformational and life-changing experience. It has enabled me to expand my understanding of myself and the incredible power of connection with Source. I am grateful to be part of a support community sharing in this wondrous journey, allowing me to further appreciate and reinforce the blessing of Source in my life.” – Joy.

“I was so painfully triggered at the thought of being replaced by my ex’s new girlfriend. With the help of the healings in Thrive, I could not only shift these blocks and pain out of my body but also fill myself with an expansive sense of love and peace in their place. It’s unmissable.” – Bee.

“Thrive genuinely helped me to cope with a difficult past by guiding me through the process of going no contact with my abuser while also teaching me how to recognize and let go of the blocks in my life that were preventing me from healing. If you’re searching for a way to heal emotional pain in the past or present, this program is for you. The profound gains in understanding it will offer have no equal in therapy. In short, Thrive saved my life.” – Bianca.

“Thrive is an amazing program that shifts toxic energy from the body, allowing you to live your best life! I’ve had the privilege of being in the Thrive community and saw myself freed from my debt cycle. By the end of the ten weeks, I had paid off all my credit cards, much to my surprise and delight! Mel’s passion, drive, and care for helping others find inner peace and reach their best self make Thrive an incredible program I highly recommend. If you want to transform your life, I urge you to try it – I promise, you won’t regret it!” – Della.

The Thrive Membership Program is open to you if you are a NARPer wanting a supportive super-boost breakthrough, a non-NARPer desiring more personal coaching with their healing journey, or if you are a past Thrive student being called to Thrive again into an even greater, healthier and happier life trajectory.

The Thrive Membership Program starts September 12^th, 2023.

Be quick to claim one of the limited spaces remaining.

I hope today’s article has given you some vital keys to your abuse recovery. As always, I look forward to your comments and questions below.

But to most of you, this may seem very difficult.

You might believe that putting yourself first is selfish or feels wrong in some way.

You might even be confused about what self-love is!

No doubt, throughout your narcissistic relationship, you experienced many times when your needs were neglected and seen as unimportant.

To make matters worse, the narcissist’s efforts to continually derail you, using any available or fabricated ammunition against you and projecting his or her behavior onto you (making it all out to be your fault), will have succeeded in smashing your self-esteem to pieces.

You want to get better and heal after this tragic event in your life, but when faced with the task of providing yourself with unconditional love and encouragement, it might seem like climbing Mount Everest would be easier.

You might have been doing the exact opposite for so long. You may have a history of putting everyone else’s needs before yourself. And most certainly, your relationship with the narcissist has been all about him or her rather than you. It is usual that due to the narcissist blaming you and because your emotions have felt so tormented, you have become critical of yourself rather than supportive.

I want you to know that this difficulty was normal (and was certainly experienced by me) before I started making an effort to give myself the love and encouragement that I needed to recover.

When you first change your behavior, it can feel unnatural, but if you commit, you can drastically alter your life in ways you couldn’t imagine.

Today, I want to help you start moving forward in your recovery by showing you how to provide genuine love and support. This is achieved by moving forward into acceptance and taking responsibility for what you have been through.

There are two types of healing I consistently see about narcissistic abuse – and they are truly polar opposites – one being non-healing, where the ability to thrive, let alone basically recover, is stunted, and true-healing, whereby the individual thrives and creates a much more empowered self as a result of being narcissistically abused.

The difference comes down to this:

Growing through the experience, or

just trying to go through the experience.

So, how do we grow through the experience?

We grow by using our narcissistic experience to heal and change our lives for the better.

This has to be done by (after initially discovering what ‘narcissism’ is) getting our focus off the narcissist and firmly on ourselves so that we can heal our pain, fear, and insecurities.

This is very hard to do if we choose to stay in pain. This occurs if we are not committed to healing and changing ourselves.

If we don’t commit to healing ourselves, we will resist getting better—and we will not even be at first base in regard to getting well.

We stay separated from ourselves.

Shifting Through Resentment and into Acceptance

As soon as we start judging ourselves in relation to how bad our lives have ended up, the emotional pain becomes unbearable.

Statements such as:

How could I have stayed so long?

How could I have been tricked so easily?

I’m so stupid!

I have wasted (however many) years of my life.

My life has become everything terrible that I never imagined it would become.

We may try and reduce the emotional pain by shifting the blame onto something outside of ourselves (usually the narcissist), which, of course, renders us more powerless…

We start recovering when we understand why and how we can accept what happened to us without judgment.

This means we need to face, embrace, and support our unhealed parts without pain or self-judgment. It is about accepting and embracing them unconditionally with self-acceptance.

You are your most powerful force. You are the key person who can heal, love, support yourself, and create change. Everything you need is within you.

I now understand this so well. It was fundamental to my healing and has been to many other people’s recovery.

Healing starts with taking responsibility.

Yes, he or she is a narcissist who is impossible to have a healthy relationship with – BUT if you make this healing journey about you and healing the unhealed parts that created you as susceptible to narcissist abuse, you will create a healing experience that genuinely defies one you believed was possible.

I often find that the people who are stuck in non-recovery are not just blaming the narcissist; they are also deeply ashamed of themselves for being ‘so stupid,’ ‘wasting my life,’ ‘losing everything I put in’ ‘trusting this person only to get destroyed, discarded, etc., etc.’  and the list goes on and on.

Please know I understand these normal human painful emotions, and all the way up until my breakdown, I was doing all of these things myself.

When I ask people the question, “Were you ‘full and happy before they met the narcissist?” the question means within yourself, within your own soul.…because you may need to accept (to get well) that the system of life is ‘energetic’ it is not ‘practical.’

Many of us were ‘independent’ and even ‘successful’. In fact, many, many people who were narc abused are very capable and independent people, yet not emotionally ‘whole’.

It is also common for people to meet narcs after years of being single. But again, it comes back to ‘Was I whole?’, and ‘Did I have beliefs about myself and life that allowed me to be whole?” or ‘Do I even know what being whole is?’

Taking on the shame and blame is a choice – and is a long way from ‘I accept I have unhealed parts, and this is why I was in a narcissistic relationship, and NOW I CAN accept and heal them’.

Shame and blame only come when we can’t accept this about ourselves and make our recovery all about ourselves.

When we let go of the focus on shame and blame and move forward into the proactive energy of creating what we do want instead of staying stuck in what we don’t want, everything changes.

The Two Vital Questions You Must Ask Yourself

If you are having difficulty shifting into acceptance and moving forward in your recovery, ask yourself these questions:

“Why would I keep hanging on to resentment when it is only going to bring me more emotional pain and more of the behaviors of love partners and people that I resent?” and

“Why did I attract and sustain a relationship with a narcissist?”

When we are ready to honestly confront and take responsibility (not make it about anyone else but ourselves) for these questions from a true soul level, we are in a position to start getting well.

If you cannot embrace and honestly start working with these questions, you are stuck in your ego. This is perfectly understandable when you have been hurt and are still in pain and fear.

Your ego wants justice, revenge, and accountability—and the ego needs to be ‘right’ and make someone else ‘wrong’. Even if you got ‘justice’ (and you won’t if trying to force justice and accountability from a space of pain), your ego would get a feed momentarily, and then you would STILL be feeling terrible after it wore off.

Nothing we achieve through our ego holds, feels durably good, or is sustainable – ever!

We can let our ego kick, scream, and condemn for as long as we like—and the result will be the same—we keep hitting brick walls and experiencing pain until we FINALLY accept that true healing is all about dissolving our ego, realizing it is our internal enemy. Blame and shame are all products of our egos that take us away from our liberation and not toward it.

Self Accountability

Why do we need self-accountability? We need it to become conscious and to grow. Without it, we believe ‘it’s everyone else’s fault and problem’ and don’t change ourselves.

Self-accountability is not about accepting ‘blame’—it is about making the decision to heal, grow, and become better as a result of the pain.

It is the model of knowing:

‘I realize and embrace that there are parts of me that contributed to being susceptible and powerless to narcissistic abuse.’ By accepting this, I can focus on healing these unhealed parts. Doing so can create true change and solutions in my life.

Recognizing Your Unhealed Parts

Even before you can begin recovery, you need to be aligned with proper recovery, and this is realizing that pain, blame, and shame are not aligned with getting well.

Recently, on the NARC Facebook Group, I showed an example of recognizing the unhealed parts that allowed my abuse to take place.

I started with my own list of reasons as to why I got hooked on a narcissistic relationship.

These reasons were integral parts of my personality, which existed before my narcissistic relationship:

• I was not whole or happy with myself
• I always needed some accomplishment or someone ‘loving me’ to feel okay about myself
• I was unresolved over previous relationships and had not accepted or healed the unhealed parts that showed up within these painful relationships.
• I had never learned to love and accept myself unconditionally ‘just for being me.’
• I believed I was only lovable for what I could produce
• I was never able to just ‘be’ without being obsessive/compulsive and thinking about ‘what I should be doing.’
• I found it very hard to treat myself nicely, nurture or value myself
• I was my own worst critic rather than knowing how to speak to myself lovingly and supportively
• I could not accept compliments easily and believe I deserved them
• I could not let people into my life without fearing they had agendas or would control me
• I was suspicious of other people, and I didn’t know if I could trust myself to honor me, lay boundaries, and walk away rather than rely on someone else to ‘love me.’

The list goes on and on, and the truth is that I could write 10 pages.

The truth is I was NOT real with myself (unconditional love and support), and I gravitated into a relationship with ANOTHER false person!

I have no shame in admitting these things, and I have incredible relief in doing so.

I am still imperfect, but my life now is about taking responsibility instead of blaming life and others for what I choose and create. Now, I can and do heal these aspects of myself instead of careering into more pain, blame, and shame with no way out.

And that is the difference now.

The Magical 55 Points of Self-Accountability and Healing

An incredible thing then happened on the NARC Page, as another member deeply fell into herself and came up with a list of 55 points as to what she recognized about herself (her belief systems) that had led her into a very painful narcissistic marriage.

These were magical.                                                                                  

They described so many of the reasons why we get narcissistically abused.

I related to so many of these points.

What was totally consistent was that many people in the group who were having big and powerful healing breakthroughs (working NARP) also did and posted as such.

These 55 points were:

1. The more I do for people, the more people will love/like, and accept me
2. If I do what people want, they will love me
3. People won’t love me for being me
4. If I disagree with people and what they say, they will not like me
5. My happiness depends on what other people are or are not doing
6. I am obsessive about other people’s bad behavior and let it control and dictate my life and how I feel. I need them to recognize their behavior and admit to it for me to feel OK
7. If I am right and they are wrong, I need to know people ‘get this’ for me to feel OK and move on
8. I sometimes let people take control because that means I don’t have to make decisions in fear of failure, and that makes me feel safe
9. People have hidden agendas, and if they say something nice, it’s because they want something from me
10. If people do something for me, they want something in return
11. I find it hard to treat and nurture myself because I do not deserve it, and people will view me as being selfish and leave
12. The less I ask for, the more I will get
13. If I voice my needs, people will leave me, and that is not OK
14. Just being me is not enough. I must be more by what everyone else deems enough
15. I did not lay clear boundaries and allowed people to walk all over me and convince me my boundaries were wrong, needy, over the top, and unacceptable
16. I am easily swayed by what other people feel is acceptable or not and do not honor my own feelings and beliefs and speak my truth
17. I must achieve other people’s standards to be accepted and be deemed acceptable
18. I alone am not enough
19. I must achieve stuff to succeed and feel whole, confident, at peace, and OK and to be accepted
20. I do/did not love myself unconditionally
21. I did not back myself and needed other people to have my back to feel ok and safe
22. I do/did not trust myself and my gut instincts
23. I was too scared to leave in fear of failure and stayed to prove my worthiness. And needed others to love me, recognize this, and acknowledge this for me to feel this
24. I am not enough, so I must prove this to people at all costs, even if it means going against what and who I really am, and as a result, I lose myself
25. I felt/feel worthless and need people to remind me of my worthiness to feel it myself
26. If I don’t have control, I will lose control
27. I was petrified of being abandoned and being replaced, so I stayed to avoid this
28. I stayed regardless of everything I knew was wrong in fear of someone else replacing me and being better than me
29. If I dismissed what I really felt and allowed him the freedom he wanted, he would want me more, and things would be OK
30. I constantly forgave people for unforgivable behavior and allowed myself to be abused over and over again
31. I did not have enough self-respect for myself and needed this from the outside to feel respected
32. I need to feel needed to feel worthy and ok
33. I get jealous/territorial/competitive/unsure of myself regarding some of the relationships other people have with other people in fear of them liking them better and abandoning me. This would mean I am not enough
34. I do not have self-confidence unless I feel amazing, look amazing, and everything is going well in my life
35. I easily lose self-confidence and become very jealous of other people and or what they have instead of knowing, loving, and being content with who I am and what I have
36. People’s opinions of me rule and dictate my life and how I feel
37. I wasted a lot of time trying to please everyone else to feel pleased within and about myself
38. I forfeited my dreams and goals, thinking that someone else could provide them for me and that they would be better
39. I have never really known what I want to do in my life and have relied/hoped that someone else could fill this hole for me
40. I am scared of failure and not being good enough and have made excuses and waited for the outside world to fix this for me because I am scared of failure and making the wrong mistake again
41. I need other people to agree with me for me to agree with me – trust myself unconditionally and feel ok
42. I constantly overanalyze thoughts and situations, make excuses for others’ behavior, and second-guess myself
43. I am far too hard on myself and am my own worst critic
44. I allowed someone to control me, my thoughts, values, and beliefs, and as a result, I lost myself
45. I don’t think I have ever been authentic. I must be the person people want me to be to be loved and accepted
46. I was obsessive about being accepted as an equal by both the outside world and with my ex-narc to feel accepted, equal, and good enough for him
47. I have relied on other people’s point of view to trust my own
48. I must prove myself and my self-worth to feel self-worth
49. I need to prove myself and am obsessive/compulsive about it
50. I allowed myself to be treated continuously in unacceptable ways because I did not lay firm enough boundaries, follow through, and have the guts to walk away and feel whole on my own
51. The kinder I am, the kinder people will be to me
52. If I did so much and was so much, I would never be replaced and abandoned
53. Being replaceable and abandoned and someone else being better, prettier, more intelligent, ‘more this more that’ petrifies me and has always been a huge issue in my life, and I fight it at all costs
54. I don’t love myself, I am not enough, and I need someone to remind me of this, accomplish stuff, have stuff, do stuff to feel good about myself and be accepted by other people
55. I was not enough for my husband, and someone else was

Unconditionally Loving and Accepting Yourself

On the same day, another member posted in the NARC Group about’ What is loving myself?’ and ‘I have no frame of reference to do this.’

My response to her was:

“Self-love is acknowledging our inner dysfunctions and what has not worked for us.

The 55 points are a magnificent list, allowing us to embrace and realize so much. THEN we look at this wounded, hurt part of ourselves as our inner child and say to this part of ourselves, ‘You precious, darling, lovable soul, I adore you with all of my heart, and because I love you so much, I am going to do everything in my power to help you, heal you, support you, and help you get better’.

That is what loving ourselves is.

It is a dedication, a devotion, a commitment, and then we immediately are ‘self-love’, and we get to create more and more and more of it.

And THEN we get to attract the REAL deal from life—as an inevitable match of who we are to ourselves.

Our inner child has been screaming out in pain for help, devotion, and love and was unfortunately trying to get that from ‘outside of us’ because we didn’t go to her ourselves. She could never get this from ‘the outside.’ It HAD TO come from us – and that is why, until now, she was not getting better.

This is why it is ALWAYS about healing the self with unconditional love and focus. There is nothing else to change or fix! “

The member answered with another post, amazed at how ‘simple’ the concept of ‘loving herself’ was.

My next response was:

“It is incredible how the ‘truth’ is always so simple. Our egos, our minds, and the human condition have caused us to complicate everything to the extreme! That is great news that you understand and can commit to the simple, true formula now! Now you are on your way ‘home’ – absolutely. All you need to do is ‘do’ this, the ‘being’ of loving you.”

I would love you to join in on the self-accountability exercise by listing the reasons why you got hooked on a narcissistic relationship. You can use your own examples or ones from the magical 55-point list. If you would like, please share your answers in the comments below. However, if you would like to keep it private, just write the list for yourself.

This exercise will allow you to recognize your unhealed parts that require healing to start accepting, embracing, and healing them unconditionally.

Once you recognize your insecure, broken parts and step up with love, you become the loving, supportive, healing source to yourself you may have never been before this point.

This is the key to change your life – forever. This is the absolute formula to come out of narcissistic abuse and finally love yourself without exception.

We may experience this in many different forms. Maybe this person who once vowed and declared we are their soul mate, that they truly love us, and they can’t live without us has moved on to another relationship without even a second glance. And maybe this person is attempting to discredit and destroy us, and is trying to rip us apart in property and custody battles.

These behaviours are clearly the very opposite of what love should be.

Of course this feels personal, and the narcissist’s tactics bring on every insecurity and fear that we may have had about ourselves, namely I am not lovable and not worthy of being loved.

Virtually every individual who has sustained a relationship with a narcissist loved this person, and kept loving until it hurt – horrifically. We can agonise about the injustice of handing over so much of our love and support for months, years or decades to come to the horrific realisation that all of this loving and giving amounted to nothing, and was never genuinely reciprocated by the very person who was meant to love us.

In all of the people that I work with, and within my own narcissistic abuse experience, this situation proves to be one of the hardest to get past, and to come to terms with. We feel emotionally annihilated by this insane betrayal of what we thought our love with this person was.

As human beings with a conscience, compassion and love to give, it feels unthinkable that another person is incapable of loving, or that they can profess love one minute, and do the exact opposite the next.

This insane version of love greatly disturbs our logic and destroys our emotions, because ‘love’ is the very essence of why we want to be in a relationship, connect and share our lives with another person. Loving and the being able to share love is as natural a desire for us as it is to breathe air.

When we look at our version of love we have no ability to fathom, let alone accept, why the narcissist did not reciprocate love genuinely.

Understanding Why the Narcissist is Incapable of Love

In order to come to terms with The Narcissist Never Loved You, you must understand why he or she acts the way narcissists do.

• The narcissist does not operate as what we know is a ‘normal’ human being.
• The narcissist has no desire to allow love, teamwork and co-operation into his or her life.
• The narcissist believes he or she has to remain ‘separate’ in order to survive.
• The narcissist needs to dump his or her internal torment onto an intimate partner and make the other person at fault in order to try to relieve his or her tormented inner self.
• The narcissist needs to steal energy (‘narcissistic supply’) in order to attempt to fill their own pain of inner emptiness.
• The narcissist, due to internal emptiness needs to take energy, and doesn’t have the resources to give energy once having secured much needed supply.
• The narcissist through damaging a person close to them, experiences the omnipotent high of feeling significant enough to affect another person in this manner.
• The narcissist cannot genuinely feel love, but knows how to feign it in order to secure attention and significance.
• Narcissists know that intimate people in their life, who are hooked, are the best targets to harvest as well as release internal anger, and that these people will hang around whilst it takes place.

From our own moral compass, these things seem horrific and unspeakable. The following information may be confrontation, but the reason I am expressing what I am about to say is because it will help you understand what narcissism is…

If we are all honest with ourselves – we know that the times when we feel empty, worthless, scared and insecure that we may have acted in manipulative ways, and even hurt other people in order to try and feel better within ourselves.

Whether or not we were children or adults, we know our capacity to be immature and nasty. If we live our life through a lens of fear and victimised feelings, we feel separate, unworthy and unlovable, and may act narcissistically when seeing other people as the enemy.

Hopefully these times are momentary, and because we have a conscience we often regret what we have done – and apologise and take responsibility. If we apply self-realisation, we realise that these tactics of fear, separation and egoic defence mechanisms do not procure healthy results, and accordingly we decide to grow up.

Can you imagine what it would be like if you were stuck in this programming with no way out? This is exactly the reality for the narcissist who has such an over-developed, fearful and aggressive ego and such a damaged, stunted and numb sense of connection, union and trust, that the narcissist simply cannot operate in any other way. If he or she momentarily does, as soon as self-loathing and fear re-surfaces (which are the narcissist’s powerful inner drivers) the old compulsions kick straight back into gear and constantly reassert.

Quite simply the narcissist can’t and doesn’t grow up.

You would have experienced this many times. Just when you think the narcissist gets it, takes responsibility for the poor behaviour and professes to change, My Hyde appears again, and you’re going back through the same abusive, non-sensical and mind-bending patterns. You continually feel like you are battling with an irrational 5 year old.

If you are really honest with yourself – you know that this is not what ‘love’ is meant to be.

The truth of the matter is: the narcissist is incapable of love, because the narcissist is incapable of loving and accepting his or her self. The enemy within becomes the enemy without – and everyone is the enemy because of this self-loathing – and as the intimate partner, this most definitely means you are the closest target on this list.

The first step in gaining relief from the torment of realising He or she never loved me, is the acceptance of the truth that a narcissist does what a narcissist does, because they are a narcissist.

The Truth will always set you free…

Your Soul Truth

(Feel into this…)

When we resist The Truth, our healing process cannot begin, because we try to change ‘what is’ into a version of ‘what we want it to be’. ‘What is’ simply is – and denial means our emotions and life will keep beating us up until we accept the truth. Delusion, denial and non-acceptance are resistance which creates our self-disintegration, because we can never come to peace with our life in the now.

When we accept The Truth we finally start to set ourselves free, take back our power and incorporate a version of ‘love’ that is going to work.

One thing is for certain, you can’t make a narcissist love you, and in fact you can’t make anyone love you, you can only learn how to love yourself, and then people who are capable of genuine love will gravitate towards you.

Like so many others I used to seek myself through others. I had numerous partners, even before the narcissist, whereby I only felt loved if they were loving me. I didn’t know how to have an authentic sense of love for myself. As a result I would try to make people who didn’t have the resources love me, and stayed attached to them in this futile exercise.

When I realised The Truth, which all along was: This had always been about learning to Love Myself, everything shifted.

No longer was I attracted to unavailable, addiction prone or narcissistic individuals. THEN healthy people that showed me genuine love became my reality.

I explain in detail how you can make this change in my eBook How to Recognise and Heal Co-dependency.

(Please note this eBook is included in the Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program)

Additionally, you will learn how to reject people that don’t love you, rather than believing and feeling that it is you that is being rejected.

In order to get real love you must understand:

• It isn’t anyone else’s job to supply you with ‘love’, it’s your job.
• Your loveableness does not rely on any specific person’s level of love or non-love.
• When you don’t love and back yourself, you will rationalise away the warning signs, the pain and the abuse, and try to make an abusive person love you in order to feel whole.
• You haven’t previous to, and during this abuse, felt ‘enough’ or ‘lovable’ unless someone else was granting you love, and you felt rejected and unlovable when they weren’t.

Coming Home to Loving You

The Laws of Life and Energetic Reality is an absolute force and the foundation of all reality you experience. This system is undeniable, and can’t be shortcut.Your experience in life will only ever supply and provide you with what it is that you are supplying yourself.

The ‘gap’ that the narcissist was able to operate through is: You hadn’t yet learnt healthy boundaries, how to love and respect yourself fully, or how to let go of the ‘dream’ that someone else was going to provide your love and safety and inner fullness for you.

All of us who have suffered narcissistic abuse wanted to feel whole, safe, lovable and ‘enough’ as a result of another person confirming this for us. The truth is, we hadn’t as yet confirmed these essential ‘self commodities’ within ourself. We hadn’t realised the absolute need to genuinely love, respect and back ourselves in order to receive more of that from others.

The realisation ‘he or she never loved me’ is pointing us to the place of authenticity, and the way home to the love we really want to create in our life. The crippling pain (which is arguably like no other) has brought on the necessity to understand what we need to establish within ourselves.

When you do the work on this, you will know that it is irrelevant that the narcissist isn’t capable of love, in fact that is the narcissist’s issue and curse in life to bear (the inability to know, participate in and share genuine love), whereas you do have this ability, and you (unlike the narcissist) can turn your love experience around.

This is not about the narcissist – this was always about you. The narcissist was simply a catalyst showing you the truth.

When you do the work on your inner, a person who is incapable of love will not be your reality. You will no longer agonise over the ‘what if’s’, ‘should have beens’, and the wasted years of your effort and love, and you will come home to yourself genuinely and create genuine love in your life.

Your healing is the need to let go of the need to gain yourself through love from the narcissist, and fully commit to the journey of loving yourself.

You are capable of creating real love from within, and this is the only place that manifests it genuinely from others. That is the life you deserve.

Once accepting and being at peace with ‘the narcissist didn’t love me’, you have the golden opportunity to claim the gift of giving you back to loving yourself.

Those of you that have come to terms that the narcissist never loved you, please share your stories and insight into how you overcame this hurdle.

It will help and inspire many to do the same.

Remember, you can always remain anonymous.